Re: updated uncertainty ontology

 From Wikipedia:

A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all  
evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent  
on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses.  
Empirical data is data that is produced by experiment or observation. 
[1] It is usually differentiated from the philosophic usage of  
empiricism by the use of the adjective "empirical" or the adverb  
"empirically." "Empirical" as an adjective or adverb is used in  
conjunction with both the natural and social sciences, and refers to  
the use of working hypotheses that are testable using observation or  
experiment. In this sense of the word, scientific statements are  
subject to and derived from our experiences or observations.

I don't think "John is tall" qualifies as an empirical assertion  
because there is no way to test it using observation or experiment.   
"John is 1.8 meters tall" is an empirical assertion.  I can verify it  
by performing an experiment.

The term empirical is used by Morgan, M. G. and M. Henrion (1990).  
Uncertainty: A Guide to Dealing with Uncertainty in Quantitative Risk  
and Policy Analysis. New York, Cambridge University Press, to refer to  
properties that can be verified by experiments, and to which it is  
legitimate to assign probabilities.

Kathy

On Jan 8, 2008, at 3:22 PM, Mitch Kokar wrote:

>
> Kathy,
>
> Here are my replies to your changes.
>
> On Jan 7, 2008, at 11:44 PM, Kathryn B Laskey wrote:
>
>> Mitch,
>>
>> I made a couple of changes to the uncertainty ontology. Please look  
>> them over and let me know what you think.
>>
>> I was uncomfortable with the word "random" being used as broadly as  
>> you use it.   The standard usage of the term random connotes a  
>> phenomenon that follows a statistical law. There is much  
>> ontological debate over whether randomness in this sense really  
>> exists.  Most people would not use the label random for sentences  
>> that have a definite but unknown truth-value -- such as whether  
>> Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty. Nevertheless, we can apply  
>> probability to such sentences (see the book on the Sacco and  
>> Vanzetti case by Jay Kadane and Dave Schum).  I took the liberty of  
>> changing the term to empirical on the ontology page.  I haven't  
>> changed any of the diagrams, and if I'm overruled we can go back --  
>> but I really think this terminology is more appropriate. Then I  
>> made randomness a subclass of empirical uncertainty.  I chose this  
>> terminology because that is the term used by Morgan and Henrion  
>> (1990), which I have added to the reference list.  It is an  
>> excellent reference on uncertainty.
>
> I like your descriptions of Empirical. This is definitely a better  
> description than what we had before for "Randomness". However, the  
> name "empirical" seems to be strange here, but if you think this is  
> the name to use, then I have no problem. The other opposite of  
> "empirical" is "theoretical". So would you say that the other types  
> (ambiguity, vagueness and inconsistency) are theoretical and not  
> empirical? This might be the case, but it's just that I am not sure.
>
> I would prefer a different description of Randomness. You say  
> "sentence is an instance of a class" - do we need the notion of  
> class here? Could we just say that "there is a statistical law  
> governing whether the possible worlds satisfy a sentence"? Or  
> something of this sort?
>
>>
>>
>> I also don't think it's right to say for the case of randomness  
>> that a sentence is satisfied in one of the worlds.  An event in  
>> probability theory is a sentence that has a definite truth-value in  
>> each world (satisfies the clarity test) and is satisfied in a  
>> subset of worlds.  I changed the definition to correspond to this.
>
> Agreed (see above).
>>
>> I have issues with your definition of vagueness and ambiguity  
>> also.  For ambiguity, you say a sentence can be satisfied in many  
>> worlds.  Consider a sequence of 50 coin tosses, and consider the  
>> sentence that the first toss is heads.  This sentence is not  
>> ambiguous.  Its meaning is perfectly clear.  It is satisfied in  
>> 2^49 of the 2^50 possible worlds.  I looked at many definitions of  
>> ambiguity. It means open to multiple interpretations; not clearly  
>> defined. I changed the definition of ambiguity to "the referents of  
>> terms in a sentence to the world are not clearly specified and  
>> therefore it cannot be determined whether the sentence is satisfied".
>
> I like this. In my first attempt I wanted to capture exactly what  
> you mentioned above - open to multiple interpretations. Your  
> description captures this much better.
>>
>> I also changed vagueness to "there is not a precise correspondence  
>> between terms in the sentence and referents in the world".  The  
>> prototypical example of vagueness is the concept of "tall" -- each  
>> of the possible worlds specifies a definite height, but there is no  
>> referent in the world for the term "tall."
>>
> The example of tall is very good. This is exactly what I had mind,  
> too. My intuition here points to fuzzy logic. The only problem with  
> the description now is that vagueness looks very much like  
> ambiguity. Perhaps we should make a reference to multi-valued logic  
> here?
>
>> I am not thrilled with these definitions, but they are the best I  
>> could do.  I don't think the original definitions were tenable for  
>> the reasons I've given.  Does anyone care to comment or make  
>> additional changes?
>>
>> I also added anchors to the wiki page, so that links can be  
>> included to the WikiWords in the uncertainty ontology.  For  
>> example, go to the Discovery or Appointment Making use cases, which  
>> have both now been annotated.  If you click on, for example,  
>> UncertaintyNature, it will take you to the place in the uncertainty  
>> ontology where UncertaintyNature is defined.
>>
>> Kathy
>>
>> On Dec 19, 2007, at 9:19 AM, Mitch Kokar wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> In order to annotate the "buying speakers" scenario I had to extend
>>> the Uncertainty Ontology a bit. Attached is a new version. Also
>>> attached is a graphical representation of the annotation of the
>>> scenario. I will explain the details in the telecon.
>>>
>>> ==Mitch
>>>
>>> Content-Disposition: attachment;
>>> 	filename=Uncertainty-v2.owl
>>> <Uncertainty-v2 1.owl><Picture 1 5.png>
>>
>
>