AKICILJ

[green_amber]

I just asked (poor sweet) easterbunny this but it occurs to me I may as well ask y'all..

Does the Semantic Web imply the need for one ontology to rule them all? I can see how you can map/join ontologies that are contiguous and (hopefully) exclusive eg one for mammals and one for invertebrates, so you end up with an ontology of animals? . But supposing you're trying to develop an ontology for tax law? A German lawyer will see different concept, in different orders of precedence, and use different phrases (even after translation) than a UK lawyer or a US lawyer. Can all 3 start working independently on their ontologies and eventually usefully share data in applications, or do they all have to agree an ontology at scratch (which just ain't going to happen?)

This is after lunch with Burkhard the mad German ontologist :-)

In other news, I am off to PloktaPi tomorrow - yay! - on the train, not plane, partly as a compromise with work/life balance; I have great hopes of getting most my essays marked on the train. ( don't tell the AUT ). Getting hair cut a.m. to look bootiful, and have bought lotsa new clothes with mother on Tuesday, some of which may accompany me:-) In particular, I acquired a rather wonderful ecru linen transparent coat thing in Per Una to go over a brown/cream sundress, which I think looks rather Katherine Zeta Jones altogether, for my brother's wedding in JUne -- a pic may follow . Sunday is supposed to be a trip to the revamped tate Modern with peter_crump and altogether I think I Need a Break and Oh Good I've Got One! (many thanks to bohemiancoast for putting up with me again..)

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

The Semantic Web most certainly does not require a single ontology, not least because an ontology is an artifact designed with some purpose in mind. Ontologies are naturally both domain- and task-dependent, and it's really only the anti-SW crowd who claim otherwise, that the SW is some Diderot-esque fantasy of a singular, universal, self-consistent representation of human knowledge. The rest of us (being knowledge engineers, logicians and SW practitioners) know how hard it is to elicit sufficient knowledge from a group of experts who barely agree between themselves.

The tax law example you give is an example of a multi-perspective ontology. We have a system at Southampton (remind me to show it to you when you're down) that supports the triple assessment protocol for breast cancer treatment; a patient is seen by a clinician, a radiographer and a histopathologist, all of whom have different viewpoints on the same subject, and use different terminology. Where the radiographer might talk about microcalcification visible in X-rays, the histopathologist would be looking at cellular abnormalities, and the clinician a lump in breast tissue, but these are different manifestations of the tumour.

Working with all three types of expert, we developed viewpoint-specific ontologies and provide the tools to map between these ontologies; there's some minimal agreement at a high level, so there's a top-level ontology which describes a framework into which the individual perspectives fit. You could develop the sub ontologies in isolation, but you'd be making the integration harder for no good reason (better to plan ahead).

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

That's .. mindblowing for me as a lawyer. meets a lot of the problems B and I have been talking about. Wanna see. BTW, seem to have lost your email address - can you mail me? Are we going to meet June 5 and if so when would suit? I also want to mail you latest from prospective PhD student..

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

That's .. mindblowing for me as a lawyer.

ISTM that in Law, you learn the ontology and then work within that framework. Given a new case, you investigate to see how it best fits, what existing law or judgements apply. You may not stick it in ad-hoc, or create a new category. Because, you know, it's The Law, it is not optional, and you do have to work within it. Ignorance is no excuse. "Common sense" comes second where Law exists (I'm thinking of the common idea that "if my parents give me their house then live for 7 years, they can still live in it but I won't have to pay Inheritance Tax").

In (most) other parts of life, things work the other way around, or maintain a balance between working within ontological strictures and growing new systems.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Have mailed you. 5th June is probably not going to be possible, unfortunately (research group awayday, with threats of unspecified sanctions for non-attendance), but I'm free all day on the 6th at present.

[(Anonymous)]

we developed viewpoint-specific ontologies and provide the tools to map between these ontologies

Do you have any online documentation or papers that you could point me to? That would be fantastic. I'm working with ontologies in space science.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Easterbunny?

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

D'oh! Yes. Login::brain interface failure.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Our work system seems to log me out every other am at the moment. hence first post tending to be anon :(

[nmg.livejournal.com]

The project is called MIAKT - there's more information on the website, including papers, videos, and some OWL ontologies.

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

Thanks! There's a roundup of the virtual observatory schema -> ontology work here, access control stuff here, and the big universe one here.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Ah, right. Tony Hey gave a keynote on eScience yesterday (I'm at WWW2006 in Edinburgh), and he mentioned this in passing.