[humanmarkup-comment] Introduction for a Semiotic Application Proposal

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Title: Introduction for a Semiotic Application Proposal

(Note:  Except for Len's response to the introduction, I wrote this before I got the Wolfram book, and I had a telecon with a Web Services subcommittee this morning, so I finished this up, too at the same time, before jumping back into devouring Wolfram.)

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would provide an introduction to a new activity that Len has suggested, and which I support to a large extent. This is an experiment, to use his explanation of it to me in reply to my query as to whether he had reached a conclusion in his study of the conceptual framework of stratified complexity as put forward by Dr. Paul Prueitt, Ph.D. The experiment is to create an application, which to me, sounds like a semiotic communication application. The main point is to create a small footprint processor which uses strict definitions and interpretations of the semiotic concepts of sign, signal and symbol. In Len's words:

I want to propose a simple application  language for us to explore based purely on sign theory.  This  is just an experiment to see if an 80/20 sweet spot can  be hit with a simple language that could then be augmented  with namespaces.  In other words, what would it mean to  leave notions of inheritance behind and deal strictly  with aggregation?

len

I passed this introduction by Len, and he responded:

There's nothing wrong with that.   I want to explore a sign markup design because

it might have immediate utility.   Deriving from abstractions has a way of making people

think we are agreeing when we may not be.   A sign markup focuses or clarifies the

semiotic aspects but doesn't force us to enumerate codes.   It should just be a

very simple DTD or schema for classifying signs according to the traditional

semiotic types.   The utility of that would be the ability to take a system of

interpreters and assemble them according to their sign capabilities rather

than their sensory capabilities.  

This evolved out of the most recent discussions of the elements in our strawman base schema which began exploring processing of information as part of the Human Markup Language itself, as opposed to adhering to a language model consisting of solely a vocabulary.

However, while I support conducting this experiment, I do not believe that we need to do this to the exclusion of continuing to work on our Primary Base Schema. If the experiment proves out, and a simple application language can fill our needs, so be it. However...

My own opinion is that a semiotic processor is needed, and it makes sense for us to develop it, since it will improve the delivery of Human-Centric information both in terms of fidelity and in terms of clarity.

This is not related to my call for a subcommittee to study the need for a high-level ontological framework, but it could work with such framework since it seems to focus on the processing rather than the theory, unless I am reading this wrongly.

Yet, a word of caution is needed here at the beginning of this effort.

The caution is that we must remain open to the distinct possibility that this effort may well spin-off into its own technical committee, and, in fact, I want us to be ready to spin that effort off sooner rather than later because it is an effort rife with areas that are certain to engender conflicting opinions, and I don't want our effort, which has been characterized by the most unchaotic and unconflicted progress of any such group in my experience, to be fragmented as a result of this effort.

I am passing this by Len's eyes prior to posting because I want him to correct any misstatements which I make as I express some further introductory statements concerning this.

There are several aspects to this experiment which I am interested in refining.

One, since I have already expressed a preference for the DAML-OIL upper level ontology as a foundation, I am hoping that our experiment shows that it is a good idea to have an upper level ontology.  However, it is the worst possible methodology to have a predefined observation or conclusion you seek to validate. Please refer to HM.frameworks for what I mean by ontology.

Two, a marriage of autopoiesis:

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/t.quick/autopoiesis.html#observe

and semiotics:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem01.html

will actually have a much more widespread applicability than HumanMarkup, so our work may prove seminal to another effort, or spin-off into its own activity. It is particularly useful for organizing, accessing, and using data systems.

My thinking is more aligned with complex adaptive systems than stratified complexity, and my personal viewpoint falls short of accepting knowledge theory as a system that exhibits the attributes of cellular automata, which is what autopoesis, in confirming the necessity of "situatedness" of observer/observed posits. I really just want my biases understood in saying this.

If what I have said makes no sense to you, I suggest you have a lot of studying ahead of you. The terminology of this field sounds much more complex than the ideas themselves actually are. In essence, autopoiesis says that cognitive units (you, me, artificial agents) are units that are themselves part of the processes and made up of the same stuff as the processes which they observe. (This is the basic significance of "situatedness" and boils down to a conscious acceptance of and allowance for, uncertainty based on an observer's effect on the "observed." Think of the observer as the observer's own blind spot.)

Because cognitive "entities" are part of what they observe, they exhibit the attributes of cellular automata, and the entire field gets a bit more complex from that point. However, what it boils down to for us in our attempt to develop a semiotic processor, is to make clear what constitutes a sign, to what system, observer or observed, or combination thereof, it belongs, what constitutes a signal and how can we agree on what a signal means, i.e. what "message" is being sent, and what constitutes a symbol and what does a symbol stand in place of, i.e. what is the level of abstaction that the symbol characterizes. Lastly, can we construct a self-consistent system of clear signs, signals and symbols that operates to improve communication?

Again in Len's own words:

"(Reference to previous correspondence)... it isn't a bad model for understanding why multiple

observers get/have a different story.  See

http://www.csu.edu.au/ci/vol03/paper4/paper4.html

for a better explanation.  This in many ways is just behavioral cybernetics from the perspective
of biology.  In effect, emotions are not discrete  as much as they are a sum of various internal
systems creating an effect across the system.  That is pretty much what we said to begin with.

I've been harping from time to time on the  notion of 'observables' and these notions
work with that.  I want to focus on sign  systems because if our domain is human
communications, our task is to model the  gestures of that, first, and then only
by way of providing possible interpretations,  does the rest of the human modeling become
useful.

len

Hmmmn.

Ciao,

Rex

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