Re: SUO: Re: Proposed SUO Content Outline
Pat --
I'm going to rethread this, putting my original reply to John Sowa at the
bottom,
and some responses inserted within your reply to me.
> That is a good question, and your point is well taken. But look where
> it leaves us. We will need to write axioms which say that spatial
> coordinate systems exist, without saying anything in particular about
> any spatial coordinate system.
Actually, the few statements I made were meant to imply that there are
a lot of things we can say about coordinate systems. Some are very
general, and would apply to all coordinate systems. Some are more
particular, and would allow us to differentiate different kinds of
coordinate systems.
Many of those things that would be said in an upper ontology would
have to do with point of view. This would articulate under what
conditions a particular (type of) coordinate system would be
appropriate.
My expectation coming into this group was that an SUO would be used
to express these kinds of issues. In general I would like to see us
spending less time trying to convince each other of some particular
point of view, and more time working on how to reconcile multiple
points of view, through axioms (or whatever representation) that
articulate what is common, what needs to be differentiated, and for
what purpose.
> How do we do that? What can be
> usefully said about spatial coordinate systems in general, or about
> the general concept of a spatial coordinate system? I do not mean to
> imply that this task is impossible, but I do think it is considerably
> harder than the task of describing one or two coordinate systems and
> the mappings between them. At the very least, such a limited exercise
> might be a very useful preliminary study before attempting to write
> the mathematical masterpiece of generality required for a universal
> theory of coordinate systems in the abstract. The basic
> methodological point being that these 'upper' theories, if they are
> to be nontrivial, are likely to be very difficult to get right. We
> are trying to break the sound barrier before we know how to walk.
Maybe I'm overly naive, but I didn't think I was proposing anything
like a mathematical masterpiece. My view of the SUO is that it carves
information spaces into useful areas of particularity. I see it being used
as an organizing and indexing mechanism that acts as a framework for myriad
particular ontologies. I believe the world is ready for a huge new
emphasis
on the *meaning* within software-based information systems. We're only
recently in this position, with the critical mass of computing power and
interoperation among enterprises of all types now in place. I think that
significant progress can be made on this program of meaning reconciliation
in a matter of months, rather than decades. I have a sinking feeling that
this puts my out of step with the most prolific members of this group, for
whom some issues of fundamental point of view need to be resolved before
any progress can be made. My hope is that we can deal with many issues
without making particularistic commitments at the uppermost level.
Does this make sense?
>
> Pat Hayes
>
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>
> >John --
> >
> >It seems to me that an upper-level ontology should strive to avoid most
of
> >the problems that you outline below. The kinds of things that an
uppermost
> >ontology could say, that would actually be useful to organize subtending
> >ontologies would be things along the lines of:
> >
> >There are spacial coordinate systems.
> >There can be any number of such coordinate systems.
> >Each coordinate system exists in relationship to some specified
reference
> >point.
> >Coordinates from one system can be mapped onto coordinates of another
> >system.
> >Some coordinate systems are based on fixed units of length.
> >Some coordinate systems are based on dividing a geometrical figure into
a
> >fixed number of units.
> >Etc.
> >
> >I wonder why anything in an upper ontology would ever be so particular
as
> >to require reference to any specific spacial coordinate system
whatsoever?
Doug McDavid
Member of IBM Academy of Technology
mcdavid@us.ibm.com -- 916-549-4600