RE: A NEW FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FORMAL MOTION: was RE: SUO: Re: SUO Ballot with 2 Questions

["Eric Peterson" <epeterson@CCAAVA.com>]

Please see below:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jean-Luc Delatre [mailto:jld@club-internet.fr]
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 2:44 PM
> To: Eric Peterson
> Cc: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE; John F. Sowa; Mike Pool;
> apease@ks.teknowledge.com; clegg@cyc.com; John DeOliveira; Patrick
> Cassidy; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org;
semanticweb@yahoogroups.com;
> Downes, Stephen; cg@cs.uah.edu
> Subject: Re: A NEW FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT FORMAL MOTION: was RE: SUO:
Re:
> SUO Ballot with 2 Questions
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Only a few comments on specifics points from Eric Peterson's:
> http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg09673.html
> 
> 
> 
> > [ELP] "Standardization" ("http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary";) is
not
> > creation. "Standardization" is a transitive verb and therefore
requires
> > something to be standardized.  Wouldn't we agree that the thing to
be
> > standardized is "practice" - that we are specifying a standard
practice?
> 
> If you mean that in spite of lot of various ontologies floating around
> there is no such thing that could be recognised as a "common
practice",
> I agree with you.
> 
> > Even if this group could or should toss out those members that don't
> > really believe in a single SUO, the relatively unified remaining
group
> > members (including myself) would not be able to let go of their pet
> > content.  The content merging process would be a battle at every
> > pair/group of competing axioms.
> 
> EXCELLENT!
> In the same paragraph you manage to deride the "non-believers"

[ELP] Jean-Luc, you will always be my role model for gracious and polite
behavior ;^)

I am for diversity of opinion, but if we don't believe in the basic
sacraments, we shouldn't go in and disrupt the services of those who do.

This is the Standard Upper Ontology Working Group.  Please again notice
the singular in the word "ontology".  The charter explicitly reinforces
that point as well:

http://suo.ieee.org/scopeAndPurpose.html
________________________________________________________________________
INTER-OPERABILITY: The standard will provide a basis for achieving
Inter-Operability among various software and database applications. 
1) Application developers can define new data elements in terms of a
common ontology, and thereby gain some degree of interoperability with
other conformant systems. 
2) Applications based on domain-specific ontologies that are compliant
with this standard will be able to interoperate (to some degree) by
virtue of the shared common terms and definitions. 
3) The SUO will play the role of a neutral interchange format whereby
owners of existing applications will be able to map existing data
elements just once to a common ontology. This provides a degree of
interoperability with other applications whose representations conform
to SUO. This entails the SUO being able to be mapped to more restricted
forms such as XML, database schema, or object oriented schema. 
________________________________________________________________________
_

It wouldn't make sense to interoperate in this way with multiple
competing ontologies.  You would need n^2 mapping axioms to link n
competing axioms for a given definition.  Or you could map all n
competing axioms into one interchange axiom, but them you end up
creating a single interchange ontology to link your competing
ontologies.  One way or another, scalable interoperability is best
supported by a single upper ontology.

It's really that simple.


> AND to provide support for their position!
> I have a few suggestions:
> 
> - Are not you confusing "content" with "form", i.e. an UPPER ontology
> should
> not contain anything SPECIFIC for
> any domain ("pet content"), only sort of "meta" ontological statements
> (think IFF ;-)

[ELP] Upper is about generality.  

The line you are quoting lends itself to some difficulty in
interpretation:

"An upper ontology is limited to concepts that are meta, generic,
abstract and philosophical, and therefore are general enough to address
(at a high level) a broad range of domain areas."

I might have said " meta, generic, abstract ***or*** philosophical".
You can be "generic" about your meta axioms, but I don't think that's
what the founding fathers/mothers meant.  And I've been told that "and"
linguistically means "or" sometimes.

> 
> - If you don't understand your ennemies you have no chances to defeat
> them,
> and obviously you have NO CLUE why, at least John Sowa and myself, are
> close
> to killing you on the unique ontology idea.

[ELP] John has been talking the "merging" talk recently.  He agreed with
my motion to state that merging into one ontology is the goal.  He even
called it a "restatement" of the charter.


> 
> 
> > Even if I could will us into unity, and we could garner the spare
time,
> > it would take five years of merging and creation, and another five
to
> > see it used and proven.
> 
> I am glad you are still optimistic, the "united SUO group" will bring
> success (at last) in 10 years and at very little cost, where the poor
> simpletons at
> Cyc failed (still with lots of PhDs, 20 years and $50 million), see:

[ELP] In the English lexicon, "simpleton" is a very derisive -
particularly when applied to intellectuals.  There are several Cycorp
employees on this list.  Are they excluded?

> 
> http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=00063887-5C1E-1C6D-
> 84A9809EC588EF21
> 
> Which link you already did got from Bob Clarke's message
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/semanticweb/message/1001
> but probably didn't bother to read.


[ELP] I didn't see notice such a link.  But link you gave me a while
back hadn't exactly soiled its shoes with the dirt of verity and reason.
Is this one better than the last one?

<snip>