[OEP] Re: discussion on part note

Hi Alan,

At 7:43 +0000 18-02-2005, Alan Rector wrote:
>I would strongly object a note for this purpose that took on the 
>full DOLCE (or
>BFO, or other) axiomization or indeed that got into the many of the 
>issues that
>Lambrix (and elsewhere Artale et al) discuss, although I would be 
>pleased to see
>the references, flavours of part-whole, and perhaps other 'further reading'
>extended.  This is not because I don't think these issues are important, but
>because a) they are important but can only be understood after 
>people understand
>the basics; b) they cover more than most people need; and c) 
>although there are
>a
>lot of ideas, there is less consensus.   (I omitted Lambrix' thesis and papers
>from
>the references, apologies.)

consensus can be missing on details, but I disagree on ignoring the 
relevant literature on a topic so widely investigated

>
>Our recent interaction with users is that "simpler is better".  Most 
>need a very
>simple version most of the time.  Points where users have made errors in our
>experience.
>
>1)    Mixing part-whole and kiind-of
>2)    Not understanding why you need both "all As is-part-of some B" 
>and "all Bs
>has_part some A" (apologies for the misprint.  I thought I had 
>corrected that on
>the web version.)  OWL, and DL syntax generally, obscures the 
>distinction so it
>has
>to be made doubly clear.
>3)    Not being able to get a part-whole explosion as they would expect
>4)    Making transitive relations functional in an attempt to create a tree
>5)    Confusing containment, and sometimes other relations, and whole-part
>relations.
>6)    Having no idea how to get the "fault of the part is a fault of 
>the whole"
>in
>those situations when they need it.
>
>Given the unfortunate problems of tableaux reasoners with KBs that 
>contain both
>is_part_of and has_part, I think this also needs a "health warning".  (We have
>seen
>20 class ontologies that stop both Racer and FaCT much to users' surprise.)
>
>If we can get these six points across, we will give simple timely 
>advice. If we
>wait until we  settle arguments such as that  between Pat and Aldo over
>endurants
>and perdurants our advice will be neither simple nor timely.

In fact, I was only reacting to Pat. Notice that my point is that 
such arguments *cannot be settled at all*: we must be tolerant to all 
possible uses, then there is nothing to wait for.

But maybe it's a good idea to use a set of axioms that are good 
enough (DOLCE, Lambrix, Artale, Vieu, Goodman, or anything else), and 
encoding them in OWL, eventually using other patterns, e.g. for n-ary 
relations. You may discover that within OWL some differences 
disappear.

I like your six points very much, but staying on the FAQ side only 
does not give a complete picture: why not giving out answers to FAQs, 
which are grounded on something?

>Let's keep it simple.  Even simple things are hard enough for new users.

Agreed wholeheartedly.



-- 



Aldo Gangemi
Research Scientist
Laboratory for Applied Ontology
Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technology
National Research Council (ISTC-CNR)
Via Nomentana 56, 00161, Roma, Italy
Tel: +390644161535
Fax: +390644161513
a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it

*******************
!!! please don't use the old gangemi@ip.rm.cnr.it
address, because it is under spam attack

Received on Friday, 18 February 2005 12:01:25 UTC