RE: Upper ontologies

Does this not imply that every time you move up a level in an ontology there are "different points of view have advantages and disadvantages". If an upper level ontology is impossible, why are levels top-1, top-2 etc. doable?

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Neil McNaughton
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-----Original Message-----
From: Martin Thomas Horsch <horsch@inprodat.de> 
Sent: Monday, 11 January 2021 17:04
To: semantic-web@w3.org
Subject: Re: Upper ontologies

Dear Mikael,

four reasons. The first one applies to all standardization, and to all metadata standards, not only top-level ontologies, and it is simply that multiple concurrent development efforts exist. Here, as in many cases, there is no authority that can enforce the uptake of a single standard.

Second: By selecting a top-level ontology, you commit yourself to a philosophical position on what sort of things can exist in the world.
Unsurprisingly, it is impossible - and undesirable - to make everybody accept the same point of view. Also, different points of view have advantages and disadvantages depending on what exactly you want to do.

Third: It is also not a major problem. At the level of domains of knowledge, there will always be semantic heterogeneity, or in other words, multiple domain ontologies will be in use at least in some domains. Therefore, solutions addressing this heterogeneity need to be co-developed with any major innovation in data management anyway.

Fourth: Once a top-level ontology has been developed, it can never disappear. Even if most of the community recommended one of them, the others would still be around, and people would be able to use them.

Best wishes,
Martin

On 11/01/2021 16:40, Mikael Pesonen wrote:
> Maybe this is a stupid question but why is there (at the moment) 17 
> different upper ontologies:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_ontology

> 
> Isn't the idea to make just one that everyone can use?
> 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 12 January 2021 10:22:47 UTC