[SCL] naming ontologies

[Bill Andersen]

Hi Pat...

Gotta hit the road so this message will be quick.

I agree that much of what Chris set out in his paper might end up as 
overkill for these purposes.  At a first cut, I'd settle for some 
syntactic notion of "document" (set of sentences) and "inclusion" of a 
document "in" another document - yielding a document - and of course 
attaching the semantic notions you do to those hooks.  That's probably 
good enough.

My point was only that we should *finish* step 1 before step 2, but 
thanks for showing us some of step 2.

   .bill


On Dec 2, 2003, at 1040, pat hayes wrote:

>> Hi Pat...
>>
>> I'm glad you're thinking about this because it's an important 
>> subject.  However, Chris wrote a paper for ECAI 2002 (attached)
>
> Thanks for sending this (which I confess I hadnt read and didnt even 
> know about, sigh.) However, after a quick read, I think Chris is 
> hoeing a different kind of row here. This is, as the title implies, an 
> ontology *theory* where that last word is being used in a technical 
> sense, ie a formal ontology. This presupposes a formal language to 
> write the theory in, which for us begs the central issue. (Chris 
> mentions this in footnote 13, but relegates it to 'metatheoretic 
> housekeeping'. But Im not suggesting it in that way at all: Im 
> suggesting it as part of the language.)
>
>> Content-Type: application/pdf;
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>> 	name="ecai2002.pdf"
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>> Attachment converted: Betelgeuse:ecai2002 1.pdf (PDF /CARO) (000AAA91)
>> on Ontology Theory, which covers what you're trying to provide a 
>> syntax for below and more.
>
> Lots more; but also less, since Im suggesting this as a syntactic 
> device in the language. So, different.
>
>>  There's a conflict between the view there and the view you present - 
>> namely that ontologies do not consist of sentences but rather 
>> propositions, which seems to be what you're hinting at here:
>
> I really don't care about this issue, or the philosophical tarpit 
> about propositional identity and 'content' that it uncovers. For our 
> purposes we can say that they are sets of sentences, or even just 
> strings, provided only that we can interpret those strings as SCL. One 
> thing it does show, by the way, is that simple entailment relation 
> described as 'Subsumes' in Chris' framework is likely to be too crude.
>
>>> The meaning of this notation is that the name denotes this set in 
>>> all satisfying interpretations: this requires that the universe 
>>> admits things called 'sets of sentences' which as far as the 
>>> semantics are concerned can be thought of simply as functions from 
>>> interpretations to truthvalues, i.e. as propositions, which we can 
>>> treat as a primitive semantic category (like strings and integers). 
>>> So if 'ex:ont' is such a URI then it makes sense to write something 
>>> like I(J('ex:ont')) = true where I and J are SCL interpretations.
>>
>> In general, I think it's getting hard enough just to get the MT and 
>> syntax straight for *one* set of sentences that would denote an 
>> 'ontology' (quotes because Chris has a formal definition of what 
>> constitutes one).  Now, you're introducing a whole new set of 
>> machinery.
>
> My point was that hardly any machinery is necessary. We just need to 
> have things in the universe that can themselves be interpreted. We 
> aren't going to say very much about them other than that they are 
> denoted and they are true or false. We don't need a full theory of 
> them.
>
>> Not that I object in principle.  Someone has got to try eventually to 
>> do this and I applaud the effort, but isn't this draining energy away 
>> from hitting the 25-meter target - getting the basic SCL stuff right 
>> and settled upon quickly?
>
> It would seem to be, except that what I found was that this actually 
> simplifies a lot of issues that we need to deal with now in any case; 
> in particular, it provides a natural (?) way to accommodate the 
> awkward fact that identical SCL sentences might be written in 
> different 'languages' depending on how you interpret the lexicon. This 
> is a definite *problem*  for a useable interchange langauge, and so 
> far we havnt got any way to deal with it . So, two birds with one 
> stone, etc. . And I think that providing a way to name ontologies is 
> part of the basic stuff in any case.
>
>> Once that's done, I'll be 110% behind doing what you suggest and let 
>> me also suggest - although I'll let Chris speak for himself on this - 
>> that we use Chris' paper as a starting point to get the ideas right 
>> and then figure out where the ontological hooks are to hang the 
>> syntax off of.
>
> Well, lets see about that. Im not sure I agree with Chris' way of 
> doing these things. For example, why bother to axiomatize the notion 
> of being a syntactic part of? Being a syntactic part of is well 
> understood already and we have precise, machine-readable ways to 
> express it. I think this idea that its not real unless its axiomatized 
> is kind of beside the point for most practical purposes (though it 
> fits well into a certain tradition in philosophical logic). Suppose 
> there were a formal ontology of ontologies: what language would it we 
> written in, and what use would it be? I want to USE ontologies, not 
> reason ABOUT them. Ontologies, for me, are essentially syntactic 
> entities; and I disagree with Chris' view that this way of thinking is 
> somehow awkward or unsatisfactory. I also do not share his 
> philosophical scruples about using set theory in a metalanguage, do 
> not find model theory 'austere and formal' compared to a theory of 
> propositions (which I guess Chris feels are made from some kind of 
> soft velvet material, as opposed to the wire-mother of set theory) and 
> I do not think that it is 'far removed' from 'ordinary semantic 
> notions' (which Im not sure what those are, but whatever they are, 
> axiomatizing them in first-order logic is hardly a warm fuzzy way to 
> get at them.)
>
> Pat
>
>>   .bill
>>
>> --
>> Bill Andersen (andersen at ontologyworks.com)
>> Chief Scientist
>> Ontology Works, Inc. (www.ontologyworks.com)
>> 1132 Annapolis Road, Suite 104
>> Odenton, Maryland 21113
>> United States
>> Office: 410-674-7600
>> Mobile: 443-858-6444
>
>
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--
Bill Andersen (andersen at ontologyworks.com)
Chief Scientist
Ontology Works, Inc. (www.ontologyworks.com)
1132 Annapolis Road, Suite 104
Odenton, Maryland 21113
United States
Office: 410-674-7600
Mobile: 443-858-6444