RE: SUO: Monolithic ontologies (was ontology as science)
Dear Adam,
Actually I think that roles are a particularly tricky issue
in 3D approaches that are made relatively easy in 4D (that has
been my experience moving between them anyway.)
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Pease [mailto:adampease@earthlink.net]
> Sent: 02 July 2003 16:15
> To: Patrick Cassidy
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: Re: SUO: Monolithic ontologies (was ontology as science)
>
>
>
> Pat,
> If you had an application that required you to reason
> about a muscle as
> both a BodyPart and Food you could simple define a particular
> instance as
> such. This might be unsatisfying to someone who wants (for
> some reason) a
> pure treatment that somehow separates out classes from
> contexts and roles,
> but I don't see that it causes a practical problem in knowledge
> representation. Do you have an example that shows a problem?
> I don't think the issue of roles is particular to a 3D
> approach, but to
> your specific question of how to represent PartTimeStudent
> (leaving aside
> for the moment whether that deserves to be reified), it would
> presumably be
> a &%subAttribute of &%Student.
> To specify the characteristics of Student, one could use
> axioms, just as
> for the definition of any other term, for example
>
> (=>
> (attribute ?X Student)
> (capability EducationalProcess patient ?X))
>
> Adam
>
> At 10:49 PM 7/1/2003 -0400, Patrick Cassidy wrote:
>
> >Adam,
> > Thanks for the response. A follow-up here:
> >
> >Adam Pease wrote:
> >[Pat Cassidy wrote]
> >
> >>> If roles cannot be classes, then do you consider SUMO
> >>>classes like "Food" and "BiologicallyActiveSubstance"
> >>>as *not* being roles which might change for a particular object?
> >>
> >>I'm guessing that you're concerned about cases like the
> same substance
> >>being used as a floor wax or a dessert topping, but as I
> see it, it would
> >>still be a food, just as a table could be used as a chair,
> or a TV as a
> >>hammer, but they would still be tables and TVs, respectively.
> > I'm not particularly concerned about artifacts, it is just
> >certain things like "Food" that I wonder about. The gloss for
> >"Food" in SUMO reads:
> >
> > "Any &%SelfConnectedObject containing &%Nutrients, such as
> > carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, that can be ingested by a living
> > &%Animal and metabolized into energy and body tissue."
> >
> > The muscle of any live animal would seem to qualify, including
> >human muscle. Wood is food for termites. It would seem that
> >any part of any living thing can serve as food for some
> >animal, so if Food is not a role that depends on context,
> >what is the distinction between Food and living things generally?
> >Could you not just have "Organism" as one subclass of "Food"?
> >(Even bacteria can be food for protozoans, and fungi for ants).
> >
> >
> >Another class that to me has some character of a "role" is
> >"BiologicallyActiveSubstance". The gloss reads:
> >
> >"A &%Substance that is capable of inducing a change in the
> structure or
> >functioning of an &%Organism. This &%Class includes
> &%Substances used in
> >the treatment, diagnosis, prevention or analysis of normal
> and abnormal
> >body function. This &%Class also includes &%Substances that occur
> >naturally in the body and are administered therapeutically. Finally,
> >&%BiologicallyActiveSubstance includes &%Nutrients, most
> drugs of abuse,
> >and agents that require special handling because of their toxicity."
> >
> > Consider a synthetic substance invented by a chemist,
> which years
> >later is discovered to have therapeutic activity. Was this always a
> >"biologically active substance"? How does one classify substances
> >used traditionally in medicine which are discovered to actually
> >have no biological activity at all? If a species evolves to
> >become sensitive to something that previously had no effect
> >on organisms (say, an allergen), would that also always have
> >been a biologically active substance?
> > I suppose you can use the "uses" relation in specific instances
> >for some of these cases that are borderline, but without a class
> >that expresses a role, it's not obvious how all these things can be
> >related to each other.
> >
> >
> >As to roles of humans:
> >
> > > Those sorts of roles have been treated as properties. Take a look
> > > at SocialRole
> ><http://ontology.teknowledge.com:8080/rsigma/SKB.jsp?req=SC&n
ame=SocialRole&skb=SUMO>
>
> OK, so using this it would seem that "Student" would have to be an
>instance of a SocialRole. Is that right? If "Student" is not a
>class, how would SUMO express the relation between "Student" and
>"PartTimeStudent"? "collegeStudent"? Or between "Physician" and
>"Surgeon"? How do you specify what the characteristics of
>a "Student" are?
>
> Most ontologies I have seen allow many roles as classes. I'm
>curious how one can do without them in 3D.
>
> Pat
>
>=============================================
>Patrick Cassidy
>
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>=============================================