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Subject: Re: [topicmaps-comment] Notions have existence .....
A brief tupennorth on this debate: abstract objects are useful whether they're real or not; subjectIdentity elements are useful either way; beware technical solutions to non-technical problems. [This is not intended to be a response solely to SRN's post, even though it looks that way] Steven R. Newcomb: > Maybe I've been > brainwashed by 2,400 years of thinking based on Plato's > ideas. On the other hand, maybe Plato and I have > simply had the same unshakeable intuition that every > idea is necessarily unique, has identity, and exists > regardless of whether anybody happens to be thinking > about it at any given moment. I think it would be > awfully hard to explain the phenomenon of language -- > information interchange -- in the absence of such an > intuition. There *are* traditions which deny the reality of abstract objects (e.g. Aristotle and onwards). These traditions are well represented in current philosophy of mind and language, not to mention the natural and social sciences. Explanations of the phenomena of language - e.g. in linguistics and psychology - are getting on quite nicely without reference to the Forms. Even if one regards the biologically deterministic cognitive science of the Chomsky/Fodor tradition as a kind of crypto-Platonism, there's plenty of mainstream work in philosophy (e.g. social externalism), linguistics (e.g. HPSG) and psychology (e.g. connectionism, behaviourism, social-constructivism) which is either agnostic on or hostile to the Platonist view. But ... surely it doesn't matter whether abstract objects are real or not. It makes no difference for most work in mathematics, the natural and social sciences and the humanities, so why should it matter with topic maps? For example, it's hard to think of any work on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony to which it would make any difference whether the abstract object 'Beethoven's Fifth Symphony' was real or whether it was a convenient conventional fiction to facilitate discussion and research. In any case the usefulness of subjectIdentity elements for explicit indications of a topic's denotation is obvious. Steven R. Newcomb: > Topic maps simply aren't > meaningful unless each topic has exactly one changeless > and eternal subject. I think this might be a bit strict. From a Platonist point of view all abstract objects (Forms) are necessarily changeless and eternal. However, as humans do not have direct access to the Forms (shadows on the cave wall and all that), getting the subjectIdentities right might be a bit tricky. More seriously and practically, most of the things we want to talk about are not changeless and eternal, at least from the human point of view (e.g. people, countries, interchange syntax standards): to adopt Platonist rhetoric, the abstract object/Form 'Tony Blair' may be changeless and eternal, but the concrete object which is its manifestation is not. In these cases the above criterion would be more useful - while retaining the intent - if it were weakened to something like 'each topic should have well-defined borders of changeability' (if Tony has a liver transplant he's still Tony, but if he has a brain transplant ... ?), but even this has the potential to become a philosophical can of worms (Ship of Theseus and all that). Perhaps realistically the best we can say is that best practice is to have a topic's subjectIdentity element point to some resource that everyone can agree either is or refers to some entity. The resource could be kept up-to-date. This resource could well be a topic element - in the absence of direct access to Forms, what better way to define a subject (notion/idea) than a comprehensive and authoritative listing of the subject's characteristics. The terms 'circularity' and 'infinite meta-level regression' spring to mind. No doubt such authoritative reference topics will emerge / are emerging. In the meantime - and even after - topics without subjectIdentity elements will arise along with questions of if/how they should be merged. These questions are not technical. Ivan Uemlianin, PhD Head of Topic Map Development Jura Technology Ltd 6 Tai Seion Llanddeiniolen Caernarfon Gwynedd LL55 3AF Head Office: 35 Norroy Road London SW15 1PQ
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