Re: [ontolog-forum] Model Semantics, Representation Syntax, and Systems Integration

On 11/11/10 5:53 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
> Kingley, Alan, Doug, Chris, et al.,

John,

Thanks!

Just copying in LOD mailing list since I made a cc. mistake when 
starting this thread :-)

> KI:
>> ... maybe we could use this thread to arrive at obvious  common
>> ground re. data integration and the diminishing need for  a
>> syntax level lingua franca.
> Many philosophers, politicians, computer programmers, and even
> scientists have "one factor" theories, AKA "silver bullets."
> They have a single magic slogan or principle, which they claim
> solves everything or at least everything they think is important.
> A lingua franca is useful, but it must be sufficiently broad
> to support all the paradigms anybody requires.

Yes.

Others: read on...
> AR:
>> I think there *is* a need for a lingua franca for intercomputer
>> communication. But I support the idea that there should be
>> alternative syntaxes (as long as they can be clearly translated to
>> the lingua franca).
> That's fine.  I have supported Common Logic because it is broad
> enough to encompass a very wide range of popular methods and systems.
> But even then I believe it is important to have more expressive power
> than CL.  That's why I would recommend the IKL extensions for the
> next version of the CL standard.  (And for research purposes, I would
> encourage even more general studies.)
>
> AR:
>> I haven't checked on CL, but IMO, it should have a normative
>> syntax that is considered the one that projects should make  sure
>> they can produce, so as to remove the aforementioned barrier.
> The CL standard is defined in terms of an abstract syntax.  As Chris
> said, the CLIF concrete syntax is sufficiently similar to KIF that it
> is a de facto starting point for many projects.
>
> AR
>> The main practical issue with using unrestricted CL is that there
>> are few systems that can reason (in a predictable way) over it.
> That misses the point.  A restricted notation can only guarantee
> predictable reasoning is for a very narrow range of problems.
> That is "magic bullet" thinking.  Any notation optimized for one
> narrow range is guaranteed to be useless for infinitely many
> equally worthy problems.
>
> Doug F. worked on the Cyc project, whose CycL language has the
> expressive power of IKL, and Cyc has developed methodologies for
> solving a wide range of problems in a predictable way within an
> expressive framework.  It supports a family of reasoning methods
> for different kinds of problems under a very broad umbrella.  I
> endorse Doug's response:
>
> DF:
>> Where is the problem here?  An interlingua must be at least as powerful
>> as the languages between which it is used to translate.  Although
>> knowledge bases which it is used to translate may not exercise all the
>> capabilities of the interlingua, the interlingua could use higher order
>> expressions.  The systems which translate to and from the interlingua
>> would be designed to do just that, and not act as generic theorem
>> provers.
> At a somewhat less expressive level than Cyc, but with a much larger
> base of practical implementations, I would cite the UML diagrams,
> each of which expresses a different subset of FOL.  The major flaw
> in the original version of UML is that they did not take the obvious
> next step of using the common foundation (FOL) to map between the
> different diagrams.  More recently, they have mapped the UML diagrams
> to Common Logic, but they haven't yet integrated those mappings with
> their design methodologies.
>
> DF:
>> One language that DOES have these features is one that has not been used
>> for the Semantic Web because its native syntax is not RDF: CycL.  CycL
>> not only could be used to express mappings among different ontologies,
>> but since it has its own massive ontology, hundreds of thousands of the
>> ontology terms would already be expressed in the language.
> I agree.  But Lenat&  Co. admitted that the IKL extensions to CL have
> the same expressive power as CycL.  In fact, the IKRIS project showed
> that IKL could be used for interoperability in communications among
> several different AI systems, including Cyc.
>
> At the end of this note is a slide from a talk I presented at the RuleML
> conference in October.  It summarizes the work of the IKRIS project for
> demonstrating interoperability.  See the full set of slides for details.
>
> CM:
>> Common Logic... is a semantic framework that supports an unlimited
>> number of alternative languages -- although it does not privilege
>> any particular language (a.k.a., CL dialect) over any other
>> (although the KIF-like dialect CLIF is sort of a default).
> I agree, but I wouldn't claim that CL or even IKL, by itself, is
> a magic bullet that can solve all problems.  The full range of
> problems is enormous, and the following slides are an attempt to
> show the magnitude of the issues and some ways to address them:
>
>      http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/iss
>      Integrating Semantic Systems
>
> Summary:  You can't support interoperability among all IT systems
> by narrowing the expressive power.  Users always ask for *more*,
> not less expressive power.  Cyc and UML have shown how to avoid
> getting trapped in a single-paradigm, magic-bullet approach:
> use methodologies with an open-ended variety of design patterns
> that can guarantee efficiency on different classes of problems.
>
> John
> ____________________________________________________________________
>
> Source:  http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/clruleml.pdf
>
> IKRIS Project
>
> DoD-sponsored project: Design an Interoperable Knowledge
> Language (IKL) as an extension to Common Logic.
>
> Goals:
>
>     ● Enable interoperability among advanced reasoning systems.
>     ● Test that capability on highly expressive AI languages.
>
> Show that semantics is preserved in round-trip mapping tests:
>
>     ● Cycorp: Cyc Language → IKL → CycL
>     ● RPI / Booz-Allen: Multi-Sorted Logic → IKL → MSL
>     ● Stanford/IBM/Battelle: KIF → IKL → KIF
>     ● KIF → IKL → CycL → IKL → MSL → IKL → KIF
>
> Conclusion: “IKRIS protocols and translation technologies
> function as planned for the sample problems addressed.”
>
> Interoperable Knowledge Representation for Intelligence Support
> (IKRIS), Evaluation Working Group Report, prepared by David A. Thurman,
> Alan R. Chappell, and Chris Welty, Mitre Public Release Case #07-1111.
>
> http://nrrc.mitre.org/NRRC/Docs_Data/ikris/IKRIS_Evaluation_Report_31Dec06.doc
>
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-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
President&  CEO
OpenLink Software
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Received on Thursday, 11 November 2010 23:40:55 UTC