Re: SUO: Multi-Source Ontology (MSO) Draft Ballot Question
Adam,
I'd like to thank you for stating so clearly what seems to be a
common misunderstanding that appears commonly in research projects,
journal papers, etc. I only wish your statement could be put up
in big, bright lights for the entire KR/OntoEngr/SemWeb communities
to see. One often finds misguided criticism of WordNet per se, when
it's often just a poor application. The whole differentiation between,
as you say, philosophical and linguistically-based ontologies is
something that should be highlighted and kept very clear, as in any
aspect of design that tries to intermix concepts, processes or tools
outside of the context of their original design. While trying to hang
a picture in our dorm room, a roommate of mine in college tried to
hammer a nail into the wall with a pickle jar, with disastrous results.
(not the brightest spark on the planet, needless to say, but his
favorite TV show was the soap opera General Hospital....)
Murray
Adam Pease wrote:
> Philippe,
> I may have misunderstood the purpose of this work. As a set of
> relations between ontologies, as an aid to a human's understanding of them,
> it sounds very useful. But then I'm wondering why it's being proposed as a
> starter document. If it lacks information from the ontologies it uses as
> sources, and adds no new information, why is that suitable for a starter
> document?
> Another point is that WordNet and SUMO are two very different products
> that one shouldn't mix together. WordNet synsets are language constructs,
> not concepts, and the links among synsets are correct linguisticly, but not
> philosophically. SUMO on the other hand is not language dependent, and
> defines concepts which are valid philosophically, but may not have direct
> correspondence to any particular lexical item. I fear that putting them in
> the same representation language could cause considerable confusion.
> As an example, take the inference path that is possible from the SUMO
> term Motion to the WordNet synset "motion, movement, move" then up the
> hypernym links to "change", "action" and then "act, human action, human
> activity". Through that faulty inference chain, one could conclude that
> any Motion is an intentional human action, which of course is
> false. Hypernym links are linguistically valid, but not logically
> valid. Maybe you're "corrected" many of these WordNet links, but it's not
> clear to me the utility of that enterprise. I've seen so many papers
> detailing "corrections" to WordNet, which, although valid as far as they
> go, miss the point. WordNet wasn't intended for logical inference, so if
> you want a product for doing inference, you're better off with a product
> created for that purpose.
......................................................................
Murray Altheim http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK .
"Iraqi sovereignty will be established by appointees
appointing appointees to select appointees to select
appointees. Add the fact that Bremer was appointed to
his post by President Bush and Bush to his by the US
Supreme Court, and you have the glorious new democratic
tradition of the appointocracy: rule by an appointee's
appointee's appointees' appointees' appointees' selectees."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1130138,00.html