Re: SUO: Re: Focus and Volume
Adam and Pat,
To answer Adam's question:
AP> Then, without picking a particular working document for the group to
> focus on, and with an average number of axioms under active discussion
> averaging about 1 per month, how are we to make progress on
> axiomatizing an upper level?
I would like to adopt some of Pat's suggestions and arrange them
in a slightly different order:
PH> But let me be the straw man. I will stake out a position and defend
> it: the upper ontology is not irrelevant, but almost any upper
> ontology does more harm than good. That is, almost any ontology could
> be constructed more efficiently and with less work, if the highest
> levels were stripped out or ignored, and then perhaps inserted after
> the fact to 'fit' the middle-level concepts. The reason being that it
> is essentially impossible to think of the necessary distinctions ab
> initio, but that one must discover them by building nontrivial
> axiomatic theories at the 'middle' levels first, and thereby
> discovering the conceptual distinctions that provide the best
> representational leverage.
I agree with this point. In fact, that is how I formed the hierarchies
I presented in my KR book: start with distinctions that are known to
be significant at many different levels (including some of the lowest
levels of the hiearchy) and form lattices as cross-products of the
lower-level distinctions. What I called my "top level" is the product
of three important distinctions, but as I have said many times, I am
willing to negotiate on which distinctions are included.
> Most of the high-level debates on this
> list that have been of real ontological substance (eg the
> continuant/occurrent debate, the relevance of 4-d spatiotemporal
> frameworks) have been on issues that have already been distilled from
> earlier middle-level work (in that case, an entire literature),
I agree.
> most of those that have not been so distilled (eg almost everything
> that is in any way associated with the intials CSP) have been an
> entire waste of time and bandwidth.
I agree that a lot time and bandwidth have been wasted on a fruitless
effort to explain CSP's distinction. However, CSP most definitely
distilled them from a very large number of lower-level observations.
I am working on a paper that will explain them better, but I don't
intend to waste time and bandwidth until my paper is done.
> Meanwhile, the merged ontology
> consists of an accumulation of middle-level theories being hung onto
> a framework which was provided a priori rather than being abstracted
> from the theories themselves (in direct opposition to the methodology
> of the author of that heirarchy, by the way) and shows the resultant
> conceptual strain at almost every point.
I agree.
> I might add that this methodology is supported to some extent by
> empirical work on concept mining, where a key strategy in identifying
> useful conceptual dimensions is to find the ways that concepts can be
> teased apart, ie how they differ as well as the ways they are
> similar. The key question to ask is, given three concepts A, B and C:
> in what way would B be closest to A and furthest from C? The point
> being that this kind of analysis requires a level of detail which
> only becomes apparent when one has a reasonable amount of particular
> detailed knowledge to apply it to.
I agree.
AP>> The point is to pick one (or generate one) and move on, as
>>agonizing over the "one true ontology" is pointless. I agree with
>>Doug whole-heartedly.
PH> No, the point is to move on. The issue is not the one true ontology,
> but the utility of ANY upper ontology. If the upper ontology is
> really not that important, then why are we (you) wasting so much
> time building one? What utility is shared by *all* upper ontologies?
What I have been calling for is an upper level that is dynamically
created from whatever set of distinctions are in use. I have repeatedly
cited examples taken from Wille & Ganter's FCA work, in which a new
hierarchy, including upper, middle, and lower levels is created
at any time from any given set of distinctions just by pushing
a button.
And by the way, there are many other lattice-building methods
that should be considered. The FCA is one example I am familiar
with, but there are others. I am primarily arguing for lattice
building methods, not for any particular lattice. Another very
important property of such automated methods is that there is no
need to prove consistency -- the method of construction guarantees
consistency. That is by no means true of any hand-constructed
hierarchy (such as Cyc or the current merged ontology).
Bottom line: I agree with Pat that the upper level should be
distilled from the lower level, but the process of creating
the full lattice should be done by an automated method.
John Sowa