State-centric methodology of ontology engineering
Riichiro Mizoguchi
Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST)
While working on ontology engineering for about 25 years, I think I unconsciously acquired my own methodology of ontology engineering. It is what I call “State-centric” methodology. My background is AI and Engineering rather than logic or philosophy and it must have been driving me to understand the reality in terms of state which is the heart of General Problem Solver (GPS). All my papers on roles, functions, processes/events and causation published in Applied Ontology clearly show the utility of the state-centric methodology. My treatment of context seems rather unique, since I claim any object as a whole provides its parts with a context in which each of them plays the assigned role to make their collection to be a unitary whole. The notion of a non-intentional goal together with the systemic context as its concretization works very well to capture temporal entities. The success of unified definition of biological and artifact functions is largely based on this idea. Device ontology which I have devised for enabling to capture dynamic and complex phenomena in a consistent manner has been exploited in many of my work on function. It is a role assignment system and fully state-centric. In my recent work on causation, I’ve realized that any causation C->E can be mapped onto a function in which E is a non-intentional goal in the systemic context associated with C->E. The new functional talk of causation is fully state-centric which contrasts with the common idea that state should be excluded from the relata of causation. I found the essence of causation exists in an occurrent in the form of <Event cause State> where State is the resultant state of the Event. In my talk, I will discuss the state-centric methodology through typical achievements on roles, function, processes/events and causation.
Riichiro MIZOGUCHI received Ph.D. degree from Osaka University in 1977. He had been a full professor of the Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, Osaka University from 1990 to 2012 and is currently a research professor of Research Center for Service Science, Japan
Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST). His research interests include Non-parametric data analyses, Knowledge-based systems, Ontological engineering and Intelligent learning support systems. Dr. Mizoguchi was President of International AI in Education Society and Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education from 2001 to 2003 and President of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI) from 2005-2007. He received honorable mention for the Pattern Recognition Society Award, Best paper award of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers, 10th Anniversary Memorial Paper
Award of JSAI, Best paper award of ICCE99, Okawa Prize (Ontological Engineering), Best paper award of JSAI, Best paper award of ICCE2006, and Best paper award of Japan Society for Information and Systems in Education, Best paper award of JSAI in 1985, 1988, 1996, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2006, 2010 and 2012, respectively. He was Vice-President of SWSA (Semantic Web Science Association) and Co-Editor-in-Chief of J. of Web Semantics from 2005 to 2009 and from 2008 to 2011, respectively. He is currently associate editors of ACM TiiS and an editorial member of Applied Ontology.