[Person-ontology] Methodology using an upper ontology
Pat Hayes
phayes at ihmc.us
Thu Nov 8 09:14:43 PST 2007
>Pat, it is a bit unfair that, since you have so
>much time to criticize reusable ontologies
Reusable =/= upper, in general. Im all in favor
of reusability. And BTW, I have VERY little
spare time, but dashing off emails (like this) is
quick, and I can often do it while attending
meetings (as I am now) which I don't have to
listen too all of (like now). And, regrettably, I
can't get funding to support the development of
ontologies or even ontology frameworks in this
country at present. No US government agency
(AFAIK) is supporting such work. (I have been
trying for years.)
>(and almost everything else in the world, it seems
Now now, you have no knowledge of the many times
I AGREE with others. I usually don't bother to
send emails about that. :-)
>), you do not actually contribute to do at least
>one ontology that is actually applied, and
>possibly show that reusability is useless on a
>practical ground.
>
>The same argument you make can be made at any
>level of detail, therefore, your (and Lenat's)
>claim is just a slogan.
Well, Lenat certainly speaks from experience, and
I from observation. The upper levels are usually
taken to be more "authoritative" than the lower
ones, is my point. Not perhaps by the people
(like you) who actually helped create them, but
by many, perhaps most, of those who have more
limited scopes in mind. So if they (the upper
levels) clash with important intuitions at the
level at which information really needs to be
represented, those intuitions are modified rather
than the upper-level concept modified or
abandoned. Im not saying this is always bad; but
I think its often is, and the harm is ignored or
under-rated by proponents of universal
upper-level ontologies as a guide, or even a
> E.g., for an expert in a specific branch of
>biomedicine, even the best biomedical ontology
>will be useless in your sense, because it would
>be too broad to catch any useful semantics to
>her.
?? Im not sure what you mean. But we must be
misunderstanding one another. Why would a
specifically biomedical ontology be useless? Im
presuming that it would have been created by
biologists, doctors or other domain experts,
rather than by philosophers, of course. And I
would hope that its construction had been at
least informed by the needs of people like this
expert.
>For me, the actual point is to enable users to
>do decent ontologies, whether or not they can
>read DOLCE or anything else.
I agree.
>I can use Latex without knowing much about the compiler.
Bad (and highly misleading) analogy. DOLCE
imposes a real conceptual burden (at least the
nonsense about continuants, but lots more) on all
ontologies which must interoperate with it.
>On my side, I am too busy in making real
>applications of reusable ontologies, or content
>design patterns, as I prefer
Excellent work, but not what I was critiquing,
and not the topic of this thread. Like I said,
reusable =/= upper.
>("upper level" is old fashioned guys). So sorry
>for not commenting this in more detail :)
Quite. Please don't let me stop you doing your
excellent work. (Really, no sarcasm!)
Pat
>
>Cheers
>Aldo
>
>Il giorno 29/ott/07, alle ore 22:06, Pat Hayes ha scritto:
>
>>>All,
>>>
>>>It was posted (not sure by who):
>>>
>>> "Construct an ontology. It almost does not matter exactly where
>>>you
>>> start, but either the very top (most general) or the very bottom
>>> (data) is not usually a good place."
>>>
>>
>>Me (Pat Hayes). Though the advice comes originally from Doug Lenat.
>>
>>>Question: Why not use an existing upper ontology?
>>>
>>
>>Well, question back: Why use it? What would it be useful for? Here we
>>are, say, trying to formalize a mid-level concept, say 'ocean wave'
>>(Im making this up), using BOF, say. BOF requires us to classify
>>ocean wave 'properly'. In particular, we must decide whether or not
>>it is a continuant. Well, is it or isn't it? Do you know? I don't.
>>Moreover, I don't CARE. Nothing turns on this decision other than
>>making BOF happy. THe high-level upper ontology is just getting in
>>the damn way, forcing me to make decisions I don't care about, are
>>irrelevant to my concerns and that have no obvious answer. Suppose,
>>moreover, I toss a coin and decide that my wave is indeed a
>>continuant. Is this any help? No: all it does is make it harder for
>>me to say some natural things (since continuants aren't allowed to
>>have temporal parts).
>>
>>Suppose instead I am using DOLCE and formalizing, say, the W3C TAG
>>notion of a 'web resource', and I decide that a web resource is kind
>>of like a 'place' where some information can be stored. So I look in
>>DOLCE and I find a high-level notion of 'region'. The only way to
>>decide whether or not I can put my notion under this heading is to go
>>into the actual axioms of DOLCE (which is a bit like taking a bath in
>>nitric acid, by the way) and see what it actually says about
>>'regions', paying attention to detail and asking 'does this axiom
>>apply to my idea'? And this is just writing axioms, only way slower.
>>
>>> Wouldn't it provide a
>>>good-enough top-down structure? Wouldn't it also provide many (maybe
>>>half) of the needed concepts?
>>>
>>
>>No, it almost certainly would not provide any of them in the form I
>>am likely to need them, since the people who built it the upper
>>ontology, no matter how smart or well-meaning they were, weren't
>>thinking about the issues that arise at my level of detail: so
>>whatever they put into the UO, its very unlikely to be anything more
>>than a provisional sketch or draft of what I am going to need.
>>Mereologists often take it as obvious that partOf is transitive,
>>because they are thinking about lumps of clay: but if I'm making an
>>ontology for a parts catalog, parthood isn't transitive. So for me,
>>all that the UO has done is stolen the term 'part' and forced me to
>>use a different term for my concept. Im going to have to write my own
>>axioms for it anyway.
>>
>>Upper ontologies, by and large, are no actual use to practical
>>ontologizing at all. They warp intuitions and interfere with the
>>process, like an exasperating micro-manager. They add nothing
>>computationally useful, since almost nothing useful can be said at a
>>very high level. They usually embody some a priori philosophical
>>perspective which likely has no relevance to the actual topic under
>>discussion. Whoever wrote them wasn't thinking about the topic, for
>>sure.
>>
>>>Of course, in parallel, gather
>>>requirements and work from the bottom up.
>>>
>>
>>The danger is that these two parallel tracks might not actually meet
>>anywhere. And the worse danger is that when this happens, the
>>top-down track is usually treated as authoritative, since to change
>>an entrenched 'upper' ontology is seen as harmful to interoperation.
>>So we end up with a situation where the entire shape of the whole
>>ontology has been formed by people who don't know squat about the
>>actual subject-matter: kind of a pre-emptive Peter Principle at work.
>>
>>Pat
>>
>>>
>>>Jim Schoening
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Person-ontology mailing list
>>><mailto:Person-ontology at idcommons.net>Person-ontology at idcommons.net
>>><http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/person-ontology>http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/person-ontology
>>>
>>
>>
>>--
>>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home
>>40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office
>>Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax
>>FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell
>>phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us
>><http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes>http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Person-ontology mailing list
>><mailto:Person-ontology at idcommons.net>Person-ontology at idcommons.net
>><http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/person-ontology>http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/person-ontology
>>
>
>
>
>_____________________________________
>
>Aldo Gangemi
>
>Senior Researcher
>Laboratory for Applied Ontology
>Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technology
>National Research Council (ISTC-CNR)
>Via Nomentana 56, 00161, Roma, Italy
>Tel: +390644161535
>Fax: +390644161513
><mailto:aldo.gangemi at istc.cnr.it>aldo.gangemi at istc.cnr.it
>
><http://www.loa-cnr.it/gangemi.html>http://www.loa-cnr.it/gangemi.html
>
>icq# 108370336
>
>skype aldogangemi
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home
40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office
Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax
FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
More information about the Person-ontology
mailing list