Hi Azamat:
Excellent rebuttal, if you're assuming I am without experience in the domain
being pursued by ONTAC.
But that assumption would be erroneous. I am encouraging this COSMO
discussion group within the ONTACWG to “get on with it” because I’ve
been modeling and reasoning on this for a very long time, and I see a clear path
forward to a useful and practical EA common semantic model (i.e., COSMO), that
I’ve traveled several times before, where some apparently see sand,
pebbles, sticks, trees, and boulders over which they must cautiously step.
I would submit that my "reasoning" on the subject of a
general ontology for enterprise management, which encompasses enterprise
architecture, is fairly significant, and has been my personal and career focus
for over 48 years, and has been published in U.S. government channels since
1987, and on the web since 1994. It is now understood by a larger
audience.
·
My own "knowledge
representation model", that I call my "generalized object model"
which I now document as the M3 layer of a four layer architecture metamodel, dates
from 1957, when I was six, when I envisioned the world as many layered fishing-nets
with knots (i.e., nodes) and connecting-lines. It predates the OpenGroup
and Object Management Group (OMG) object metaschema by about 40 years, and is
more extensive and expressive that that now-standard metaschema.
·
My own "wheel of
knowledge", which I developed in 1965 at the age of 14 as a tool to help
me determine what I should study in college to attain my goals of socio-technical
integration, predates the Encyclopedia Britannica Propedia outline of knowledge
by several years.
·
My 2nd Order Logic-based ontology
for enterprise management dates from 1982, where I designed it as the theme for
most of my Master's level education projects on “whole-enterprise
management” and as the mechanism by which I thrived in my then-current
assignment as the Assistant Resource Manager of a 16,000 person US Army Command
in West Germany.
·
My axiology-based extension to my
enterprise management methodology, metaschema, and technology incorporated the
aspects of value-chain analysis and management in 1992.
·
My general ontology approach was
used as the EA framework, metaschema, methodology, and technology for the
recently (2005) completed U.S. Federal Executive Branch (FEB) continuity
communication enterprise architecture (CCEA) project, whose purpose was to help
establish and maintain continuity of the mission essential functions of the FEB
under all circumstances. The briefings on the project completion status to
the U.S. CIO Council’s (CIOC) Chief Architect’s Forum (CAF) and Architecture
and Infrastructure Committee (AIC), then to the Industry Advisory Council (IAC)
EA Shared Interest Group (SIG), and then to the most recent SICoP Conference
led to several recommendations that that approach be submitted as a foundation
for the future OMB FEA, and led to my being requested to participate in the
ONTACWG formed by SICoP under Pat’s leadership.
Note that I am not a logician or an ontologist by education, training,
or interest. I’ve been a “get it done” manager,
analyst, and technologist my entire career, and I’ve almost always done “it”
successfully. You can read more about my interest and experience in these
areas at http://www.one-world-is.com
, and I believe you’ll find my own ontology approach, and my purpose, is
similar to yours. I appreciate your efforts and find your web site at http://www.encyclopedic-intelligence.com/
most impressive, as corresponding-to, adding depth, and validating my own, and I
appreciate a similar appreciation, or at least tolerance of my efforts.
Thanks.
Roy
-----Original Message-----
From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Azamat
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 12:51 PM
To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion
Subject: Re: [ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we start? - sub (10)
[RR]
>I am not an authority for this group.
...
>Enough philosophy! Let us build something useful for the FEA
community,
using semantic technologies, quickly! Let us work with tools, not
debate the science and philosphical underpinnings of the tools.
Roy,
Then here some useful poetry for you from W. Auden:
''Those who will not reason
Perish in the act
Those who will not act
Perish for that reason.''
The meaning of this is always think before doing, acting, or stating
something.
Any good machine model (theoretical account, or framework) is a
representation of pieces of reality, its complex entities, processes
and
relations. The intelligent computer programs are to be based on a
semantic
model of real systems so that to be capable not only to properly react
to
environmental stimuli but also effectively reason about the world.
Repeat again the substance of my message:
[any common ontological and semantic modelling not directly dealing
with
reality, its complex systems and dynamic relationships, is a mindless
waste
of time, money and effort].
Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy Roebuck"
<Roy.Roebuck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "ONTAC-WG General Discussion"
<ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 6:10 PM
Subject: RE: [ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we start? - sub
(10)
Hi:
I am not an authority for this group. But to again inform and
focus
those WG participants outside the Federal Enterprise Architecture
community that recently gave rise to the ONTAC WG - the
Common
Semantic Model that the ONTAC WG's founding authority [i.e., the SICoP
(U.S.
Federal CIO Council's (CIOC) Architecture and Infrastructure
Committee (AIC) Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice)]
expects from the COSMO facet of the ONTAC WG effort is a "semantic
model" that encompassses U.S. Federal enterprise management and
the
supporting enterprise architecture efforts and capability, as now
bounded by the OMB FEA Assessment Framework, V2, released this month.
If the ontology being discussed and "developed" by this WG
does not
support U.S. Federal Government organizations' efforts to attain Level
5
across the board in that assessment framework, then I submit that it
does not need to be part of this discussion. A semantic mechanism
to
provide interoperability of FEA efforts, metaschema, methodology, and
modeling and repository technology is needed - that's all.
Enough philosophy! Let us build something useful for the FEA community,
using semantic technologies, quickly! Let us work with tools, not
debate the science and philosphical underpinnings of the tools.
Roy
-----Original Message-----
From: ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontac-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Azamat
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 9:56 AM
To: ONTAC-WG General Discussion
Subject: Re: [ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we start? - sub
(10)
Patrick,
We all know that you are trying to do a good thing. But reading your
manifesto is producing more questions than answers. Below just few of
them
instigated by your folowing basic statements.
[PC]
>There have been several proposals in ONTACWG discussion for what
might
>serve as a the beginnings of a Common Semantic Model.
>
Please expound a Common Semantic Model of What?:
1. of Reality, the World, its basic aspects, levels, features,
components,
factors, or meanings;
2. of human knowledge, its basic features, components, factors, and
meanings;
3. or of natural language, its basic namespace composition, structure,
features, senses and meanings.
>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.
<
Another question arising is how can you expect something (funding) from
the
taxonomies telling reasoning applications nothing essential about the
real
world, existence, being, and reality, its nonlinear complexity,
composition,
dynamics, aspects, levels, systems, and, especially, (causal )
relationships?
For missing the class of relationships as a basic pillar of reality is
missing such significant phenomena as process, causality, order,
difference,
organization, complexity, hierarchy, structure, control, information,
communication, etc. Lack of relational entity as a key denizen of the
world
is a main reason why neither of the taxonomies imposed can't be used as
a
standard, nor they can be employed as the complementary parts of a
whole.
As a test case, try and adapt any of the ontologies for developing an
integrative (ontological) theory of complex nonlinear causal systems.
Or
try
just to imagine any of your proposed entity models for creating the
class of
reasoning applications dealing with dynamic complexity in nature, mind
or
society, not speaking of making the modeling agents capable to predict
the
behavior of the world, its complex nonlinear hierarchical networked
systems.
Ontology is not a catalogue of categories but a scientific theory of
reality, its levels and aspects, composition and properties, states and
changes as well as the entity constraining fundamental relationships
(downward and upward causality known as part-whole relationships,
space-time
relationships, causal connections, etc.).
There is one rational way to relate the Real World (W) and the Software
Computing World (C), via the Unified Framework Ontology (UFO), as the
mapping scheme UFO: W arrow C. Since, instead of descriptive
ontological
models, we must be after a standard theory of real entities and
relationships, their properties and value types as the realistic,
prescriptive and predictive ontology intended for scientific,
cognitive
and
linguistic engineering.
>WordNet has also been suggested as a model, but is not itself used
for
>logical inference.
The WordNet is the most rich and comprehensive lexical taxonomy. You
can't
do better common semantic model of entity names than logically
encompassing
the whole content of WordNet, as it has been done in USECS. Only then,
having developed the (WordNet) intergrative ontological context, one
may
take on the difficult task of automatic processing (building,
alligning,
mapping, merging, intergrating, querying, and what not) of domain
content
(or Web data) with specific reasoning mechanisms and inference rules,
thus
making all sorts of specific ontological and semantic applications.
Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
http://www.eis.com.cy
----- Original Message -----
From: "Cassidy, Patrick J." <pcassidy@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "ONTAC Forum" <ontac-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 9:21 AM
Subject: FW: [ontac-dev] RE: [ontac-forum] RE: Shall we start? - sub
(10)
There is a question from Ken Ewell which I think touches on a topic of
broad interest:
>[PC] It will be easier to get agreement, the simpler the core
is, but
>in order to serve the proposed function of enabling
interoperability
by
>providing a set of concepts with which definitions of complex
concepts
>can be specified, it will have to have a certain irreducible level
of
>complexity. Just how complex it can get and still gather a
wide range
>of acceptance among user communities is not obvious to me.
But over
>the years I have heard many - actually most - ontologists say that
they
>would use another representation if there was a good reason to do
so.
>
>
[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.
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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