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Ontolog Forum

Session The Ontological Landscape
Duration 1 hour
Date/Time 10 Mar 2021 17:00 GMT
9:00am PST/12:00pm EST
5:00pm GMT/6:00pm CET
Convener Ravi Sharma
Track A

Ontology Summit 2021 The Ontological Landscape

Ontologies are a rich and versatile construct. They can be extracted, learned, modularized, interrelated, transformed, analyzed, and harmonized as well as developed in a formal process. This summit will explore the many kinds of ontologies and how they can be manipulated. The goal is to acquaint both current and potential users of ontologies with the possibilities for how ontologies could be used for solving problems.

Agenda

  • 12:00 - 12:30 EST
    • Title: Experiences in developing with DOLCE Slides
    • Speaker: Claudio Masolo
    • Abstract: After almost 20 years, the DOLCE ontology (a Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering) is still one of the most used foundational ontologies. Without describing the ontological distinctions adopted in DOLCE, in this talk I will discuss the main principles that guided its development and share few lessons learned about its role in the fields of Semantic Web and Conceptual Modeling.
    • Bio: Claudio Masolo is a researcher at the Laboratory for Applied Ontology (http://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/) of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council. He got a PhD in Information Engineering under the scope of a co-tutorship program between the Universities of Padova (Italy) and Toulouse (France) in 2000. His main research interests concern the ontological foundation of knowledge engineering and conceptual modeling with a particular focus on qualitative representation of space, time, change, and properties as well as on ontological foundations of cognitive theories. He is one of the main persons under the development of the DOLCE ontology; co-founder and Membership Officer of the International Association of Ontology and its Applications (IAOA); member of the Editorial Board of the Applied Ontology Journal. Participant in several national and European projects he published more than 60 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences.
  • 12:30 - 13:00 EST Discussion
  • Video Recording

Conference Call Information

  • Date: Wednesday, 10 Mar 2021
  • Start Time: 9:00am PST / 12:00pm EST / 6:00pm CET / 5:00pm GMT / 1700 UTC
  • Expected Call Duration: 1 hour
  • The Video Conference URL is https://bit.ly/3i1uPRl
    • iPhone one-tap :
      • +16465588656,,83077436914#,,,,,,0#,,822275# US (New York)
      • +13017158592,,83077436914#,,,,,,0#,,822275# US (Germantown)
    • Telephone:
  • Chat Room: https://bit.ly/39PzQJW
    • If the chat room is not available, then use the Zoom chat room.

Attendees

Discussion

[12:07] MichaelGruninger: DOLCE is being standardized as Part 3 of ISO 21838

[12:13] RaviSharma: Claudio - when IT is used is it always LC ontology (lower case)

[12:16] RaviSharma: It is still not clear to me as to what this "O" pluralistic ontology means especially in relation to reality?

[12:19] TerryLongstreth: @Ravi - I think the intent is to provide a trustworthy axiomatic framework for separate contexts

[12:20] RaviSharma: If this "o"ntology is special, does it confine it to 6 types and axioms etc of DOLCE only.

[12:21] RaviSharma: If so how are ordinary ontologies mapped in to this "O"ntology?

[12:21] RaviSharma: Terry- thanks i see the relevance!

[12:23] ToddSchneider: How can the 'small set of ontology' domains be identified (to meet the intent of a 'library' for reuse)?

[12:23] RaviSharma: can these be called DOLCE Compliant ontologies, Todd are these Foundational?

[12:26] ToddSchneider: Ravi, Foundational, no. Reference, likely.

[12:28] RaviSharma: Michael - COLORE and DOL are related to this "O"ntology?

[12:29] ToddSchneider: Can the OntoCommons project be considered an extension of the WonderWeb project?

[12:30] RaviSharma: How relevant is the grammar variation in DOLCE, do the six types and axioms take care of this?

[12:31] RaviSharma: Slide - 18, can we then apply it to synthetic Language such as Controlled English?

[12:32] MichaelGruninger: @Ravi: yes, COLORE presumes a pluralistic approach in which people can use different ontologies while understanding their similarities and differences

[12:38] Douglas R. Miles: What inference engines would be suggested for using COLORE?

[12:38] Douglas R. Miles: (Also same question about using DOLCE)

[12:39] John Sowa: @Michael, I agree that a pluralistic approach is essential.

[12:40] Gary Berg-Cross: Some "situations" may be an arbitrary conceptualization. Some are useful and close to reality as a working hypothesis.

[12:41] John Sowa: And that is why I have far more hope for DOL than for the goal of standardizing TLOs.

[12:41] Douglas R. Miles: (sometimes with DOLCE, i wish there was a unlistened to arg 1 that is merely a comment space for naming a predicate

[12:42] Robert Rovetto: Claudio, who is currently in charge of DOLCE in ISO?

[12:42] MichaelGruninger: @Douglas: Currently, there are not any native Common Logic reasoners. However, there are translators from Common Logic to the theorem prover syntax TPTP, which can be imported by all first-order theorem provers (e..g Prover9, Vampire, ...)

[12:43] LaureVieu: @Rob: Stefano Borgo, Daniele Porello and myself

[12:43] Robert Rovetto: @Todd, it is not formally an extension of WonderWeb

[12:44] Robert Rovetto: @Laure,are you, Stefano and Daniele formally members of the Italian national body in ISO?

[12:45] LaureVieu: @Rob: ask this to Stefano

[12:47] Douglas R. Miles: @MichaelG: thank you.. hrrm survivable, I was afraid that was the case

[12:47] RaviSharma: Claudio - Is the DOLCE Library and "O"ntology using instances based on underlying FOL, Second Order Logic (Wishlist), and a conceptual Language, then how do we get to realizable (truth like) entities, otherwise it is still a theoretical effort?

[12:47] Robert Rovetto: @Grazie, Laure. Can you clarify? For example, are you--yourself, a formal member?

(Each person would know if they are members of the ISO, because it involves a formal process through the national body organization). That's all I'd like to know

[12:50] Douglas R. Miles: What Gary is saying is why I think TimBL really could have allowed people to scale to a something more expressive.. But I think the W3C assumed no developers would step up and make a inference engine

[12:50] Douglas R. Miles: + available

[12:53] Douglas R. Miles: @Sowa: Amen

[12:53] RaviSharma: Doug - Yes

[12:53] Robert Rovetto: @Laure, if you and no other DOLCE developer are in, then it is likely still in the hands of the same bfo-supporter that prevented constructive input on two separate occasions in the past. In other words, if there is no DOLCE person in it, then it will continue to be blocked.

[12:57] John Sowa: For more detail in support of the point I made, see http://jfsowa.com/pubs/fflogic.pdf

[12:58] RaviSharma: Claudio- it sounds similar to BFO like objective, looks harder?

[12:58] John Sowa: The title of that article is "Fads and fallacies about logic" the worst fallacy is that OWL is efficient.

[12:59] John Sowa: As I said, the OWL strategy is to make it impossible to state problems that might get hung up in a loop.

[13:01] John Sowa: However, OWL also makes it impossible to state many important problems that can be solved efficiently with FOL.

[13:02] John Sowa: By the way, the fflogic.pdf article was published in a journal whose editor was Jim Hendler.

[13:02] RaviSharma: I want to thank the speaker, Todd and others who participated.

[13:02] John Sowa: Jim thought that he would hate my article, but he was pleasantly surprised. He liked it

[13:03] BobbinTeegarden: @John it's a question of available tools for us engineers!!!

[13:04] BobbinTeegarden: Many of us would much rather use CL, e.g.

[13:06] janet singer: Following on what John said about future direction, the circle-O notion can be helpful if 1) Ontology refers to human understanding and conceptual models cultivated in natural language, 2) ontology to explicit models, and 3) they are recognized as two irreducible poles in circle-O. One can foreground one or the other, but not completely separate them

[13:06] LaureVieu: @John: Claudio certainly isn't an OWL defender!!

[13:06] LaureVieu: neither I am

[13:06] AlexShkotin: I have to leave and have a look at nice page of next session https://ontologforum.org/index.php/ConferenceCall_2021_03_17#Agenda

[13:14] BobbinTeegarden: Please references for Aus tool!

[13:15] janet singer: Supporting what Claudio said, speculative formalization is useful as a tool during conceptual development as well.

[13:15] Robert Rovetto: If anyone wants a demo of the language I mentioned, I'd be happy to do a screen-share call. send me an email.

[13:16] John Sowa: by the way, I was not criticizing Claudio.

[13:17] janet singer: But there seems to be a tendency to think that circle-o should be fully axiomatizable itself, which takes you back into little-o ontology again

[13:18] janet singer: The circle-o ontology arguably fits the need for the supra level that John and Matthew raised before.

[13:21] RaviSharma: Janet brings up superlevel and need for relating it to "O"ntology.

[13:21] RaviSharma: ....critical to development

[13:22] RaviSharma: Janet - Todd said more Referential rather than foundational.

[13:23] janet singer: John S says the Supra level could just be ordinary language

[13:24] RaviSharma: John - agrees with janet that we need a talking level, to get an idea of the basic Q and then follow on communication bet two people and it takes iterations before becoming familiar with communication among them.

[13:24] RaviSharma: New company John mentioned GraphStax.

[Added later] Ken Baclawski: John will be talking about GraphStax at the 24 March 2021 session.

[13:26] RaviSharma: Medicine, Intelligence, domains experts who do not know IT or Ontology, translating ontology outputs into English (lang) and make progress that way. John further says make it understandable to people

[13:28] RaviSharma: I also said and John agreed that Claudio's presentation did not emphasize OWL.

[13:29] janet singer: John says call it the Human level instead of the Supra level

[13:31] BobbinTeegarden: I think AI agrees that you need a human-in-the-loop also...

[13:32] janet singer: The need to shift focus to a human-oriented perspective that John is referring to came up several times at the recent INCOSE IW

[13:34] RaviSharma: Janet - your super model, Robert 's inputs and John's human facing levels will certainly construct better ontologies.

[13:35] RaviSharma: Robert - key take away "O" philosophical and o in ontology is computer use of ontology engineering

[13:37] RaviSharma: Assuming philosophical views with ontology community using computers can create some lack of understanding/ - Robert

[13:39] RaviSharma: Janet - Ontology Engineering understanding and shared mental models are to be matched - implicit, tacit, codified, philosophical word use can sometimes put alert in conversation?

[13:39] BobbinTeegarden: I think that instead of 'philosophical' some ontologists are trying to do that with 'conceptual' ontology (vs implementation...) --

[13:40] RaviSharma: yes Bobbin, and for some of us the conceptual and ontological constructs are same or very similar e.g. data models!

[13:42] RaviSharma: Bobbin - Gary brought some of it out in his talk two weeks ago, where he showed a Leo Obrst style maturity graphic.

[13:43] BobbinTeegarden: Thanks Ravi, sorry I missed it, will go see the recording for sure.

[13:44] BobbinTeegarden: In modeling things, I always used 3 levels: conceptual (business), implementation (architecture), and deployment (ISO 6 layer model of networks, tools, ...)

[13:47] BobbinTeegarden: Is there a way to get the DOL folk to do a FOLDOL tool for us?

[13:49] Robert Rovetto: Two worthwhile facts are: non-logical approaches to ontology, where some build ontologies without symbolic logic. and manual vs. automated ontology development. The latter of the latter--automated development--does not readily admit of metaphysical examination and abstract analysis.

[13:52] BobbinTeegarden: These levels move from abstraction into decomposed implementation into domains of discourses... sounds like in the other direction m-theories are connected upward to larger abstraction...?

[13:52] RaviSharma: Bobbin - this is a great and relevant Q for John Sowa and Ken may also be willing to address it now?

[13:54] RaviSharma: Janet thanks for bringing attn to Bobbins statements

[13:57] BobbinTeegarden: My current research treats these structures -- levels of abstraction decomposing to domain specific concepts ... decomposing themselves to sub-domain... an holons, holonic structures. There seem to be a few other folk thinking that way. The burden of being a philosopher underneath...

[14:01] RaviSharma: Bobbin - Is not holon related to Monad?

[14:02] BobbinTeegarden: Inclusiveness?

[14:02] RaviSharma: i see

[14:02] BobbinTeegarden: Can a Monad also be a holon?

[14:03] RaviSharma: I do not remember meaning on Holon yet so hard to say. inclusiveness is fine and generalization is one of possible outcomes of inclusiveness!

[14:10] RaviSharma: Claudio - one of the things I wanted to follow-on

[14:11] RaviSharma: is as to where do you see this effort being productive in short and mid term, as super, human readable, implementable ontologies and how these distinctions of double O and lowercase o in ontologies will help us move forward.

[14:18] BobbinTeegarden: In many cases, the meaning is in the context -- so the same term in one context means something else in another context... why I went to holonic structures...

[14:21] BobbinTeegarden: In a previous Summit meeting, John S said he was doing a tool but didn't have the finance to finish it...

[14:30] Robert Rovetto: maybe John would be interested to give a talk about the tool to potentially finding supporter, and perhaps showing some aspects or desiderata for it?

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