RE: [topicmaps-comment] Can subjectIdentity elements guaranteetopicidentity?

[Paul Stephen Prueitt <bcngroup@erols.com>]

I will intercede with a comment about the construction of topics.

In normal discourse it is easy to establish a social agreement that concepts
do not have boundaries in the same way as do objects such as trees and
rocks.

So when one talks about topic representation, the issue of boundary should
not surprise us.  But it does surprises us. Why?  The answer, it seems to
me, is that the surprise is really about how poorly our collective insights
have been with respect to knowledge (topic) representation in formal
languages.

I have made the point a number of times that a failure is perhaps due to the
nature of formal languages .. since natural language copes with issues of
scope and ambiguity in a reasonable fashion.

Thomas's reference to antibody has an insight in this regard.  The immune
system recognizes and interacts with natural affordance in the antigen
world.  It does this in specific ways that might not be reducible to a
formal construct.  Some aspects of engineering and physics is reducible in
an utilitarian metric.  However, it should remain a question of whether of
not topics, as experienced by individual humans, is reducible to something
that can be expressed as formal syntax and sent as bit streams.

So what is the alternative?  Perhaps the alternative is to demand a little
less from syntax and a little more from humans.  Concepts are situated:

http://www.ontologystream.com/prueitt/whitePapers/Situationedness.htm

and how the process of becoming situation is reified (using topic maps, for
example) may not be through any formal definition of scope, for example.
Scope in a natural setting may be so strongly associated with situatedness
that scope can not be properly made into a manipulation formalism.

The question of "how does one represent scope" may be similar to "what is
the largest integer".  The question may be misleading until one has the
insight and courage to pronounce this insight in face of a culture agreement
that topics can be represented in XML and that this representation can be
independent of perceptional acts by individuals.

I have specific notions about how we might proceed, as do other members of
my community.  Members here are welcome to join the private forum at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EinsteinInstitute

to discuss these notions.