RE: SUO: RE: Problems in SUMO
John,
Comments below.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 2:27 PM
> To: Ian Niles; 'sowa@bestweb.net'; Ian Niles; West, Matthew R
> SITI-ITPSIE; Patrick Cassidy; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: 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 think we're in agreement here.
>
> >..... 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.
True, but then this wouldn't be a case of expressing the concept of a book
in their native language. It would be a matter of having them undergo a
training program which inculcated, partly through non-linguistic means,
concepts that are central to a literate society.
>
> 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.
The question isn't one of ease or intelligence. The question concerns your
claim that every natural language can express any concept whatsoever.
>
> 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.
This doesn't follow. The fact that natural languages have at least the
degree of syntactic expressiveness of the logics you mention does not imply
that natural languages can express any ontology and, hence, any semantic
content whatsoever.
>
> 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?
I don't follow you here. I was arguing that the concept of book presupposes
a set of concepts that are not available in many languages, e.g. those of
stone-age cultures, and that inculcating those concepts in the mind of
someone who is familiar only with one of those cultures would require
non-linguistic training, and, hence, that your claim that all natural
languages are fully expressive is false.
>
> John
>