Re: SUO: Re: Finding an upper ontology
Folks,
It appears to me that there may be a confusion here between ontology and
vocabulary. They are two different things. For an example of how both
products can be related, look at the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology, and
our mappings to the WordNet vocabulary, as well as the language templates
for expressing SUMO statements in several natural languages. Vocabulary
can and should vary to accommodate different languages and linguistic
communities. That does not necessarily have any bearing on the issue of
whether a single ontology can serve multiple (or all) communities (at some
level of generality).
Adam
At 09:34 PM 6/8/2003 -0400, John F. Sowa wrote:
>Stephen,
>
>I managed to dig out an ancient version 4.0 of IE, and read
>your slides. I think they make some good points:
>
> http://www.downes.ca/files/one_standard_files/frame.htm
>
>Your concluding slide, which I very much agree with, presents
>a fundamental challenge to any attempt to develop a standard
>upper ontology:
>
> > Objects are best described using multiple vocabularies.
> >
> > There is no way to determine which vocabulary will be relevant
> > to either an author or a user of a given object.
> >
> > Trying to stipulate a canonical vocabulary a priori needlessly
> > reduces the effectiveness of a system of communication.
>
>This conclusion does not mean that it is impossible to have
>a sharable upper ontology, but it does imply that any such
>upper level must be capable of supporting an open-ended range
>of vocabulary for all possible uses and all possible purposes.
>
>As I said in earlier notes, the question of how much can be
>usefully shared is an empirical issue. It is probably more
>than just a single node at the top, but how much more is
>unknown.
>
>Whether a useful amount can be shared before we have to
>start admitting incompatible (i.e., mutually inconsistent)
>alternative modules is also unknown.
>
>I believe that it is probably possible to accommodate some
>sharing together with some system for managing mutually
>inconsistent alternatives. But again, this is an empirical
>question that cannot be answered a priori.
>
>What this means is that we cannot just pick an ontology and
>legislate it as an official standard. There is still a lot
>of research to be done before we can say exactly how much
>can be shared and how we can best accommodate inconsistent
>alternatives.
>
>John Sowa
>
>PS: I'll be doing some traveling for the next week or so,
>and this might be the last note I'll be able submit on this
>topic for a while.