RE: [topicmaps-comment] situated context

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

I agree with the hypothetical remark regarding the

"if we could arrange for a non-biological system to
have something "like" or analogous to "awareness", the all Paul's work on
situated-ness should apply just as well to it.'

I am not at all sure what hubris has to do with anything, and I try to not
be defensive here.  It is not my work that I hope we are talking about, but
rather the work of a large number of scholars whose work is published in
books and journals, over the past 5 or 6 decades and beyond.  These
materials are referenced in my work, but also my interpretation of this work
remains an interpretation of one person.


It might be considered to be hubris to think that biological and physical
reality can be duplicated in it's essence as a computational process.  This
possibility is NOT ruled out by stratified complexity.  However, there is
specific argument and reasoning that includes a great deal of biological
research that suggest that the NATURE of any computational process is
artificial and simple, and can be compared to biological systems only with
some degree of reflection.

What appears to be the cause of the notion of hubris here (tell me if I am
right Thomas), is the investment that we as a society have made on a
philosophy and perspective that IGNORES the biological model to a very great
extent.  To a very great extent, the mainstream knowledge management and
knowledge representation communities are apathetic even to a discussion of
the issues that a biological perspective might bring to the issue of
knowledge sharing within communities.

What the session at KT 2002 is designed to do is to introduce the
biologically and ecologically motivated work in a way that is focused on the
knowledge representation and knowledge management communities.  We are
trying to reach out form one community to another community.



-----Original Message-----
From: Thomas B. Passin [mailto:tpassin@home.com]
Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2001 7:36 AM
To: topicmaps-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [topicmaps-comment] situated context


[Paul Stephen Prueitt]

> 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?
>

I suggest (if David Dodds will permit my extending his remarks) the
following point of view:  if we could arrange for a non-biological system to
have something "like" or analogous to "awareness", the all Paul's work on
situated-ness should apply just as well to it.  Since we don't know much
about the nature of awareness or even situated-ness, to deny such a
possiblity requires some degree of hubris.

Not-cross-posting-but-feel-free-to-forward-ly yours,

Tom P