Re: CG: More meat for the ontological stew
John Cabral wrote:
>I agree with John Sowa, Jean-Luc. This was a very interesting article.
>Thank you for posting it. First off, I think that Shirky makes many valid
>points, but I can't agree with his conclusions.
>
>The example from Yahoo is one application of an ontology and it is a
>particularly bad one. However, one could (and people are planning to)
>use ontologies as the contents of tags or for many other purposes. So,
>directing his criticism at ontologies rather than classification schemes
>is ultimately off-target.
>
>Shirky seems to have a general strategy of adopting a very constraining
>definition of a particular project, pointing out a flaw that follows from
>that definition and then saying that the project is doomed. He doesn't
>seem to imagine that the projects could address those problems.
>
>Oddly, his basic strategy seems to rely on the essentialism he rejects.
>i.e. ...
>
>Shirky: Ontologies are rigid, absolutist and essentialist.
>Representations need to handle context and different point of views in
>order. Therefore, ontologies are destined to fail.
>
>Ontologist: True. We should make ontologies and the systems that use
>them be able handle context, multiple points of view, and a variety of
>conceptual frameworks so that they can express all of the things people
>will want to express.
>
>
Sorry for intruding but there is currently work about ontologies that
allow multiple
points of view, ako personalization. This work is associated to that of
evolving ontologies.
With my Kindest Regards,
Sofia
>(Implicitly) Shirky: But that wouldn't be an ontology!
>
>
>This article
>
>http://www.shirky.com/writings/semantic_syllogism.html
>
>follows the same argumentative style. In light of the inadequacies of
>deduction for performing many important types of reasoning, Shirky gives
>up on the project rather than (a la John Sowa and others) working on how
>to address the challenge.
>
>
>JPC
>
>
>
>
>
>>JLD> Another recent paper, ontologies for "the masses"
>> > don't work either:
>> >
>> > http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>========================
>To post a message, send mail to cg@cs.uah.edu.
>To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@cs.uah.edu with the command 'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
>See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
>See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.
>For help or administrative assistance, mail to owner-cg@cs.uah.edu
>
>
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Helena Sofia Pinto Phone + 351 - 21 - 3100388
Instituto Superior Tecnico Email sofia.pinto@dei.ist.utl.pt
Departamento de Eng. Informatica
Av. Rovisco Pais
1049-001 Lisboa
PORTUGAL
INESC-ID Algos Group Email sofia@algos.inesc-id.pt
Rua Alves Redol, 9
1000-029 Lisboa
PORTUGAL
---------------------------------------------------------------------