[topicmapmail] Making ontologies : RDF vs TM

[Lars Marius Garshol]

* Murray Altheim
|=20
| It was rather quickly discovered that these fixed categories didn't
| work very well for the real world, that almost nothing is *about* a
| single subject, that the whole idea of "about" is very
| context-based.  So when in computing, say as in RDF, we see
| "rdf:about", or in Topic Maps we see "subjectIndicatorRef", we
| should be very suspicious, or at least very careful. Nothing has or
| is just one subject. The statement of subject-hood is contextual.

I think you are right that the notion of single, absolute, discrete,
and objective subjects is very dubious, and in fact it was Bernard who
persuaded me that this is the case way back in Orlando in 2001. He has
been talking about this for a long time, and I think he is right.

However, the question isn't really whether the notion is valid or not,
or whether it applies in the way we think it applies, but whether we
can make it work. If my IT system works the way I want it to, then who
cares, really, if it fails to be an exact model of the "real" world?

Ann had an interesting insight about this at the reference model
workshop in Montr=E9al this August, which was that if one didn't do any
merging of topics up front, one could apply different theories of
subject identity to them at will, which are effectively equivalence
relations that form one equivalence class for each (hypothesized)
subject. (This is my understanding of it; hers may differ. :)

I thought this a very interesting idea, and one that I think in part
overcomes this problem. I'm not sure where it will go and what will
happen to it, but for me this clarified a number of things.
=20
| (I use Topic Map termino- logy here because I am also emphasizing
| that I think we can still use Topic Map technology to do information
| or "knowledge" modeling; we just need to alter our approach a bit
| when talking about subject identity.)

How do you think we need to alter our approach? (I'm asking because I
couldn't find an explanation of this in your email. Which is not to
say it may not have been there. :-)
=20
| The problem is that almost the entirety of western culture is built
| upon thousands of years of thinking about things as subjects, as
| categories, as identifiable "types", when I believe reality is
| telling us otherwise.

I agree.

| My feeling is that it isn't crackable, that we'll never have any
| kind of universal ontology because there are almost no shared
| universals amongst all people.=20

I agree again.

--=20
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
GSM: +47 98 21 55 50                  <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >