[sc34wg3] Topics and Subjects clarification

[Nikita Ogievetsky]

I agree with Bernard on this.

--Nikita.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bernard Vatant" <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>
To: "SC34 WG3" <sc34wg3@isotopicmaps.org>
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 6:30 AM
Subject: [sc34wg3] Topics and Subjects clarification


> *Nikita
> > | So, I am a subject? Hmmm...
> > | I think that a subject is a mental proxy for an individual.
> > | And a topic is a computer proxy for a subject.
> > | So I am neither a subject nor a topic.
> > | However my subject is an instance of a subject
> > | and my topic is an instance of a topic.
>
> Agreed completely.
>
> *Lars Marius
> > I think this is a philosophical point of view that might have some
> > validity, but it doesn't fit very well with how topic maps have been
> > defined up to this point.
>
> Why? Nikita's viewpoint seems to me completely "orthodox" in Topic Maps
paradigm - at
> least as I always understood it.
>
> *Lars Marius
> > So far topic maps have said topics represent
> > subjects, and subjects are real-world things.
>
> I disagree completely with the assertion "subjects are real-world things".
It is
> restrictive, misleading and metaphysically biased, in the sense that it
supposes that
> real-world is divided into things *before* we speak about them, which is
obviously wrong.
> Definition of things is always ad hoc, arbitrary, and - in best cases -
agreed upon in a
> community through provisional consensus. In the worse and most frequent
cases,
> disagreement triggers religious wars. And BTW those wars are triggered
exactly because
> people confuse their subjects of conversation with real-world eternal
absolute things :o)
> Main tool to agree on how to divide the world into those arbitrary
"things" is
> conversation, that's why I always insisted that subjects are strictly
speaking "subjects
> of conversation" - they are created, agreed upon and maintained through
conversation.
>
> So we have to distinguish clearly those three levels
>
> 1 : Real world, whatever that means - and we really should not care
> 2 : Subjects (of conversation)
> 3 : Topics that formally represent subjects
>
> Topic Maps deal mainly with 3. They indicate also how the representation
process is made,
> so they deal with the link between 2 and 3. But they don't deal with the
structure of 2
> itself, and not at all with the link between 1 and 2, and even less with
1.
>
> Bernard
>
>
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