SUO: RE: Lifecycle Integration Schema
Dear Jon,
See comment below.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@att.net]
> Sent: 02 September 2003 13:10
> To: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE; SUO
> Subject: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
>
>
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> LIS. Discussion Note 5
>
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> Matthew,
>
> Deleting points adequately covered for now.
> New remarks interspersed without indenture.
>
> Re: "thing"
>
> | thing
> |
> | A <thing> is anything that is or may be thought about or perceived,
> | including material and non-material objects, ideas, and actions.
> |
> | Every <thing> is either
> | a <possible_individual>,
> | or an <abstract_object>.
> |
> | NOTE 1. Every <thing> is identifiable within a system.
> | System identifiers created by other systems and received
> | as part of a data exchange may be stored for future reference
> | as an identification, referring to the originating organisation
> | or system.
> |
> | NOTE 2. Every example provided for other entity data types
> | declared in this schema is also an example of <thing>.
> |
> |
> http://www.tc184-sc4.org/wg3ndocs/wg3n1328/lifecycle_integrati
> on_schema/lexical/thing.html
>
> JA: You are saying that you are really only thinking about things
> that have identifiers in given system, or names in a certain
> context of discussion. This is very significant and needs to
> be elevated to the level of an explicit principle, instead of
> being left implicit in a note that is likely to be neglected,
> in other words, relegated to a hidden axiom or constraint
> whose consequences are not critically reflected on.
>
> MW: I think it is more that we are saying that if you want to
> say something about an object under this standard, you have
> to be prepared to give that object an identifier. This is a
> practical rather than philosophical statement. You will find
> elsewhere under representation a quite general approach to
> identification. Providing this "system unique identifier"
> was more a piece of practical design. I.e. philosophically
> you can ignore it.
>
> There are those among us who would not too quickly dismiss
> the philosophical consequences of these practical bearings,
> and I am decidedly ONEOF ('EM).
>
> When I was but a flowerchild in the garden of mathematics,
> we tended to dismiss what was disaffectionately described
> as "matters of mere notation", but when I grew big enough
> to pick up a computer and till that garden on my own, the
> first big shock of weeds I harvested clued me immediately
> into the sine qua non character of "mere notation".
>
> In formal computational terms, a "system unique identifier" (SUI)
> of a denoted object is known as a "gödel number" (gnumb). There
> are gnumbs for objects in the external world, whether abstract or
> concrete, and there are gnumbs for every finite piece of text in
> the formal language that we use, the latter gnumbs being what we
> are really creating when we "quote" that piece of text.
>
> A measure of how "critically reflective" a formal system can be,
> or help us to be, about these external and internal worlds both,
> is determined by many pickwickian details of the gnumb function
> gnumb : X -> N, where N is the set of nonnegative integers, and
> X is typically thought of as being built up in layers from some
> initial X_0 that we might treat as the "initial external world".
>
> From another angle, if we think of SUI's as "coordinates" of objects,
> that have their meanings relative to a particular frame of reference,
> but may be total gödellygeek from the POV of another reference frame,
> then what we have here is the task of intercommunication among codes
> that we have charged ourselves to discharge.
>
> So there's a lot more to say about this,
> but the thrust of it all is that we can
> no longer just shove these issues aside,
> under whatever category label we assign.
MW: Then I suggest you consider this attribute deleted for the
purposes of the use of this material within this forum.
>
> MW: Firstly NOTEs and EXAMPLEs are informative in standards terms.
>
> JA: I probably need a definition of what you mean by "informative".
> It sounds like you are saying "not definitive" or "optional".
> The way I see it, if it's not avoidable, it's not optional.
>
> MW: See above.
>
> JA: However we gloss it, I am trying to indicate a potential risk of
> misinterpretation, of being taken to mean something that is very
> different from what one really intends, and there is a potential
> danger of, well, glossing over this point if we don't keep all
> the constraints and intentions in plain view. There is also
> an efficiency loss that comes from trying to do more than
> one really needs.
>
> MW: A data model is to support the holding of data about things.
> Here we are noting that different systems that might wish to
> communicate about some thing may have their own identifier
> for it, and that this is not a problem.
>
> JA: Exactly. I am just saying that you are making some significant
> assumptions about the relations of signs to things that need to
> be made more explicit if they are going to be dealt with more
> effectively in a computational/logical framework.
>
> MW: For how we deal generally with signs, I suggest you
> look in the representation area, Diagrams 16-20.
>
> Will do.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
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