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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

 

 The BCNGroup Beadgames

 

 

Challenge Problem  à

 

 

Lattice of ontologies

 

Function/structure descriptions

 

 

Ian, 

 

The issue I addressed was the need to !! sometimes !! not have a specific URI as referent to an individual, or to a concept.

 

At core there are some basic limitations that come from the RDF/W3C paradigm where terms, to be proper, need one precise definition.  This requirement is for the purpose of equipping terminology with first order logics.  However, linguistics and others have long argued that terminology cannot be universally treated as the elements of a logic. 

 

So the RDF/W3C standards create - if successful - a semantic web defined by computer scientists and imposed on user communities.  If you want something done you better make sure that it is allowed.   Business and government have real problems with the information system that is in place does not recognize the real time realities.  

 

This limitation is related to the question of an anonymous individual.  One simply wants the individual not to have to have a fixed meaning nor a complicated URI. 

 

The same can be said about concepts.  Sometimes the power of a concept lies in its ability to shift interpretation so that situations/individuals with differing environments can manage to "communicate".  Some people call this pragmatics, where the real inconsistencies and non-coherence between points of view are allowed because this is the way the social and physical world !! sometimes !! is.  (sorry about this philosophical statement, but it is intended to point out an aspect of reality.)

 

We know that there are more than one way to work around the limitation.  One work -round is to manage things within and across namespaces.  Here we come across the same shell game, one is either unwilling to look at the failures of namespaces, or one realizes that so far there has not been a resolution to fundamental issues that arise from the W3C paradigm. 

 

This is hard stuff, as you know Ian.  But the current state of Protege as the major editor/viewer of OWL specified ontology makes this ever harder - in many peoples views.  Just check the discussions on the Protege - OWL forum. 

 

Your paper, referenced below, is esoteric; and the business government communities need something that works now.  So, many are asking if W3C standards ask too much.  I ask if the W3C ask the wrong things of society. 

 

The core difficulty, that my mind has, is with the way that OWL and RDF files generally look with all kinds of URI references.  RDF was supposed to be readable!!!!  This stuff is neither readable nor understandable - unless one dedicates considerable time and talent to the subject - as you obviously have.  The work is very admirable.  But being admirable does not make it easy to understand, easy to use, or correct.

 

But then there are the performance issues and the issues related to Protege versions and a whole lot of inference engines.   

 

It is not my intention to be unhelpful to anyone.  However, the user communities need help in understanding why there are continuous problems with Protege and OWL. 

 

 

I again hope that Protege team is able to get stability to a project that has gone on now for 11 - 13 years.  The theoretical issues may never be solved (because the issues assume computability over common semantics). 

 

 

see discussion about Robert Rosen's view on complexity

 

 

http://www.ontologystream.com/beads/nationalDebate/314.htm

 

 

So it is up to the Stanford Protege team to have a meeting and decide if the ontological commitment to ontology only with logic is serving the user community. 

 

The other issue is the use of terms like "nominal"

 

A nominal is a word that differs grammatically from a noun but functions as one.

 

from

 

http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsANominal.htm

 

OWL connotation for "nominal" can be read from

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellet_OWL_Reasoner

 

 

and well as your own paper

 

Reducing OWL Entailment to Description Logic Satisfiability

 

at

 

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2003/HoPa03c.pdf

 

which I recommend everyone read.