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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