[seek-kr-sms] ontology management

[Joseph Goguen]

Hi Shawn, welcome back!  My answers are interleaved below.
Cheers, joseph

Shawn Bowers wrote:

>
> 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").

Im thinking of philosophers like Barry Smith who call themselves
"ontologists" and more CS oriented folk like Guarino and Welty
who take the same "realist" philosophical line as Smith.  I was also
thinking of Rich, who seemed to think he could nail down ecology
with is ontologies, and a similar attitude I found at an Italian research
center working on ontologies for cultural artifacts.

>
> 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).

Yes, and im also thinking of the notion of theory in mathematical logic,
which is a set of sentences (and declarations) in some formal logic.

>
> 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.

Yes, this is a good idea, and it isnt quite in SCIA, though we do assign
numerical "relevance values" to nodes and edges for various other
purposes, so im guessing it is probably not hard to make the modification.

>
> 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).

The notation "_i" is LaTeX for "subscript i" and e_i is what is called a
"theory morphism" in the literature (mostly algebraic specification and
institution theory literature, but also some formal logic); both C and C_i
are theories, over different "signatures", i.e., sets of declarations, 
and e_i
maps the declarations (i.e., the signature) of C to terms over the
declarations of C_i.  The axioms in C_i can be very different from those
of C but axioms of C that make sense in C_i should be provable in C_i.
Sorry, this is a bit technical, but i hope it makes sense.  (There are also
even more general notions.)

Thanks for your thoughtful post.

Cheers,   joseph

>
> 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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> >>
> >>
>