ONT Re: Information = Comprehension x Extension -- Discussion
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ICE. Discussion Note 15
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HT = Hugh Trenchard
JA = Jon Awbrey
JP = Jack Park
HT: Jon. As a general note, I think it was worthwhile for you to open up
your discussion more broadly to the members of the GB. It is however,
from my point of view and, I'm sure, from the point of view of many
of the GB members, difficult to pick up a topic rather in mid-stream
without a clear introduction as to the overall objectives of your
analysis. I see from Jack Park's initial email that one objective
is to create a "language" to describe "topic maps", which appear
to me to mean a computer programming language. Even so, after
tracing some of the links and threads, it remains unclear to
me what your overall objectives are.
HT: So maybe it would be helpful to backtrack a little and start the GB group
off with a clear statement as to what the philosophy and purpose of your
discussions are, and generally what the topic maps relate to. I think it
a little unfair to expect all of us to parse every link and thread for
the "connective tissue", when a few clear statements can get us started.
HT: From my overview of your discussions, it looks to me your discussions do
have implications for global brain discussions, so I imagine many of us
are interested in what you are doing. But I think people would be more
willing to contribute if they felt that what they said at least fell
within the rubric of your discussions.
okay, let me just kick back a bit and global-brain-storm for a while.
the motivating metaphors of the global brain invoke analogies between
the ways that cognizance, information, intelligence, knowledge, wisdom,
wit, and so on are embodied in the human brain, so far as we know it at
present to have evolved over the past millennia, and the ways that some
kinds of comparable virtues might become embodied in the e-webs that
people will most likely be spinning for a while yet to come.
now the phylogeny of our brains is handed to us by evolution, while
the ontogeny we acquire by the sweat of our localized brows, but the
structure of the e-net is something that we'll be making up as we go,
partly informed by fruitful if a bit self-fullfilling analogies, and
partly responding to pragmatic pressures of an unforeseeable variety.
topic maps are not my topic, not yet anyway, so i'll have to
defer to jack on that -- at this point they are just one of
many work-in-progress proposals as to how the information
that gets put on the internet might usefully be arrayed.
but what he did say brings to mind, via the motivating
analogies of this list, many old discussions about
the extent to which the various resources of the
human brain might or might not be localized.
independently of this structural issue, or perhaps along a time axis
orthogonal to it, my particular interest is piqued by the processes
by which information and knowledge come to be embodied in systems
that are capable of becoming intelligent. by way of bringing
all such processes under a single head, it's convenient
to call them by the generic name "inquiry".
at this juncture, i became aware of a connection between
one of the themes that jack was stressing with regard to
topic maps and one of the main themes that arises in the
peircean models of inquiry that i have been exploring.
actually, i think it was on different but closely entangled thread:
Re: AOI Discuassion 7. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05261.html
In: AOI Discussion. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd1.html#05254
In part:
JP: I have never been all that thrilled with "standards speak", that
compilation of gobbledy-gook that's created to make everyone else
think you are a great standards writer. But, being the creator of
the book on XML Topic Maps, I'm somewhat the insider who actually
knows that all those words you quote below are intended to say
just one simple thing:
JP: A *topic* is the *one* place you go to find out
everything that is knowable about one *subject*.
JA: I know that both you and Murray Altheim use a lot of neuro-metaphors,
and I remember thinking -- out loud? -- that what topic mappers were
really saying here was almost literally something like the following:
| If there were not a Grandmother cell,
| it would be necessary to confine her.
JA: Or something like that.
JA: But the questions are:
| If my_brain (does, does not)
| have its my_grandmother cell,
| (is, is not) that good reason
| for an e-merging global brain
| to (have, have not) its own?
JA: So that's already an 8-fold way too many questions -- but even worse:
JA: 09. What would a Global_Brain's_Grandmother cell look like?
10. Would we even recognize her; even if we could see her?
JA: So you can see that I have many questions about this.
JP: Pretty simple, what? You also need to know that a *subject*
is anything, yup, anything you might want to talk about.
JA: And they are anything but simple when projected on this neuro-field.
JA: Yes, that's more questions than I know how to answer, either.
But that's my first real attempt to forge a link between the
field of Global Brains and the field of Topic Maps, and I'll
just have to leave it to cool for a while and hope that I'll
be able to hammer its koan-headed rawness out into something
more usable later on.
JP: That simple notion is, in some sense, the justification for
topic maps in the first place. To be a topic map (according
to emerging standards), if two or more topics could be shown
to contain information about the same subject, then they must
be merged. Emphasis on the term *must*. AFIK, topic maps
constitute the only standards-based effort to require the
merging processes. Other efforts support merging, but
don't require it. That does *not* detract in any way
from the validity and power of other efforts (e.g. OWL);
it only speaks to the opportunities available to those
who may wish to choose among paradigms.
JP: Incidentally, the reference you chose for that quotation is the latest
draft "Reference Model" for the next generation topic maps standard, one
which brings topic maps much closer, I think, to the representational power
now found in the likes of OWL and other RDF-based schemes. Indeed, it is my
own hunch that, with the new reference model, topic maps may get pretty close
to what I would call "category maps" in that some requirements of category
theoretic computations are satisfied. It's just a conjecture now, but it
may be that Rosen's categories could be represented and manipulated
using "category maps".
JA: Again, I have many questions, but something that you said off-line
made me think that what you really want here is something like this:
| If a global information system bears any virtual information about
| a subject, then there ought to be ways to make it actual and local.
JA: Just a first try at capturing the gist of the "subject in question" (SIQ).
JA: But what comes to mind next is another one of those memories
that approaches its 40th birthday in my brain, and so I ask
tolerance for the likelihood of confabulatory elaboration,
McCulloch's ideas about the "reticular formation" (RF),
that was thought to have a role in waking up the brain
and that he thought might play a role in the process
of "marshalling" ideas that he knew the company of
Aristotle and Peirce had given the good strategic
names of "apagoge" and "abduction".
JA: So the question arises:
| Is the sought for e-merge of topics really just
| our old friend abuductive synthesis in disguise?
now, at this point i was mostly just sitting back and waiting for
jack to respond to some of the questions that i asked above, which
i know that he'll be working on furiously with every moment of his
so-called spare time. in the mean time it seemed like a good idea
to keep clarifying and developing some of the background material
on the relations among inference, information, inquiry, logic,
semiosis, sign relations, and so on. as it happens, some of
my own work in this area touches on classical themes from
cybernetic control systems and formal neuron models,
from what i fancy is a slightly novel angle.
e-nuff for now, i hope ...
jon awbrey
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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