In this post, I’d like to provide a preliminary discussion for the SCOR General Meeting on September 25th. While there are several issues that we must tackle in order to advance SCOR, I believe that there is a common thread running through them: how to put ontologies to work. As you can see on the Work page, the outputs of SCOR have largely been theoretical or foundational up to date. This is not surprising, in light of the fact that SCOR was launched predominantly by philosophers.
However, it will be a crucial step for SCOR to effectively implement ontologies. In particular, ontologies are expected to address the problem of lacking semantic interoperability in information systems. This point has, in fact, been made — somewhat provocatively — in the following 2020 editorial of the journal Applied Ontology:
At an even higher level, applied ontology is a branch of philosophy, where the philosophical principles are spelled out in formal terms and a general viewpoint of reality is captured in logical forms.
However […] Applied ontology is not just (philosophical) ontology and is not just conceptual clarity. Applied ontology has been thought as a solution to scientific problems. As such, it must be a scientific enterprise. [1, p. 246]
We believe that success in applied ontology must be understood as a scientific, not a philosophical term. Success of an ontology means that with it knowledge is correctly modeled (both practically and philosophically) and that superiority is verified via practical comparisons in the domain. [1, p. 248]
Although we don’t need to agree with every claim in these excerpts, it cannot be denied that SCOR must pave the way for “practical comparisons in the domain” to support knowledge modeling that is both philosophically well-founded and practically useful. Indeed, I believe that SCOR has a huge potential to do so, as SCOR members include not only philosophers but also a wide diversity of people, including information/data scientists and those from the private sector — which creates a unique environment for bridging theoretical foundations with real-world applications.
But how can we put ontologies to work? Some insights can be found in the editorial of the FOIS 2018 proceedings:
From the practical viewpoint, there is no doubt of the value of ontology modeling based on philosophical principles. However, it is clear that this approach raises several problems. One of them is the entrance barrier for newcomers: formal ontologies based on principles are hard to understand in particular because some of the concepts and foundations, and their implications, appear to be difficult to grasp without a substantial background in their underpinnings. Another related problem is the high cost in terms of time and expertise that managing and reusing such modeling systems require. These ontologies are prohibitive to adapt (e.g. integrating specialized modules, pruning irrelevant parts, adding new stakeholders’ views) in many contexts where there are time constraints and specialized personnel is not available. [2, p. 6]
While acknowledging “the value of ontology modeling based on philosophical principles” (as we discussed in the kick-off event in February), we should ask ourselves the following: How can we lower the “entrance barrier for newcomers” to the SCOR community? How can we address the “high cost in terms of time and expertise”?
Regarding both questions, I have two ideas in mind for now. The first is to develop a strong use case for ontologies originating from SCOR, as this will help domain experts understand their practical value and encourage them to invest time and resources into ontology development. We have not yet established such a use case. The second idea is to provide accessible opportunities for learning about ontologies, particularly for people from the private sector. A good example of this is the ongoing series of SCOR online seminars and courses on formal ontology in Neuchâtel. However, this alone is not enough.
What are your thoughts on these points? I look forward to discussing them further in the general meeting this fall!
References
[1] Borgo S, Hitzler P, Shimizu C. Time is ripe to embrace the scientific approach in Applied Ontology. Applied Ontology. 2020;15(3):245-249. doi:10.3233/AO-200237
[2] Borgo S, Hitzler P. Some open issues after twenty years of formal ontology. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2018) (pp. 1-9). Amsterdam: IOS Press. doi:10.3233/978-1-61499-910-2-1