RE: CG: Re: Re: Whole and Parts (and boundaries)
With respect to the problem of long border crossings, it seems to me that
we have at least two major ontological categories in play here. One is the
arbitrary physical border between tracts of land that are respectively
claimed by two human social sovereignties. The other is the social border
between those social sovereignties. The former is a fictional plane
(height and length, but no depth) separating the territory of two
geopolitical jurisdictions. This aspect of the boundary is physically
crossed in a second or less, once one is in a socially negotiated position
to do so. The other boundary is a power nexus which must be negotiated
prior to making the final, physical movement through the arbitrary
geophysical demarkation plane.
Yes?
Doug McDavid
Business Transformation Architect
IBM Academy of Technology - http://www-306.ibm.com/ibm/academy/index.html
mcdavid@us.ibm.com
408-927-1565 (IBM tie-line: 457)
|---------+-------------------------------------->
| | "Gary Berg-Cross" |
| | <gary.berg-cross@em-i.com> |
| | Sent by: |
| | owner-standard-upper-ontolo|
| | gy@IEEE.ORG |
| | |
| | |
| | 07/14/2005 01:44 PM |
|---------+-------------------------------------->
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| |
| To: "John A. Bateman" <bateman@UNI-BREMEN.DE>, "Murray Altheim" <m.altheim@open.ac.uk> |
| cc: <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>, <standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG> |
| Subject: RE: CG: Re: Re: Whole and Parts (and boundaries) |
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
I generally agree with John Bateman's contextual discussion on goal and
functions affecting what boundary means (“ontological characterizations.”
As John described it). The experimental work on robot-human interactions
in spatial settings provides real data as I suggested in my earlier message
drawing on epigenetic robotics.
I think that his statement
>"It took us three hours to cross the border."…..Sounds pretty thick to me.
suggests how linguistic data gives very useful indications. It’s thru our
own mental models which we use in turn for
> modelling decisions relevant for building
>ontologies, but only when listened to.
There is a degree of commonality to our own experience based mental models
as designers of ontological models from insights offered by linguistic data
we have to be aware that our lifelong developed mental models will differ.
That’s one reason that letting robots develop their own models rather than
building them in offers some check on unconscious bias. Of course we have
realize that our general design principles for developing cognition may
also be flawed and have to be reformulated.
Gary Berg-Cross
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org on behalf of John A.
Bateman
Sent: Thu 7/14/2005 7:57 AM
To: Murray Altheim
Cc: sowa@BESTWEB.NET; standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: CG: Re: Re: Whole and Parts (and boundaries)
> I have no real data about people talking about boundaries,
> but I have some info about people talking about walls --
> i.e., whether a wall is part of a room or a boundary
> between rooms or whether part of the wall is part of the
> room or part of the wall is part of the boundary.
>
> If you ask them, people have an incredible number of
> different thoughts ranging from confusion, to irritation,
> to lengthy and irrelevant discourses on the topic -- and
> essentially all of those responses are useless for any
> serious kind of application.
These kinds of issues are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL for
any one to make any statements about 'how people
do things'. As John S. says, if you haven't collected
(or have access to) the data where people are actually
going about tasks trying to solve problems involving
the concepts, then it is better to say nothing.
In my own group, putting people in situations where they
have to talk about and solve spatial problems is
the fundamental methodology without which we say
nothing about 'how people' do stuff
(http://www.sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de/i1). On the basis
of these experiments (usually robot-human
interactions in spatial settings),
we propose ontological characterisations.
Absolutely obvious, is that characterisations depend
on goal and functions. So even the word 'boundary'
is not yet sufficiently defined to say much that
is sensible, but as soon as it is used in context,
that complexity usually vanishes.
Example:
> For example, when lay people (as opposed to geographers
>>or politicians) talk about the boundary between two
>>countries, they generally don't think about the thickness
>>of the boundary.
Absolute nonsense. Data:
"It took us three hours to cross the border."
Sounds pretty thick to me.
As soon as one then attempts to 'explain away' the
usage (e.g., "well, they were not strictly talking about
the border but about the road up to the crossing point,
which is actually a line of no thickness"), I think
the point has been missed. Either you use the
linguistic data or not. If not, fine, then we
can go with boundaries defined mereotopologically,
fiat or otherwise). If linguistic data
('how people think about...'),
then it should be done properly. That's my
only point here I think. I believe the
linguistic data do give very useful indications
of modelling decisions relevant for building
ontologies, but only when listened to.
John B.