[topicmaps-comment] situated context

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

I feel that David's recent post are brillant, and are following a line of
thought that I see as both long term and insightful of where the current
XML-type standards are. (copied below)

David said:

PS: Paul Pruett may claim I am wrong about "situated context" being possible
outside of special creation fleshbots (humans) but I believe
I will demonstrate that he is talking through his hat if he attacks me
there. "Situated context" is merely one of the possibilities of *agency*,
and frankly only warm pink fuzzy humanists still believe that agency is
possible only in a human mind. That is so dreadfully anthropocentric as to
be medieval.

***

I think that there is a misunderstanding here.  My back ground is more in
the biological science, physics and foundations of mathematics.  XML books,
even the new XML Meta Data bood - which is excellent - are hard for me to
grasp as a whole.   But the notions regarding a Turing machine and finite
state engines are also of importance in how I and my collegues, at the
Eisntein Institute, are formulating stratified complexity.

The notion of actual physical stratification comes from the study of
physics... thermodynamics and quantum mechanics.  Plank's constant,
Boltzman's constant and other such empirically observable constants suggest
to some of us evidence that there are in fact organizational scales in
physical reality.  Human awareness seems to take in several of these scales
so as to interact with and use quantum mechanical phenomenon (photons
impacting in retina --> perception of the world via the eyes) and metabolic
phenomenon.  David Bohm's theory of "implicate order" is one way that the
scholars have tied together the physical phenomonen and the perceptional
phenomenon. Karl Pribram has been a core figure in the development of new
work in this area.  J. J. Gibson, Robert Shaw, Peter Kugler, Robert Rosen
and others have made essential contribution to this body of thought.

Situated context IS involved in human awareness.  One might define this
concept by looking at the experiemental evidence from the approporate
sciences.  **Then** we might look at the problems in knowledge
representation that most of the membership of the XML community is well
aware of.  The question is then about whether of not there is ever anything
like the **situated context** defined by these science involved in XML
parsing or the retrieval of XML strings from a larger XML string.  What
about XML "addition" .

Does the notion of scope reify the bioligical notion of situated context?

Again, I stress that the route that I have choose to take in defining
**situated context** is by the use of the bioligcal sciences, and quantum
mechanics.  We are trying to meet computer science half way somehow.

(David, I am crosss posting to KMCI and EI, both of which you are members...
perhaps you and I can "inform" these other two forums as to the nature of
the discussion within the leadership community of the XML standards.  Again,
this is moving us towards a face to face meeting (with virtual webcast) in
March 2020 at the KT 2002 conference.)



-----Original Message-----
From: David Dodds [mailto:drdodds42@hotmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2001 10:41 PM
To: topicmaps-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Cc: drdodds42@hotmail.com
Subject: [topicmaps-comment] Everchanging subjects [ Notions
haveexistence ...]


Hi Thomas

"David, do you see emergence as related to complexity in a topic map (or a
set of them), or do you see it as coming out of a simple system, like
cellular automata?  And if the latter, how do you think that topic maps
could fit in?"

I do not see a data structure by itself capable of emergence. At the present
time topic maps are data structures.
and an "external" "engine" is used to do things with them. That is the
external engine reads them and creates them, a sloppy metaphor is to say
that the external engine "powers them" or ""makes them alive"". (gurk)

The engines it seems to me are programmed in such a way as to adhere to or
implement the XTM spec. (well in the ideal world the engines do that). I
think perhaps that the current engines are not graph processing aware and
are more like the steam shovel doing good work only because a skilled
operator knows how and when to pull the right levers. (ie activate the right
internal routine))  [I fully expect indignation from engine writers. It is
not my intention to criticise current engines. What I intend is to point out
that the processing done by current engine designs is not situated, nothing
more. As Thomas has pointed out there are a myriad applications where
"business-programming-headed software" is just fine thankyou. (David agrees.
generally))


I think there will be an eventual trend towards having a kind of
graph-structure virtual-machine. these gsvm will be able to "process" or
"operate" graph structures representing Topic Maps, RDF, DAML-OIL,
Conceptual-Graphs, XML technology data structures, graphics graphs(SVG for
rexample, maybe VISIO), and so on. Sort of how that 'you know what
programming language' has a virtual-machine (but it is not a graph structure
oriented processor per se).)

TMs  They are a graph structure.
TMs are not  (yet) general graph structures, in my opinion, they are
specialized graph structures. Where they are not general graph structures
they are not capable of "supporting" certain things. This is why some of the
graph structure based operations some people would like to try doing arent
possible right now. (I expect more criticism on that.) I do not see how
anyone could say that TMs are universal turing machines for example. If they
are Id be delighted to be given refernces as to where I can study how to use
them that way.

By having a graph-structure-processing-aware ""engine"" or (software)
processor "running" TM data structures , in the future it will be possible
to incorporate/disincorporate other graph structure represented data such as
RDF, or DAML-OIL , or CYC. Metaphorically speaking these different graph
structures (at the present time) are like the different gauges of railroad
track that have been layed around the world. When trains came to a border
everybody got out walked across the border andgot on the other train. That's
because the tracks were different gauges and a given train could run on only
one gauge of track.

Also these GSVMs could have subsystems which use techologies such as
genetic algorthims, neural networks, fuzzy/rough sets,; which in effect
allow the engines to learn the best construction methods and patterns  as
time passed (learn by doing and observing). This means that with such
subsystems that the engines quite potentially could become more efficient
with the passage of time/"experience"/"learning". Genetic algorithms for
example can allow an engine to examine a number of different structural
patterns and ""figure out"" (""evolve"") which is the "best" particular
structure for use. (If this sounds like an application of David Dodds'
notion of "situated context" you're right).

cheers
David Dodds

PS: Paul Pruett may claim I am wrong about "situated context" being possible
outside of special creation fleshbots (humans) but I believe
I will demonstrate that he is talking through his hat if he attacks me
there. "Situated context" is merely one of the possibilities of *agency*,
and frankly only warm pink fuzzy humanists still believe that agency is
possible only in a human mind. That is so dreadfully anthropocentric as to
be medieval.


>From: "Thomas B. Passin" <tpassin@home.com>
>To: topicmaps-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
>Subject: Re: [topicmaps-comment] Everchanging subjects [ Notions
>haveexistence ...]
>Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 21:37:31 -0400
>
>[David Dodds]
>
> > Thomas said
> > "Do you think that machine processing will be/should be/has to be
> > very different in its essence from human use of the same topic maps?"
> >
> > I think of necessity that human *use* of a _given data structure_, topic
> > maps in this case, will be more sophisticated than the *use* of the same
>ds
> > by a computer. This is true because (except for possibly severely
>retarded
> > people) most people bring the sophistication of situated activity to
>bear
>on
> > use of TMs , and they would just as much if they were shovelling dirt
> > instead. Humans are INTEGRATED in the use of their mental powers, they
>are
> > "conceptually organic" as it were, they use ganzfeld, they make/use
>context.
>
>[...]
>
> > the difference between agents (such as humans or programs) doing organic
> > perception and agents doing inorganic perception is major, it is the
> > difference between what a person brings to bear using a topic map and
>what
> > nematode brings to the same topic map "usage". Only a pointy headed
> > programming-only immersed person cant see things like tacitness and
> > metaphorical/analogical activity accompany human activity and just aint
> > there at all in business-programming-headed software.
> >
>
>Well, there is a definite place for the current type of
>"business-programming-headed-software", isn't there?  After all, we
>probably
>don't want TurboTax coming up with unexpected emergent behavior at tax
>time.
>It's just that we are wanting more from our systems now.
>
>David, do you see emergence as related to complexity in a topic map (or a
>set of them), or do you see it as coming out of a simple system, like
>cellular automata?  And if the latter, how do you think that topic maps
>could fit in?
>
>
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