[seek-kr-sms] KOAN2

Shawn Bowers sbowers at ucdavis.edu
Thu Nov 3 14:54:28 PST 2005


Hi Joseph,

The ideas you discuss in this write-up I think are right on track.

In some sense I've been pushing this notion of a "kernel" for a while
for seek ... and I think that the notion of measurement and the
surrounding framework is precisely what that "kernel" should consist
of.

I have a few points and questions about the write-up.

First, I'm not an ontologist, but when you say "Many of them seem to
believe in the possiblity of a single unified ontology that attracts
consensus ...", I wonder if this is really the case. In particular, I
think that *most* (but perhaps not all) people agree that it is not
possible to define *the* single unified ontology. It is possible to
define ontologies with broad scopes, as well as ontologies with narrow
scopes, but these may not be accepted by anyone as *the* ontology for
a domain.  However, the reason folks consider creating such
ontologies, is because even if they are not *the* ontology, they still
permit something that people can commit to ... like a formal glossary
of terms.  An ontology, as you say, is just some theory, that may or
may not (typically not) be completely accurate. But, still can have
value (and some shimmer of "truth").

In terms of calling an ontology a theory, I think you are in good
company: Guarino, Wand, and particularly Bunge view ontologies in
exactly this way -- in fact, to Bunge these are synonyms.  In some of
his writing, Bunge uses the phrase "asking ontological questions,"
which are essentially questions that "probe" the theory, to see if
some fact follows from it (i.e., is entailed, or can be explained by
the theory), or even to test the theory (sort of QA/QC kind of
process).

You say: "Such tools can also be used to identify subdomains where
consensus is most likely to be achievable ..."  This argues for some
mechanism to rank or denote when some fragment of an ontology is more
"authoritative" than other parts. I think this notion of
"authoritativeness" can be (will also be) a crucial aspect in using an
ontology for reasoning/inference, e.g., in data integration.  It can
provide some richer context/guidance for applying certain integration
strategies, or ranking different possible strategies.

I am not sure I understand the notion/definition of "extension." In
particular, it looks as though given a kernel C of concepts, that the
extension operator maps concepts of C to concepts of C (i.e., it maps
concepts of the kernel back into the kernel). (It wasn't clear what
the "of" meant in C_i of C.) I would have expected that somehow the
kernel is extended by adding new concepts, related those concepts, and
possibly at some point in the future either "normalizing" them (i.e.,
realizing that they map to existing kernel notions), adding them to
the kernel, or dropping them as being "junk".  Also, how would one
handle properties or characterstics of concepts (i.e., "extend" or
"modify" concepts at a finer granularity).

Thanks Joseph for sending out this draft.

-shawn





Joseph Goguen wrote:
 > Dear Shawn,
 >
 > At the KR/SMS section of the SEEK AHM, i made some suggestions about
 > this, which i subsequently wrote up and circulated.  Just now, ive put
 > it on my
 > website, at
 >
 >    http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~goguen/papers/onto-intgn.txt
 >
 > It starts off a bit philosophical but i think gets quite practical by
 > the end,
 > and also mentions the supporting theory; i still need to add citations
 > though....
 >
 > We all missed you at the meeting but admired all the work that you have
 > done.
 >
 > Cheers,
 >
 >    joseph
 >
 > Shawn Bowers wrote:
 >
 >> Hi all,
 >>
 >> Since I wasn't at the AHM, I'm not sure if any discussion or progress
 >> was made in terms of Kepler/SEEK strategies and infrastructure for
 >> managing ontologies.
 >>
 >> Recently, KOAN2 was released with an impressive list of features.  I
 >> wonder if this is something that we should look at more carefully,
 >> and possibly adopt for Kepler/SEEK.
 >>
 >> http://kaon2.semanticweb.org/
 >>
 >>
 >> -shawn
 >>
 >>
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 >>
 >>



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