[topicmapmail] RE: sense making

[Paul Prueitt]

Sam,

I suggest that humor is wonderful, but when used to deflect an important
issue it can bring great sadness.

The "so what!" to Godel is typical of the response made by most who should
know better.

The creators of the standards for topic maps should know better, and take
the time to get the relevance of Godel right.  (My opinion).  Else the
questions: Why not just use XML with RDF?  Why have non-addressable
subjects?

So, things can be culled to simply this:

Either Godel's theorem is not relevant really in any important way or the
theorem provides a core reason why formal systems (of all kinds - not just
arithmetic) fail to model the knowledge processes in individual humans
and/or social units.

The proposition that I make, and that the literature that I cite makes, is
that the Godel theorem is one of many clear indications as to why there is a
fundamental mismatch between any complete formalization an the types of
knowledge representation that topic maps claims to attempt to get leverage
on.

Of course the issue is the relationship between formal completeness and
formal consistency, and the nature of explanatory cohesiveness (Paul
Thagard, Paul Smolinsky) in the way that human participate in communicative
acts.

So yes, making fun of things and expressing humor is nice.  I do hope no one
feels that I am not also a human who expresses humor and is social.  So
seriousness of thought in this regards perhaps should just be forgiven.  I
will not press the point, but rather have patience - as Steven advised - and
look to the long term.

I have more precisely stated the position at:

http://www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/kmbook/Chapter2.htm

and a more general theory at:

http://www.bcngroup.org/area3/pprueitt/kmbook/Chapter1.htm

but this really is difficult to take in if one is reading it for the first
time.  The difficulty is not intrinsic, I claim, but rather like multiplying
7 * 8.  It is difficult until one learns it.