RE: Question about ontology

Hi J,



I’m afraid that’s not so fundamental. We shouldn’t over-interpret natural
language grammar (nor physical appearance for that matter) when it comes to
semantics. I can easily juggle around with adjectives, nouns and verbs and
turn them into each other without changing the meaning of the sentence.
Natural language grammar is superficial/superimposed structure for a large
part.



As much as that I can say that I am **in** a marriage (which I am), I can
say that some marriage relates me to my wife. Also, there is no fundamental
difference between a relation/predicate on the one hand and an object on
the other. They are just different perspectives of the same. A marriage is
equally a relation as it is an object. We tend to take them apart, but for
superficial reasons (natural language grammar, or mathematics). Reification
is no exception, it’s the rule. Don’t we say that we take **part** in a
relation?



So, I see no problem in having “full bottle” as the relation in this
example. It relates “empty bottle” and “liquid”. The pouring is the context
responsible for defining that relation. In case we can’t express
contextuality, I would settle for seeing it as the third component of the
relation. This makes sense (in this example), because you need “pouring” **
first** before you can have full bottles.



By the way, by saying that the difference between **being in something**
and **taking apart in something** is superficial, I do not say that such
distinction is always irrelevant. But, in case I would feel that this
distinction is relevant, I should think about what makes the difference.
This context (the differentiator), though, is **specific**, it’s not
fundamental. This even holds for the physical context.



Cheers!

Paul





*From:* jmcclure@hypergrove.com [mailto:jmcclure@hypergrove.com]
*Sent:* maandag 9 september 2013 22:09
*To:* public-owl-dev@w3.org
*Subject:* RE: Question about ontology



Well... If 'part-of' applies to liquid in a fullbottle, then wouldn't it be
true you'd say that some car is part-of a full-garage? No, some liquid is
IN a bottle, and some car is IN a garage. There's no need to redefine our
most fundamental speech patterns!

/jmc

On 09.09.2013 11:52, Paul Oude Luttighuis wrote:

Dear Sybri team,



My first question would be the question of existence-dependency, in other
words: which terms are needed to define others? In this case it seems to me
that “empty bottle”, “liquid”, and “pouring” all preceed “full bottle”.



The semantic structure at hand then is: the context of “pouring” defines
“full bottle” in terms of “empty bottle” and “liquid”.

In other words: pouring **is** not a relation between empty bottle and
liquid, it **defines** such relations.

Such contextuality however cannot be expressed by OWL-type ontologies.



If you would however want to stick to the OWL world, then part-of would
work perfectly I guess, but then I would see “pouring” as part-of “full
bottle” as well. There is no upfront semantic reason not to.



Regards,



Paul



*From:* System Bridge [mailto:sysbri1@gmail.com]
*Sent:* maandag 9 september 2013 13:32
*To:* public-owl-dev@w3.org
*Subject:* Question about ontology



Hello,

we are group of PHD students and we would like to ask you (ontology
experts) for help/advice.

We`re trying to make a simple expert system using ontology as knowledge
base. We have come to few problems and before making any conclusions, we
would like to confront it with you.



We noticed that every explanation and example we found uses object
hierarchy, e.g. OneThing isPartOf OtherThing or OneThing hasPart
OtherThings. We don`t know how to model process which also causes that
resulting object will be assembled from some other objects. For example:

   a) Object Empty bottle

   b) Object Liquid
   c) Process: Liquid will be poured into the Empty bottle and thus will
create some new object Bottle filled with liquid - see image attached.


What we need is to define a relation “Pouring” that is between liquid and
empty bottle. In fact we don’t really need “is part of” relations if there
is a way to express “is part of” implicitly in “Pouring” relation, because
it is obvious that the "Bottle with liquid" was created by "Pouring" the
"Liquid" into the "Empty bottle". Also the direction of "Pouring" is
important for us.

So, the question is whether you may help us either by explaining this
particular example or providing us with helpful source of information how
to solve it.

Thanks in advance

Your sincerely

Sybri team, University of Zilina, Slovakia[image: Inline image 1]