RE: SUO: Re: Proposed SUO Content Outline
Pat
You wrote:
> But let me sound a different note. While I agree with John and Chris
> that adequate, and even profuse, documentation is important to convey
> to human users what the axioms of an onotology are *intended* to
> mean, the fact remains that the only actual content in a formal
> ontology lies in the axioms. The ONLY content. It is perilously easy
> to assume that because one has written a convincing essay which
> explains what the concept of, say 'physical object' is that one has
> in mind, that this meaning - or at any rate, some smidgeon of this
> meaning - is thereby somehow magically captured in one's axioms just
> by writing (PhysicalObject ?x). This peril is well known in AI
> circles, where it has become known as the 'gensym fallacy', and we
> take pains to burn it out of our students heads at an early stage of
> their education. One way is to imagine the entire axiom system with
> every meaningful name replaced by something like "G2456734" (a
> 'GENerated SYMbol'), and then see what the axioms mean. To a
> mechanical reasoner, they mean *exactly the same as they did before*,
> no more and no less. To think otherwise is like thinking that a
> compiler is reading and understanding the comments in your code.
I do not disagree with what you say. I believe that SUO should encompass a
formal ontology amenable to 'mechanical reasoners', but should also
encompass accompanying 'parallel' documentation "to convey to human users
what the axioms of an onotology are *intended* to mean". This latter
aspect, it seems to me, is crucially important not only in terms of the
eventual deliverable, but also during the development process when knowledge
of *intended meaning* can be beneficial as an aid to both understanding and
debugging.
Regards
Chris Angus