The Common Semantic Model What Why How Patrick

The Common Semantic Model What, Why, How? Patrick Cassidy MITRE Corporation* Presented at the Expedition Workshop Meeting January 24, 2006 NSF – Ballston, Virginia * NOTE: The author’s affiliation with The MITRE Corporation is provided for identification purposes only, and is not intended to convey or imply MITRE’s concurrence with, or support for, the positions, opinions or viewpoints expressed by the author.

COSMO: What is It? The Common Semantic Model (COSMO) is a basic set of ontology elements – classes, relations, functions, instances – similar to an upper ontology, intended to serve as the conceptual “defining vocabulary” that will permit specification of the meanings of any domain term or concept. It serves a function analogous to the “controlled defining vocabularies” used in some traditional dictionaries to define words.

COSMO: Why is it needed? • A Common set of defining concepts is necessary to permit domain concepts defined by different groups to be reusable for precise and consistent logical inference. The COSMO provides a common “vocabulary” with which to specify the meanings of concepts and terms. • Without a common standard of meaning, it is not possible to reliably reuse knowledge specifications among different groups for automated inference.

Who Needs a Common Semantic Model? • Any computer system that needs to accurately communicate conceptual information needs a language in common with the receiving system "Money is being spent on labs and hiring smart people who make products do unnatural acts together. ” Alan Shockley, manager of Enterprise Information Technology at EDS Estimated costs of lack of data interoperability nationwide is over 100 B/yr

What Does it Mean to “Specify the meaning of a term”? • “The biological mother of a person is a woman who has given birth to that person” • {{? Mother is. The. Biological. Mother. Of ? Child} implies. That (There. Exists {((exactly one) ? Event) and ((exactly one) ? Date)} such. That {{? Event isa Birth. Event} and {? Event occurred. On ? Date} and {? Mother is (The Mother in ? Event)} and {? Child is (The Baby in ? Event)} and {(The Birth. Date of ? Child) is ? Date}})}

The Integrating Function of the Common Semantic Model Generic. Obligation Same. As Obligation Duty

The Integrating Function of the Common Semantic Model – via Domain-level Mapping Generic. Obligation Same. As Duty

What A Common Semantic Model Isn’t ≠ A controlled vocabulary Each community can choose its own words to refer to concepts ≠ A mandated standard Users can use any common ontology or none, as their own needs dictate

Communities and Controlled Vocabularies • Whenever a community of interest or community of practice is sufficiently homogeneous to agree on a controlled vocabulary, that vocabulary can serve as a linguistic signature of a particular context, which will be helpful in machine interpretation of text documents. • i. e. , multiple controlled vocabularies are good things. The Common Semantic Model can specify the relations between terms in community vocabularies.

Concepts vs. Words Mathematical Theory � / | � � � / / � � � | / � � � | / � � Cat | / � � Ontological Theory Terminology “House” “Residential House” “Haus” “maison” “дом” House Siamese Axioms: (Every Cat has (( 4) Legs)) (Every House has ((at. Least 1) Door)) シャム猫 “Siamese” “Siamese feline” “Siamese Cat” “chat siamois” “Siamesische Katze”

Everybody Gets Everything They Want • Nobody has to stop doing anything they want to • Just learn the common defining language and use it when you want to communicate • It’s the job of the programmer to make it easy to learn and use

Definition Acceptance Hierarchy Executable Specification: Methods, Sequence, States is used in Quasi-2 nd Axiomatic Ontology: Order, Function Terms Open. Cyc SUMO DOLCE accepts Restricted FOL: OWL accepts Taxonomy/Thesaurus/Terminology

Methods? Isn’t Logic Enough? • Q: Is there anything that cannot be stated in quasi-2 nd order logic? If not, are methods necessary? • A: Perhaps not, but methods with sequential instruction execution are a very efficient way to control inferential explosions. Avoiding long unnecessary inferential paths will probably be essential for practical problems.

Contexts • Q: Isn’t context important? • A: Very. Existing ontologies have modules, contexts, or similar mechanisms (“microtheories”). More elaborate contextual reasoning may be necessary.

How Can a COSMO be Developed? • Within the ONTACWG: • http: //colab. cim 3. net/cgi-bin/wiki. pl? Ontology. Taxonomy. Coordinating. WG – 130 participants • Within the COSMO-WG: • http: //colab. cim 3. net/cgi-bin/wiki. pl? Cosmo. WG – 50 Participants • By construction and maintenance on the Wikis and the common web site: • http: //colab. cim 3. net/file/work/SICo. P/ontac/reference/

Any Other Possibilities? • Collaboration among Upper Ontology Custodians? – e. g. via an Upper Ontology Summit Proposed for March 25 th • (Watch this space)

What is Available So Far? • A Bare Taxonomy, a merger of parts of the top levels of Open. Cyc, SUMO, DOLCE, BFO, and ISO 15926 – Simple Indented list: – http: //colab. cim 3. net/cgi-bin/wiki. pl? Cosmo. WG/Top. Level 2 – OWL version: http: //colab. cim 3. net/file/work/SICo. P/ontac/reference/Protege. Ontologies/Top. Level 06. owl

What Formats Will be Supported? • Some variant of Common Logic – SKIF or IKL (? ) • quasi-second order with function terms • OWL-full(? )

How Will the COSMO be Tested? • OWL version – via a DL reasoner – e. g. Protege-OWL + Pellet • FOL version – via a FOL prover – e. g. Sigma. KEE using Vampire Incrementally, as ontology components are added

What Else is Needed? • A Good English-Language Interface – e. g. some Controlled English variant “Colonel Mustard killed Miss Scarlet in the Kitchen with a Knife” => {{“Colonel Mustard” killed “Miss Scarlet”}, (in the Kitchen) (using-i a Knife)}

Who is Paying for All This? • At present, No One (SICo. P support for Web Site) • Funding will be needed for a fullyfunctional COSMO with utilities and Demo Applications