formal logic

Are people being reasonable when they act irrationally? Doesn’t rationality and reasonableness mean the same thing? Charles and Igor kick of the new decade by diving into a messy mix of behavioral economics, nudges, moral philosophy and legal studies, to examine what standards guide people’s decisions. Charles asks Igor about core standards that guide people when they try to make a good decision. Igor unpacks how the standard of a rational agent evolved in the 20th century and what implications it has had for modern economics and politics. Charles wonders if there are any reasonable people left on the Clapham omnibus in London. Igor discusses his new work assessing how most people define rationality and reasonableness, showing that irrational behavior may be a consequence of focusing on reasonableness instead. Welcome to Episode 24.

* Subject Dr. Pat Hayes from the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition ("IHMC") was our invited speaker. His presentation was entitled: "A logic for ontology interoperation" where he talked about Common Logic (CL) and its extension, IKL - a system of logical notations and formalisms that can act as an expressive foundation for ontology interchange. * Date Thursday, October 26, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_10_26 * Abstract (by Pat Hayes) Over the past few years a series of initiatives have converged on the design of a 'common logic' into which a large variety of alternative logical notations and formalisms can be projected, and so can act as an expressive foundation for ontology interchange and standardization. This talk will briefly survey the design principles that have emerged from these discussions and the outline of the resulting framework, which is currently going through ISO approval as ISO Common Logic, and a more recent extension called IKL, designed explicitly for ontology interoperation, which provides a variety of powerful naming conventions which enable it to explicitly describe relationships between ontological frameworks. We will illustrate the talk with examples showing how description logics such as OWL, modal and temporal logics, hybrid logics and context logics can be mapped into CL and IKL.

* Subject NIST-Ontolog-NCOR Mini-Series: "Ontology Measurement and Evaluation" Kick-off Session, with Dr. Steven Ray, Dr. Chris Welty et al. * Date Thursday, October 19, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_10_19 * Session Abstract (by Steve Ray) This mini-series will explore the landscape, issues and solutions relating to the measurement, evaluation, quality and testing of ontologies. * Pertinent Issues we might explore during this and subsequent sessions, such as: o 1. Why do we need to care about ontology quality? o 2. What are objective means of classifying something as an ontology, taxonomy, data model, semantic networks, or tagged markup, etc. o 3. How can ontologies be evaluated and measured? o 4. How can the quality of Ontology Design Tools be assessed? ... and so on. * Keynote Presentation Titles and Abstracts: ** Ontology Quality and the Semantic Web - Dr. Christopher A. Welty Abstract: One of the guiding principles of the web and its machine interpretable successor the semantic web is to "let a million flowers bloom." HTML was based on technology nearly two decades old at the time (Hypertext), for which a research community concerned mainly with Human-Computer interaction was investigating what the "right way" to use hypertext for effective communication was. The vast majority of early HTML pages completely ignored this and yet the web thrived. Still, as the web became a serious medium for dissemination, institutions for whom effective communication was critical did begin to take this research seriously and today's highly visible web pages are designed by people with experience and training on how to "do it right". The progress and evolution of the semantic web should follow the same path - the semantic web standards (RDF, OWL, and RIF) are based on decades-old technology from Knowledge Representation and Databases, and there has been for about 15 years a research community associated with this field that has studied what the "right way" to use these systems is. This field, which I will call "ontology engineering" for this talk, is concerned among other things with ontology quality and its impact. In this talk I will discuss research on characterizing ontology quality and measuring the impact of quality on knowledge-based systems.

* Subject Ontolog Mini-Series: "Database and Ontology" Kick-off Panel Session with Dr. Matthew West (Program Lead), Dr. Tatiana Malyuta and Dr. Leo Obrst * Date Thursday, October 12, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_10_12 * Session Abstract (by Matthew West) Broadly ontologies describe what exists. Databases hold facts about what exists. It is therefore not surprising that ontology can help in the design of databases by having the design match reality more closely. On the other hand ontologies are things about which we wish to hold information, and databases are powerful ways to store information so that it can be retrieved by many people, especially when there is structure to the information. Different databases will have their own, sometimes implicit, ontologies. Identifying and mapping between these ontologies is key to data integration. Finally, databases, whether for ontology tools or other applications, need to have a human interface. The use of ontology in design and implementation of the human computer interface can transform the utility of a system. This mini-series will explore these interactions, how ontologies and databases are mutually supportive, and identify the main issues people in these fields are grappling with. * Pertinent Issues we might explore during this and subsequent sessions: o 1. How does ontology improve database design? o 2. What is there beyond ontology in database design? o 3. How do you design a database to manage an ontology? o 4. What are the limitations of databases in supporting ontologies? o 5. How do you discover the ontology implicit in a database? o 6. How do you map between ontologies? o 7. How does ontology help with the design and implementation of human computer interfaces? o 8. What are the key challenges in developing human computer interfaces using ontologies? * Talk Titles and Abstracts: ** Improving Database utilization with Ontology - Dr. Tatiana Malyuta Abstract: Databases do not provide open and explicit descriptions of data semantics. This prevents efficient, qualitative, and automated data utilization. Ontology, as an open and standard semantics provider, can help in resolving the problems of data utilization. Issues of building a productive relationship between Ontology and Database are discussed. ** Ontologies and Databases: Similarities and Differences - Dr. Leo Obrst Abstract: Ontologies and databases have much in common, but there are many differences too. Databases focus on local semantics that have only aspects of the real world, typically keep that semantics implicit, use logic structurally, and their schemas are not generally reusable. Ontologies focus on global semantics of the real world, make that semantics explicit and machine interpretable by using a logic-based modeling language, and are reusable as true models of a portion of the world. ** Ontology in Database Design - Dr. Matthew West Abstract: Databases hold information. The information is about things. What things there are is at the heart of ontology. Some key concerns of database design, and how ontology can help are presented.

* Subject Professor Alan Rector from the University of Manchester (UK) presents: "Terminologies and Ontologies: What are they for? What would it mean to QA an ontology (specifically in healthcare?)" * Date Thursday, September 14, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_09_14 * Abstract (by Alan Rector) Terminologies and 'Ontologies' serve several disparate purposes: o Providing a controlled vocabulary and/or standard set of identifiers o Providing a means of browsing and finding appropriate vocabulary or identifiers o Providing the linguistic terms - synonyms, translations, etc.. - to go with the controlled vocabulary o Cross mapping and translation between different systems o Providing logical criteria which can be used for inference and query expansion o Providing additional 'universal' or intrinsic information about the entities involved o Serving as an index for other background knowledge and resources Most current biomedical ontologies serve primarily the first three functions, with varying efforts towards formal logical criteria. However, there are aspirations, and sometimes claims, for more rigorous functions, and many standardisation efforts pre-suppose more and more formal structure. Each of these functions implies criteria for quality assurance. For example, for managing controlled vocabularies, process issues such as version control and coverage are most critical. Browsing raises issues of human computer interaction, and language raises its own issues. The last three all require a degree of logical coherence and rigour. In addition to many biomedical ontologies, scaling is critical. Biomedical ontologies are large and potentially combinatorially explosive. For some applications, small enumerated terminologies are sufficient. For others, indefinitely large compositional ontologies that cannot, in principle, be pre-enumerated are required. Finally almost all ontologies are based on many poorly articulated assumptions. Any quality assurance methodology must take account both of what can be understood independent of consultation with the originators and what conclusions can be reached after consultation with the originators. Overall we propose an approach to quality along two dimensions - process and content - and a two stage process - the first independent of consultation with the originating authority, the second in consultation with the originating authority.

* Subject Dr. York Sure, Assistant Professor at the Institute AIFB of the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) and currently visiting researcher at Stanford University (USA), presents to the community his talk entitled: "What does Sparkling Wine have to do with Semantics?" * Date Thursday, August 17, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_08_17 * Abstract (by York Sure) In this talk recent advances of semantic knowledge technologies are presented. Tangible results, both in the area of technology such as the Semantic Media Wiki and the area of ontology engineering methodologies such as cost estimation for ontologies, are highlighted. The results are put in a wider perspective to give an overview of currently ongoing projects in the EU. Of course, an answer to the question posed in the title will be given as well.

* Subject Co-Moderators Mr. Duane Nickull (Adobe) and Mr. Rex Brooks (Starbourne Communications), SOA experts themselves, put together a very knowledgeable panel that included Mr. Ron Schmelzer (Zapthink), Dr. Ken Laskey (MITRE) and Ms. Rebekah Metz (Booz Allen Hamilton), and together with a great group of participants, explored the role of ontologies and taxonomies in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) designs and applications. * Date Thursday, August 10, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_08_10 * Abstract (by Duane Nickull and Rex Brooks) To explore what role ontologies and taxonomies play within a service oriented architecture environment. Ontologies and taxonomies can be employed in service oriented environments in numerous ways, through ontologies of domains, for instance health informatics or plastics manufacturing, or taxonomies of services or service categories within domains, so we want to explore how ontologies and taxonomies can improve the availability and performance of services in these roles. 3 guest speakers will each bring a unique perspective on the topic and speak for 10 minutes followed by a quick Q-and-A. After the final session, a longer group Q-and-A and discussion will take place among all participants in the session.

* Subject Dr. Patrick Cassidy from MITRE was the Ontolog Forum invited speaker for our Thursday, July 13, 2006 session. He presented a talk on: "Defining Vocabularies, Ontological and Linguistic: A Tool for Ontologizing Ontolog" explaining the position of the formal upper ontology and its role in semantic interoperability, and proposes the use of a controlled "Linguistic Defining Vocabulary" that the community may find useful immediately in the task of ontologizing the Ontolog, or similar bodies of knowledge. * Date Thursday, July 13, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_07_13 * Abstract (by Pat Cassidy) For over ten years, study groups have been exploring the potential for broad agreement on a common upper ontology as a tool for semantic interoperability. The vision of how the upper ontology will enable semantic interoperability is usually stated in terms of unifying the semantics of multiple databases, or mapping multiple domain ontologies through a common upper ontology or interlingua. This talk will describe how utility of the upper ontology for semantic integration goes beyond these scenarios, and will propose the use of an upper ontology in a way that may immediately affect the task of ontologizing the Ontolog, or similar bodies of knowledge. What I will propose in this talk is that the development of the Common Semantic Model (COSMO), an upper ontology being developed within the Ontology and Taxonomy Coordinating Working Group (ONTACWG), should be pursued in parallel with development of a natural-language interface integrating the COSMO with an English defining vocabulary. A starting version of the English defining vocabulary is available as the Longmans' defining vocabulary, used in the LDOCE dictionary. The COSMO should then be developed so as to support creation of the logical specifications corresponding to any term definitions created using the English defining vocabulary.

* Subject Dr. E. Michael Maximilien from IBM Research organized and moderated our scheduled discussion on: "Ontologizing the Ontolog Body of Knowledge - Discussion Session-2 - Tools, Techniques, and Approaches Panel Discussion". Invited panelists included Dr. John 'Boz' Handy-Bosma (IBM Global Services), Mr. PeterMika (Free University, Amsterdam, Netherlands), Mr. Conor Shankey (Visual Knowledge) and Mr. W. Scott Spangler (IBM Research) * Date Thursday, July 6, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_07_06 * Abstract (by E. M. Maximilien) In this panel we want to investigate tools, techniques, and approaches that can help us in the task of ontologizing the rich semantic conetnt of the Ontolog Forum. In particular we would like to cover: o (1) Tools to create formal and semi-formal knowledge representation (KR), e.g., OWL, Protege, and so on; o (2) Tools and services to create free-form annotations of contents, e.g., deli.cio.us, Flykr, and others, resulting in folksonomies; o (3) Research, techniques, and tools (if any) to help make sense of resulting folksonomies and ontologies; o (4) Automated techniques, tools, and research approaches to mine structure in unstructured text such as the ONTOLOG Wiki, e.g., UIMA, podzinger.com for podcast to text translation, and others; and o (5) Semantically-rich next generation collaborative platforms, e.g. semantic Wikis or other emerging web 2.0 tools.

* Subject Dr. Timothy Redmond from Stanford Medical Informatics was the invited speaker for our Thursday, June 29, 2006 session. He presented a talk on: "Developing Applications in Protege: The Protege Plugin Architecture" for those of us in the community who are, or are planning to, develop ontology-based applications. * Date Thursday, June 29, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_06_29 * Abstract (by Tim Redmond) Protege is a very popular ontology editor. In addition to its capabilities as a simple application for viewing and editing ontologies, it also boasts a highly flexible plugin architecture and a rich knowledge base application interface. In this talk we will describe approaches for developing graphical plugins embedded in the Protege graphical interface and to develop standalone applications based on the Protege knowledge base application interface.

* Subject Dr. Matthew West, Reference Data Architecture and Standards Manager of Shell International Petroleum Company Limited (London, UK), and one of the authors of the ISO 18876 specifications, will be presenting to the community his talk entitled: "Integrating Data or Ontologies - A look at the ISO 18876 Architecture" * Date Thursday, June 1, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_06_01 * Abstract (by Matthew West) How do you do integration in practice? What are the steps you need to take? What are the things that are often overlooked? This talk will introduce the ISO 18876 integration architecture which sets out the key elements to successful integration of ontologies or data.

* Subject Dr. David Ferrucci, a Sr. Manager from IBM's T.J.Watson Research Center and the Chief Architect for UIMA, presents his talk entitled: "Putting the Semantics in the Semantic Web: An overview of UIMA and its role in Accelerating the Semantic Revolution" * Date Thursday, May 11, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_05_11 * Abstract (by David Ferrucci) The dream of the semantic web as well as the future of information and knowledge management applications will rely on the rapid and massive explication of intended meaning (i.e., semantics) in unstructured information sources (e.g, text documents, video, speech etc). This talk will discuss the importance of embracing and deploying automatic semantic discovery, in spite of less that perfect accuracy, to help enable the semantic web, as well as an emerging class of advanced search applications we refer to a Knowledge Gathering and Synthesis applications. It will introduce IBM's recent contribution of UIMA (http://www.ibm.com/research/uima ) to the open-source community and discuss how this work will help accelerate the production and application of automated semantic discovery.

* Subject Mr. Adam Cheyer from SRI International presents his talk entitled: "Ontology Management in CALO, a Cognitive Assistant that Learns and Organizes" * Date Thursday, May 4, 2006 * ONTOLOG forum Wiki page details http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_05_04 * Abstract (by Adam Cheyer) CALO is one of DARPA's most ambitious efforts to develop a persistent assistant that lives with, learns from, and supports users in managing the complexities of their daily work lives. A multi-year project that unites some 200+ researchers from 25 academic and commercial organizations, the goal is to produce a single system where learning happens "in vivo", inside an ever-evolving agent that can observe, comprehend, reason, anticipate, act, and communicate. In this talk, we will first provide an overview of CALO: the what, the how, the why. Next, we will discuss the engineering methods we use to develop and maintain the ontology of CALO. CALO has some unusual requirements, such as "Concept Learning" where the ontology is extended and modified "in-the-wild" by machine learning algorithms. Finally, we will demonstrate IRIS, a semantic desktop that serves as the office environment that integrates best with CALO. IRIS leverages many of CALO's techniques to ontology management, and being open source, provides a distributable, transparent example of the approach.

* Subject Mr. Jack Park (SRI) and Dr. Patrick Durusau (INCITS/V1) presents to the community their talk entitled: "Avoiding Hobson's Choice In Choosing An Ontology" * Date Thursday, April 27, 2006 * ONTOLOG forum Wiki page details http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_04_27 * Abstract (by Jack Park and Patrick Durusau) Most users of ontologies have either participated in the development of the ontology they use and/or have used it for such a period of time that they have taken ownership of it. Like a hand that grows to fit a tool, users grow comfortable with "their" ontology and can use another only with difficulty and possibly high error rates. When agencies discuss sharing information, the tendency is to offer other participants a "Hobson's Choice" of ontologies. "Of course we will use ontology X." which just happens to be the ontology of the speaker. Others make similar offers. Much discussion follows. But not very often effective integration of information. In all fairness to the imagined participants in such a discussion, unfamiliar ontologies can lead to errors and/or misunderstandings that may actually impede the interchange, pardon, the accurate interchange information. Super-ontologies don't help much when they lack the granularity needed for real tasks and simply put off the day of reckoning when actual data has to move between agencies. The Topic Maps Reference Model is a paradigm for constructing a mapping of ontologies that enables users to use "their" ontologies while integrating information that may have originated in ontologies that are completely foreign or even unknown to the user. Such mappings can support full auditing of the process of integrating information to enable users to develop a high degree of confidence in the mapping. Topic maps rely upon the fact that every part of an ontology is in fact representing a subject. And the subject that is being represented is known from the properties of those representatives. Such representatives are called subject proxies in the Topic Maps Reference Model. Those properties are used as the basis for determining when two or more subject proxies represent the same subject. Information from two or more representatives of the same subject can be merged together, providing users with information about a subject that may not have been known in their ontology. Park and Durusau explore the philosophical, theoretical and practical steps needed to avoid a Hobson's Choice in ontology discussions and to use the Topic Maps Reference Model to effectively integrate information with a high degree of confidence in the results. All while enabling users to use the ontology that is most familiar and comfortable for them.

* Subject Ontologizing the Ontolog Body of Knowledge - Discussion Session 1 - Framing the Issues, Requirements and Approach - moderated by Dr. Denise Bedford (World Bank) on 04/20/2006. The session was opens with a panel that included Ms. Lisa Colvin (Genentech), Mr. Patrick Heinig (EPA), Dr. E. Michael Maximilien (IBM), Dr. Bob Smith (California State U / Tall Tree Labs) and Mr. Peter Yim (Ontolog / CIM3) * Date Thursday, April 20, 2006 * ONTOLOG forum Wiki link http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_04_20 * Abstract (by Denise Bedford) The Ontolog community is strategizing how to develop a baseline ontology to represent the entities, relationships and uses of content. The purpose of this ontology is to support the needs and uses of any members of the Ontolog Community. The intent is to provide a foundation upon which any member of the community could apply additional functionality or transform content into other ontology models. By content, we include the community of people, their work and expertise; all electronic archives and content created in and published via the wiki, and information that is referenced by the community members such as standards, reference models, meeting announcements and reports. We will discuss, in this session, how we should frame the issues, establish our requirements and to go about approaching this task of 'ontologizing' the Ontolog content.