Re: Evidence

Alan,

Rather than using the public community for just debate, perhaps it would be 
best used as an educational tool.

For example, what is your definition of a construct within the context of 
knowledge systems design in life sciences?

I have found that occasionally revisiting definitions to include refinement 
is essential for advancement of a practice, which has indeed been a sticky 
point in knowledge systems often enough. And even when agreement can be 
reached, definitions tend to be fluid, particularly in fast evolving areas 
of science.

Also, for those who use generic email addresses without links to web sites, 
it would be very useful to occasionally inform folks on our backgrounds and 
relationships, like a link to a web page and/or bio for example.

.02

Mark Montgomery
CEO, Kyield
http://www.kyield.com
Managing Partner
Initium Venture Capital
http://www.initiumcapital.com



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Ruttenberg" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
To: "Kashyap, Vipul" <VKASHYAP1@PARTNERS.ORG>
Cc: <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>; "Pat Hayes" <phayes@ihmc.us>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:53 AM
Subject: Re: Evidence



On Jun 20, 2007, at 10:08 AM, Kashyap, Vipul wrote:
> VK> I think Pat raises a very valid point. I do sense that folks  are 
> treating BFO as “true” and sometimes probably trying to shoe- horn their 
> requirements into it. The scientific method requires  that the various 
> constructs and distinctions of BFO (and for that  matter others such as 
> DOLCE, OpenCyc, etc.) be evaluated from the  use perspective and see if 
> they bring any value in the context of a  real application probably 
> healthcare and life sciences.
Usually I think of the scientific method as trying to determine
truth, not utility, though as you know I'm a big one for utility.
Note that my general support for BFO has been based on its utility in
collaboratively building ontologies for combining knowledge,
particularly OBI and in the HCLS demo. I'm quite interested in anyone
else's work that might be used to be able to evaluate alternatives,
but I plan to invest my limited time in continuing to use and improve
BFO until it breaks in a way that can't be fixed.
> BTW, I do not intend to evaluate whether these constructs are 
> ontologically sound, etc. but the question we need to answer as a  group 
> is: Are these constructs useful?
I don't know what "ontologically sound" means. I would offer that a
"best practice" would be be to make sure that part of our "acceptance
tests" for agreeing that something is useful is that many of us
understand what is meant by a construct.

-Alan

Received on Wednesday, 20 June 2007 16:06:48 UTC