[sc34wg3] What do we mean by reification?

[Murray Altheim]

Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
> * Patrick Durusau
> | 
> | So I have a subject, the topic map construct and I have a
> | topic. What I am missing is what is being gained by saying that is
> | reification versuse the more usual case of subjects and topics being
> | a relationship (in SAM terms)? Or perhaps better, what is lost by
> | saying both are reification?
> 
> I think we lose some clarity. If you tell people that a topic
> represents a subject they will immediately understand what you mean.
> If you tell them the topic reifies the subject you will have to
> explain what you mean by it, but you haven't gained anything by making
> things harder.  The simple word "representation" expresses equally
> well what is going on.
> 
> Further, reification is not used in the AI community the way we have
> used it in ISO 13250:2000/XTM 1.0. For example, Russell & Norvig say
> 
>   "Reification is the process of turning a predicate or function into
>   an object in the language."
> 
> This corresponds to what the SAM calls reification, which is basically
> a special case of the topic-represents-subject scenario, which I think
> we do need a special term for, and here we have one that was designed
> to say just this.

You lost me here.

Russell & Norvig's definition seems to match almost exactly with
the idea that a topic reifies a subject, i.e., turns something
in the "real world" into "an object in the language". I don't
see this as a conflict at all.

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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