- From: David Decraene <David@landcglobal.com>
- Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:06:58 +0100
- To: "Phillip Lord" <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>, "public-semweb-lifesci hcls" <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
A lot of confusion might also come from the word 'formal', it must be interpreted in it's philosophical sense, as the intended wikipedia article attempted to describe (in a rudimentary manner), e.g. concerning theories of enduring versus perduring entities, dependent and independents, of inherence and participation and more, ... there is no statement that upper level ontologies must be formal in this sense, although in my opinion any ontology that claims to be formal (in the philosophical sense) must at least comply to some basic principles, principles often defined in the aforementioned formal upper level ontologies (BFO, DOLCE, etc..). for a good reference on the theories: Barry's pages: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/ ________________________________ Van: public-semweb-lifesci-request@w3.org namens Phillip Lord Verzonden: wo 24/01/2007 17:57 Aan: public-semweb-lifesci hcls Onderwerp: Re: [biont] Nice wikipedia page on ontology Hmmm. Sure I wrote more than that in my original email. Yeah, Robert has my main beef which is the distinction between the representation language and the representation itself. The use of "algorithms" is clearly wrong and I don't think that an upper ontology provides consistency checks, nor that an ontology needs one to be formal. Still, it's an early wikipedia entry. These things often improve over time. Phil >>>>> "Robert" == Robert Stevens <robert.stevens@manchester.ac.uk> writes: Robert> 'd be inclined to agree with Phil. I don't where the bit Robert> about "algorithms" has come from. The other mistake, I Robert> think, is not to make the distinction between formality of Robert> language for representaiton and the formality of the Robert> ontology itself. The latter is, I think, a matter of the Robert> distinctions made. One can make an ontology in a formal Robert> language like owl, but still be informal in the ontological Robert> distinctions made. Robert> Formal ontological distinctions can be encapsulated in an Robert> upper level, but upper level otnoogies are not necessarily Robert> formal.... Robert> Anyway, it is bad at almost any level Robert> Robert. Robert> ,At 13:55 24/01/2007, Phillip Lord wrote: >> >>>>> "Alan" == Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com> >> >>>>> writes: >> Alan> Start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_Ontology >> Alan> -Alan >> >> >> Well, it starts of with this.... >> >> "A Formal ontology is an ontology modeled by algorithms. Formal >> ontologies are founded upon a specific Formal Upper Level >> Ontology, which provides consistency checks for the entire >> ontology and, if applied properly, allows the modeler to avoid >> possibly erroneous ontological assumptions encountered in >> modeling large-scale ontologies. " >> >> >> >> Almost none of which I would agree with. -- Phillip Lord, Phone: +44 (0) 191 222 7827 Lecturer in Bioinformatics, Email: phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk School of Computing Science, http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord Claremont Tower Room 909, skype: russet_apples Newcastle University, NE1 7RU
Received on Wednesday, 24 January 2007 18:07:16 UTC