Re: owl:Class and owl:Thing

''What exactly did you have in mind when you referred to "n-relational 
ontology of things"? <HT/>

Hans:

Relations should be analyzed not only with respect to the number of terms 
they connect and formal properties as cardinality, symmetry, transitivity, 
reflexivity. This is all the subject of a formal relational logic. As old as 
Russell statement that 'every proposition should be regarded as expressing a 
relation between two and more things', like in the from R(x, y, z,...).
Above all, relationship should be considered with respect to the nature and 
meanings of its components; for it is a real entity (like causality and 
space-time relations) rather then an idea, although expressed by verbs and 
propositions and abstract nouns and relational adjectives. Thus here comes 
''n-relational ontology of entities''.

Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
http://www.eis.com.cy
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Hans Teijgeler" <hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl>
> To: "'Azamat'" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>; <semantic-web@w3.org>; "'ONTAC-WG 
> General Discussion'" <ontac-forum@colab.cim3.net>; "'John F. Sowa'" 
> <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>
> Cc: "'Frank Manola'" <fmanola@acm.org>; "'Peter F. Patel-Schneider'" 
> <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>; "'Paul Prueitt (ontologystream)'" 
> <psp@ontologystream.com>; <seanb@cs.man.ac.uk>
> Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 8:17 PM
> Subject: RE: owl:Class and owl:Thing
>
>
>> Hi Azamat,
>>
>> You must be a hell of a typist! But I like your contributions.
>>
>> <AA>
>> To be an ontology, its basic construct should be the class of Thing equal 
>> to
>> the class of all entity classes, of which the most fundamental are the 
>> class
>>
>> of Substance (Object), the class of State (Quantity and Quality), the 
>> class
>> of Process (Change or Action) and the class of Relationship. Each one of
>> these Entity classes is organized as a hierarchy of subordinate classes
>> (kinds and types), where particular levels occupied by such individual
>> things (or instances, particulars, and concrete entities) as objects,
>> specific states, unique events and specific connections. Crucially,
>> 'definition', 'class', 'property' and 'statement' (see Topics) should be
>> filled up with real contents and meanings.
>> </AA>
>>
>> <HT> For that reason we use the data model of ISO 15926-2, although Barry
>> Smith doesn't like it much. In that model we have all you mention above 
>> (as
>> far as I can judge). An overview is at [1] and [2].
>>
>> We have created an owl:Class for each entity types of our data model. We
>> also happen to have Thing as the root of the hierarchy, and we declared 
>> that
>> as a subclass of owl:Thing.
>>
>> The actual ontologies are built from what we call Reference Data, like 
>> PUMP
>> or VESSEL or MAXIMUM_ALLOWABLE_WORKING_PRESSURE. These are also 
>> owl:Classes.
>> As you could see in the code snippets these are typed with one or more of
>> the owl:Classes that represent the entity types.
>>
>> The individuals, like myPump which I can kick, are typed with one or more 
>> of
>> the Reference Data classes and/or specializations thereof.
>>
>> [1]http://www.tc184-sc4.org/wg3ndocs/wg3n1328/lifecycle_integration_schema.h
>> tml
>> [2]http://www.infowebml.ws/introduction/data-model-0.htm
>>
>> To illustrate this please follow the case below:
>>
>> In the ontology for data model (xmlns:dm):
>>
>>    <owl:Class rdf:ID="ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject">
>>        <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#ClassOfArrangedIndividual"/>
>>        <owl:disjointWith rdf:resource="#Organism"/>
>>    </owl:Class>
>>
>> In the ontology for reference data (xmlns:rdl):
>>
>>    <dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject rdf:ID="CENTRIFUGAL_PUMP">
>>        <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#PUMP"/>
>>    <dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject
>>
>> In an ontology of a pump supplier (xmlns:xyzco):
>>
>>    <dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject rdf:ID="Model-AK150">
>>        <rdfs:subClassOf
>> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/rdl/2006-02#CENTRIFUGAL_PUMP"/>
>>    </dm:ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject>
>>
>> In our project data:
>>
>>    <rdl:PUMP rdf:ID="FPO-347621">
>>        <rdfs:label>pump P-101</rdfs:label>
>>        <rdf:type
>> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/rdl/2006-02#FUNCTIONAL_PHYSICAL_OBJECT"/>
>>        <rdf:type
>> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/rdl/2006-02#INANIMATE_PHYSICAL_OBJECT"/>
>>        <rdf:type
>> rdf:resource="http://www.15926.org/rdl/2006-02#WHOLE_LIFE_INDIVIDUAL"/>
>>        <rdf:type
>> rdf:resource="http://www.xyz-corp.com/catalog2006#Model-AK150"/>
>>    </rdl:PUMP>
>>
>> As you can see we can precisely type any individual. This may be used in
>> applications, because certain behaviour can be attributed to these types.
>> (NOTE: The typing with that Model-AK150 actually shall be attributed to a
>> "temporal part" of FPO-347621, but that would probably not be interesting
>> for the readers of this forum).
>> </HT>
>>
>> <AA>
>> This is all about its intensional meaning, its primary definition, while 
>> its
>> extension is made up of all types of pumps differered by the type of 
>> working
>> substance used and ways of operations, constructions, etc.: gas pump, oil
>> pump, water pump, lift pump, hydraulic pump, hand pump, foot pump, you 
>> may
>> continue such a division at infinitum. In the actual world of particular
>> things, a pump is an individual existing as a concrete physical object, a
>> unique instance of a class of physical devices.
>> </AA>
>>
>> <HT>
>> In the forementioned Reference Data we have thousands of such classes, 
>> and
>> all the ones you mentioned are in. And the suppliers will be invited to
>> define their classes (listed in their catalogs) as specializations
>> (subclass) of those Core Classes in the Reference Data. The same holds 
>> for
>> classes defined by standardization bodies, like ANSI, DIN, BS, etc.
>> POSC/Caesar (www.posccaesar.org) has mapped thousands of ANSI pipe and 
>> pipe
>> fitting classes already.
>> We are going to create so-called Object Information Models for these
>> classes, defining which kind of information is relevant during the entire
>> lifetime of the class members. This will take one or two decades, or so, 
>> but
>> not doing it because it is so large a job will mean that we all keep 
>> doing
>> it for ever, and that is far more costly.
>> </HT>
>>
>> What exactly did you have in mind when you referred to "n-relational
>> ontology of things"?
>>
>> Kind regards,
>> Hans
>>
>> ======================================================
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Azamat [mailto:abdoul@cytanet.com.cy]
>> Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 17:22
>> To: Hans Teijgeler; semantic-web@w3.org; ONTAC-WG General Discussion; 
>> John
>> F. Sowa
>> Cc: Frank Manola; Peter F. Patel-Schneider; Paul Prueitt 
>> (ontologystream);
>> seanb@cs.man.ac.uk
>> Subject: Re: owl:Class and owl:Thing
>>
>> Hans inquired:
>> ''Is it possible that owl:Individual, that once existed [1], was meant to 
>> be
>> the class of REAL individuals in a REAL world?''
>> Hans decided:
>> ''I have thrown out the owl:Thing. Much easier to read for humans.''
>>
>>
>> The class/thing distinction makes here all the difference, and hardly you
>> will get any explicit account from the owl languages authors. For its a
>> central issue in all current activities of building top ontologies (SUO,
>> USECS, ONTAC, etc.) and SW languages (RDFS, OWL, OWL1.1, etc), and it
>> touches the sorest spot in the whole logical enterprise of OWL ontology
>> passing as an ontological undertaking 'breaking all implicit and explicit
>> assumptions of computing science'.
>>
>> The status, validity, and expressivity of any general representational
>> languages and technologies are chiefly determined by the ways of treating
>> the things in the world. And there are usually three main choices widely
>> practiced: one can define 'Thing' as an individual,  a class of 
>> individuals,
>>
>> or the universal class, i.e., the class of all classes. Or, in terms of
>> quantities, as a fixed value (constant), an individual variable, and a 
>> class
>>
>> variable.
>> The narrow view of thing as [an entity with a specific identity] has its
>> long history as ('a primary substance', 'a bare individual', etc.) and 
>> was
>> supported by such modern logicians and ontologists as Quine, for whom 'to 
>> be
>>
>> is to be a value of a bounded variable'.
>> In the OWL domain, the extension of the construct owl:Thing has only
>> individual things, being void of other essential meaningful dimensions. 
>> In
>> the biological classificatory system, this corresponds to the level of
>> species whose members share a set of essential features and bound by a
>> membership relationship between an individual and its class. Note you can
>> subject a collection of individuals, say, the totality of human beings, 
>> to
>> further divisions and subdivisions, such as man and woman, White or Black 
>> or
>>
>> Yellow or Red, the aged or the young, the poor or the rich, the working
>> class or the professional class; underworld, lower class, middle class or
>> higher class, etc. Yet they are not (genetically) essential 
>> classifications,
>>
>> and you are still in the domain of individuals, for even infinitely
>> increasing the number of individuals doesn't allow you to create  a new
>> class or species or kind. Therefore we say about two types of difference, 
>> in
>>
>> kind or in degree.
>> But a fundamental position is  to consider Thing (or Entity) as the class 
>> of
>>
>> classes (the set of subsets) at least; at best as the class of all 
>> classes
>> (the universal set of all sets), hierarchically ordered by inclusion
>> (containment) relationships (or whole-part relationships). Since, as the
>> class variable, Thing will have as its values lower classes and 
>> subclasses
>> as well, or the type of variables whose values are also variables (as a
>> metasyntactic variable 'foobar', where "the value of f(foo, bar) is the 
>> sum
>> of foo and bar").
>>
>> Returning to our sheep, the OWL semantic language. To be blunt, without
>> diplomatic evasion and sublety, as a general ontological language it is
>> fundamentally defective and it would be a technological catastrophe to 
>> use
>> this as 'Ontology Infrastructure for the Semantic Web' [1] for several
>> evident reasons.
>>
>> First, the polar terms of the OWL vocabulary are individuals, classes, 
>> and
>> properties, which are, above all, mathematical and logical abstract terms
>> without real content and substance, i.e., without reference to reality. 
>> To
>> be an ontology, its basic construct should be the class of Thing equal to
>> the class of all entity classes, of which the most fundamental are the 
>> class
>>
>> of Substance (Object), the class of State (Quantity and Quality), the 
>> class
>> of Process (Change or Action) and the class of Relationship. Each one of
>> these Entity classes is organized as a hierarchy of subordinate classes
>> (kinds and types), where particular levels occupied by such individual
>> things (or instances, particulars, and concrete entities) as objects,
>> specific states, unique events and specific connections. Crucially,
>> 'definition', 'class', 'property' and 'statement' (see Topics) should be
>> filled up with real contents and meanings. Even you may have an
>> idiosyncratic set of ontological commitments as pivotal environmental and
>> cognitive universals, still they  must be ontological classes, rather 
>> than
>> logical entities.
>>
>> Second, the construct of owl:Property, with its two basic types: owl:
>> ObjectProperty (mapping individuals to individuals) and 
>> owl:DatatypeProperty
>>
>> (mapping individuals to datatype values). In fact, there are monadic and
>> diadic properties; essential and accidental; atomic, transient, complex, 
>> or
>> emergent; particular and general, etc. But mostly important to tell the
>> formal properties (attributes) from the ontological properties, which are
>> generally classified as:
>> 1. the property of being a substance (object), substantial properties;
>> 2. the property of being a state (quantity or quality), quantitative and
>> qualitative properties;
>> 3. the property of being a process (change, action, operation), dynamic,
>> functional, operational properties;
>> 4. the property of being a relationship; relational properties per se.
>>
>> Thus, in the owl domain, owl:Property is badly narrowed to the property 
>> of
>> being a formal (functional) relationship, direct and inverse; without
>> explicitly identifying the nature of relations between the connected
>> components, spatial, temporal, causal, whole/part, syntactic, semantic,
>> pragmatic, etc. Moreover dealing with only two main types of property: 
>> owl:
>> ObjectProperty and owl:DataProperty, existing as disjoint constructions,
>> discard any hope of comensurability between magnitudes (entity variables)
>> and multitudes (numbers), forget measurement, assigning number to things.
>> There are other defects and contradictories, particularly in its
>> (subsumption) logic, which may take more time and patience, so i better 
>> stop
>>
>> for now.
>>
>> Moral. In difference to the OWL people's feelings and hopes, it is not an
>> ontology but a sort of formal language involving a functional, formal 
>> logic,
>>
>> and just need be properly renamed as FoLWL or LWL, Logical Web Language.
>> Accordingly, the semantic web into the formal semantic web, which is a 
>> poor
>> abstraction of the real (semiotic) Web [as it' has recently turned out],
>> asking for a firm conceptual foundation, n-relational ontology of things 
>> and
>>
>> its complement, ontological semiotics. Or, put away for a long time your
>> lofty hopes about real-life knowledge applications and web-based 
>> intelligent
>>
>> systems capable to represent and reason about the world, and have instead 
>> a
>> 'wonderweb' blown off billions and billions of public funds. It seems
>> something must be done to stop this fast-going and widely spreading 
>> pandemic
>>
>> of nescience.
>>
>> Hans, about you specific problem, you are on the right track. On the
>> ontological abstract level, a pump is a specific class (species) of Thing 
>> [>
>>
>> substance > physical substance > artefact > device > mechanism > 
>> mechanical
>> device] marked by a specific [functional property] of moving fluid and 
>> gas
>> [substance] by suction or pressure [process]. This is all about its
>> intensional meaning, its primary definition, while its extension is made 
>> up
>> of all types of pumps differered by the type of working substance used 
>> and
>> ways of operations, constructions, etc.: gas pump, oli pump, water pump,
>> lift pump, hydraulic pump, hand pump, foot pump, you may continue such a
>> division at infinitum. In the actual world of particular things, a pump 
>> is
>> an individual existing as a concrete physical object, a unique instance 
>> of a
>>
>> class of physical devices.
>> All the confusion comes from the replacement of fundamental ontological
>> category of Thing or Entity with a empty logical  category owl:Class. And
>> please don't throw 'things' away, as the child from the bath, rather 
>> discard
>>
>> empty 'classes', the bath itself.
>>
>> with all respects,
>>
>> Azamat Abdoullaev
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Hans Teijgeler" <hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl>
>> To: "'Dave Reynolds'" <der@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
>> Cc: "'SW-forum'" <semantic-web@w3.org>
>> Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 10:27 AM
>> Subject: RE: owl:Class and owl:Thing
>>
>>
>>> The class Pump is such a case where it is both an owl:Class and an
>>> individual, as a member of the class ClassOfInanimatePhysicalObject. Yet
>>> it has not been declared as owl:Thing. I understand from you that that 
>>> is
>>> OK.
>>>
>>> Is it possible that owl:Individual, that once existed [1], was meant to 
>>> be
>>> the class of REAL individuals in a REAL world?
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Hans
>>>
>>> [1] http://wonderweb.semanticweb.org/deliverables/documents/D1.pdf
>>>
>>> =========================================================================
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Dave Reynolds [mailto:der@hplb.hpl.hp.com]
>>> Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 23:58
>>> To: Hans Teijgeler
>>> Cc: SW-forum
>>> Subject: Re: owl:Class and owl:Thing
>>>
>>> Hans Teijgeler wrote:
>>>
>>>> In OWL-Full it is possible to have a class that also is an individual
>>>> in the context of a class-of-class. We have that a lot. Now my
>>>> question is whether or not I shall call the same object an owl:Class
>>>> when it is in the role of class, and call it an owl:Thing when it is
>>>> in the role of individual. If not, what shall prevail? Or must I 
>>>> declare
>>> it twice?
>>>
>>> You don't *need* to declare it at all in OWL/full.
>>>
>>> If you use a resource in the role of a class then it can be inferred to 
>>> be
>>
>>> a
>>> class. For example, if you use it as the object of an rdf:type statement
>>> or
>>> in an rdfs:subClassOf statement then it can be inferred to be an
>>> rdfs:Class.
>>> In OWL/full rdfs:Class and owl:Class have the same extension.
>>>
>>> Similarly it can be inferred to be an owl:Thing (for trivial reasons in
>>> OWL/full) and probably some subclass of owl:Thing based on the
>>> domain/range
>>> of whatever properties you apply to it.
>>>
>>> However, it may be useful for human readers of your ontology if you
>>> document
>>> it's dual nature by declaring both it's types explicitly along with
>>> appropriate rdfs:comments.
>>>
>>> Dave
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
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>
>

Received on Tuesday, 4 April 2006 07:33:08 UTC