New paths for subject identity? RE: [topicmapmail] Making ontologies : RDF vs TM

[Murray Altheim]

jackpark wrote:
> I like this thread.  Way down below, Murray is seen to have
> stated: "Nothing has or is just one subject".
> 
> But, we have come to accept that there is a "one subject:
> one topic" correspondence, driving the urge to merge.

You may feel that way, but I don't think there's any evidence
epistemologically that would support that claim. It is itself
an assertion. In the context of Topic Maps there still may be
very useful ways of dealing with knowledge modelling that
work very well as currently designed, because the fundamental
issues of subject identity within Topic Maps (or indeed, any
knowledge modelling) are not being challenged here, as within
the context of a specific Topic Map we have an implied
agreement about the context and associated meanings of the
Topics and Associations contained within. It's a form of
agreed-upon communication. If one agrees with the assumed
premises (the ontological commitments) everything works just
fine. It's when things get shared outside of the original
context, or when parties use that Topic Map without the
awareness or acceptance of those commitments that we begin to
have real problems.

> How to reconcile, if, indeed, reconcilliation is necessary,
> a perceived tension between what Murray says and what we
> accept as a central dogma of topic mapping?  Consider a
> shoe, maybe a particular shoe. Yup. That shoe constitutes
> the concept implied by "nothing" (interpreted to mean: "no
> thing" or "no concept"). But, there is a plethora of
> subjects that can be raised around that shoe (subject),
> thus, associations. So, on the hunch that Murray states a
> fundamental truth, that no concept can have or be just one
> subject (not sure I care much for that wording), that,
> reworded, any concept can be associated with many subjects,
> then, where's the beef?

There's a big difference between the idea that there is a
fundamental subject and the idea that a Topic Map is simply
a form of communication. When you and I sit around and talk
about shoes as a subject, we don't define the boundaries of
what is or isn't a shoe. For the purposes of our conversation
we have a shared understanding. When pressed, we could not
firmly define "shoe" in a way that would satisfy everyone.
Furthermore, our discussion of specific shoes (as well as
our contextualized idea of "shoe") are occurring within the
context of the two of us and our particular conversation.
Should we carry on a conversation in several years, our ideas
of what constitutes a shoe may have changed, or the conversation
itself might be occurring in a different context (e.g., we might
be talking dress shoes vs. running shoes, or perhaps we're at
a horse race).

> Bernard raises this quotation in the context of a
> fundamental argument that (and this is my interpretation of
> what Bernard is doing; your mileage may vary), the XTM use
> of a PSI might be flawed because subjectness is thought to
> be contextually sensitive. Ok. My interpretation could be
> way off base here; I'm trying sensemaking in a really
> complex domain using two-dimensional thought processes.
> Ignoring that possibility and forging ahead, I don't see
> any beef. One topic, one subject. Issue is identity.

Think of a Topic Map as a form of communication between an
author and their audience. It's contextualized already by
it *being* a form of communication, not a statement of some
kind of universal.

> Issue is identity, and that's where I think that the Steve
> Newcomb approach to disclosure of identity rules starts to
> make sense. Yup. Identity really is context sensitive, and,
> again, my interpretation at work here, the TMRM permits the
> derivation of identity through scoped assertions, as
> addressed in the required disclosures. Maybe there's a
> better way to accomplish the implementation of
> context-sensitive identification of subjects, or at least,
> maybe there's a different way. But, the TMRM, in my view,
> seems to want to address this particular issue directly.

I'm not sure bringing in new language is either necessary of
efficacious. What does "scoped assertion" mean such that it
is any fundamental way different from "contextualized
association"? Really? Let's just talk in plain English. And
as for "required disclosures", I'd challenge that as a
recursively impossible task, like trying to canonically define
something by looking at a dictionary definition, then at each
of the words used in that definition, ad infinitum...

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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