Re: SUO: standards
John,
My first inclination on reading your description of MSO below is to look into it, think about things, then send a thoughtful contribution to the list to get out some ideas and help the group find a promising direction. But my next thought is that it simply isn't worth it. No group actions will result, no group consensus will edge closer, and the whole thing will simply get swallowed up in another round of pointless dillentantish quasi-intellectualism from the core group of folks currently dominating discussions and creating a rather large disincentive for others interested in serious work to get involved. Life is short. I have responsibilities. I cannot justify getting involved with a group with this level of anti-progessiveness instilled in its bones. Many others I've talked to feel the same way. I continue to monitor the list, mainly to catch an occasional gem from an occasional contributor, but also (I confess) out of
this amazement in watching something with so much intial promise go so rediculously and absolutely astray.
It is, quite literally, an experiment in failure, in watching those with a great interest in seeing their words publically aired and their wills here and there imposed masquerade as a group of collaborating problem solvers. If anyone were to notice or to even care, the real problem solvers have largely left, or are now content to make occasional ascerbic comments in small hope of initiating a bit of grounded reflection about some serious matters. In the meantime, those who choose to stay on for that occasional gem have to endure a steady stream of irrelevance in the interim. Fortunately, in this format it's as easy to stay partially attached as it is, apparently, to stay fully engaged in rediculousness.
Erik
"John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
Erik,
Thank you for supporting my original claim:
> After thinking abou this for a few months, I agree with
> John Sowa, and believe that monolithic ontologies are wrong-headed.
But I don't agree with the conclusion:
> They exclude. This means that there can't be any such thing as
> a "Standard" upper ontology. It seems reasonable to dissolve
> the group, or let it continue to fragment in dissolution and
> disgust, and move on.
The effort that gives me some hope of developing something useful
is Philippe Martin's Multi-Source Ontology (MSO), which I believe
can lead to "a new mindset", as you said:
> On the other hand, maybe this entire line of thought has been
> an indication that there is no serious standards work happening
> here, and there hasn't been for some time, and the gr!
oup
ought
> to give a new mindset a shot?
What Philippe has done is to develop a super hierarchy, which
includes the concept types from three different projects:
WordNet, my KR ontology, and Dolce. Now he is adding the
categories from Matthew's ontology. The next step is to
include the categories from SUMO and OpenCyc. Since both
SUMO and OpenCyc have already been aligned to WordNet, that
provides a good start, which should simplify Philippe's work.
> Standards exclude. By virtue of having them (having one),
> they also enable. Get on with something, or acquiesce as
> a sociological experiment and forget about engineering
> an ontology for a standard.
What IFF has promised is a methodology for relating multiple
independently developed ontologies, but nobody has actually
applied that methodology to the actual starter documents on
the SUO site. By sitting down and doing some hard work in
actually relati!
ng
multiple ontologies, Philippe has taken
an important first step.
There is still more work to be done, but I hope that having
a super hierarchy that relates all the special cases will give
us a solid target to examine, criticize, revise, and build on.
John Sowa
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