John,
You seem to be skipping around between the notion that it is best to include everyone's views on how concepts in an ontology should be defined, and the notion that inclusion is a kind of methodological first step to faciliate proper "testing" of which theories work best.
Those two views are in prima facie tension, at least if you are willing to admit that the results of any "tests" that would show us how to proceed might necessitate expunging a particular view (say, on the proper definition of an "event") if other definitions were demonstrably superior in the context of the stated purpose.
On the topic of tests: this is a beguiling idea, I've often thought of what it would mean to put an upper ontology to some sort of test to measure its usefulness for its intended aims (i.e. in the SUO scope and purpose documenation), but it seems to me that the kind of testing that would provide some benchmarks for fulfilling its stated objectives won't have much to do with disagreements over how to define things like "event" anyway.
Perhaps I'm wrong. How might we test an SUO to see whether different definitions of 'event' will make substantive differences in application development areas and system interoperability issues involving data exchange? I'm not sure I know what a test that, say, precluded one but not another philosophical interpretation of the nature of events when designing (for example) an e-business application using the SUO would even look like. I'm not even sure this makes sense. How about anyone else?
I know a lot of people have been wondering about much more modest problems that are nevertheless in the space of ontology considerations, like to what degree should you axiomatize an ontology based on its intended use, how many terms and rules it should contain to faciliate target objectives, and so on. These considerations are to be considered in contradistinction to, say, the debate over how to fit both the scientific and the folk psychological conceptualizations together in a single ontology to make sure that people with different philosophical opinions will all have their desired foundational ideas registered. The latter considerations aren't quite focused in the same way as the former, I'm afraid.
Erik
Mike Pool <mpool@iet.com> wrote:
At 08:47 AM 6/18/2003 -0700, John F. Sowa wrote:
>Matthew and Eric,
>
>The following interchange is crucial:
>
>ELP> And since we haven't shown a great amount of unity,
>> we can't yet claim that having more designers is better.
>
>> MW: Not as long as everyone wants to be in charge. One of
>> the reasons I support John Sowa's proposal is that I think
>> it will support the development of convergence, but allow
>> a large number of people to stay on board whilst the
>> consensus emerges.
>
>I agree with Eric that any brilliant new theory can only be
>developed by a single individual (or at most two or three closely
>attuned colleagues). An example would be Whitehead's ontology,
>which is brilliant, but highly idiosyncratic. I believe that
>Whitehead's approa!
ch holds
the key to resolving many of the
>thorny issues we have been facing, but it will take a lot of
>time to iron out the "rough edges" and build a consensus.
>
>Therefore, I agree with Matthew that the best approach we can
>take toward a practical ontology that people can accept is one
>that allows anybody to put their pet theories into the common
>registry. Then we can allow time for testing, comparison,
>and analysis to show us how to proceed.
>
>Trying to resolve a serious scientific dispute by voting is
>as foolish in ontology as it is in nuclear physics.
John,
I disagree, or at least I would deny that very many issues in ontology development are serious scientific disputes. The SUMO &%Process' versus Cyc #$Event and their different definitions of what appears to be, prima facie, the same concept is a case in point, It would be silly to keep both around in a standard ontology. Nevertheless!
, this is
conventional in a way that issues in nuclear physics would not be (unless, of course, the issue in nuclear physics concerned a stipulation regarding term usage). We may come up with practical reasons for adopting one convention or another but it would be hard to even conceive of devising an experiment that would allow us to determine the fact of the matter as to whether OpenCyc or SUMO "got it right" on the event definition score as it's just sort of odd to propose that one of these definitions is in some sense "falsifiable" (unless we could generate a contradiction from it, but even then it is only falsifiable in combination with !
the other definitions that allow for the generation of the contradiction). Many ontology issues will concern the ways in which we choose to define terms and, with apologies to Quine and you I guess, this is really nothing like nuclear physics (even if the cleavage between defining terms and figuring out the way the world is isn't very clear).
best,
Mike Pool
>If you
>can't resolve a dispute, the best we can do is to accommodate
>all the options until further evidence becomes available.
>
>John
>
>