SUO: *Date 11 Feb 2002
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SUO WG Members,
For the health of our enterprise I have decided to
enter on a course of genuinely critical observations.
I have come to the conclusion that I have been far too
politic up to this point, and that it has not done any
of us any good. So, no more mister nice guy. In order
to temper my remarks in advance, however, I feel that I
need to say this: Nobody here, nor any small coalition
among us, nor indeed any single group that I can think
of anywhere in the world today, knows enough, working
alone, to build anything that might deserve the name
of a standard ontology. So it should not be taken
as too surprising a critique of anybody's efforts
to observe how far short of this capacity that
they may in fact fall at this point in time.
Nor does it take any exalted perspective to
make that observation, as I think it clear
to "the average citizen in the street",
our old friend T.A. Cits, if you will.
So I think that it is important for us to appreciate the fact
that the task before us, and it is still a long ways before us,
is a far different thing than any brand of standards effort that
has ever been tried before, and it ought to be just plain obvious
that new ground will have to be broken, in regard to both content
and method, before our lessons are done.
Speaking of lessons, that's the segue I need. I genuinely believe that
the task of articulating anything like a "standard theory of being" is
just bound to be a learning experience for us all, if we do it right.
Morever, the task itself, if it is contemplated in a proper light, is
more akin to tasks of "concept learning" and "language acquisition",
than it be cousin to the brand of à priori axiomatic ex-postulation
to which our work so easily degenerates, that is, whenever we lose
sight of all external reference points for our would-be "standard".
In that spirit, let us consider the central importance of these
experiential and experimental learning tasks to the success of
our work on a standard ontology. Right at the moment, I can
see two ways that I might personally try to tackle the issue.
1. Front Door. I will return to the "conformance question" (CQ)
with which we have previously diverted ourselves, except that
this time I will turn the tables and look at what falls under
them in a new light. To wit, to what must a standard conform
if it would have anybody conform to it? That is the question.
| Conformance
|
| Implementations of S (= SUO) are "ontologies" or "information models".
| A conforming implementation is an ontology or information model Q
| such that all three of the following rules are satisfied:
|
| 1. For every term t occurring in both Q and S,
| the axioms for t in Q must be exactly those
| axioms for t in S whose component terms t_j
| all occur in L(Q).
|
| 2. Every term t in Q is such that:
|
| a. t appears in S,
|
| OR
|
| b. t has axioms in Q,
|
| AND
|
| the axioms that t has in Q are sentences of L(S),
|
| OR
|
| when the axioms that t has in Q are translated from L(Q) to L(S)
| they become sentences of L(S) that contain only the most specific
| appropriate terms t_j that are axiomatized in S,
|
| OR
|
| c. t is axiomatized in (or using) terms that have property 2b.
|
| 3. Q is internally consistent and it is consistent with S,
| that is, a contradiction cannot be derived by means of
| first-order logic from the set of statements belonging
| to either Q or S.
|
| Adapted from "IEEE Standard Upper Ontology (Draft Proposal)",
| Ian Niles and Adam Pease, Teknowledge Corp., 29 January 2002,
| http://ontology.teknowledge.com:8080/rsigma/FormalSUOdraft.rtf
2. Back Door. On the Brand X Generic Ontology Sublist, I have already
begun a thread on the Scope & Purpose Application Area of Education:
Inquiry Driven Learning Environments (IDLE's)
01. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03725.html
02. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03727.html
03. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03728.html
04. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03729.html
05. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03730.html
06. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03732.html
07. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03733.html
08. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03734.html
09. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03736.html
10. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03737.html
11. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03738.html
12. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03741.html
I believe that you will find, as I have always found,
that many of the most persistent problems and even the
sometime solutions that one finds occasion to encounter
in that joint endeavor to learn and to teach, and even to
do bits of research on the side, form a modest microcosm for
the more exalted works that we would achieve in the macrocosm.
Jon Awbrey
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