Murray, (01)
I have been preaching that point to the SUO group for
the past five years and to the ONTAC group for the
past three months. But as I said to David Eddy, it
is impossible to get that point across to people who
believe in the *one true ontology to rule them all.* (02)
> Given that #1 (a single unified theory) requires that
> everyone agree on everything, it simply doesn't seem
> feasible. People's requirements are often very different,
> not to say anything about their use of language, even
> mathematical language. (03)
You obviously know something about how software works
and about how it is developed. I am quoting your note
in its entirety for the benefit of those who think they
can legislate the one true ontology: (04)
> I realize this comes slightly out of left field, but in my
> own work (which was markedly to design a system to enable
> non-experts to work with "informal" ontologies, but could
> still be harmonized with a formal logic at some level, which
> suggested trying to locate a single, logical core), I ended
> up with only a few concepts that needed to be in the core:
>
> 1. a means of establishing [subject] identity
> 2. a facet, or property relation
> 3. the class-instance relation
> 4. the superclass-subclass relation (which I later
> redefined to be based on a mereological or
> collection basis, ala Cyc)
> 5. a means of expressing context
>
> I realize that this as a "core" doesn't fit within any
> single formal logical bounds (borrowing willy-nilly as
> I have), but the five aspects above were what I ended up
> with, for what it's worth. I expect that I'll be able to
> align this to some degree with Common Logic once it is
> stabilized (and I have the time). (05)
My list of absolute requirements for the core is similar
to yours. The word _context_, however, has many different
meanings. I'm sure that you had a precise definition for
your system, but it might be better to use a different
word in order to avoid confusion. (06)
> One thing (which I'm sure might seem strange to some)
> is that I'm not convinced that a class-based approach to
> ontology is all that useful, at least for my purposes. For
> example, in looking at Faceted Classification (from library
> science) for concepts of identity, I found that sets drawn
> from collections of entities sharing specific properties
> or 'facets' (i.e., extensional sets) are much more valuable
> in drawing up functional categories. I'm admittedly in way
> over my head on this kind of thing, but I think I just kept
> running up against epistemological walls in the axiomatic
> approach, and my attempts to understand category theory was
> not helped by putting the book under my pillow. I do find
> topos a very appealing theory. In retrospect, it'd have been
> nice to have had a formal grounding in mathematics before I
> jumped into this slough, but I didn't. Life goes on. (07)
Your points are very well taken. Unfortunately many people
in this slough still think they can legislate a magic solution
to all the world's problems. (08)
John (09)
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