[sc34wg3] Topics and Subjects clarification

[Marc de Graauw]

I agree completely with everything you say here (except the suggestion that the
way things are represented in my mind would have any connection with the amount
of beer I have imbibed, which I find very hard to believe ;-)) And, like you, I
would be happy to stick with what ISO13250 says on subjects, which is plenty.

Marc


| > * Bernard
| > | 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.
|
| * Marc
| > I am not sure what this 'clarification' is Bernard. It certainly is not a
| > clarification of the way 'subject' is defined in 13250, XTM and SAM, because
| > you obviously disagree with what is said there.
|
| I agree with definition of subject in ISO13250.
| But not with reference to real-world in SAM, which is not employed in 13250,
| and not in XTM either, except last reference to it in Section 2. of XTM 1.0
that looks
| like a bug, because all others were removed.
|
| > You speak as if there were
| > an objective truth, accessible for everybody, on what subjects reallly are,
| > and that you are clarifying the notion of 'subject' by pointing at those
| > truths.
|
| Sorry if it looked that way. It's more a question of clarification of the
definition we
| stand on - always arbitrary - than of "truth".
|
| > I do not believe there is such a universally accepted notion of what
| > subjects are, and frankly I cannot believe you would actually believe that.
|
| Of course there is no and can't be any universal agreement on that, and that's
why we have
| to clearly state on which definition we stand, or which we don't accept.
|
| > So then apparently you are proposing to change the definition of 'subject'.
|
| No. To stick to the original one in ISO 13250, which is clearly "whatever the
topic map
| author has in mind when creating the topic" ... "regardless of whether it
exists".
|
| > When I use Topic Maps I do not want to commit myself to statements such as:
| > - It is false that the world is divided into things *before* we speak about
them.
|
|  ... Neither to the opposite "It is true that the world is divided ..."
|
| > I think ISO13250 did a reasonable job in saying as little as possible about
| > the 'real world' and the relation between it and Topic Maps, while realizing
| > one cannot say nothing on the issue.
|
| Sure. So don't mention it. That's my point.
|
| > I think a Topic Map standard should
| > bear as few philosophical implications as possible, and what you propose on
| > the issue does not fulfill that condition.
|
| Well "as few as possible" does not mean "none at all" ( remember Einstein's
"as simple as
| possible, but not simpler") ... you can't pretend to make a model of any kind
without
| standing on some philosophical principles, implicit or explicit, and I think
better to
| explicit them than assume there are none. I asked the same question in SUO
forum last
| year, "Don't you think building an upper ontology is culturally and
philosophically
| biased"? And I was answered by people-who-know-what-the-truth-is: "Why? First
Order Logic
| is beyond all cultural differences" ... well ... I flew away.
| I think we should avoid the same kind of arrogance, and not go as far as
pretending that
| topic map paradigm is beyond all philosophical views, and therefore can
support any one of
| them. Topic Maps do convey some philosophical principles that should be more
explicited -
| not as absolute "truth" of course, but as "axioms" - which is different. And
I'm pretty
| sure that some views of the world won't be supported by topic maps, because
they don't
| agree with those axioms. This is not a problem to me - every tool and
representation,
| however generic, has its limits - but my hunch is it might be a problem for
some people in
| this community, that really *believe* that *anything* can be expressed in
topic maps.
|
| > Lars and Marc are standing in the corner of the Ontopia booth at a major XML
| > conference, having a beer and are deeply engaged in discussion. Bernard
| > enters and asks: 'Well, what is the subject?'. Lars answers: 'Nikita'.
|
| Well ... "Nikita" in my mind is not necessarily the same subject than in
yours' or Lars' -
| depending among other things on how deep everyone is engaged in the beer :))
|
| Bernard
|
| _______________________________________________
| sc34wg3 mailing list
| sc34wg3@isotopicmaps.org
| http://www.isotopicmaps.org/mailman/listinfo/sc34wg3
|