Re: SUO: RE: Topic Maps
Pat,
On rereading my paper, I think I agree that at least one reference to
'representation' was worthy of modification. Thus, I no longer speak of the
representation of an IBIS session, rather the presentation of an IBIS
session. In the area of speculation about Cmaps and TMs for knowledge
representation, I thought my comments were, indeed speculative, refering to
papers in the forthcoming book by Eric Freese and Holger Rath concerning
programmatic strategies they have evolved to make semantic nets with XTM and
to perform logical inferences on the same structures. I am not sure that I
make any claims of my own that XTM constitutes the substrate of a KR scheme.
With respect to ontologies, I did suggest that some narrow ontologies may
emerge from the many debates that will arise from the application of IBIS.
I suspect that I would be very interested in entering a lively discussion on
just how XTM might be used to represent (really) those ontologies. And then,
I can't resist wondering just what KR is, if not a mechanism by which mental
activity is stimulated. And, is mental stimulation a primary outcome of
creating and reading Cmaps?
Many thanks for your comments.
Jack
From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
> >Chris,
> >As the ontologists around here are fond of saying, "I believe we are on
the
> >same page."
> >I put together the beginnings of a little paper on mapping IBIS to XTM.
It's
> >at http://www.thinkalong.com/JP/ibisXTM.pdf
> >My reason for doing so was to support my chapter in the book I am editing
> >_XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web_ to be
published
> >by Addison Wesley this year, and for my paper at KT 2001, "Bringing
> >Knowledge Technologies to the Classroom", a draft of which can be seen at
> >http://www.thinkalong.com/JP/ParkKT2001.pdf
>
> Jack, thanks for that reference. However you say some things there
> that I think are wrong, or seriously misleading in the SUO context.
> First, you identify Concept Maps (reference Joe Novak) with semantic
> networks; and elsewhere in the document you claim that concept maps
> are a notation for knowledge representation. Neither of these is
> really correct, at least with the sense of 'semantic network' and
> 'knowledge representation' used in the AI tradition. Novakian Cmaps
> are widely used in classsroom applications and are apparently of
> considerable use in aiding inter-personal collaboration (other folk
> in this Institute have been developing Cmap interactive educational
> software for years, with Novak as an external consultant; you can
> download it free from http://cmap.coginst.uwf.edu/ ) but they are
> most definitely not a KR formalism. They have no clear semantics, or
> indeed even a clear logical syntax.
>
> I am currently working on a Darpa-funded effort to build software to
> allow 'subject-matter experts' (read: people who don't know logic) to
> input Cmaps which will get translated into a suitable KR formalism,
> and it is currently unclear whether this will turn out to be easier
> than translating natural language into KR or more difficult:
> certainly it is a research problem at about the same scale of
> difficulty. So if Topic Maps are concept maps, they certainly are not
> KR or semantic networks (or CG's) as understood in the present
> context.
>
> Pat Hayes
>
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