Cassidy, Patrick J. wrote: (01)
[ .... ] (02)
>[KE] Would those same ontologist choose to interact using a different
>language?
>The one that affirms would make for a very interesting, and most
>likely,
>enlightening case.
>
>[PC] Actually, yes, if there were any benefit to do so. We have ample
>precedent of people taking great trouble to learn a natural language
>which is not their native tongue in order to communicate with others.
>
>
This was an error of interpretation. I would expect that kind of thing
would not become an issue if there were a common semantic model that
could check for clarity and provide information when a message can be
interpreted differently by different perspectives. (03)
I was thinking specifically about an ontologist and a personal
preference to speak or use a language different from their mother tongue
specifically to formulate theory or support for their axioms or ideas. (04)
Students attending a conference must present their work in the language
of the conference-- i.e., they have to obey the ground rules to
participate. People choosing another the language under the force of
practicality-- is a choice, but not the same kind of choice I had in
mind. Your analogy with how programming languages are chosen is apt and
speaks directly to the "specialization-to-usage" nature (hub-type) of
the great complex ontologies (CyC, SUMO, DOLCE, etc.). (05)
Nonetheless, I tend to agree with the scenario you painted-- I guess
this is more or less the vision statement Hans was after. (06)
I had rather hoped some seriously productive efforts would get started
and some systems would be engineered. At some point I thought we were
moving to use-cases to test out the theories and logical methods that
have been discussed. (07)
It is depressing that there is no funding for efforts of unifying
logical systems of reasoning about all the real stuff going on that we
have information about that still cannot be figured out. (08)
-Ken Ewell (09)
>Every international scientific conference I have attended was conducted
>in English, and included speakers who obviously were not comfortable
>with our language, but took the trouble to learn it because it was the
>medium required to communicate with those they wanted to communicate
>with. People take a lot of trouble to learn complex programming
>languages, because there are examples of programs using those languages
>that do very useful things. Conversely, if one already knows a
>programming language, it takes a lot more motivation, such as examples
>of things a new language can do that the old language can't, that will
>induce people to learn a second language. As far as ontologists go, I
>will use **any** language that has a large user base and a reasonable
>number of public sample applications. I have spoken with others having
>a similar attitude.
>
>The whole game is motivation. Up to this point there has been little
>if any reason for people to painstakingly learn the details of existing
>upper ontology systems because (1) they are complex and difficult to
>learn; (2) they are not used enough for third-party developers to
>create utilities to make them easier to use and to extend their use;
>(3) there are few if any publicly available demonstration programs that
>make it clear that the ontologies will do enough useful things to
>justify the investment of time in learning them; and (4) since there
>are few reasoning systems available that already use that ontology,
>there is mostly no communications benefit right now in taking the time
>to tune one's own system to use it.
>
>Those who have relatively simple reasoning or representation tasks to
>perform may take one look at something as complex as Cyc and conclude -
>perhaps justifiably for the immediate future - that the costs of
>learning to use it greatly outweigh the benefits. So they make their
>own, simpler knowledge classification system. What is lost is the
>potential for interoperability with other systems. But at present it
>is only a potential. The upper ontologies and the Common Semantic
>Model, useful in themselves, are only essential when one wants one's
>reasoning system to interoperate semantically with another's (or one
>organization's different databases to interact with each other). So a
>COSMO is **essential** only if you have a sophisticated reasoning
>system and want to interact with others. Getting to the point where
>there are enough local practical reasoning systems to begin to gain the
>enormous benefits of the networking effect via a COSMO is a slow
>process. When there are few local reasoning systems that need to
>communicate, the motivation to invest heavily in communication is
>absent. That is the current situation.
>
>Nevertheless, it should be quite clear to anyone who has taken any time
>to examine the simpler examples of reasoning with ontologies that the
>technology will inevitably be extended to provide powerful reasoning
>systems with broad and very important capabilities. As with a
>programming language, there is a big difference between developing a
>small test program and a large and complex operating system. Years of
>intensive development involving many people may be required.
>Developing an impressive reasoning system will be, I suspect, more
>complex than developing an operating system like Windows. But many of
>the components are available. Predicting the timetable is risky
>because it depends a lot on a number of factors.
>
>Will people take the time to learn and use a complex upper ontology?
>Someone else's ontology? Someone else's ontology language? Yes, for
>the same reasons that they take the time to learn English and Java.
>When examples are available to demonstrate the benefits of using a new
>language, they will undertake the effort.
>
>But developing a widely used Common Semantic Model is not quite like
>anything else that has been done before, and analogies can hide
>significant differences. Developing applications of ontologies is a
>more complicated task than developing some simple program in a
>programming language, and no community speaks ontology as a native
>language. To develop the "installed user base" that will encourage
>increasing numbers of people to use, test, and improve a common
>ontology may have to proceed in incremental steps of increasing
>complexity. Fortunately, we don't have to get universal agreement,
>just a large enough base of users to form a self-sustaining community
>that can share results with a common conceptual language and help it
>evolve and improve. The process could be greatly accelerated if there
>were a significant source of funding that could support a large
>representative group of users and developers oriented to a single
>ontology, to get a variety of impressive applications and utilities to
>make the system easy to use. But such funding has not yet
>materialized. It is possible that some influential organization like
>Microsoft will decide to create their own version for their own
>purposes and by monopoly power force the rest of us to use it.
>Windology anyone?
>
>There is another benefit of a Common Semantic Model beyond immediate
>use in applications, and that is to serve as a common paradigm of
>meaning that can help accelerate development of more powerful reasoning
>systems. Reasoning with contexts will be necessary to control the
>explosion of inference that will occur with first-order logic on even
>moderately complex knowledge bases. To meaningfully compare
>alternative reasoning methods, and learn what tactics work, it will be
>essential to make comparisons using the same realistically large
>knowledge base, so that the knowledge variables will be controlled and
>the reasoning itself form the subject of experiment. The COSMO can
>perform that function, for any community wishing to perform a
>comparative evaluation of reasoning methods and to reuse each other's
>results.
>
>One thing ONTACWG can do to help is to become a community with a Common
>Semantic Model and develop it in incremental steps. At each stage the
>investment of time in learning how to use it might be commensurate with
>the demonstrated or immediately realizable benefits of the model at
>that stage of development. In this way, those who are not convinced
>enough of the benefits of complex ontology systems may have less
>complex systems available that are easier to learn and evaluate. This
>is a model for development that is propelled by a combination of the
>complexity of the topic and the absence of direct funding for a broad
>community effort. Whether it can succeed will depend on whether our
>volunteer participants will focus on the concrete details of
>construction and evaluation of the Common Semantic Model in its
>increasingly complex and increasingly capable stages.
>
>There have been several proposals in ONTACWG discussion for what might
>serve as a the beginnings of a Common Semantic Model. It is possible
>that one of the existing upper ontologies could be adopted as a whole.
>Thus far there has not been general support for that strategy. Perhaps
>the complexity of those systems is not yet balanced by demonstrated
>publicly available and impressive applications; the needed motivating
>factors may be absent. WordNet has also been suggested as a model, but
>is not itself used for logical inference.
>
>All suggested approaches are welcome. Providing specific computational
>resources to support an approach will probably increase the chances
>that other members will take an interest. There are some commercial
>programs that can be useful, and references to those can be helpful,
>but if they are expensive it will probably be necessary to provide
>powerful motivation by specific examples of utility in order to induce
>others to part with their cash.
>
>Right now the only specific small starter version of a COSMO that has
>been proposed for ONTACWG is the merged top levels from OpenCyc, SUMO,
>and DOLCE (with a few elements from BFO and ISO15926), which I put on
>our site at:
> http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CosmoWG/TopLevel2
>. . . and is available in OWL form at:
>
>http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/ontac/reference/ProtegeOntologies
>/COSMOtopOWL03.owl
>
>
>Discussions about this and related topics are proceeding now within the
>ONTAC-dev email reflector. to subscribe go to:
> http://colab.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontac-dev
>
>
>Pat
>
>Patrick Cassidy
>MITRE Corporation
>260 Industrial Way
>Eatontown, NJ 07724
>Mail Stop: MNJE
>Phone: 732-578-6340
>Cell: 908-565-4053
>Fax: 732-578-6012
>Email: pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx
>
>
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> (010)
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