Re: Cross-ontologies reasoning

Drew McDermott wrote:

>   [Francis McCabe]
>      Notwithstanding the technologies being discussed, *translation*  
>   between ontologies is about as tractable in the general case as mapping  
>   between English and Japanese.
>
>This assessment is overly pessimistic.  We're not talking about
>translating Japanese literature into English.  In most cases the
>differences between ontologies fall into categories such as these:
>
>* One ontology represents a concept as a class, the other as a property
>
>* One ontology makes fine distinctions about a concept; the other uses
>  a broader brush.
>
>* One ontology uses a predicate with n arguments where the other uses
>  a similar predicate with n+1.  The missing argument must be deleted
>  or inferred somehow.
>
>* and so forth
>
Yes, and so forth. Going so forth, we see that also:
* One ontology takes one point of view on how the world should be 
divided up into concepts, while the other takes a quite different point 
of view. Just guessing here, but I suspect that if you compare the DOLCE 
ontology with the top level of SUO you would see this kind of thing 
going on.

*  and so forth

Jeff

>
>Translating back and forth can be done by straightforward deductions.
>
>Perhaps you meant merely to say that the deductions would end up
>consuming exponential amounts of time.  (Which is _not_ the problem
>with translating between two natural languages, such as English and
>Japanese!)  You may be right, but it's not obvious.
>
>Or maybe you meant to say that the translation rules could not be
>generated automatically.  I agree with you there.
>
>  
>

Received on Tuesday, 16 December 2003 12:39:49 UTC