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*************************
This is a huge and very complicated subject -- but I think there are some big-picture simple things that can be said about it.
I got interested in "categories and concepts" many years ago, initially from a holistic and graphical point of view. I got into the study of "mystical symbols" when I first went back to the university, and what emerged for me was the idea that many such symbols can properly be understood as a kind of "pre-mathematical intuition” into profound ontological subjects. Clear examples might include the cross, mandala, and yin/yang, and probably some others like axis mundi. I like this model of “mandala” – taken from the “wheel of the dharma” on the national flag of India. http://originresearch.com/interval/index.cfm
Human beings have not yet advanced to the point of collective evolution where the commonly repeated symbols that arise in deep intuition are well-understood. They are seen as art, as fantasy, as emotional or simply as incomprehensible, as "mystery". Scholars like Joseph Campbell and psychologists like Jung have looked carefully at this topic, but perhaps not from the point of view of scientific interpretation. But maybe Ramon Lull was moving in this direction.
John, you said the other day in a previous thread that your experience with people trying to connect "data" and "information" with "wisdom" was that their ideas generally tended towards "mush". I know what you mean; I often feel something similar -- because it seems to me that the enterprise of human civilization has not (yet) established a clear and non-controversial understanding of holistic or graphical thinking. So the common thinking is muddy. This entire domain of analysis itself might be thought of as mush. It's uncharted, pre-scientific, unmapped, still blurry and very experimental. It's the mysterious domain of "religion". Skeptics shake their head and walk away.
This is the connection between analysis and intuition, between empiricism and holism – and how that connection is experienced in a normal human mind. At the linear/empirical/scientific end of the spectrum, things are pretty clear. We understand measurement. But what is at the absolute top of this descending cascade? This is the domain of “the absolute container” – where everybody and everything get confused….
*
As I started thinking about this comment, in the afterglow of the very interesting ontology summit just concluded, with its reference to an array of special-case ontologies -- both graphical and verbal -- perhaps seen in the light of Michael Gruninger's comment (if I understood it right) that we do indeed need broader/more inclusive ontologies -- that there might be a huge missing area in the study of intuition.
What about an ontology of symbols? Pull together 500 or 1000 primary and common symbols from various traditions around the world -- and work on interpreting their meaning. Nils Bohr had the "yin/yang' symbol on his personal coat of arms. What does it mean? What are its ontological implications? It's clearly a mathematical form.
Years ago at Berkeley, I bought an engineering book on the "Smith Chart" -- which was about radio antenna design -- because its large-page format presented multiple alternative versions and interpretations of the yin/yang diagram -- a circle with a large letter S dividing it into two sections – which turned out to have major implications for the behaviour of radio waves.
This kind of symbolism has arisen in in some form in every culture that has been studied. So, I think the explanation is -- people are struggling to understand their own deepest intuitions. These symbols are like mathematical hypothesis based on "best guess" approaches. "I don't know for sure what it means, but this is what I get".
*
Today, many years later, I am still following my guiding holistic intuition. I am continuing to take notes and gather elements on what looks to me like a potent universal container for all possibilities of semantic ontology. It's profoundly "mystical" -- and relates to common mystical symbols like "Uroboros" (snake swallowing its tail) -- but it also seems to directly plug in to the concept of "measurement" in its most basic and unquestionable level.
If this framework is making sense, and moving in the right direction -- it might be an exacting map connecting quantitative and qualitative variables -- showing how they can be mapped across a well-defined spectrum of levels.
My guiding intuition is -- all language emerges as labels for distinctions within the continuum -- and those distinctions can be defined at any level of abstraction. Because we have not (yet) accurately and reliably mapped the higher levels of intuition, and do not as yet have the conceptual apparatus to do so, we find ourselves wandering in a mush of confused ideas.
***
So maybe the issue is "what is meant by the concept of a unified ontology?" I personally am not interested in building a huge dictionary. I want to understand the derivation of words and their meaning. I think it is a universal process, and that all meaning can be understood in approximately the same way -- ie, as a dimensional decomposition descending across levels of analysis – where those levels of analysis are clearly defined as the framework for a universal ontology.
In this context -- special case structures don't really matter. They are no longer logically independent objects -- as I think you are saying they are -- but rather as special-case instances a universal/general form that contains them all and from which they are all derived by a highly coherent and rational process.
My guess is -- we are going to see how this works. This does not imply that all independently evolved domains are going to plug into one another immediately. But their common derivation will provide a powerful source of insight. My guess is, we will find ways to meet at the edges, and evolve common ways to interact that span the borders.
Bruce Schuman
Santa Barbara CA USA, 805-705-9174
Weavingunity.net
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 8:54 AM
To: ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: ontolog...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Why a single unifiied ontology is impossible
Twenty years ago, when I finished my book on knowledge representation, I still had some lingering hopes for a unified top-level ontology of everything. But those hopes were always running into inconvenient facts.
Bruce Schuman
I agree with this, Patrick, thank you.
I like this notion of “null” as the common point or space. I’ve been thinking the same thing.
And I think it is short-sighted to presuppose that
“any single top-level ontology [must necessarily] privilege one choice over an infinity of other options”
I think the top level should itself implicitly contain “an infinity of options” – and that this make perfect sense when we understand that “every particular parsing of the space” is a special case instance. We are not trying to make a rigid list of word meanings – we’re trying to make language absolutely and infinitely fluent – and derived from a common source.
If we don’t have the time or situation to drive all ambiguity and uncertainty out of a shared abstract concept by dialog – I’d guess that the statistical methods discussed during the Ontolog Summit today point very strongly towards ways to make excellent guesses. Those guys are awesome. This stuff is do-able.
“Since everything in our ontologies derives from the Thing object, they must all have this in common, which means that they are not disjoint, but in fact are all part of a superset ontology.”
Yes, exactly. I want to hammer on this point until we see it very clearly – until we see how all symbolic and algebraic representation can be derived from this common starting point by a fully coherent process.
This kind of method can explain to any degree of detail the huge range of human diversity in all its dimensionality – while fully holding it together around its common source
From: 'Stingley, Patrick' via ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 11:58 AM
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: [ontolog-forum] Why a single unifiied ontology is impossible
I disagree that a single unified ontology is impossible. In fact, I believe it is inevitable.
It is not impossible because SUMO exists. Maybe someone can correct me if this doesn't count as a satisfactory example disproving the thesis.
It is inevitable for the following reason. As we learn from suffering with Protege, all of the members of our ontologies derive from the "Thing" object.
In Set Theory, the only thing all sets have in common is the Null Set and nothing can be derived from the Null Set.
Since everything in our ontologies derives from the Thing object, they must all have this in common, which means that they are not disjoint, but in fact are all part of a superset ontology.
v.r.,
Patrick Stingley
On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 1:49 PM Richard H. McCullough <rhmccu...@gmail.com> wrote:
John, you said
... language-based resources, such as WordNet,
are more useful for relating multiple ontologies than any single
top-level ontology that privileges one choice over an infinity
of other options.
I think the synset definitions are an important contributor
to the success of WordNet. These definitions describe the
use of a word in different contexts, and thus define
the concept hierarchy lattice of the ontology.
Without synset definitions, the ontology can be a
very ambiguous structure.
Richard H. McCullough
http://ContextKnowledgeSystems.orgWhat is your context?
On Tue, May 7, 2019 at 8:54 AM John F Sowa <so...@bestweb.net> wrote:
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Dear and respected colleagues,
Ontology answers the question: What is…? as it applies to everything there is, which is actually in perpetual change. Telling machines what things are is the engineering aspect of ontology engineering. A single unified ontology, which would make the life of engineers so much easier, would presume that we can describe, in whichever manner (words, images, sounds, combinations of all kinds of representations), all there is in its continuous change. While the physical—the subset of all there is that is not alive—might be, within a certain framework, fully and consistently described, the living –by far the larger subset of all there is—is undecidable.
These considerations alone should make us aware that a single unified ontology is for reasons related to our relation to reality not possible. For the same reason a single unified ontology of medicine is a goal defying the nature of the entity it would fully describe if it could.
AI as practiced currently being nothing but ontology made operational, to talk about AI in any creative endeavor (medicine is such an endeavor) is nonsense.
Automating tasks we associate with intelligence (even so we do not understand yet what intelligence is) is not the same with making available a machine that “produces intelligence”waiting to be deployed.
Best wishes.
Mihai Nadin
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Paola
I share your instinct, but for me its rather like having two conflicting postmodern views of truth: one says that there is no absolute truth, only relative; the other says that there is an absolute truth, but we are trapped in limited contexts and can never know what it is because unlike a GUT it would not be verifiable. Either way the practical outcome is the same.
Godfrey
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Hi Patrick, Many thanks for the mention. Others have different opinions but I see SUMO (http://www.ontologyportal.org) as a clear existence proof that a common ontology is possible. After nearly two decades of encoding a wide variety of domains, each new project has required elaboration but not rework of any significant portion of the ontology. Much like conventional procedural programming, we've collectively realized that with some considerable effort, reusable generalizations are possible. all the best, Adam
Hi Adam,
It has been a while!
Anyway, I quickly loaded your SUMO->Wordnet and SUMO rendition in OWL to our URIBurner instance.
Results:
1. Entity
Type Sampling -- just click !
Kingsley
-- Regards, Kingsley Idehen Founder & CEO OpenLink Software Home Page: http://www.openlinksw.com Community Support: https://community.openlinksw.com Weblogs (Blogs): Company Blog: https://medium.com/openlink-software-blog Virtuoso Blog: https://medium.com/virtuoso-blog Data Access Drivers Blog: https://medium.com/openlink-odbc-jdbc-ado-net-data-access-drivers Personal Weblogs (Blogs): Medium Blog: https://medium.com/@kidehen Legacy Blogs: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen/ http://kidehen.blogspot.com Profile Pages: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/kidehen/ Quora: https://www.quora.com/profile/Kingsley-Uyi-Idehen Twitter: https://twitter.com/kidehen Google+: https://plus.google.com/+KingsleyIdehen/about LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kidehen Web Identities (WebID): Personal: http://kingsley.idehen.net/public_home/kidehen/profile.ttl#i : http://id.myopenlink.net/DAV/home/KingsleyUyiIdehen/Public/kingsley.ttl#this
The basis for the merge is ;; is the upper level of Sowa's ontology. The definitions and axioms of the other sources ;; have been mapped into this ontology. Thus far, the merge incorporates Russell and Norvig's ;; ontology, Casati and Varzi's theory of holes, Allen's temporal axioms, the relatively ;; noncontroversial elements of Smith's and Guarino's respective mereotopologies, and the KIF ;; formalization of CPR. Note that this file does not not, as of yet, include Sowa's ;; upper-level ontology.
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