Over the next few months...
Since this working group has a Standard Upper Ontology as our deliverable,
I think it would be useful to discuss some of the content we intend
for the SUO. I think most of us agree that there will be some constants
representing concepts, with some relations between them.
We also agree that there will be some logical axioms defining the constants
beyond the simple instance-of hierarchy, and the simple generalization-of
hierarchy.
I think some very dedicated people have put together the PSL-Core,
and some of their axioms are suitable for inclusion in the SUO.
There is also a great deal of work that has been done by the Cycorp team,
and they have shown great generosity in sharing their Upper Ontology
with the knowledge representation community.
John Sowa's work with Conceptual Graphs is well known, as well as that
community's contribution to Knowledge Representation over the years.
I have looked over some of the work by ISO TC184/SC4/WG10 at
http://www.pdtsolutions.co.uk/iideas/ and see a great deal of hard work
has been done by them as well.
The work at Stanford KSL has supported work by many diverse groups,
and has been an integral part of many practical efforts on ontologies.
From discussions on this list, I can see that there are many people who
have been working in this field and making substantial progress unbeknownst
to each other.
Since we have not had the privilege of working in person with each other,
and since we have about five months left of the initial evaluation phase
left, I think we should not plan to make decisions off-line, but rather we
should reach consensus through this mailing list.
Does this correspond to everyone else's understanding, goals, and plans?
David (whitten@netcom.com) (713) 791-1414 ext 6116