RE: SUO: More KIF-ified Ontology Content
Dear John,
See comments below marked MW:
Regards
Matthew
============================================
Matthew West
Operations & Asset Management
Shell Services International
H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929
Mobile: +44 7796 336538
E-mail: Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com
http://www.shellservices.com/
============================================
snip
> I strongly agree with Pat's point:
>
> >PH: I think that you believe that there is a single, universally
> >acceptable, ontology, and that all others can be mapped into it. I
> >think this will happen only when science stops.
MW: This is something I clearly need to refute. I believe that our
ontologies will change over time as our knowledge of the world changes.
Therefore part of my requirement is that what we do understands that this is
the case. This might be in the upper ontology, or in the language
(meta-ontology) in which it is expressed. One of my concerns is that there
seems to be no provision for this as yet.
MW: I also do not see a single ontology, but multiple ontologies. However, I
do see (theoretically) that they are constrained subsets of some integrated
ontology. An example of a constrained subset would be Newton's theory of
gravity, a less constrained ontology would then be general relativity.
MW: Similarly I see continuants and occurants as concepts from a more
constrained ontology that can be mapped into (and out of) a 4D ontology. I
do not necessarily expect all concepts of a 4D ontology to be mappable into
a continuants/occurants based ontology, since I perceive it to be more
constrained.
>
> But I still believe that there is something useful that we can
> accomplish even before science stops. My best cut at what
> that may be is summarized in the Knowledge Soup chapter of
> my KR book. Summarizing even more briefly,
>
> 1. An open-ended lattice of theories, which could be extended
> arbitrarily far to accommodate any possible way of
> conceptualizing the world in any finite set of concepts.
> A complete lattice would have to be infinite, but any
> particular version that might be implemented at any one
> time is finite. However, there is no restriction on what
> anyone might add to it, given enough time, effort, and
> ingenuity.
MW: Well I certainly think that we will need something other than a
monolithic ontology, and lattice is a good way to describe this.
MW: I believe we need a way of carving up theories, without loosing their
interdependence. So I believe we need a way to:
a) define and name a theory,
b) refer to and use it in another theory (without repeating it).
I note that there seem to be no facilites in KIF to achieve this.
>
> 2. Methods for navigating the lattice to find theories that
> are approximately true or "good enough" for many problems,
> and with methods for revising and extending theories to
> make them better adapted to solving new problems.
MW: Well in my terminology, this is about matching the constraints in the
problem domain with the constraints on the applicability of the theory.
Provided there is a match (and the theory is a good one) then you should be
able to use it.