RE: SUO: RE: Problems in SUMO
Ian,
We must deal with many users (sometimes even ourselves)
who try to define concepts that are inconsistent. If and
when we try to do that, the system should tell us.
>Well, then it seems to me that the language in which these representations
>are couched is doing something which you, in your original message, said the
>language absolutely should not do, viz. imposing constraints on what the
>language user can think.
The only constraint that these examples (e.g., round square)
impose is that contradictions degenerate into absurdity.
Since KIF lets you say (and P (not P)), it lets you say
something contradictory, but the tools should tell you that
it is. That is not a constraint on the language, since the
language lets you say it -- but to be helpful, the tools might
give you a warning message.
>..... I have
>read about field anthropologists who knew the native languages of stone-age
>tribes and were unable to successfully convey the concept of a book in these
>languages. Maybe you can shed some light on how these anthropologists
>should have expressed themselves.
Very simple: they would have to spend many years of teaching
the natives how to read and write their own language and then
lead them from the concept of a single page to the concept of
multiple pages, etc.
That might take quite a few years to do, but it is no easier
to put the equivalent knowledge into an ontology that a
computer program is supposed to understand. Even stone age
people are smarter than any of our computers.
JFS>> But to support the 21st century, we need to design a system
>> that can detect inconsistencies and semantic anomalies
>> while allowing people to define whatever new inventions
>> anyone might propose.
>
IN>I agree with this, but I don't see that it has anything to do with your
>claim that all natural languages are fully expressive.
All natural langauges have the full expressive power of
first-order, modal, higher-order, and metalevel logics.
Any ontology that can be encoded in those logics can be
encoded in any NL.
It is simply impossible to encode anything in KIF (e.g.
SUMO) that could not be recoded in any stone age language.
How would you define book in KIF without assuming a lot of
primitives that no stone age reader would understand?
John