CDSI WG, (01)
Given Pat Hayes' description (below) of what Jim Hendler refers to as
"URI-based reference mechanism
coupled with the standard for KR and other aspects is aimed
exactly at scalability.": (02)
The key question now is: Could the above referenced technology (when it
matures) be used to achieve semantic interoperability across large numbers of
domains (with independently developed ontologies)? Any takers? (03)
Jim Schoening (04)
Pat Hayes wrote:
>
> OK, here's my take on that.
>
> First, "standard for KR". I think all that Jim means is, the SWeb is
> intended to use whatever is the best available KR mechanism that can
> be adopted as a 'standard', ie which a wide enough spectrum of users
> can be persuaded to agree to use. No such choice will be free from
> controversy. OWL wasn't and isn't free from controversy, and nobody
> even knows if a large enough community can ever be brought to
> consensus on an acceptable Rule language. But assuming that some WG
> can get its job completed, and produces a useful notation, then that
> can be used on the SWeb. There are plenty of potential candidates
> which are way more expressive than OWL readily available. So it would
> be a mistake to identify the SWeb vision with OWL or DL technology in
> particular. OWL-DL is just the first in what one hopes will be an
> evolving series of KR standards which will provide the infrastructure
> of the SWeb. Perhaps the next one will be more like
> Python+Prolog on steroids. Or it may be a
> breakthrough in CL reasoners using the guarded fragment, who knows?
> The decision is as much political as technical, or even subject to
> whims of intellectual fashion.
>
> "URI-based reference mechanism" is more interesting. This is one of
> the few things that really is new and different about the SWeb: it is
> part of the Web, and subject to Web conventions and protocols. It
> isn't *just* applied ontology engineering. So, every SWeb ontology is
> required to use names drawn from a (literally) global set of names.
> The scope of these names is the entire Web. There are no 'locally
> scoped' or 'private'
> names on the Sweb. So if your ontology uses a name for a concept, my
> ontology can use it too.
> Anyone can 'say' anything about everyone else's concepts, on the Sweb.
> This is a whole new game, which nobody has played before. A can
> introduce a concept called A:thingie1 and B can introduce B:thingie2,
> and C can then, entirely independently and without asking for A or B's
> permission, assert that (say) A:thingie1 is the same as B:thingie2. A
> and B may disagree: tough tittie, they can't stop C from making the
> assertion. C can say things about A's ontology, in fact, such as
> assert that it is all BS. The globality of the namespace has a whole
> range of consequences which we are only beginning to explore. And
> being URIs (actually IRIs these
> days) , these names can also be used as identifiers which *access*
> things on the Web.
> Whether these accessed things should be the referents of the names is
> currently controversial (I think not, in general), but that they
> access
> *something* is not even remotely at issue. So SWeb concept names have
> a whole new dimensionality to them, which is (or at any rate can be)
> orthogonal to their use as referring names. In particular, it allows
> ontologies to "address" other ontologies (a pale version of which is
> the OWL:imports primitive, but one can do a lot more than this), which
> obviously has many potential applications relevant to scaling.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> BTW, I entirely agree with Jim's optimism. I think people are way too
> scared of inconsistencies. Lets wait and see what problems actually
> crop up before trying to solve or avoid ones that we only worry about
> rather than actually find.
>
> Pat
> (05)
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