Re: SUO: standards
Murray,
Yes, I agree with everything you say in principle.
But in practice, somebody needs to implement the
principles.
What Philippe has done is to implement what I believe
is a very good meta-ontological framework. We also have
IFF as a very good theoretical framework, which nobody
has implemented completely (although important parts of
it have been implemented and used for years).
I believe that MSO together with IFF can be an important
step toward what we have been talking about for the past
three years without making any measurable progress.
> Now, there may be those interested in some "alignment"
> of a bunch of commercial and public ontologies. I'm
> deeply suspicious about the result because these products
> were each developed under such different circumstances
> and for different purposes. But rather than dissuade
> anyone from that effort (which I suspect is pointless
> to argue about), I'd rather advocate for analysis
> of the commonalities in their structure and methods.
> That's where the real value would be, I suspect.
All of your suspicions are very well founded, and all
of them have been debated for the past three years
without any measurable progress -- either theoretical
or practical.
The framework that I have been proposing, preaching,
and writing about for a lot more than three years is
designed to accommodate everything -- good, bad, and ugly
-- and put it in its proper place within the hierarchy.
That is an essential step toward doing anything useful.
I'll say more about this in other postings.
John