RE: ONT Varieties Of Ontology
Dear Jon,
This is a good question. But I do nto recall, and cannot
find quickly the distinction between a ROSO and an ULTO.
Could you provide a definition/description please?
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Mobile: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@att.net]
> Sent: 14 December 2003 17:01
> To: Inquiry; Ontology; SemioCom
> Subject: ONT Varieties Of Ontology
>
>
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> VOO 1
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> Problem Statement.
>
> A. What are the different types of ontology projects
> that are covered by our current scope and purpose?
>
> B. What are the criteria that are appropriate
> to each of the different ontology projects?
>
> Given, then, that different types of ontology projects
> will have different criteria for the acceptability and
> the adequacy of proposals at each stage of development,
> let us see if we can formulate the respective criteria
> for a number of ontology projects that fall within the
> charge, scope and purpose of a standard upper ontology.
>
> A variety of ontology projects come to mind.
> I will give them these working designations:
>
> 1. ROSO
>
> What are the minimal criteria of acceptability of
> a "research oriented scientific ontology" (ROSO)?
>
> 2. ULTO
>
> What are the minimal criteria of acceptability for
> an "upper level technical ontology" (ULTO)?
>
> 3. URFO
>
> What are the minimal criteria of acceptability for
> an "un-reflective folk ontology" (URFO)?
>
> We've all concurred, or at least relented, that there's
> room enough under the Standard Umbrella Ontology for the
> type of "un-reflective folk ontology" (URFO) that concerns
> itself mostly with "shoes, ships, sealing wax", and so on,
> but the question remains, on less rainy days, whether the
> principles and the parameters that suit the garden variety
> URFO are adaptable to the rigors of the ROSO and the ULTO.
>
> After we have settled on the minimal criteria of acceptability,
> we might then venture into establishing the ideal criteria of
> adequacy for the respective types of ontologies.
>
> Defining, or at least characterizing these types
> of ontology projects would of course be a major
> part of the task of developing the respective
> criteria for acceptability and adequacy.
>
> Jon Awbrey
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> Notes on previous exchanges:
>
> JA = Jon Awbrey
> JH = Jay Halcomb
> PG = Pierre Grenon
>
> PG: Never the less, it seems to me that this group would be
> better off if proposed material was judged on criteria
> similar to those by which the final product shall be
> evaluated, rather than dependent upon pleasant
> email exchanges.
>
> JH: I agree with this view, which was the essential point
> of my last e-mail -- getting more specific about such
> criteria for working documents.
>
> JA: Many people, present writer included, have observed that
> the criteria
> appropriate to different kinds of ontology applications
> and projects,
> all of them nonetheless falling under the rather large tent of our
> scope and purpose document, may be radically different.
>
> JA: In particular, I have pointed to the differences in
> working methodology
> and goals of research oriented ontologies and, for the
> lack of a better
> name, so-called commonsense ontologies.
>
> JH: Precisely so. I think that we've many of us said these similar
> things at one time or another, and we always return to them when
> a proposal is made (recall the discussion about the CycL language
> when that proposal was made). That is why I think that developing
> clearer acceptance criteria, upfront, for specifying these various
> targets is important, when it comes to working documents for the
> group. Specifically, developing specification criteria for
> terminologies, languages, and logic(s). I would hope the
> IFF folks should have some specific thoughts about this.
>
> JA: Until a better term comes along, I'm using the word "project"
> somewhat in the way that people speak of cultural projects or
> existential projects -- broad, compelling, if slightly vague
> intimations of something that needs to be done.
>
> JA: Here is a narrative about one sort of ontology project,
> the aims, criteria, and working assumptions of which
> I am acquainted with, and feel like I understand:
>
> JA: I once got sold on the project of building software
> bridges between
> qualitative and quantitative research. For example, in many areas
> of clinical practice, medical anthropology, and public health one
> has "practitioner-scientist models" where people accumulate lots
> of free-floating informal hunches and qualitative impressions in
> their on-the-job settings, that they then need to follow up with
> hard data gathering, quantitatively measurable constructs, and
> the usual battery of statistical methods. A lot of practical
> savvy never gets widely distributed, and a lot of benighted
> mythology never gets tested, all for the lack of good ways
> to refine this "personal knowledge" into scientific truth.
>
> JA: It still seems to me that properly designed lexical and
> logical resources
> ought to provide us with some of the plancks we need to
> build this bridge.
>
> JA: At first strike, it sounds like this ought to involve an
> integration of
> research oriented and common sense ontologies. But there
> has seemed to
> arise one insurmountable obstacle after another in trying
> to do this.
>
> JA: Just by way of focusing on a concrete illustration, take
> the word "event".
> Formalizing the concept of "event" for a research
> oriented ontology does
> not require any discusssion on our part. Those
> discussions were carried
> out somewhere between the days of
> powdered-wig-wearing-high-rollers and
> the days of manurial comparisons. To get the standard
> axioms, one goes
> to a standard reference book and copies them into one's
> knowledge base:
>
> | PAS. Probability And Statistics -- Ontology List
> |
> | 01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04885.html
> | 02. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04886.html
> | 03. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04887.html
> | 04. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg04888.html
> |
> | et sic deinceps ...
>
> JA: The only question is whether one's favorite ontology
> prover is up to
> the snuff of proving whatever theorems need to be proved thereon.
>
> JA: There can be no compromise with these criteria.
> The research market simply will not bear it.
> So if there is to be an integration with
> nontechnical language and methodology,
> it must be an augmentation of these
> basics and not their overwriting.
>
> JA: I have gotten used to the idea that there is another sort
> of ontology project,
> but since I do not get the cogency of it, it seems like
> its definition and its
> criteria of validity would have to come from the critical
> self-examination of
> those whose project it is. All I know at present is that
> the obvious course
> that I suggested above for formalizing the concept
> "event" is probably the
> course of last resort from the standpoint of this
> alternative project.
>
> JA: That is what I mean by radical differences in working
> criteria for acceptance.
>
> JA: Similar disjunctions of approach and acceptability could
> be observed
> for several other dimensions of diversity among
> ontological projects,
> for example, the "already been chewed" vs. the "knowledge
> soup" brands,
> that is, those who expect full-fledged axiom systems from
> the outset
> vs. those who would gel their knowledge chunks out of a
> semiotic sol.
>
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