Talk:Ontology (computer science)

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Just a question on terminology: why not use 'generic ontology' instead of foundation ontology or upper ontology? MajFreak

Contents

Entities/concepts

Q: Should this line: "The purpose of a computational ontology is not to specify what does or does not 'exist', but to create a database, which is a human artifact, containing concepts referring to entities of interest to the ontologist (...)" read "(...) containing entities referring to concepts of interest (...)", or am I wrong? I thought databases contained entities, not concepts?


A: DBs contain elements (entities, objects, ...): if you're describing an ontology, expecially a "core ontology", you're referring to concepts, categories, not necessary to particular objects. In short, it depends on how you interpret them (and what they refer to). In an RDF statement, for example, you talk about "resources", which can be URIs, texts, even other statements. Bye, Alessandro


Good introductory article! I just regret that the editor(s) who quoted authors like T. R. Gruber and Peter Murray-Rust did not actually cite the appropriate references! --Alexandre 21:38, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Article refactoring

In my point of view, the article stresses the upper level ontology way to much and misses a lot of other topics. I am working at a research institute (mainly dealing with ontologies) and could probably (with the help of my colleagues) rewrite the article quite a bit. What would be a good process to do so? Just do it? Post it on a web-page? How do you "suggest" articles? As I would really like to remove quite a lot from the articel, I fear I could offen the original authors or the community? As I am new to editing wikipedia pages, I would LOVE to get some advices for my problems. I You have any, You can post them here or email them to mvo at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de If this is the wrong place to ask for help, feel free to remove my question completely :-) Thank You, Max.

I would suggest that you first post here on the discussion page a proposal for a new outline and ask the other contributors for their opinion. If after let's say three weeks there are no substantial objections then just go ahead and reorganize and expand it. From my point of view the article contains useful information. The areas for further work are the parts on Anatomy of an ontology and Ontology languages? And it would be nice to have two elaborated examples. Hirzel 15:42, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Just do it. If you're concerned that it will be controversial, or if it'll be initially less "polished" than the current article, or if you'd prefer to get initial comments on a rough outline, then alternatively place it at a temporary page. (Say, a sub-page of your user page, or an article-space page Ontology (computer science)/Temp.) Alai 15:48, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Italian translation

I have added the link to the italian translation for this page. I am planning to add some content to the italian page, then I will try to back-translate this stuff in english.

I hope the grammar will be acceptable!

--Mcoletti 14:47, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wiki categories

Could you mention how much (or few) ontologies are related to Wikipedia categories? -- Error 01:03, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The article includes a particular view against the viability of an upper ontology. There are quite a few proponents of an upper ontology. Does anyone object to the addition of a reasoned counterpoint to the view currently expressed? User:Apease

Language and Concepts

"It is essential to separate the language used to refer to terms from the terms themselves."  ??? This sentence either needs some critical clarification or it needs to be removed. This also points to a fundamentally mistaken assumption at work in the section titled "Why an Upper Ontology is Feasible." Namely, that an ontology can provide a mapping of concepts that is faithful to a common understanding of these concepts without reintroducing the ambiguous, culturally relativistic, self-reflexive, imprecise characteristics that are inherent in language. Last time I checked, tools like SUMO are still using words (mostly English) to represent concepts. So I don’t think it is true that the “conflation of ontology, language and knowledge” is an error that can be avoided. This conflation is simply an inevitable fact of human existence. What rational justification is there for believing that concepts can exist outside of their linguistic formulations anyway?? The conceptual landscape is determined and constrained by language. There are a lot of things we can do with language. But one thing we can’t do is stand outside of all linguistic formulations and talk about concepts in general.

KL


REPLY: SUMO does not use words to represent concepts. It uses words as convenient labels for concepts. One rational justification for this is the existence of translations of SUMO concepts into multiple non-English languages. Reasonable people simply disagree about this issue.


KL: So, I'm still not clear how using "words as convenient labels for concepts" is different from "using [English] words to represent concepts." The implication here is that SUMO embodies a completely transparent representation of concepts which entirely circumvents the messy reality that there is no way to describe, define, characterize, organize, etc., concepts without employing human language. Chinese and Hindi versions of SUMO are no evidence that this transparent representation has been achieved. Rather, there are now two more representative approximations of a particular conceptual schema using radically different symbolic/linguistic idioms. Creators and users of the Chinese SUMO may have reached some kind of consensus, but that’s no basis for claiming that there is scientific precision in the whole set of “term A = concept B” formulations.

Leaving aside the inexact science of translation, however, the lynchpin criticism of SUMO here is that it can never embody anything more than one conceptual schema, which presupposes one epistemic attitude and/or one theoretical framework for the whole structure and contents of the upper ontology. Plato tried something similar with his realm of ideal ‘forms.’ The forms are envisioned as absolute unchanging concepts of pristine purity, unsullied by the particulars of language or real-world contexts. And because the ideal form of ‘dog’ contains only the essential qualities of “dogness,” the ideal form becomes a template enabling our recognition of all of the real-world instances of “dogs.” There is a long and fairly damning history (2000+ years) of criticism of the theory of the Forms, starting with Aristotle and his “third man” argument.

Following Richard Nisbett and his book The Geography of Thought, I have a hard time conceiving of a single ontology for both Western and Asian thinkers. The ancient Greek passion for abstract categories into which the entire world can be taxonomically arranged is prototypically Western. The whole notion of causality is essentially Western. “In the Chinese intellectual tradition there is no necessary incompatibility between the belief that A is the case and the belief that not-A is the case. On the contrary, in the spirit of the Tao or yin-yang principle, A can actually imply that not-A is also the case, or at any rate soon will be the case…. Events do not occur in isolation from other events, but are always embedded in a meaningful whole in which the elements are constantly changing and rearranging themselves. [In the Chinese approach to reasoning,] to think about an object or event in isolation and apply abstract rules to it is to invite extreme and mistaken conclusions. It is the Middle Way that is the goal of reasoning.”

KL


A good exercise for any formal system is to replace the symbols with arbitrary strings. If you get the same inferential closure from the system without resorting to the implie meaning of the labels, then the full semantics of the system has been defined and does not depend on language. That's the case for SUMO just as it is for arithmetic. The meaning of "plus" or "+" doesn't depend on language but rather the formal semantics of the symbol.

Ontology vs. taxonomy

i added the expand tag because the article mentions that ontologies have certain concepts that make them different from simple taxonomies, but it does not yet do a good job in explaining what theses differences are. 790 08:52, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Order of things

Maybe better if the more regular form of ontologies (domain ontology) is explained in-depth before the upper ontologies.

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