Re: DQL ontology

From: pat hayes ([email protected])
Date: 08/20/02

  • Next message: tim finin: "Re: DQL ontology"
    >We're developing an environment in which agents that
    >communicate with the standard FIPA (http://fipa.org/) agent
    >communication language and protocols can use DAML+OIL as a
    >content language.  Our immediate applications involve agents
    >which provide event and calendar management related services
    >as part of our ongoing ITTALKS (http://ittalks.org/) system.
    >
    >One of our current implementations uses the Jess rules
    >engine to reason about DAML+OIL content (using an enhanced
    >and extended version of the DAMLJessKB), draw additional
    >domain and application appropriate inferences, make
    >decisions and perform actions.
    >
    >The FIPA ACL has a very simple query model (query-if and
    >query-ref) so we are trying to fit DQL into this framework
    >by adding a few new communicative acts (CAs), reusing
    >existing FIPA CAs as much as possible, and developing
    >appropriate FIPA protocols, specifying them in agent UML
    >(http://www.auml.org/).  Since have a working prototype,
    >we're anxious to use it to experiment with the DQL concepts.
    >
    >To this end, we've written an initial DAML Ontology for DQL queries
    >(http://userpages.umbc.edu/~anu1/DAML/DQLOntology.daml)
    >based on 01-DQL_spec_version2.html and are using this in our
    >prototype.
    
    Er..guys, I havnt looked at the details of this, and maybe I have 
    misunderstood what you are doing; but there seems to me to be 
    something fundamentally wrong with the very idea of having an 
    ontology for queries. Ontologies express assertions; they describe 
    things. Queries, in contrast, ask questions. A query is not an 
    assertion. In logical terms, assertions (ontologies) and queries are 
    on opposite ends of the sequent arrow. Querying is a different kind 
    of speech act from asserting. So an ontology of queries seems like an 
    oxymoron.
    
    To make the point in another way: suppose one does have an ontology 
    of queries, and I then use it to describe a query. OK, Ive described 
    a query. But I havnt thereby actually QUERIED anything: I havnt 
    expressed a request for information, or asked for something to be 
    proved, or requested that a knowledge-base server actually do 
    anything about it. All I have done is make another assertion, one 
    that says a query exists, in effect. But of course queries exist: 
    that doesnt need to be asserted.
    
    So my comment is that I fail to see what you think the point is of doing this.
    
    Comments?
    
    Pat Hayes
    
    PS. There is another technical reason why any such attempt to 
    describe what is essentially a piece of syntax in a language like 
    DAML is bound to be incomplete, which is that DAML simply doesn't 
    have the expressive resources to describe syntax adequately. Even 
    full first-order logic doesn't have enough, so DAML certainly does 
    not.
    
    
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