[topicmapmail] Proposal: Extending the Role of Occurrence Elements

[Murray Altheim]

rmorikaw@gmu.edu wrote:
> Carlo, You're suggestion looks correct to me - - of course I'm also 
> a novice in topic maps.
> 
> Per Tom and Murray's suggestions, I believe scopes are the best way 
> to characterize suspect or un-validated information.  I also have come
> arround to the view point that topic maps, as a semantic standard, 
> should remain stable (i.e. do what it is meant to do), vice attempting
> to modify it for specific purposes.  In this I fully agree with Murray's
> comment that I should attempt to work capabilities "on" vice "in" XTM.
> 
> I've concluded that, while topic maps represent a powerful paradigm 
> in providing semantics (much more than RDF), higher order logic still
> needs to exist on top of the topic map in order to perform some of the
> more sophisticated number crunching such as required using Bayes or 
> Belief nets.  The combination of a logic layer over the topic maps is
> good because there exists some real synergy between the two.  A logic
> layer may not care about all of the associations between topics; only
> about the associations that it is fed as inputs for its analysis.  On 
> the other hand, topic maps provide all of the associations within a 
> given paradigm or ontology of the topic map.  In other words, let 
> topic maps do what they do best.
> 
> If anyone has a different opinion, I'd be more than greatful to get your insights.

On the contrary, I strongly agree. One of the first things I tried to
do with XTM was to grab an existing ontology that had a basis in logic
and build a "minimal" topic map that represented the basic concepts of
first order logic. I used CycL as the ontology. I'm now taking part in
the Simplified Common Logic project with a mind to creating an XTM
Topic Map based on Common Logic.

...and letting Topic Maps do what they do best, but taking advantage
of the inherent graph structure to create an intermediate layer of
logic between the Topic Map graph and the actual TM application.

Murray

PS. I wonder if we might have your first name so we can address you in
email...
...........................................................................
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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