RE: A question on the vocabulary for 'persons' - ACL level of granularity?

Hi Xiaoshu,

Getting back to an earlier point in this discussion...

> Well, how can a computer knows my intension about the parts 
> that I don't
> "use/disagree"?  But, I think, if I disagree one portion of 
> the ontology, I
> certainly would not use the other part of the ontology at all 
> since if I
> make one contradicting statement, it will invalidate the entire model.

Consider an effort that creates an ontology to wrap the English language
(or any other language) so that it could be reasoned over.  This seems a
noble objective.

Now if it truly captured the 'essence' of the language, which many
people only understand overlapping parts of, others, perhaps those in a
particular scientific domain, have a specialized knowledge of a part of
the language that others don't, different reasoners ought to be able to
be created that can duplicate this ability of humans to (mostly)
communicate together at different levels of understanding.

If we can't, I believe this points out a current weakness in how we
express ontologies and write reasoners.  It's obviously possible to do,
we do it as people all the time.

cheers,
Michael

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-semweb-lifesci-request@w3.org 
> [mailto:public-semweb-lifesci-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of 
> Xiaoshu Wang
> Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 8:24 PM
> To: public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org
> Subject: RE: A question on the vocabulary for 'persons' - ACL 
> level of granularity?
> 
> 
> 
> > > I wish it could be that simple when you handle the task to 
> > machine.  
> > > Show me how you can only import the foaf:Person without 
> > fetching the 
> > > foaf:geekcodes as well? From other perspective, can you do 
> > something 
> > > like, I only use this part of GO but not the other part? 
> > Even if you 
> > > are allowed to do so, what do we mean sharing an ontology. 
> > If someone 
> > > agress only ome portion, but others agrees to other 
> > portion, of the ontology?
> > 
> > You're right that there's no way to "dis-import" (i.e., refuse to
> > import) parts of an ontology you disagree with.  But we have 
> > to be careful to distinguish the parts you disagree with from 
> > the parts you simply don't use.  In the case of "geekcodes," 
> > I'm guessing that you don't have any opinions about them one 
> > way or the other; you just think they're not relevant.  In 
> > that case, it's harmless to import the ontology.  In 
> > practice, this happens a lot.
> 
> Well, how can a computer knows my intension about the parts 
> that I don't
> "use/disagree"?  But, I think, if I disagree one portion of 
> the ontology, I
> certainly would not use the other part of the ontology at all 
> since if I
> make one contradicting statement, it will invalidate the entire model.
> 
> Hence, even if I don't disagree but just no use certain part 
> of an ontology.
> How do I know if those who want to use my ontology but 
> disagree the imported
> other part.  For example, if I develop a ex:Patient and make it a
> rdfs:subClassOf the foaf:Person.  Personally, I don't care the
> foaf:geekcodes.  But what if other, for example, Chris Mungall like my
> ex:Patient but not the foaf:geekcodes, it will force him to not use
> ex:Patient but develop another cm:Patient, where he might 
> make a statement
> saying that "there is no such thing as foaf:geekcodes".  Now the world
> becomes messy because a simple mappying from ex:Patient to 
> cm:Patient with
> owl:equivalentClass won't be able to remove the 
> contradiction.  Then, what
> if someone disagree the online account part of foaf, or 
> Organization, or
> even Agent?  
> 
> > Another remark, which may be too obvious to be worth 
> making, but here
> > goes: You can use a namespace, and thus the symbols from an 
> > ontology, without importing it.  In some cases, one does this 
> > just to declare that you want to use that symbol to avoid 
> > making up one of your own; and you don't need the axioms that 
> > formally constrain the symbol's meaning.  In other cases, 
> > there may be only a few such axioms, and you can simply copy 
> > them.  I don't know if this is a good idea.  We're getting 
> > into a whole mess of hard questions about version control, 
> > partial importing of ontologies, etc. etc. that I wish I had 
> > answers to.  
> 
> Do you mean just use the URI without importing it? If so, I 
> am not sure how
> it will work?  One of the neat features of the web is its 
> loosely coupled
> nature.  But you need to follow your nose to know more about 
> the resource.
> Without "importing", i.e., to fetch the resource description from the
> namespace, what is the use of it?  For instance, if given a 
> dubline core URI
> http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator, without following 
> the URI, I won't
> even know how I should label it.
> 
> Or, did I misunderstand your "using namespace without 
> import"? If so, can
> you give me an example?
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Xiaoshu
> 
> 
> 
>

Received on Monday, 18 September 2006 15:01:29 UTC