Dear John, (01)
Are you aware just how small the UF really is? (02)
I have: (03)
Thing (04)
Individual
A thing that exists in space-time (or space and time).
Note: This needs to be broad enough to encompass 4D
possible individuals in possible universes, and 3D
occurants. (05)
Class
A thing that has members.
Note: This needs to be weak enough to allow 3D classes
to change their membership over time and 4D classes that
are defined by their extent. (06)
Tuple (07)
I don't think there is much more that is really common. (08)
Take something like pump. In a 4D ontology this would be
represented by a set (unchanging membership) of spatio-
temporal extents. In a 3D ontology the members are
occurants. Now you could of course have a class that was
the superclass of these two, but you wouldn't get a sensible
answer from it for how many pumps there are. (Actually it
would probably make more sense to have a class of pump classes). (09)
I did think there might be some common ground around activity,
but it seems not. A 4D activity has as parts temporal parts of
its participants. A 3D activity, although spatio-temporal, has
occurants as participants that do not have temporal parts. (010)
Do you see a way out of this? (011)
Regards (012)
Matthew West
Reference Data Architecture and Standards Manager
Shell International Petroleum Company Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom (013)
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Mobile: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx
http://www.shell.com
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ (014)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: 27 November 2005 15:01
> To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion
> Subject: [ontac-forum] Neutrality Principle
>
>
> In developing a unified framework, we need to get all
> the major players in the ontology field to work together
> right from the beginning.
>
> Since all the major systems are currently incompatible
> with one another, that requirement imposes constraints
> on what is possible. Therefore, I propose the following
> *neutrality principle*:
>
> The unified framework UF should be neutral with respect
> to all the major ontology projects that are currently
> under development. That implies:
>
> 1. Every system X that participates in the effort
> should support import and export operators for
> importing all of UF or any subset of UF to and
> from X.
>
> 2. UF should not contain any categories or relations
> that would create an inconsistency with any major
> system X; i.e., it should be possible to import
> *all* of UF into X without causing an inconsistency.
>
> 3. Importing UF into any system X and then exporting
> it from X should result in a version UF' that is
> logically equivalent to the original UF except for
> possible cosmetic changes in the formatting. Those
> changes should not cause any other system Y that
> imported UF' to generate inferences that differed
> from the inferences generated directly from UF.
>
> 4. Points #2 and #3 imply that the initial version of UF
> should avoid having a complex or detailed upper level,
> since most of the inconsistencies between any two
> ontologies result from problems at the top. It also
> implies that the system should contain a minimal
> number of relations whose definitions are not overly
> restrictive; i.e., it is better to have *too few*
> axioms than too many, since the more axioms there
> are, the more conflicts arise.
>
> 5. Point #3 implies that the emphasis of the UF should
> not be on rich inference capabilities, since those are
> usually highly context dependent and very likely to
> lead to inconsistencies. Therefore UF would be better
> suited to interchange and communication than to extended
> inference or problem solving. The extended inferences
> would be done by more specialized systems, which could
> add additional axioms of their own and use either
> logic-based methods or computational techniques.
>
> 6. UF should avoid features that limit its use to any
> particular notation or system of inference. OWL,
> for example, could be used to represent all of UF,
> but UF should not have any dependencies on any features
> of OWL -- either in logic or in formatting -- that are
> not available in all major systems of ontology.
>
> The details of these points are negotiable, but the fundamental
> principle of neutrality should be that UF shall be based on the
> minimal subset of features that do not create inconsistencies
> with any major ontology.
>
> To avoid slighting anybody, I'll avoid listing what ontologies
> should be considered "major".
>
> John Sowa
>
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