I have been following this mailing list
for about half a year now, and there have been a number of interesting
discussions on ULO's.
The point about mid level or domain
specific ontologies is accurate, and important, but the main unanswered
question seems to me to be
"can an upper level ontology exist,
and if so what form does it take"
all the discussions i have seen assume
that such an upper level ontology can exist. but none of them asks the
a prioi question: what form does it take. i do not mean "what is its
content", but what form, what is the basis, what are the fundamental
assumptions?
it may be that the sumo mailing list,
or the IEEE group is not the right place for such a fundamental discussion,
but I wanted to raise this point for discussion and comment. If the consensus
is that we can legitimately discuss it here, then let's do so.
regards,
Mark Mattingley-Scott, Ph.D.
Principal
Wireless Broadband & Sensing Solutions EBO
Leader Asset Monitoring EMEA Central Region
Senior Member I.E.E.E., M.G.K,
Chair I.E.E.E. SMC Germany Chapter
Re: updated MITRE paper:
Towards the Use of an Upper Ontology for U.S. Government and Military Domains
On Fri, 09 Dec 2005 20:40:31 -0500 "John F. Sowa"
<sowa@bestweb.net>
writes:
> Leo,
>
> Thanks for sending us the pointer to the latest version of
> the report. It's a careful and thoughtful review of several
> important projects that have been under development for a
> long time:
>
> http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/tech_papers_04/04_0603/index.html
>
> But I'd like to comment on some of the conclusions. I very
> strongly agree with the following passage in Section 7:
>
> > There is no agreed upon standard upper ontology and few
proven
> > implementations. Further, the differing theoretical approaches
> > taken by the candidate standard upper ontologies we examined
> > are evidence that there is no consensus on which approach
is
> > better. In fact, there may never be a single correct answer.
> > Rather, which theoretical approach is best may be situational.
>
> This would imply that it is premature to recommend *any* upper
> ontology as a standard. Another conclusion from Section 7:
>
> > Because upper ontologies are evolving, the “best” one
today may
> > not remain the “best” in the future. However, upper ontologies
> > do provide a theoretical foundation and give clues on concepts
> > people may wish to consider in their ontology development,
even
> > if they don’t actually map their domain concepts to an
upper
> > ontology.
>
> That sounds reasonable, but one might also say that the midlevel
> and domain-level ontologies should be designed to avoid making
> any commitments that would restrict their interoperability with
> any of the upper levels. For example, Dolce seems to imply that
> a person's brain is essential to his or her identity, but a heart
> is not. For most programs written today, this question has not
> been relevant. Fingerprints and DNA have been used in legal
> decisions, but brains have not been considered. Therefore,
> there is no reason to adopt an SUO that makes that commitment.
>
> > While there is an analysis cost in selecting an upper ontology
> > as theoretical framework, there is a greater cost in not
doing
> so,
> > especially when one is dealing with relatively abstract
concepts.
>
> What cost? How has that been determined? Which abstract
concepts?
> Abstract concepts are the most difficult to define and the most
> likely to vary from one ontology to the next. Wouldn't it be
better
> to avoid making any commitment to the details of any version? If
> some application requires some mention of abstract concepts, would
> it require anything more than what is contained in a collection of
> terms with few or no axioms, such as WordNet? If so, why make
more
> assumptions than necessary? Mathematicians always try to avoid
> making any assumptions that are not needed to solve a given problem.
> That approach maximizes generality and minimizes obsolescence.
>
> > Which upper ontology is best to use as even a conceptual
model is
> > situational and may change over time as upper ontologies
mature
> > and experience is gained with their use. However,
the risk of
> > a suboptimal selection is mitigated by the fact that future
upper
> > ontologies are likely to be founded on current candidate
standard
> > upper ontologies.
>
> But the current candidate upper ontologies have made different
> assumptions. Any commitment to one assumption is going to be
> incompatible with the others. When in doubt, leave it out.
>
> Computer programs have been communicating and interoperating for
> over 40 years without an SUO. All those programs have had to
make
> assumptions about the low-level formats of the data, about the
> symbols that are communicated, and about operational constraints
> on the data. But those are low-level constraints, not upper-level.
> Is there any evidence than an SUO would help those programs? Or
> might it introduce irrelevant constraints that could block other
> important operations?
>
> The stated reason for not recommending OpenCyc is that it lacks
> rules.
> But why should upper-level rules be important for interoperability?
> What if those rules contradict constraints that are necessary for
> the lower levels? What if they contradict the implicit assumptions
> built into existing programs that are not based on any explicit
> ontology? Must those programs be rewritten or even scrapped
just
> because somebody edicted a new ontology?
>
> Every program or database that has ever been implemented makes
> ontological commitments, and the likelihood that those commitments
> are identical to *any* proposed upper ontology is nearly zero.
> Therefore, an SUO might be incompatible with many, if not most
> existing programs in government and industry. That implies that
> either (a) the SUO would create major incompatibilities or (b) its
> axioms would be independent of the assumptions built into all that
> software. Case (a) would imply that the SUO would be a disaster,
> and case (b) would imply that it would be irrelevant. Are there
> any intermediate cases where it might be helpful? Has anyone
done
> a study of existing implementations in order to find out?
>
> In summary, this report discusses many unresolved questions about
> all the proposals for an upper ontology or even whether an upper
> ontology is desirable. I would interpret it as a strong case
for
> adopting a neutral position of emphasizing the midlevel and domain
> levels. Unless anyone can make a much stronger case for adopting
> a standard upper level, we should avoid a commitment to any SUO.
>
> John Sowa
>
>