Re: [ontac-dev] Purpose

[Charles D Turnitsa <CTurnits@xxxxxxx>]

John,

 In my model for a formal ontology (developed as part of a masters thesis, but still under revision and improvement, to be used for my Phd work), one of the key components I included was Rules (the other three components are Entities, Relations, and Concepts).  It has been under heavy re-definition and improvement over the past year, but I believe that the four components (including Rules) are still vital.

 One of the reasons that I percieved of Rules as being crucial to an ontology is to allow a system conversing in the ontology's bounded domain to specify intentions, or intentioned meanings of complex assemblies of entities, concepts, characteristics, etc that are found within the ontology.  This is, for me, an information system replacement for the percieved intended meaning that we can convey with natural language via intuition, implied context, community perceptions of appropriateness, etc.  These things, at least at present, are very difficult if not impossible for machines to capture, yet an axiomatized rule system that can capture such things as "intended use" or "purpose" could help.

 Any thoughts? 

Chuck

Charles Turnitsa
Lab Manager/Project Scientist
Virginia Modeling, Analysis & Simulation Center
Old Dominion University Research Foundation
7000 College Drive
Suffolk, Virginia 23435
(757) 638-6315 (voice)
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cturnits@xxxxxxx

-----ontac-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: -----

>To: ONTAC Taxonomy-Ontology Development Discussion
><ontac-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent by: ontac-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Date: 02/25/2006 11:04AM
>Subject: [ontac-dev] Purpose
>
>On many occasions, I have emphasized the point
>that purpose is central to understanding any human
>institution, artifact, or activity of any kind.
>But I keep seeing ontologies and taxonomies that
>try to define such things without including any
>recognition of their purpose.
>
>In another forum, I responded to a question about
>the pragmatics of communication across computer
>networks, and I wrote the following response.
>
>I'm including a slightly edited version here because
>I believe that similar issues are involved in any
>ontology that deals with any human activity or product.
>
>John Sowa
>______________________________________________________
>
>The issue of interpreting the meaning of a text or any
>other communication is a special case of interpreting
>artifacts, or more generally any byproducts of human,
>animal, or vegetable activity.  The basic question:
>
>    What is the purpose?
>
>If you look around the room you're sitting in right now
>(home, office, airport, etc.), estimate the percentage
>of things you see that are *not* human artifacts.
>Except for other people and an occasional potted plant,
>I'll bet it would be hard to find anything that is not
>the product of human design.
>
>And notice that everything has a very specific purpose,
>which depends on some human intentions, but a "folk"
>theory of human psychology is quite adequate to the
>task of analyzing the design:
>
>  1. The size and shape of a chair depends on the size
>     and bone structure of average adult humans -- not
>     on the details of their psychology.
>
>  2. The size and shape of a table depends on the chairs
>     that go with it, on the facts of gravity, the objects
>     that are expected to be put on that table, and the
>     structural properties of the wood or other material.
>
>You can make a similar list of properties of every
>artifact you see and itemize the purposes that led to
>its design.  In order to make that list, you'll need
>to know a lot about what people typically do, but you
>won't need to have a very sophisticated theory about
>how they think.
>
>> ...  Given Representational State Transfer,
>> meaning is in the message but the means of
>> invoking the message is restricted to a simple
>> set of verbs which it is claimed can be used
>> to perform all of the transactions necessary
>> on a network.
>
>If you want to know what verbs go with each object,
>list the activities in which they are used and how
>you would describe them.  Do exactly the same
>exercise for the activities on the network.
>
>> ... If the meaning is not in the head (the location
>> of the resource), then it has to be ... exactly where?
>
>It's embodied in the common knowledge of the community.
>That includes the heads of all the people in the
>community, but it also includes all the information
>stored in books, newspapers, movies, etc.
>
>For example, suppose you read _Romeo and Juliet_ many
>years ago.  You may have a rough idea of the plot,
>but have forgotten most of the detail.  The same is
>true of any message:  the meaning is eternal (i.e.,
>timeless), and it doesn't depend on whether anyone
>alive remembers it.
>
>The same is true of artifacts, human or animal.
>Biologists can interpret the purpose of a beaver
>dam or a honeycomb without having a theory of
>the minds of bees or beavers.  The purposeful
>activity of those animals led to those artifacts,
>and humans can infer those purposes without any
>direct knowledge of how bees or beavers think.
>
>> I am wondering if Pragmatics offers anything to
>> the REST vs SOAP debate.  I suspect these are the
>> same problem and it comes down to not confusing
>> the network design with anything *meaningful*.
>
>If you want to know the meaning, look for the purpose.
>As the lawyers say, "Cui bono?"  Who benefits?  And
>what advantage do they get?
>
> 
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