Re: SUO: Re: Ballot Comment
>Pat,
>
>
>At 05:20 PM 8/14/2001 -0700, pat hayes wrote:
>>>Folks,
>>>Pat sets up a strawman and then knocks him down. I disagree with
>>>the premise that by finding one ontology that one is saying that
>>>others are wrong.
>>
>>That is not what I said. What I said is that different people use
>>different ontologies, and sometimes indeed people use different
>>ontologies for different purposes. The idea that any of them is
>>wrong or right is what I think is mistaken.
>
> In your message you stated "The proposal to find a single coherent
>upper-level ontology then amounts to an insistence that all but one
>of these alternative ways of thinking are wrong." I do not believe
>that it amounts to such an insistence. If you've changed your mind
>on this, that's great.
OK, you got me. I forget writing that, and I can't find that message
in my email archives, so can you give me more of a context here?
What I think I must have been saying was that the idea of choosing
one of several alternatives to be a standard amounts to an insistence
that the others are wrong, and if I said that in those words then I
was being careless. In a previous message I tried to make clear that
adopting one alternative as a standard amounts to a declaration that
the others are unacceptable, in that anyone who wishes to conform to
the standard must change their way of thinking.
>>>I certainly don't intend that other ontologies are incorrect,
>>>impossible or inconsistent. Merely that we can create a useful
>>>single upper ontology and that has value as a standard.
>>
>>Calling it a 'standard' with the level of imprimateur associated
>>with the IEEE is not just marking it as 'useful'. It is putting it
>>before the world as a recommendation for a wide, possibly
>>universal, set of applications and uses. (If this is not true, then
>>what is the point of the standardisation process, and where is the
>>claimed benefit of interoperability? ). To me, that is a very high
>>standard indeed. It is not sufficient to simply be 'useful'; to
>>reach that standard, it has to be clearly better than any other
>>alternative, or have some clear advantage which singles it out from
>>other alternatives. (One such advantage might be that it represents
>>an accepted standard of usage in some community, as with many other
>>IEEE standards; but there is no such community for an upper
>>ontology.)
>
>I disagree. Standards don't have to be technically superior to be
>useful (not that we're not striving for excellence!). The well-worn
>Beta-VHS example is a case in point. A standard just have to be
>good enough, and shared by many.
I disagree. First, there is no notion here of 'good enough'. We don't
know what that even means in this context, and I suspect it doesnt
mean anything (ie it means something different to almost everyone:
what is good enough for process engineering might well be unsuitable
for marine biology or common-sense reasoning.) Second, the VHS-Beta
analogy is not a very good one for you to make your case, since that
was a case of two rival standards clashing, where it really was
impossible, for essentially physical reasons, for two alternatives to
coexist, unlike the case with software and ontologies; and the winner
was determined by simple commercial considerations.
The case for having an 'standard' ontology has not even been made,
seems to me. It would have to be similar to the case that Microsoft
makes for XP, and have similarly obvious replies.
>
>>>Many other ontologies could be created with the same coverage that
>>>would be just as valid.
>>
>>Then there is no reason to choose one of them as a 'standard'. Let
>>me ask you, Adam, what you think this term 'standard' means, and
>>why you think there will be any utility in having a standard, if
>>the world goes on using many other ontologies? Presumably the idea
>>of the standardisation process is to somehow encourage many people
>>to conform to the standard. So whether or not one says that other
>>ontologies could be created, the intended aim of a standardization
>>process is to discourage or thwart such activity. If we are talking
>>about the sizes of electrical plugs, that makes sense. If we are
>>talking about the conceptual framework of human thought, however,
>>(which we are, in effect, here) then the idea of choosing a
>>standard is both more pernicious and less obviously useful.
>
>An important distinction in my comment above is that other useful
>ontologies *could* be created. The value in having a standard is
>that we pick one that is good enough. Yes, we need to pick one, no,
>it need not be the one true correct ontology in order to be very
>useful.
Perhaps, (though the case has not been made); but, more to the point,
if it is an inferior ontology then it could be extremely harmful if
adopted as a standard prematurely.
One thing that is for certain is, that if it is detailed enough to be
useful, then some users will find it intrusive and awkward, perhaps
to the point of being unusable. If it treats time four-dimensionally,
the Barry Smiths of this world will refuse to have anything to do
with it; if it fails to treat time four-dimensionally, the process
control community will refuse to have anything to do with it. If it
tries to both, then it will either become so confused that only
highly trained specialists will be able to use it nontrivially (like
Cyc), or else it will have to incorporate the kind of translations
between ontological frameworks that would allow the rival views to
coexist. And if it can do that, then it doesn't need to be a
'standard upper ontology', because with such translations available,
we can translate between different upper ontologies.
>>>The value in having just one is that much like that in having a
>>>shared human language for communication between people.
>>
>>You might find (if you look around on the Web, for example) that
>>there is, in fact, no shared human language, but many of them.
>>(There isnt even a shared human language within California.) And if
>>you check out all the various attempts to create a universal human
>>language (such as Esperanto) you will find that they have all been
>>dismal failures.
>
>This seems disingenuous. There are differences in colloquialisms
>and differences in context, but when two native English speakers get
>together and talk, even if one is from Wales and one is from
>Massachusetts for example, that they have *huge* amounts of shared
>understanding. There's value in sharing a language even if we only
>share 99.9999%.
Of course they have shared *understanding*, but you were using the
metaphor of a shared *language*. I'm sure that I share the same
understanding with a native Spanish speaker that I do with a native
English speaker.
I was referring to the use of Spanish and English (and Vietmanese,
Mandarin, etc.) . No proposal to introduce a single universal
language has ever succeeded.
Pat
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