Re: Aside - Re: Question: DAML cardinality restrictions

From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
To: Peter Crowther <Peter.Crowther@melandra.com>; <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
Cc: <www-rdf-logic@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 8:48 PM
Subject: RE: Aside - Re: Question: DAML cardinality restrictions


> > > From: Jan Grant [mailto:Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk]
> >[DAML examples elided]
> > > I can't help feeling a little worried by these examples. Yes, I know
> > > they're "only" examples. But the model of the world they present is
> > > broken - will DAML be good for describing the real world or just
> > > mathematical arenas and EDI? Is it even wise to try the former - or
> > > should the examples be rewritten to be less contentious?
> >
> >Probably, but I think there are problems when entirely removing
contention
> >from examples such as these.
> >
> >[Sanity warning: these ideas are no doubt unfinished, and are contributed
so
> >that people with much more experience than me can bat them around some
more
> >or tell me where the answers are]
>
> The issues you and Jon Grant raise are basic to the very idea of
> ontology description and knowledge representation. They deserve a
> book-length answer (and there are many book-length documents which
> discuss them, if you want to get into this stuff in detail) but I
> will try to sketch some replies.
>
> First, the use of an ontology language (such as DAML+OIL) does not
> imply any endorsement of any particular ontological decisions which
> could be expressed in that language. DAML enables one to assert that
> people have feet, but it also enables someone to make a different
> assertion, or to refuse to commit themselves about the relationship
> between feet and people. Peter is right that it is probably
> impossible to say anything that someone wouldnt think is mistaken
> (even in mathematics, by the way); DAML does not presume that its use
> will provide a universal recipe for ensuring agreement. What it does
> try to provide is a way in which one set of ontological assumptions
> can be made precise, so that the question of whether or not you agree
> with it can at least be sharpened. It can help make negotiations more
> focussed, but it cannot magically produce consensus.

Sorry, i'm just a poor lonesome french cowboy, ex-serviceman in natural
language comprehension who's raging now in Business Integration.

I don't understand all of your thoughts, but i thing in my big naivety, that
this assertion is very important and that it could be more detailled.

It's that consensus is obtain in a particular classe of actors about
something by the negociation within more than one alternative assertion,
produce by credible and well known expert.
The consensus is good according to the group and to each individual
satisfaction.
An other important thing is that consensus is never definitively gained.
We're alway looking for it during all our experiences, and our adaptation
capacities are dependent on the news alternatives assertions. The bad one
today could be the better an other day.
For all these aspects, does not we need to integrate in the language some
informations connectors for this contextual and experimental satisfaction
and/or acceptation evaluation mechanism and does not we need to define a
language for this.
Or in a more general idea, does a declarative information could be
automatically exploitable for externals systems without their usages
informations frame.


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Received on Saturday, 31 March 2001 04:22:28 UTC