Reconciling ontological differences for intelligent agents

This discussion presents several alternative strategies for approaching the problem of semantic interoperability, based on recent projects to develop software agents and systems that attempt to reconcile ontological differences without explicit ontologies. The difficulties of reconciling explicit ontologies are discussed, and possibilities for meaning negotiation through implicit approaches are presented. To ground these ideas, two prototype systems are introduced that approach the issue of meaning negotiation without requiring the construction of formal ontologies.