Re: CG: Unified Framework for Ontology
Avril,
The basic point of the UF is to *avoid* "the
concepts used in common Western academic
metaphysics" -- not because they're unimportant
but because nobody can agree on them. That
was the problem with SUO for the past 5 years.
The purpose of the UF is to concentrate on
the middle levels and to leave the upper levels
to various upper ontologies -- of which there
is no shortage whatever. Upper ontologies
are so great that we have a superabundance
of them, and nobody who has one has the
slightest intention of abandoning it in
favor of anybody else's.
The purpose of the UF is to throw out *all*
upper levels, *all* metaphysical assumptions,
and make do with just the middle and lower
levels and with a bare *minimum* of axioms.
After that has been done, *anybody* with *any*
upper level can import UF into their system
with no fear of contradictions.
The greatest sources of contradictions are
upper levels and axioms. If you throw out
all the upper levels and most of the axioms,
you have no contradictions.
Of course, you can't do much reasoning with
just the UF alone. For that purpose, you
import the UF into your pet system with all
its axioms and metaphysical assumptions.
If you (or anybody else on these email lists)
would like to join the ONTAC discussions, see
http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologyTaxonomyCoordinatingWG
John