Re: Cross-ontologies reasoning

> [Bill Andersen]
> Perhaps we had a disagreement as to what the nature of cross-ontology 
> mapping is.  When you mentioned the use of heuristic techniques, I had 
> imagined that you meant something like:
> 
>    (x)[o1.bachelor(x) <-> o2.bachelor(x)]
> 
> by virtue of the fact that the symbol names were the same or some such. 
>   But of course such a mapping is of limited utility unless one takes 
> into account the constellation of axioms surrounding the respective 
> terms in the respective ontologies.
> 
> Say in ontology o1 you have
> 
>    (x)[bachelor(x) <-> (male(x) & ~married(x))]
> 
> and in ontology o2 you have
> 
>    (x)[bachelor(x) <-> (male(x) & ~married(x) & age(x,y) & y<60)]
> 
> But this only works in the o2->o1 direction and then only if there is 
> agreement on what 'male' and 'married' mean in each.  

So?  Obviously there has to be agreement on the relationships among
the symbols' meanings.  And obviously not all axioms in a merged
ontology are biconditionals.  So what exactly are you saying?

> So, Rush Limbaugh 
> notwithstanding, you don't really get to pick which axioms you don't 
> care about ....

I am inclined to agree, although there's really no reason why someone
couldn't carve off a piece of an ontology and say "I'll take this,
please."  He just has to be careful not to give it the same name as
the original.  Plus there is the problem of keeping track of his subset
if the parent ontology changes.

-- 
                                   -- Drew McDermott
                                      Yale Computer Science Department

Received on Tuesday, 30 December 2003 11:34:33 UTC