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Adam,
The FP 6th budget is almost a
history, no need to count what is consumed, although the figures i presented
taken from the EC official papers. Better look at the FP 7th Budget,
starting January 1st, 2007, and amounting to 72 726 million, with the
indicative breakdown:
Cooperation - 12 670 million;
Ideas - 11 862, People - 7129, and research infrastructure - 3961. For ICT
programs, it is allocated 12 670 million. Since the idea is to
build the Europe of Knowledge, Knowledge-Intensive Society, Knowledge Base of
Europe and Technological Know How, try and count what portion will
be channeled towards semantic-based knowledge systems and intellectual
technologies, directly through the ICT programs and indirectly through other
projects : New production Technologies - 4832 million; Security and Space -
3960, Health - 8 312.
The coming European
Commission 7th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and
Demonstration is built on better principles. First of all, it
presupposes an abundant financing of individual projects under
the rubric 'Ideas' (as investigator-driven frontier research by
individual teams, judged by a European Scientific Council). Besides, to
avoid bad misuses, frauds, self-regulation and poor deliverables allowed
by 6th FP, the whole European science system is claimed to be
overhauled: professional expertise and advice, quality
publications, monitoring and control, trust, independent reviewing,
ethical behaviour, public transparency, and financial
audit.
The urgent issue is to
understand what is really going on as the semantic web and the semantic-based
knowledge systems, so that to avoid a harmful confounding the syntactic web
with the semantic web (think the creator of the cake
may as well say how it must be cooked).
If what is now going is
really the syntactic web, as John states and i intend to agree with him,
then something must be done urgently. For then the SW folks make,
intentionally or unintentionally, deceitful pretenses, getting and
planning to obtain an underserved public funding, which looks enormous, and
thus confusing both the World and the governments. Simply put,
we must understand which web (or architectural
pillars) most fits the matter, the formal semantic web (i.e., the
syntactic web, known as the SW layer cake) or the real semantic web,
something like this version:
<Real Semantic Web> ::= <Ontological Framework> < Logical Framework> <Semiotics> <the Web> <Ontological Framework> ::= <UFO> <Upper Level Ontologies> <Domain Ontologies> <EOL>
<Logical Framework> ::= <FMF> | < ... > <EOL>
<Semiotics> ::= <Pragmatics> <Semantics> <Syntax> <EOL> <Pragmatics> ::= <Users> <Web Agents> <Intentions> <Actions> <Communication> < Proof, Trust> | <Truth> <EOL>
<Semantics> ::= <Signs, Natural Language Expressions> <Meanings> <EOL>
<Syntax> ::= <Rules> <OWL Ontology> <RDF Schema> <RDF M&S> < RDF> <XML/SGML> <Namespaces> <EOL><the Web> ::= <Resources, state, representation, identification, URI, Unicode> <Interaction, sofware agents, hypertext links, protocols, HTTP> <data Formats, HTML, XHTML> <EOL>
Regards,Azamat Abdoullaev
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, April 02, 2006 12:41 AM
Subject: Re: [ontac-forum] Re: Semantic Layers (Was Interpretation
of RDF reification)
I promissed some details about projects in the
EU.
This is also in reply to AzAmat who said:-
In order to lay down the knowledge
infrastructures of the upcoming Information Society the EU's Research
Council and the European Parliament allocated 3.8 billion Euro for Knowledge
Technologies within the 6th European Union Framework Programme (FP6) for Research and Technological Development, with a
total budget of 17.5 billion Euro. Within the FP6 Programme, all the web-based knowledge technology
projects are largely concerned with ontology research, design, learning, and
management.
I should say
immiediately that I don't see billions (1000 x millions) of Euro's in this,
but my figure is for projects across one year (but a years funding would be
far less, this is funding across a year for projects that last several years.
It is a bit uncear to me if this is just ongoing funding, or agreed funding
for 2006. I think the former, so the figures are far lower than you
suggest.)
I have done the following.
Searched the Cordis web site for
all projects in the 2006 6th Framework that use the word "semantic" in their
description.
Truth is the Cordis web site is a mess. It returns duplicates
because it can't establish that a project with a code 012345 and 12345 is the
same.
Moreover it make copy and paste into a spread sheet very difficult
(not a design consideration, but why not?). And on ...
I thought it
unnecessary to look at other years, so I take 2006 as representative.
In
millions of Euro:-
Project Funding
Cost
241.74
181.36
Companies will make up the difference between these two
figures.
Number of projects:-
46 with avg. value ~ 5.25
All of
the projects involve one or more University.
Non EU countries
include:-
Country
no. projects
TURKEY
3
AUSTRALIA
2
ROMANIA
2
LIECHTENSTEIN
1
CANADA
1
CHINA
1
UNITED
STATES
1
LITHUANIA
1
ICELAND
1
Clearly in this group there is no relationship
between their size and number of projects, but this is not the case for the
bulk of the projects with the top few supporting as
follows:-
GERMANY
88
FRANCE
46
ITALY
45
GREECE
40
SPAIN
39
UNITED KINGDOM 33
I am only giving
these figures as it does indicate a huge amount of activity entailing a single
very central theme, essentially semantics in web based technologies.
(Certainly not just ontology related research as suggested by AzAmat.)
From
this prespective I think it understandable that I am disappointed that John
Sowa's work is not more obviously represented. I also pay head to John's point
that not all eggs should be in one basket as, in a way, they are for the 6th
Frame Work, since there seems to me a great deal of overlap, repetition and
reinvention of the same underlying technologies, rather than reuse of
established techniques and methods.
In regard to modularity and reuse it
seems that there is no established policy on making project results available
in the public domain. Some projects produce Open Source artifacts, while many
do not. It doesn't seem appropriate to elaborate the consequences of this
here.
I admit my analysis is by no means complete or necessarily accurate
on these points.
I understand that, even with an average of 5.25M euro, it
is by no means a simple or straight forward business to undertake funded
research, but the naive thought remains that it would be well for the
Information Society to make John Sowa's work central to one of these
projects.
I do think that this is relevant to this list as there is a
question as to what the semantic web is and, however that is answered, one
aspect is that it is what it is shaped to become. Surely this level of funding
will have a considerable, if not decisive influence?
Of course the other
strand, I don't know how related, is that of the ground swell towards
folksonomies. I would think that the just announced ActiveRDF for Ruby would
act in this direction. I personally am fascinated and would like to
investigate this sort of approach. There is a link between the popular and the
subversive, how this will play out in the end e.g. will we end up with
something like what ensued due to the invention of the pop song format - a
whole culture - I can't guess.
But let me use what Peter Maxwell
Davies has said about popular music as an analogy when he said he doesn't
listen to it because it is repetitious, without structure or interest.
Although it may be fun in other ways, there is a need for architectural form
and that can only come out of hard work, hard thought and thorough knowledge
as evidenced in these discussions.
Adam
On 01/04/06, John
F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>
> Chris,
>
> I just want to comment on
some seemingly minor points from
> a couple of your notes that hide a
very big elephant:
>
> CM> ... more or less standard
treatments [of extensional,
> > intensional, pragmatic and
modal approaches]
>
> CM> I rather admire Bunge's work,
especially his emphasis
> > on the construction of
rigorous formal theories but, for
> > good or ill, he has
not been terribly influential, and
> > his ideas are
somewhat outside the mainstream.
>
> The words "standard" and
"mainstream" suggest that there is
> some degree of
consensus. Unfortunately, whatever consensus
> exists is
highly fragmented and people who subscribe to one
> fragment never cite
and seldom read the works of people who
> subscribe to a different
fragment.
>
> As you well know, many highly influential people,
such
> as Quine from the formal perspective and the lexical
>
semanticists from the informal perspective, say that none
> of these
attempts to formalize modality, intentionality,
> etc., are likely to
capture what people say in ordinary
> language. Quine also
claims that none of them are likely
> to be of any use for scientific
language. For a summary
> of Quine's mature views on the
subject, see his 1981 book
> _Theories and Things_ .
>
>
I'd also like to throw some other quotations into the pot
> from people
who deserve considerable respect on the basis
> of their many years of
research on related issues.
>
> In his book _Beyond Analytic
Philosophy_, Hao Wang (1986),
> a former PhD student of Quine's and a
former assistant to
> Kurt Goedel, characterized Quine's approach as
"logical
> negativism":
>
> Quine
merrily reduces mind to body, physical objects to
>
(some of) the place-times, place-times to sets of sets
of
> numbers, and numbers to sets. Hence, we
arrive at a purified
> ontology which consists
of sets only.... I believe I am not
> alone in
feeling uncomfortable about these reductions. What
>
common and garden consequences can we draw from such
grand
> reductions? What hitherto concealed
information do we get from
>
them? Rather than being overwhelmed by the
result, one is
> inclined to question the
significance of the enterprise itself.
>
> In support of his
views, Want quoted a personal letter from
> C. I. Lewis, the founder of
the modern systems of modal logic,
> about the state of philosophy in
1960:
>
> It is so easy... to get
impressive 'results' by replacing the
> vaguer
concepts which convey real meaning by virtue of common
>
usage by pseudo precise concepts which are
manipulable by
> 'exact' methods — the trouble
being that nobody any longer
> knows whether
anything actual or of practical import is being
>
discussed.
>
> Barbara Partee, who has
probably done more to promote Montague's
> ideas among linguists than
anyone else, has admitted that the
> formal semanticists have not even
begun to come to grips with
> the work of the lexical semanticists,
which is much more relevant
> to defining the kinds of words and
concepts that people actually
> use, both in ordinary language and in
scientific treatises:
>
> In Montague's
formal semantics the simple predicates of the
>
language of intensional logic (IL), like love, like,
kiss,
> see, etc., are regarded as symbols
(similar to the "labels"
> of [predicate
calculus]) which could have many possible
>
interpretations in many different models, their "real
meanings"
> being regarded as their
interpretations in the "intended model".
>
>
Formal semantics does not pretend to give a
complete
> characterization of this "intended
model", neither in terms
> of the model
structure representing the "worlds" nor in terms
>
of the assignments of interpretations to the lexical
constants.
> The present formalizations of
model-theoretic semantics are
> undoubtedly
still rather primitive compared to what is needed
>
to capture many important semantic properties of
natural
> languages.... There are other
approaches to semantics that
> are concerned
with other aspects of natural language, perhaps
>
even cognitively "deeper" in some sense, but which we
presently
> lack the tools to adequately
formalize.
>
> This excerpt is from Lecture 4 of a course she
presented in 2005:
> http://people.umass.edu/partee/RGGU_2005/RGGU05_formal_semantics.htm
>
> And, of course, you can't ignore the logician Peter Geach,
who
> dismissed Montague's work as "Hollywood semantics".
>
> I have some sympathy with all of the above, but I'm not
completely
> convinced by any of them. At this point, I would
not bestow the
> term "standard" or "mainstream" on any of these
approaches, and I
> would definitely *not* recommend that any of them
be adopted as
> the foundation for any "standard"
ontology. But I would say that
> any of them might be used in
an optional module in some ontology,
> if they proved to be useful for
some particular problem.
>
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