[topicmapmail] Making ontologies : RDF vs TM

[Murray Altheim]

Dr. Agnes Mühlmeyer-Mentzel wrote:
> Hi,
> since about a year I'm a quiet - but curious - member of this list.   

Given your message today it seems a shame you haven't written before. :-)

>>But rather than
>>discuss what ontology *is* (since I'm on very thin ice anyway),
>>perhaps we should first ask what the problem is that ontology is
>>suggested as a solution for. [E.g., will creating a large structure
>>of fixed categories and then placing everything into those categories
>>work? Hasn't this actually turned into a problem in its own right?]
> 
> May be, building categories and ontologies don't solve a problem in an
> optimal manner.
> The question is, do I have a choice?

You certainly have a choice both in the philosophical/epistemological
approach you take, and in the actual tools/implementation. Certain
epistemologies (or lack thereof) lead one down cul de sacs, certain
tools have built-in deficiencies (both epistemologically and practically,
perhaps because these are linked).

I've long advocated looking to fields that have demonstrable expertise
in categories and taxonomies, such as library sciences. I note that
few if any computer-based ontology systems have a built-in classification
system, such that trying to navigate through them is usually difficult.

> Building categories and ontologies is an effort to transform knowledge
> into linguistic forms. Linguistic forms may be weak, but they are our
> most important forms for interacting and sometimes the only ones.

You must note that many scientists, of both the "hard" (e.g., physics)
and "soft" (e.g., ethics) varieties, though particularly the former,
believe that what they're discovering is a closer approximation to
some platonic ideal, some better representation of reality than that
of the last generation of scientists. They don't look at this as a
form of communication or inter-communication. I think that the point
that Rorty is making, echoing Arthur Fine (a physicist), is that this
entire approach is misleading and unproductive, that yes, as you say,
looking at our representations of reality not as being connected with
some mythical ideal but as forms of intercommunication designed to
actually benefit humanity, that's where we may see real value. Rorty
criticizes "professional philosophers" (and by implication, any
scientists who make the same mistakes) for having divorced themselves
from any real value to society.

[This of course has made a few rather angry at Rorty, who has been
derided as a "humourist philosopher" and lumped in with postmodernism.
In "Rorty and His Critics" I believe he makes it quite clear that his
motivations are entirely for the good of humanity, not just as a jab
at his peers.]

>>But before we proceed, one of the pieces of this puzzle that is
>>missing but always assumed is that we can simply "know", that there
>>is no filter between reality and how we decide to represent it. In
>>the past few years of research I've found hardly the slightest whiff
>>of any consideration for epistemological issues when discussing
>>"ontologies" within the field of AI/KR or IT. I've heard repeatedly
>>(from sources who I think should know better) that we can discover
>>the nature of reality by simply "trying harder", improving existing
>>techniques, that the platonic notions of such structures are merely
>>there to be grokked if we open our eyes and/or improve our tools.
> 
> We cannot simply "know". Most of knowledge is linguistic knowledge or
> even literal knowledge. 

I agree.

> It's the specific of human being to make "communication in distance": we
> have developped language.
> Language is a great cultural development, that makes it possible to
> transfer knowledge of generations.
> 
> Language is the key to most of knowledge, but language is not the
> reality. 
> On one side language is an abstraction of the reality and on the other
> side the most important human-human-interface for interacting in a
> society.

Certainly.

> That's the challange: Re-inventing a reality in our mind by encoding the
> spoken or written word, which contain and represent the reality in an
> abtract form.
> 
> The problems of ontologies are the problems of language. We have to
> solve them by communicating and interacting. 

Yes, and one of the points I will be making fairly strong in my own
thesis is that ontologies are a form of communication, they are a way
of stating: "this is what *I* believe." They are not, and I repeat,
not expressions of universal, platonic reality. This is a mistake I
see commonly repeated. I had dinner with Doug Lenat, inventor of the
Cyc ontology, and was pleased to hear him say that Cyc was not such
an expression, that it was, in effect, "Doug's Ontology" (now, more
correctly, "Cycorp's Ontology").

I think that it's important to consider the development of computer-
based ontologies as a means of communicating ideas about our
understanding of reality, of a specific domain. And that when we
allow others to see that ontology, they understand it as something
we are *saying*, not an expression of the universal. Now, ontologies
can and are being developed by cooperative groups, consortia, etc.,
and these are considered agreements between people.

So when the W3C promotes OWL, they should be saying: "this is an
expression of the core concepts within our ontology as we believe
them." This kind of thing is never stated. While I have great respect
for John Sowa, one of my criticisms of his approach is that he believes
First Order Logic to be some kind of universal, simply because a lot
of logicians have arrived at a consensus on a set of meanings. That
there are still some disagreements is downplayed. I'd prefer it if
FOL was thought of as an agreement, not a universal. There are many
logics, but John believes they are all fundamentally FOL at heart.
I stress "believes" here (this is that erroneous distinction between
"hard" and "soft" that we keep running up against).

One of the features built into Topic Maps that I think helps in this
regard is scope. This provides a ready ability to make statements
that capture their context, so that not everything is unscoped, or
"universal." We move from "the cat is on the mat" to "John says 'the
cat is on the mat.'"

>>Knowledge is not stored within computers, data is. The only way that
>>data becomes information, becomes knowledge, is when it can be put to
>>good use in the process of learning and discovery. Having XML in a
>>file system is nothing new or particularly revolutionary,
> 
>>From a technical point of view, having developped XML, is not
> revolutionary, but it is evolutionary.
> I look on this with "linguistic eyes".
> Developing standards is always a kind of developing language, in the
> sense of being able to communicate. The deeper worth is the process of
> standardization: interacting, agreeing, disagreeing, discussing,
> arguing, .....

As a markup language it is primarily focused on allowing computers to
better "agree" on content, but to a great degree both HTML and XML (as
a metalanguage) have enabled us to better communicate as people. And
this is somewhat revolutionary. My hat is off to people like Charles
Goldfarb (SGML) and Jon Bosak (XML), and the many others involved in
the development of these languages. The benefits have been quite
remarkable.

> By developing data models and standards for transferring knowledge, we
> beginn to simulate language. I realize three steps in this linguistic
> direction:
> 
> <html> : describes the looking of a content. (very little linguistic) 

Yes, but even the existence of paragraphs and headings provided us
with the web. Early versions of HTML were pretty impoverished but
allowed millions of people to intercommunicate in ways we hadn't
even imagined.

> <XML> / <CSS> : devides the description of a content in two parts:
> <XML>: meaning <CSS>/<html>: looking  (an important step to linguistic) 

Not a major point, but I'm one of those people who do most of my work
in 10 point Courier. So how something looks isn't very important to
me -- I'm more interested in content than form, at least during the
beginning stages.

> <topicMap>-Standard: developped a vocabulary to define concepts, the
> vocabulary provides means to distinguish between the expression of a
> concept and the meaning of a concept. (very linguistic) The vocabulary
> provides means to associate concepts. (very linguistic)
> 
> For me it's exciting, to observe this process.

Absolutely. When I had the chance to be involved in the Topic Maps
effort I jumped, as I saw this same possibility, and feel the same
excitement.

Thanks very much for your message, Agnes.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

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