Re: SUO: Re: Proposed SUO Content Outline
Adam,
In principle, I would be happy to do that, but...
>If you'd be willing to restate the axioms in your section 2 in KIF, and
>either consistent with, or, with mention of inconsistencies with, the
>current proposed "merged ontology" I think that would be a great aid to
>communication.
I would like to do that. But just one point about KIF: I don't
consider KIF an aid to communication between humans -- on the
contrary, the "merged ontology" would be vastly easier for all
of us to understand if it were documented in the way I have
tried to document the underlying concepts in my paper on
processes and causality.
That doesn't mean I am against using KIF. But I want to strike
a balance between two different goals:
1. Formulating our ideas in a form that is comparable to the
usual mathematical textbooks, which interleave each formula
with a great deal of discussion directed toward human
readers rather than computers.
2. Translating the resulting formulas into a computable
notation, such as KIF, CGs, DAML, OIL, RDF, or whatever.
Of these two activities, the first is much harder, much more
important, and much more time consuming. Once the first task
is completed, the second is trivial in comparison. (But I also
recognize the importance of doing both tasks in parallel and
iteratively -- start with #1, do some of #2, test the results
on a computer, and repeat with a refinement and extension of
#1 and then #2 and back again.)
So to answer your request: yes, eventually. But there is
a lot of writing to do in a precise, mathematical style for
human readers before writing tons of KIF would be useful.
John Sowa