Against Idiosynchrasy in Ontology Development by Barry Smith

…and responses from Matthew West

Discussion on

Barry Smith- Julian Park Distinguished Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the

University at Buffalo

- Research Director of the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS).

- Smith’s current research focus is ontology and its applications in biomedicine and biomedical informatics, where he is working on a variety of projects relating to biomedical terminologies and electronic health records.

Source: http://org.buffalo.edu/rarp/smith_vita.html

Matthew West

If Tim Berners-Lee is the father of the internet, you could say Matthew West is the father of

ISO15926 (at least Part 2)

- Worked for Shell between 1978 and 2008

- Much of his work has been in the development of standards for information management (particularly engineering)

- Has been involved in PISTEP, POSC Caesar, EPISTLE, ISO TC184/SC4, BSI AMT/4, IEEE-SUO, KnoW and ONTOLOG

Source: http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/

The “possible individuals”

Background

ISO 15926 as an Upper Ontology?- Matthew West co-authored a paper in 2007 proposing ISO 15926 be put forward as an upper ontology.

- From this perspective, Barry Smith argues against this idea by pointing out a number of ‘defects’ in the design of the data model, including:

- Terminological confusions

- Failure to adhere to sound ontology construction principles

What is all the fuss about?

A namespace is a class_of_arrangement_of_individual where the class_of_whole and class_of_part are members of class_of_information_representation and the part is the most significant part of the whole that is the namespace.

Source: ISO 15926-2

Example: ISO 15926-2 definition for namespace

• The terms comprising the taxonomy are domain independant

• Example terms:

• SingleValuedRelation (SUMO)

• Process (SUMO,DOLCE)

• Class_of_biological_matter (ISO 15926)

• ISO 15926 is sufficient to model multiple domains:

• Example domains:

• Information Management (Libraries, Museums)

• Engineering (Design, Construction)

• Operations and Maintenance

• Chemical, Medical, Physical systems…

So on the surface ISO 15926 could be considered as an Upper ontology

What makes an Ontology an Upper Ontology?

• According to Smith, ISO 15926 breaches a number of principles (both as an ontology and an upper ontology)

• The principal of openness

• As an ISO standard, people have to pay to get hold of the specifications comprising the standard

• The principle of intelligible definitions

• E.g. A class_of_cause_of_beginning_of_class_of_individual is a class_of_relationship that indicates that a member of a class_of_activity causes the beginning of a member of a class_of_individual.

• The principle of non-circularity

• E.g. An <integer_number> is an <arithmetic_number> that is an integer number.

Barry Smith’s Principals

• B.S. Response: On the issue of classes named class_of_X and class_of_class_of_X

• M.W. Response: The data model is a specification for the database to hold any extension to the ontology. Thus entity types are required for instances but not the X’s

• No useful tools available to map domain specific data to iso 15926

• M.W. concedes to a couple of minor issues

• Explanation missing in documentation

• Typo’s in documentation

• These seem to be the only ground that M.W. concedes, however for the rest M.W. stands by his standard

Response to Against Idiosyncrasy in Ontology Development

• Model elements created to suit implementation rather than purpose

• Complicated and confusing naming for entities and types

• E.g. class_of_cause_of_beginning_of_class_of_individual

• Deals with class and metaclass at the one modelling layer

• Definitions written using subjective wording

• Use EXPRESS diagrams that are mind-bogglingly confusing

• E.g. class of namespace!

• Design of standard is heavily influenced by implementation

• Basing design decisions to suit implementation language i.e. OWL

Why ISO 15926 is NOT an Upper Ontology

According to Smith, ISO 15926 is more like a coding scheme such as the Standard Algebraic Notation for Chess…which is not an ontology of chess.