SUO: RE: RE: Foundation Ontology
Hi Robert,
. Sounds very interesting. I admit I didn't grasp all
of what you said below, nut I will be interested to see the structure when
you promulgate it.
. I tried the link below, but didn't get beyond the metalevel
page - "The page cannot be found".
Cheers Graham Horn
National Data Standards Unit
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
================================================
Phone: 02.6244.1094
Fax: 02.6244.1199
Email: Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au <mailto:graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert E. Kent [mailto:rekent@ontologos.org]
Sent: Friday, February 23, 2001 6:01 AM
To: Horn, Graham
Cc: SUO
Subject: Re: RE: Foundation Ontology
Hi Graham,
I am applying what I call the Information Flow Framework (IFF) to the
structural component of the SUO. According to Jon Barwise, Information Flow
is the logic of distributed systems. The intent of IFF is to apply
Information Flow to distributed logic, ontologies, and knowledge
representation. So IFF is a framework for sharing and manipulating
ontologies.
I view the structural component of the SUO to exist on the metalevel. As
such, IFF provides around 10 medium size ontologies loosely arrayed along
two dimensions -- an instantiation-predication dimension and an
entity-relation dimension. The central ontology *Classification* represents
classifications and their morphisms. I say _around_ 10, since the number of
ontologies needed will depend on how fancy you want to proceed. For example,
the more peripheral ontology *Concept Lattice* is only needed if you want to
get serious about representing true lattice hierarchies (and their several
kinds of morphisms -- at least three).
In addition to these 10 basic metalevel ontologies, there are three more
generic metalevel ontologies: *Set*, *Category Theory* and *IFF Foundation*.
*Set* represents the category of sets and functions, and hence all the basic
10 ontologies are founded upon it; in particular, colimits in the basic 10
ontologies are defined in terms of colimits in *Set*. The purpose for the
*Category Theory* ontology is to be able to formally discuss the 10 basic
ontologies (since they all represent a particular category).
Finally, the *IFF Foundation* ontology is used by all the other metalevel
ontologies, since it tries to model enough set-theory that is sufficiently
flexible for the categorical inquiry involved in IFF. But it tries to be
sufficiently restrictive that IFF be consistent (does not produce
contradictions, such as Russell's paradox). The basic concepts needed are
those of sets and classes. For more on foundations, see chapter 2 of the
book "Abstract and Concrete Categories" (1990) by Jirí Adámek, Horst
Herrlich and George E. Strecker.
Robert E. Kent
rekent@ontologos.org
----- Original Message -----
From: "Horn, Graham" <graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
To: "'Robert E. Kent'" <rekent@ontologos.org>; "SUO"
<standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2001 5:56 PM
Subject: SUO: RE: Foundation Ontology
>
> Hi Robert,
> . May I please ask how you would describe the ontology
> you are producing, and how it expects to relate to the SUO project?
>
> . For example, is it an upper ontology, or a general ontology?
>
>
>
> Cheers Graham Horn
> National Data Standards Unit
> Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
> ================================================
> Phone: 02.6244.1094
> Fax: 02.6244.1199
> Email: Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au <mailto:graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert E. Kent [mailto:rekent@ontologos.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:09 PM
> To: SUO
> Subject: SUO: Foundation Ontology
>
>
> All,
>
> I am working on a Foundation Ontology. I would appreciate any comments and
> criticisms. This is located at:
>
> http://www.ontologos.org/IFF/Metalevel/Foundation%20Ontology.pdf
<http://www.ontologos.org/IFF/Metalevel/Foundation%20Ontology.pdf>
>
> Robert E. Kent
> rekent@ontologos.org
>