Re: SUO: RE: CYC event vs. SUMO Process -- really different?
John,
My point is that building the ontology isn't the same as lexicographers developing their definitions. The ontology has to take some non-trivial normative stance on the sorts of things there are in the world. That's the whole point. The reductio to making subtypes of every type whenever someone has a new interpretation is that eventualy the same complexity that the ontology was supposed to help ameliorate will be reproduced within it.
Also your remarks are not quite relevant to my original suggestion, unless you think that there will never come a time when someone has an interest in making a subtype that no one else thinks is necessary. In that case the ontology woulod have to subsume whatever interpretation any one has. That seems to me an abdication of responsibility rather than a collaborative process.
I know that your comments are in the spirit of the motion you've worked so hard to get through, and I supported it, and will continue to as long as there's something worthwhile to support. But I start to get off the boat if the idea is that we'll never have to make decisions about the sorts of entitities we want in an official SUO. We'll have to make those decisions. Surely you can agree with that.
Erik
"John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
Erik,
There is no need to vote, when there is a much
simpler way to accommodate the options.
> What I suggest is that the group forces a vote on
> important definitions, such as that of "Event."
The way that lexicographers develop their definitions
is to gather citations of actual uses of the words.
If there are multiple word senses, they record all of
them, organize them, and show their relationships.
To take the example of "event", there is no need to
force a decision. The ontology can simply include
three types: Event4D, Event3D, and a generic Event,
which includes Event4D and Event3D as subtypes.
The axioms associated with Event are the ones that
are common to both the 3D and 4D representations.
One important axiom is that if event e1 has a causal
influence on event e2, then e1 must precede e2 in
time. Th!
at notion
of precede could also have special
subtypes, which would be computed differently in a
Newtonian theory or an Einsteinian theory.
For many purposes, the generic Event is quite adequate.
Petri nets, for example, show causal influences and relate
events without using an explicit time metric. They are
invariant with respect to a 3D or 4D representation.
For all processes that can be represented by a Petri net
(which includes all computable functions) the generic
Event can be used.
For natural language processing, the default mapping
of the word "event" would be the generic Event. If
further information indicated some properties that
required a decision between the 3D or 4D alternatives,
then additional qualifications could be added to choose
Event3D or Event4D with the appropriate axioms added
to the current context.
I fail to see why there would be any need for the SUO
to force a choice. We can support all three
event
types (and any others that anyone else might invent).
You can put them all in the ontology and give them
different names.
John Sowa
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