Re: SUO: Re: Formal SUMO Draft -- *Date 01 Feb 2002
Jon,
I do not agree.
KIF neither imposes or implies any particular ontological commitments nor
does it dictate any particular logical or inferential systems. It is lax
about things like strict separation of function and relation symbols and
does not itself demand a single arity for each function or relation. It
permits constructions that go beyond first-order logic. But all those
restrictions _can_ be imposed by its users or by implementations.
I do not see what's to be gained (or, even, what is meant) by specifying
requirements "at a higher level of abstraction." In fact, requirements
specifications are scarcely more tolerant of ambiguity and informal
constructs than are computer programs, ontologies or proofs themselves.
The tendency to confuse descriptions with the described ("the map is not
the terrain") is a property of human cognition (of sloppy thinking, at
that), and is not principally a property or effect of the language or the
style of description.
As it stands, the SUO-KIF requirement is not much more than a statement
that the Ontology shall be written in prefix form using a Lisp-like
S-Expression syntax plus some minimal dictates on the lexical patterns used
to separate numbers from variables from named entities and some commitments
about how quantifiers are notated. It's hard to see how this curtails,
constrains or distorts ontological thinking or options or how it would
impair the ability of participants to fulfill the substantive goals of the
SUO endeavor.
I'm inclined to think that if some commitments aren't made, the likelihood
of progress is lessened. Since the choice of language in this context is
mostly a matter of choice of notational conventions Given the range of
notational variation displayed in the literature, I don't even see it as
one of the more important choices to be made.
To sum up, Logic _is_ the language. KIF is a notation, co-equal to many
others. KIF is adequate, well understood and common. It's no mistake to
choose it for SUO.
Randall Schulz
Mountain View, CA USA
At 21:52 2002-01-31, you wrote:
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>SUO WG Members,
>
>In my opinion it is a fundamental mistake to specify a particular logical
>language, for example, KIF or any other, as a part of the compliance
>conditions. This would be as bad a practice as stipulating that a
>compliant ontology has to be written in English as opposed to French or
>German, or to use an even more notorious analogy, that a program has to be
>written in ADA.
>
>Requirements should be specified at a higher level of abstraction and
>generality than any particular ontology oriented logical formalism.
>
>Among the more deleterious side-effects of thinking in only one language
>is a constant tendency to confuse that language with reality.
>
>Jon Awbrey
>
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>Adam Pease wrote:
> >
> > Folks,
> > A while back we had some discussion about conformance clauses.
> > Frank Farance and others also had some good input on sections
> > that would need to be included in a formal draft SUO. Ian and
> > I have put together a document that attempts to meet this need
> > and incorporates as much of the input we've been given as possible.
> > I've posted the draft at:
> >
> > http://ontology.teknowledge.com:8080/rsigma/FormalSUOdraft.rtf
> >
> > Note that to keep the document to a reasonable size for downloading,
> > I've referenced, but not included the latest SUMO draft that would
> > be part of a final version of the document.
> >
> > Constructive feedback would be welcome.
> >
> > Adam
> >
> > Adam Pease
> > Teknowledge
> > (650) 424-0500 x571
>
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