Re: an example ontology

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Message-id: <9208251610.AA11457@hpai07.isi.edu>
To: neches@ISI.EDU
Cc: Gruber@sumex-aim.stanford.edu, srkb@ISI.EDU
Reply-To: johnson@ISI.EDU
Subject: Re: an example ontology 
In-reply-to: Your message of Mon, 24 Aug 92 20:47:41 -0700.
             <199208250348.AA13430@quark.isi.edu> 
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 92 09:10:29 PDT
From: Lewis Johnson <johnson@ISI.EDU>

Bob Neches writes:

  The models underlying each of the individual to-be-merged
  models may well ignore some real-world complexity.

I think it's worth emphasizing that ALL models ignore some
real-world complexity.  That's what modeling is all about. 
It's not a shortcoming of existing models but an essential
characteristic of them.

Different models are appropriate for different tasks.  A
model that captures complexity relevant to all tasks will
probably be appropriate for no task.

Instead of trying to come up with models that everyone can
agree upon, it seems to me to be more worthwhile to come up
with families of related models, and a framework that
enables agents employing different models to communicate.

Lewis Johnson