Re: Core Ontology on Events -- Re: looking for an event ontology/vocabulary

Hello Ansgar,

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 1:19 AM, Ansgar Scherp<scherp@uni-koblenz.de> wrote:

> It is quite interesting to see this very long thread on events. In the past time
> we have studied many event models (see, e.g., the list Raphael Troncy sent around).
> When studying them, I was very surprised that for many of them no foundational
> literature was studied (philosophy, linguistics, cognitive sciences, etc.).
> Rather, the models seem to be developed add hoc and remain in fact quite simple
> for the always argued reason of "being generic".
>
> Libby Miller says, "events are difficult and complex things to model". And we
> would like to stress that fact. Indeed, getting a fully comprehensive understanding
> of what events are is very difficult and challenging. As such, a simple model
> will hardly work. In particular, when interoperability between different systems
> is needed.
>
> Thus, I am happy to announce that at this year's Knowledge Capturing conference
> we will present the Event-Model-F that aims filling the gap of a comprehensive and
> at the same time semantically precise event model.

First, let me say that I like your F model very much, and in fact in
our tech report we praise its use of the DnS pattern for supporting
the modeling of higher-level interpretations of events.

That said, I do not believe that it is the case that "a simple model
will hardly work". Using a simple model does not mean that one has
failed to recognize the complexity of how events are conceptualized.
Rather it reflects a choice not to formally model that full
complexity. Depending on what you are doing, the additional
formalization may or may not be desirable.

I also want to caution against the idea that we can extract from
philosophy, linguistics, cog sci, etc. a single "comprehensive" model
of events (or anything else, for that matter). The F model reflects
one strand of thought from these fields, but there are many
alternatives, as there is no consensus on the nature of events. In
particular, F seems to have a scientistic bent that may not be
appropriate for modeling, e.g. historical reasoning.

Cheers,
Ryan