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Subject: [humanmarkup] Request for Opinions: Documenting Discussions
- From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
- To: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org, humanmarkup@lists.oasis-open.org
- Date: Tue, 15 Oct 2002 06:20:00 -0700
Title: Request for Opinions: Documenting
Discussions
Fellow Humans,
I need some group guidance. Because we are not working from
use-cases, which we would be very constrained if we attempted due to
the wide variety of uses and purposes which we are aimed at serving,
we need to document how we arrived at the decisions about the
specification we will be submitting. Some TCs start from clear
business scenarios, develop specific use-cases, and drill down to
fundamental functionalities to codify for specific business purposes.
We don't do that and because of that, selling the utility and
advisability of supporting our standard will be more difficult.
So, what I intend to do is to publish our discussions as they
occurred to support understanding our process and what we thought each
element, attribute, datatype and value was needed to accomplish. That
is the reason behind insisting on the process I did, and keeping
discussions focused in subject line threads.
My question is whether it is better to simply post them all
together in one message per element, attribute, etc, and include a url
to that message in the email archive, as I do for our minutes, or if I
should compile a short html page for each item? Obviously it is easier
to give you the email example now, so here is the discussions we had
on Base Schema - Belief. (It was capitalized in the subject, but won't
be in the schema--just to clarify that.) It is ordered from last to
first chronologically as it was added to the archive of our list at
OASIS.
It will look just like any other entry in the archive:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/
I am hoping no one really wants a sample html, because that is
simply more effort, and my time is short, and after all, it is the
content of the messages that is important, not how it looks unless how
it looks prevents understanding or understanding would be
substantially improved by an html treatment.
Please let me know what you think.
Ciao,
Rex
Subject: FW: [humanmarkup-comment] Base
Schema-Belief
From: Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga <rkthunga@interposting.com>
To: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2002 02:05:52 -0400
Rex: I also think we have enough
fodder for our first draft. A few
other comments I have however...
CURRENT CONSIDERATIONS?
-----
Wanted to clarify whether these are
things to consider at this stage or
not. Regardless, we can keep
these in mind while we move forward
(pulling from Len's post):
Name of belief(s)
Description of belief
Proof of belief -- in a subjective
sense (i.e. internal signs we
express)
-within our scope
Proof of belief -- in an objective
sense (i.e. external signs as
validation)
-Semantic Web
Commitment to belief
Code set for beliefs (Secondary Base
Schema considerations)
Cultural Sets
Personal Beliefs
ADDITIONAL COMMENTS
-----
Assertion of fact vs. assertion of
belief:
As for the distinction between
assertion of fact vs. assertion of belief
that you mention Len -- I think that
this may fall under "speech
actions" (i.e. signs) rather than
belief. When someone believes
something with a very strong
commitment, then the line blurs between an
assertion of a fact vs. an assertion of
a belief...for example "God
commanded me to destroy America"
is asserted as a fact, when in fact it
is a belief...or at least I think it is
a belief. To another, it may be
as 100% as real as "The sun will
shine through my window tomorrow".
We cannot verify this, as you mention
in your last post Rex, but we can
verify (or at least provide validation
rules) that demonstrate "the
degree to which someone believes
something" by evaluating the signs used
(as Len I believe mentioned
earlier.)
Commitment to belief:
Do we want to provide containers for
helping people commit to sometimes
flawed and dangerous beliefs?
Ultimately, I think we do, because our
mission is simply to best represent
current communication
characteristics--not change or
manipulate them. It is up to software,
not HumanML, to actually help resolve
conflicting, unfounded beliefs.
As long as we have validation criteria,
in addition to commitment
quantifiers, I think we will
sufficiently allow for this (e.g. A HumanML
application can potentially be built to
challenge the belief that
"America is the Great Satan",
by sifting away the untruths involved in
such an assertion).
"Belief", more than most of
the other elements, is where we would
possibly interoperate with Semantic Web
initiative. I know that much
work is underway in the SW effort in
this regard, but I don't know to
what degree the SW takes into
"human belief" verses simply "assertions".
SUBJECTIVE/OBJECTIVE
-----
The one area I feel we should keep in
mind is the subjective vs.
objective reality as it may interplay
with beliefs and/or fact. Not
that we need to address the underlying
physical model of the universe
within HumanML, but we may need to
account for the differences in
subjective/objective models of reality,
if we hope to be interoperable
in the largest sense. Don't mean
to open up a can of leaping
grasshoppers, but I'd like to hear
comments if there are any.
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Subject: RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-Belief
From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com>,'Rex
Brooks' <rexb@starbourne.com>,'Ranjeeth
Kumar Thunga'
<rkthunga@interposting.com>,humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 12:08:14 -0700
I think the rules will emerge from
collecting together the beliefs
that comprise a belief system by asking
the people who adhere to the
belief systems to list the beliefs or
the components of the belief
system, but that is another chunk of
work for another time. I think
we pretty much have enough for the
first pass at it when we come back
to it in assembling the first draft
later this month.
Ciao,
Rex
Subject: RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-Belief
From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)"
<clbullar@ingr.com>
To: 'Rex Brooks' <rexb@starbourne.com>,'Ranjeeth Kumar
Thunga'
<rkthunga@interposting.com>,humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 13:12:28 -0500
I'm not being exact, but yes, a belief
system could
be constructed from beliefs, but that
requires almost
something like rules or some way to
state that the
set of beliefs referred to as a belief
system have
some relationships that make them into
a system.
Regardless of what the belief is based
on, physical
facts, mental states, etc., a belief is
what the
holder accepts as "true".
If it is agreed upon,
it de facto becomes attached to some
larger element
type such as culture. A belief
need not be part
of a system, but it must have a person
or persons
to assert it. Beliefs do not
exist independent
of humans. Facts do.
len
Subject: RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-Belief
From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
To: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)"
<clbullar@ingr.com>,'Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga'
<rkthunga@interposting.com>,humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 11:03:40 -0700
I think that this approach that Len
describes is more along the lines
of Belief System than belief as an
atomic element. I think we need to
be careful about that.
One can have a belief that the sun will
rise tomorrow, regardless of
what cultural or social belief system
one adheres to or whether one
adheres to
any particular belief system. The fact that the sun will
not rise tomorrow, but the earth will
continue to rotate about its
axis is actually irrelevent to my
belief because my belief is not
necessarily based on the science of
physics as we have come to
understand and accept it.
Why or how something actually happens
is the truth to which Ranjeeth
refers and which most reasonably
rational people, as I understand
THAT set of concepts, agree is
independent of any belief or belief
system. The idea that the truth might
NOT actually be independent of
our perceptions and beliefs could also
be true, but we will probably
not be able to verify it.
So what I think we should do is to
consider that when we get back
around to the new elements we need to
consider...
I am in fact going to hold off on
sending this until I have posted my
first entry for the next element.
Sigh.
It is gonna get real busy real
quick.
Ciao,
Rex
Subject: RE: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-Belief
From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)"
<clbullar@ingr.com>
To: 'Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga'
<rkthunga@interposting.com>,humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 10:19:27 -0500
One approach may be to treat belief in
terms of
commitment by the individual to the
belief. We
would need an element model that names
the belief,
describes the belief, and points to
signs that would
be expressed as a result of holding the
belief. This
would include a quantifier for
commitment that has
at least two components: how
strongly the individual
states that the belief is held, and the
sign set the
observer can look for as proof of
commitment. This is
not different from the ontological
commitment concept.
The belief itself has to stand alone so
that we can
have a code set for beliefs that can
then be members of
cultural sets (what one can assert and
individual may
hold by being a member of a culture) vs
personal beliefs
(that which the individual asserts they
hold. For
example, I share certain beliefs with
Hindus but I
am not Hindu by birth or culture.)
Beliefs would need a discriminator so
that holding an
assertion of a fact (the sun will rise
tomorrow) and
the assertion of a belief (God loves
children) can be
differentiated.
len
Subject: Re: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-Belief
From: Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>
To: Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
<rkthunga@interposting.com>,humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 09:42:37 -0700
I will chime in with an agreement. If
Rob, if he gets this, could
acknowledge adding belief to the list
of new elements, I would
appreciate it. I don't think we can
attempt to capture "truth" per
se, but belief as a basic element of
the human condition, provided
one is not raised by wolves in the
wilderness, is a valid.
Ciao,
Rex
Subject: [humanmarkup-comment] Base Schema-Belief
From: Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga <rkthunga@interposting.com>
To: humanmarkup-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2002 11:09:36 -0400
After reading Len and Rex's comments
from yesterday, I started to think
that we may want to add 'belief' as a
Base Schema element. It is
tempting to include this within
Secondary Schema within culture perhaps,
but I realize that belief is an aspect
of ourselves that lead us to use
the signs we communicate with
fundamentally, just like emotion, and
intention (which I would like to
continue to explore as well).
No one argues that there is something
fundamentally "True" in the
highest sense, although different means
of getting there and
perspectives: through scientific
method, philosophy, meditation or
religion. Belief is our best
approximation of the fundamental Truth.
Some people
may equate their 'belief' as being 100% equal to Truth, and
that is where all the problems we are
having come from--i.e.
fundamentalism. The big danger,
as both Rex and Len alluded to, is this
fundamentalism. By strictly
defining our 'beliefs', we may hinder our
ability to let ourselves probe further,
and may discourage us from
casting healthy doubts.
Thus, in a sense, I feel we are also
missing a unifer "ultimateTruth"
within our definition, but can't think
of where it might belong. After
all, that is what a belief is
ultimately for--to describe an
'ultimateTruth' that we have yet to
form a unified, verifiable,
complete, and mutually acceptable
definition of. Even though some
persons in the history of man may have
achieved this state of awareness
through subjective experience, we as a
human race have not reached this
level through objective
descriptions.
I'm starting a new thread to be
consistent with our naming scheme,
although I am cutting and pasting some
of the earlier content.
If we can describe belief in some way,
while also being able to exactly
and specifically point out where the
distinctions may lie, and make it
clear that beliefs are not absolute
within themselves, then we have a
better shot at helping dissolve the
conflicts between beliefs. Rigidly
held beliefs can be more dangerous if
strictly defined without such an
allowance. That may be the
function of Secondary Schema definition, but
just wanted to keep that in mind.
--------
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
--
Rex Brooks
Starbourne Communications Design
1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA 94702 *510-849-2309
http://www.starbourne.com * rexb@starbourne.com
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