Re: SUO: ELP's summary of MRW's standards experience

["John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net>]

Pierre,

What you're asking for is a very important item on my agenda:
writing a fairly lengthy analysis and critique of several
major approaches to ontology, including Cyc, Dolce, and others.
I wrote a critique of the earlier version of Cyc, which is
part of the joint review of Lenat & Guha's book (and published
with several other reviews in AI Journal, vol. 61, 1993).

I'll dig it out convert it to HTML and post it on my web site.
Some of those criticisms still apply, but there have been many
more changes, most of which are positive, but many of the earlier
issues still remain.  But there is far too much to itemize in
an email note.

Just a couple of comments:

PG >... Looking at a few legacy systems leads you to
>think for instance that universals may not be spatiotemporal entities. Somebody

>made such a remark earlier as if it was an elementary assumption, which is
not.
>It is a piece of doctrine.

No.  That is not doctrine.  It is part of the definition of
universals -- you either accept it or you choose other words.

In my case, I prefer to avoid the words "universals" and
"particulars" because they have accumulated too much associated
baggage over the years.  Instead, I prefer to use the terms
"predicate" (or concept and relation type) and "instance".

PG> Incidentally, Cyc is in the process of revamping -
>as cyclists like to say - the treatment of properties. So you'll just get some

>confused and contradictory notion that you would have gotten straight from
a
>textbook in metaphysics by looking at Cyc or SUMO.

I use the term "monadic predicate" as a synonym for property.
And Cyc may be changing some of their properties, but they
aren't doing anything that changes the equivalence of property
with monadic predicate.

>People can learn from their own mistake, although not always. It is harder
to
>learn from the mistakes of the other. Especially when you don't know what they

>are. 

Right.  That's why I promise to itemize, analyze, and
criticize their mistakes in my forthcoming report.

John