Re: SUO: AW: The lattice of theories
Pierre,
I agree with you that SUMO and Cyc address Frank's three types in
similar ways. Both are clearly content proposals which seem to address
Type #1 (although if I understand it, there's also some notion of a
process, automated or not, that allows incremental addition or update,
without a full scale formal vote on the entire body of content, that Frank
is envisioning).
SUMO also has some content (&%synonymousExternalConcept,
&%subsumingExternalConcept) that allows mappings from other languages
(Frank's Type #2). IFF has a far more extensive framework to address
this. It's the belief of the SUMO team that no more than what SUMO offers
in this regard may be needed. Note that DAML has similar features
(although they break down the mapping of relations and classes into two
relations samePropertyAs, sameClassAs).
SUMO also has content which could be considered "metadata" (Frank's Type
3). This is the content of the SUMO module "Structural Ontology" (the [at
least spiritual] descendent of David Whitten's "Starter Structural Ontology")
Adam
At 11:10 AM 6/11/2002 +0200, Pierre Grenon wrote:
>Franck,
>
>I'm not sure whether I understand the registry thing. Are you talking about
>developping a standard ontology? (I thought the mere idea was banished from
>this group ;) I guess my question should be: would you describe Type 1
>standards as ontological and Types 2 and 3 as meta-ontological? It might be
>usefull for instance to explain what you have in mind when you refer to the
>process of using concepts as foundations for developping further concepts.
>Do you mean that further concepts are defined or are framed in terms of
>those belonging to the intial registry? I'm curious about this framing.
>Would concept be introduced as primitive and used in some rules together
>with earlier concepts or would they be described in terms of the earlier
>concepts (there would be a mix of ontological and meta-ontological content
>in the registry). Note: I'm using the concept terminology here, and rather
>loosely I guess, I'm not really familiar with this and not very confortable
>either.
>
>To echo your notes, it seems to me that although SUMO and most of OpenCyc
>are marketed as of Type 1, there is indeed a large part of each of them that
>seem to belong to Type 3. Such has categories for binary relations,
>relations that describe the arity or the semantic constraints in particular
>argument places, some more abstract stuff, etc. Assuming that these are
>examples of what you are referring to as attributes of concepts in those
>frameworks...
>
>I believe that Cyc has capabilities regarding issues addressed by Type 2
>standards (both external, i.e., mapping to non cyc stuff and internal, i.e.,
>inter-microtheoretic mapping). I don't know about OpenCyc, maybe we could
>ask John DeOlivera... Another question might be how the NL stuff in OpenCyc
>fit in your tripartite typology, seems to me to that those things belong to
>yet another category.
>
>I'd be curious to know how Adam and Niles think SUMO can be projected on
>your typology, if they have the time to play this little game.
>
>pierre
>
> > -----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
> > Von: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
> > [mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]Im Auftrag von
> > Frank Farance
> > Gesendet: Montag, 10. Juni 2002 17:48
> > An: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> > Betreff: SUO: The lattice of theories
> >
> >
> >
> > At 08:25 2002-06-10 -0400, John F. Sowa wrote:
> > >
> > > Mike,
> > >
> > > The term "infinite lattice" may be distracting, since it sounds
> > > very, very big. But you can have a lattice with just one element
> > > or as many as you need or want.
> > >
> > > It should be compared to the integers, which are also infinite,
> > > but nobody ever uses more than a finite subset. Recognizing that
> > > the integers are infinite is essential for theoretical reasons, and
> > > it is important in practice: it ensures that we will never run out
> > > of integers, no matter how big our computers get.
> > >
> > > It might sound more comforting to call it a "library of theories".
> > > Then it sounds like a more conventional kind of thing that everyone
> > > is familiar with: a indexed collection of things, where each item
> > > has a unique identifier; a catalog with a short description of each
> > > item; a method for finding any item; and a "neighborhood" around
> > > each item that contains related items for convenient browsing.
> >
> > Mike and John-
> >
> > About a month ago (2002-05-12 E-mail to SUO list), I had
> > suggested some ideas for organizing the SUO work, which is
> > consistent with your "lattice" or "library of theories" approach.
> > There were three kinds of standards that were necessary (I've
> > slightly edited my words of 2002-05-12):
> >
> > - Type #1 (the registry): A registry of general concepts
> > where there is common agreement. The goal would be to build
> > consensus around a bunch of concepts and, hopefully, these
> > general concepts could be used as a foundation for developing
> > other concepts. Note 1: I believe that SUMO, some portion of
> > IFF, and OpenCyc might be this kind of standard. Note 2: We
> > might want to relax the constraint of "common agreement". Note
> > 3: This kind of standard usually produces two separate standards:
> > the registry (i.e., the "table" of entries -- the technical
> > part), and the registration authority process (i.e., how we agree
> > to include entries in the table -- the administrative part).
> >
> > - Type #2 (the relationships/mappings): A technique for
> > mapping one set of concepts to another. Why do we care about
> > mappings? Because, e.g., that's all the market wants, or maybe
> > it's impossible to get to common agreement on all the entries in
> > Type #1. So this kind of standard would specify we describe, in
> > general, mapping one set of concepts to another. Note: I believe
> > that some portion of IFF might be this kind of standard.
> >
> > - Type #3: We specify the necessary attributes to
> > describe a concept. In other words, we wouldn't be specifying
> > the concepts themselves, but we'd specify the required
> > descriptive attributes when describing a concept. Note: Someone
> > had mentioned something "metadata for ontologies" <-- an example
> > of a Type #3 standard.
> >
> > These types of standards could be further partitioned or
> > combined ... other types are possible, too. And once we've
> > settled on the types of standards we want, we'll probably need to
> > specify how to use this kind of information from an IT
> > perspective, e.g., codings (file formats, XML, KIF, etc.), APIs
> > (objects/interfaces with convenient paradigms in C/C++, Java,
> > LISP, etc.), protocols (ontology exchange, storage/retrieval,
> > etc.), and so on. <-- But most of this stuff is lower level
> > engineering (also known as "bindings") because we really need to
> > decide what kind of standard we want: Type #1, ..., Type #N, or
> > some combination.
> >
> > > Mike Uschold wrote:
> > >
> > > MU> Even if we succeeded in building your dream lattice of many
> > > > different theories, it is not clear to me that such a beast would be
> > > > usable in practice. It could be very unwieldy indeed. Simplicity
> > > > will help ensure usability.
> > >
> > > On the contrary, a lattice is the simplest kind of organization you
> > > can imagine for a library of theories. It is much better than the
> > > linear indexing used in libraries of books, which can never accommdate
> > > books that happen to address more than one topic. A lattice lets you
> > > have multiple pointers to all the related items. If you focus on any
> > > one theory, you can find its neighbors by going up (generalizations),
> > > going down (specializations), or going sideways (siblings).
> > >
> > > Furthermore, you can start your library with as many or as few theories
> > > as you want. A single monolithic theory, such as SUMO, is simply a
> > > lattice with just one element. If you break SUMO into modules, you can
> > > still keep SUMO in the lattice as one complete whole, with each of its
> > > submodules as different generalizations.
> >
> > As I had mentioned in my E-mail of 2002-05-12, I suggested that
> > the approach would be to "grow" the registry over time ... add
> > entries, as appropriate/as approved. I don't know how many
> > entries SUMO would require ... and there might be more than one
> > "modular" representation/decompisition of SUMO if we used Type #1
> > and Type #2 standards.
> >
> > Once the registry were large, it would have the usual issues
> > concerning searching, indexing, tagging, etc.. This is why I
> > suggested that we also look into a Type #3 standard ("metadata
> > for ontologies") to support the larger structures when they
> > become available.
> >
> > > Another nice feature is that the location of any element of the
> > > lattice can be automatically computed. You don't need an army of
> > > librarians to catalog the theories. You just let the IFF operators
> > > compute the position of any new theory relative to the ones that are
> > > already there.
> >
> > This is a feature of registration (into the registry) and
> > mappings (which are registered themselves in the registry).
> >
> > > A lattice is the simplest way of organizing a library of theories.
> > >
> > > MU> There will be some, hopefully small number of sets of axioms that
> > > > DO INDEED have some priveleged status, in the sense of being an
> > > > agreed standard that others conform to.
> > >
> > > Sure. That is what we have in any library of books. Some are very
> > > popular, and some are never read. You can have a "best sellers"
> > > list, a reference section, etc. You can put a big pointer to Oprah's
> > > latest "standard" so that everybody can find it.
> >
> > Regarding so-called "privileged status", I am uncertain if this
> > is necessary. I agree with John that a better approach might be
> > simply to leave the "registry" (or "library", as John calls it)
> > alone -- without so-called "privileged status". I'm not sure
> > what "privileged status" might mean or how we would get agreement
> > on its meaning.
> >
> > Maybe there is an entry on "Oprah's perspective of the world" and
> > for those people who think like Oprah, they can find their
> > entries. On a more practical note, there might be entries that
> > corrspond to international standards (ISO/IEC/ITU) that might be
> > useful because they might be widely adopted, yet there is no
> > guarantee that the international standard is correct from a
> > theoretical perspective.
> >
> > For example, in my E-mail of 2002-05-12 I mentioned the ISO
> > standard for units of measurement (ISO 31-*). Even though these
> > series of standards are in widespread use in industry, trade, and
> > science, there is no assurance that these are the "correct" descriptions.
> >
> > So "privileged status" might be (1) difficult to achieve (how
> > would we know we are "really right", other than this group
> > agreeing?), and (2) impractical for use ... e.g., for business
> > applications, I'd want to use the ISO version of units of measure
> > because that is the one all my trading partners are using.
> >
> > > MU> This will be driven by the impracticallity of dealing with
> > > > infinitely many infinitely variable ways to combine many different
> > > > sets of axioms.
> > >
> > > Think about the integers. There are infinitely many infinitely
> > > variable ways to combine them. But children learn to count very
> > > quickly, and the infinity never bothers them. You just use what you
> > > need, ignore what you don't, and never worry about the ones you don't
> > > need or want.
> >
> > I'd respond differently ... One doesn't worry about algebraic
> > expressions, even though there are "infinitely many infinitely
> > variable ways to combine them", right? So, if one considers
> > "walking a lattice" (i.e., navigation in IT terminology) to be
> > constructing an expression or query, then there are certainly an
> > infinite number of possibilities, but the main concerns would
> > include: (1) well-understood "semantics" for the
> > navigation/expression/query technique, and (2) an implementation
> > that supports these "semantics". <-- I'm trying to frame this
> > sentence using the context of standards documents (replace
> > "semantics" for "standards wording") to make it clear what kind
> > of standards wording is nececessary to achieve this kind of
> > expressiveness.
> >
> > > MU> Any UNIMPORTANT differences among representations for the same
> > > > concepts should be eliminated. To some extent it will be arbitrary
> > > > deciding which one to choose. Where there are important differences
> > > > these should be at attempt to keep them to a minimum and as you say,
> > > > document them carefully so users can choose.
> > >
> > > That is the beauty of having a library of theories instead of one big
> > > lump. Each separate theory can be reviewed, studied, and evaluated
> > > on its own merits and on its merits in comparison to its neighbors.
> >
> > One reason for keeping slightly different representations is to
> > deal with "drift" over time ("terminology drift", "concept
> > drift", etc.). It might be useful to have the 1970-timeframe
> > thinking available, even though (presuably) the 2002-thinking
> > would be more up-to-date. For practical reasons, both would need
> > to be available.
> >
> > -FF
> > _______________________________________________________________________
> > Frank Farance, Farance Inc. T: +1 212 486 4700 F: +1 212 759 1605
> > mailto:frank@farance.com http://farance.com
> > Standards, products, services for the Global Information Infrastructure
> >
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
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