[topicmapmail] Latest RM?

[Murray Altheim]

Jack Park wrote:
> When I posed thoughts greatly similar to those expressed below to The
> Steve, I got back an answer that greatly illuminated areas where my
> limited powers of comprehension were even more clouded. With luck, maybe
> Steve will see fit to forward his response to me to this list
> (preferably with actual email addresses deleted because the return
> address I use here is my "spam catcher" and what I use in generally
> private emails is different)..
> 
> There exists what I tend to think to be a closed world of high-powered
> intellectuals evolving the RM. I have managed, at times, to penetrate,
> if only for minutes, that world. I have done so by doing what I always
> do; I built a prototype assertion engine, which I call "Assertomat" and
> have used it as a means of generating hypotheses that probably have
> driven Steve and others to distraction. This illustration
> http://www.nexist.org/assertions/assert10.jpg is the diagram to which
> Murray refers below. I personally think that the RM represents the
> beginnings of a brilliant work. For it to get there from here, IMHO, it
> needs to articulate the rational behind each and every decision, and it
> needs concrete examples, not abstract ones.  I believe the RM will get
> there.

When Jack says that it "needs to articulate the rational behind each
and every decision", that to me simply states that there should be a
formal, mathematically-stated rational.

Since I made public my reservations about the RM, I should also say
that I share Jack's enthusiasm for where it is heading. When I said
that I thought that it was "heading into KR territory", that is
because quite a number of the relationship types in my opinion
look to be, and *should* be, based upon a logical core. And I should
also state that it would please me to no end if the RM *could* support
KR (I've been working towards that goal myself for several years now,
as some of you know).

When a loooonnnng time ago I was playing around with Cyc-in-XTM, I
saw glimmerings of that core, and wrote several prototype topic maps,
subsets of the Cyc upper ontology based on a CycL parser hack I wrote,
basically a Topic Map supporting First Order Logic. Now, I see those
same glimmerings in the Common Logic work being carried out by John
Sowa, Pat Hayes, and others. Now, I wouldn't actually recommend
travelling to that territory... yet. But that shouldn't stop us from
developing the RM based upon a firm mathematical foundation. I'm in
the process of trying to round up some help in this regard, if those
writing the RM are interested and/or listening.

Murray

......................................................................
Murray Altheim                    http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/murray/
Knowledge Media Institute
The Open University, Milton Keynes, Bucks, MK7 6AA, UK               .

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