Re: [xtm-wg] Common Assumptions

[Jack Park <jackpark@verticalnet.com>]

It seems to me that merging TMs is about collective agreement with regard to
semantics.  Here, Murray makes reference to *all* components in topic maps
prior to merging.  Would *all* refer to all associations, roles, and so
forth prior to a merge process?

I tend to think that everything we claim to *know* -- that which we refer to
as *knowledge*, is gained by combinations of creative acts and social
interaction, which lead, ultimately, to what Doug Lenat calls *concensus
reality*.  We have choices in life.  We can follow the IEEE process of
philosophical engineering (term due to Henry Van Eiken), and amass scholars
for a project to top-down decide which environment (e.g. KIF) best suits the
needs of designing, again, top-down, an ontology we can all live with.  We
can follow a bottom-up, perhaps pragmatic approach and utilize public
structures to formulate dialogs which may lead to concensus reality.  In any
case, the XTM project has the look and feel of a top-down design project,
the work product of which will be an environment useful for sharing
representations of knowledge, no matter what you call it.

In some sense, I believe that the XTM project is on a path, one which leads
towards the support of common ontologies, whatever those might be. Those of
us who subscribe to the notion that concepts (topics, subjects) are, in many
respects, basins of attraction that serve the needs of many contexts, might
argue that XTM, itself, goes only part of the distance toward such an
outcome.  What interests me most is that our discussions here could benefit
greatly from using Bryan Thompson's implementation of IBIS as a mechanism
for casting pointed questions into a pool of critical discussion, leading,
perhaps, towards the concensus reality we all seek.

Some colleagues, like Murray, do not wish to advocate the requirement of
public ontologies, and others may feel that such entities are not possible.
I would argue that, by some definition, public ontologies are essential if
we wish to make the claim that we can merge topic maps. I believe that
Murray makes this case in his closing sentences below.  I would like to
advocate that the XTM project begin, in some sense, to acknowledge the fact
that our specification supports 'ontological engineering'. I would further
advocate that such acknowledgement open the door to deeper discussions
regarding the merging process itself.

Jack

From: Murray Altheim <altheim@eng.sun.com>

<snippage>
> Actually, I wasn't advocating the requirement of public ontologies, but
> that we address (in the specification) the issue of semantic agreement
> between *all* components in topic maps prior to merging, not just topics
> based on subject. As you point out, name-based merging requires that
> there be agreement on both name and scope, as well as what the scope
> provides semantically. While in the abstract this seems somewhat
> straightforward, I think it will be profoundly difficult to implement
> programmatically.
>
> For example, to return to ontologies and the like, it would be exceedingly
> valuable to map the relations between a common ontology like Cyc and the
> US Library of Congress subject headings, but I see no way to perform this
> via computer (at this time). The manual (ie., human) process of mapping
> over 320,000 subjects to terms in a similarly-sized ontology would be
> daunting at best, and would even then only serve to provide the map based
> on the context in which the human judged equivalence. This is a vexing
> problem that is only *highlighted* in this example, but shows up in every
> merge process.
>
> Murray



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