Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Epistemology and ontology in core ontologies

exemplified by FOLaw and LRI-Core, two core ontologies for law

Joost Breuker

Rinke Hoekstra

Leibniz Center for LawUniversity of Amsterdam

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Leibniz (1647-1716)

“Once the characteristic numbers of most notions are determined, the human race will have a new kind of tool, a tool that will increase the power of the mind much more than optical lenses helped our eyes, a tool that will be as far superior to microscopes or telescopes as reason is to vision”

from: Philosophical Essays

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Leibniz on the slogan level defending ontologies?

“Once the characteristic numbers of most notions are determined, the human race will have a new kind of tool, a tool that will increase the power of the mind much more than optical lenses helped our eyes, a tool that will be as far superior to microscopes or telescopes as reason is to vision”

from: Philosophical Essays

“URI”

concepts

reasoning by“ars combinatorix”

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Overview

FOLaw as a `functional’ core ontology for law Epistemological promiscuity in ontologies LRI-Core: a clean(er) ontology for legal domains

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

FOLaw (Functional Ontology forLaw) (Valente, Breuker & Brouwer, 99)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

FOLaw’s views

Folaw does not follow the classical decomposition of legal domains in public/private law etc

Law as controlling social behaviour Legal reasoning follows this pattern as if it it simulates

the control model

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

FOLaw: normative reasoning

CASE

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

FOLaw: causal reasoning

What has happened?

Who did what? Who is to be blamed?

CASE

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Experiences with using FOLaw

conceptual model for an architecture for legal reasoning (ON-LINE)

template for information retrieval and legal question answering in about 10 legal domains/ 4 european projects

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

However, this is not an ontology….

This is an

EPISTEMOLOGICAL

FRAMEWORK

framework: structure of recurrent elements (= generic model)

epistemology: about valid reasoning message from the 80-ies (eg CommonKADS, etc):

“separate the domain knowledge from the reasoning”

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Then the question is:what is an

ONTOLOGY ?

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

what is an ONTOLOGY ?

Oh no!!!

not that again

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

…an ontology is?

`formal specification of conceptualization’ (Gruber 94) applies to any modelling!

“An ontology defines the terms used to describe and represent an area of knowledge” (Jeff Heflin, OWL-Use cases)

ontology: ”the theory or study of being as such; i.e., of the basic characteristics of all reality.” (Encyclopedia Brittanica)

in AI: `what is’ ≈> what we know me: an ontology defines the terms used to describe and

represent situations in the world

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

ontology of reasoning classes and its use in specifying a p.s.m.

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

….as a CommonKADS inference structure reflecting dependencies

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

OWL-S: an `ontology’ for web services

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Is mixing ontology with epistemology a problem?

Yes: It is not `clean’. They are reasoning frames by representing

reasoning dependencies between types of knowledge (partitions of knowledge bases); not classes (= concept definitions)

They limit reuse and interoperability of knowledge No:

Thin line between (functional) meaning and use of knowledge OWL (and other KR formalisms) allow the expression of both

IMPORTANT: frameworks are highly useful in reuse Library of Problem Solving Methods e.g. parametric

configuration Web services; OWL-S

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

FOLaw (functional ontology) (Valente, Breuker & Brouwer, 99)

domainontology

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

LRI-Core: a `clean’ core ontology for legal domains

Legal domain ontologies consist for > 90% of common sense knowledge

Recurring typical legal terms have still a strong common sense flavour (including terms for norms and legal responsibility)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

LRI-core ontology for law including CRIME.NL

mentalconcept

socialconcept

physicalconcept

physicalobject

physicalprocess

intention

mentalobject

agent normaction

legalaction

legalperson

legallyvalid norm

document

legalcode

role

crime Dutch penalcode

normativearticle

organization

judicialorganization

judge

responsibleperson

DPCarticle

criminalcourt

foundational (upper)foundational (upper)ontologyontology

legal core ontologylegal core ontology

legal domain ontology:legal domain ontology:(Dutch) criminal law(Dutch) criminal law

content

Is-aPart-of

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Common sense roots in foundation of LRI-Core

legal domains cover common sense intuitions about the physical, mental and social world

common sense is invariably implicit, because shared no `definitions’ `revisionary views’ in philosophy --> reality vs common sense naïve physics vs qualitative physics

needed: `evidence’ from psychological research• cognitive (development) psychology• evolutionary psychology• neuro-psychology• …anthropology…

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Major categories covered

physical world life mental world roles (= social world) abstract world

occurrences

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Principles from this view

Common sense is explained by an evolutionary view starting with animal `understanding’ and action primacy of physical world `domain specific inference engines’ (neural deficiencies)

Physical world: (re-)acting to physical change objects: relatively static

• classes/individuals/instances (entities)• individuals have identities; classes have not (<-> OntoClean)

processes: kinds of changes of objects• movement as primary change• no identity: occur in events… • many processes occur persistently (e.g. gravity) (<-> DOLCE)• classes/instances (events; equilibrium states)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

some further principles

humans vs/and other animals (mammals) intentional stance consciousness natural language: manipulation of symbols representing

• metaphors,• `reification’ (beliefs, etc.)

these all enable the development of worlds beyond the physical world mental world as a metaphor of physical world distinction between behavior and intended behavior

• roles creating abstract world (`form’) by metaphorizing `instincts’

about the physical world (eg: grasping entities of the same kind, counting, …) (Lakoff, 2002)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

…and a very basic principle…

Persistency or occurrence is not a property of any class; it is a property of

individuals (`life cycle’)

--> no endurant/perdurant distinction (<-> DOLCE)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

..however…

we need terms to refer to occurrences entities ((instances of) individual objects) events and states of entities situations and histories of entities causation as the glue between events

on the canvas of space and time (a 4D view…) spatial positions temporal moments ‘now’ appears to move by the arrow of time: existence of

objects as trajectories in space/time

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

five `worlds’ of concepts

physical world matter/energy --> object and process

life mental world

metaphor intentional stance communication

roles physical and social roles social organization

abstract occurence

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

physical world

basic `natural’ concepts: energy & matter basic defined concepts: physical object & process

both contain mixtures of energy & matter processes are changes

• transfer (changing positions)• changing value (quality; quantity)• transformation (changing type of process or object)

types of processes• mechanics: movement & support are core (cf senses & muscles)• thermo-dynamics: heat exchange• chemistry: mixing/changing substances

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

process and object

energymatter

processobject

heat

electricity

force

property

substance

transfer

quantity

form

size

aggregation

transformationchange-of-value

is-a

change-of-substance

mass

change

is-a

is-a

is-a

part-of

heat exchange

radiationmovement

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Between death, life and mind

Biology/life: Living physical objects: agents Processes initiated by agents: actions

Actions are intended (goal oriented vs causal) Awareness: communication actions (cf speech acts) Self awareness: reflection

Control over reasoning Modeling fellow agents Modeling discourse

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

the mental world as ametaphor of the physical world

mappings: energy --> emotion|motivation matter/substance --> thought/content (information) object ---> mental-object (concept,…)

• container ----> mind, memory process ---> mental-process (thinking, memorizing, …)

• process --> action mind/body `problem’:

person has mind; mind is container of mental entities action: will as `force’ NB: this naïve view is incorrect! (Wenger, 2003)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

roles

distinguishing between role and role taker: e.g. student - person

roles define complementary relations speaker-hearer, student - teacher these `complementary relations’ explain duty/rights relations in

legal theories roles are behavioural pre-scriptions

requirements for role taking (cf man taking `mother role’) norms, prescriptions

role performance may be assessed against role Bad cook, good cook, … violating legal norm

social organization: part-of structure of roles

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Conclusions

A guideline: do not not mix (epistemological) frameworks with ontologies

Modelling common-sense cannot be done by consulting experts, but by intuition & introspection :-( empirical evidence from cognitive science

Legal domains cover the full range of common sense worlds from the physical to the mental world

LRI-Core is under construction (OWL)…in a month a second release…

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

Leibniz’/Wilkins views on a “conceptual language”

The “conceptual dictionary,” in which words are arranged in groups by their meaning, had its first important exponent in Bishop John Wilkins, whose Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language was published in 1668.

Analyzing the mind's contents, drawing up tables of categories of all simple and complex ideas, then assigning a symbol to each of these, one could, it was thought, obtain a language which, eliminating the mediation of words, would be free of the ambiguity and uncertainty of human languages.

(The Dictionary of the History of Ideas: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/DicHist/dict.html)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

where it all happens:the world of occurrences

“And in order to understand how common sense works, there is nothing better than imagining “stories” in which people behave according to its dictates.” (Ecco, 99)

(semi-)Platonic view: ideas/concepts make up our understanding of what happens in the real world: understanding as constructing a model of a situation episodic vs semantic memory (psychology) Individuals vs Classes (A-Box/T-Box distinction) time and space as the referential canvas of situations and

events

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

the world of occurrences-1situation 1

structural (topological) descriptions of objects in space

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

the world of occurrences-2situation 2

inferred: time between situation1 and situation2

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

the world of occurrences-3events & states of objects

desk

floor

teapot

ball

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

break

collide

move/fall

T-2T-1

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

the world of occurrences-4identifying processes

desk

floor

ball

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

break

collide

move/fall

T-2

support

support

teapot

T-1

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

the world of occurrences-5identifying causation

desk

floor

ball

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

break

collide

move/fall

support

support

teapot

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

desk

floor

ball

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

move/fall

break

collide

move/fall

support

support

teapot

Why does thedesk not move?

•the world of occurrences-6limiting causal effects…

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

summary

identifying events by recognizing changes, which are viewed as instances of processes (-types) (cf causal-models,

Pearl, 2000)

identifying causation (= causal relations between events) identifying states as ongoing processes what happens to the forces (heat, energy,…) that are the

resources of processes (mental, qualitative simulation) (cf Michotte, 196x)

Joost Breuker

CORONT-WS/EKAW-04

An experiment

DIRECT

ONTOLOGIES

LRI-Core

extensions

CASEunrelated events/states

31

2

6

54 7

CASErelated events/states

31 2

65

4

7

temporal order