Dear Martin,
thank you for taking of your time to discuss my statement below about
the foundational perspectives of the CRM. Allow me please, in turn, to
restate, with all due respect, the distinctions that we should introduce
if we want to remove any misunderstanding. It would indeed be a pity to
"confuse everything".
I must confess that it is almost impossible not to think that the level
of factuality modelled by CRMbase is the one of the happenings in the
physical world, and this from the point of view of the spatio-temporal
relations of classical (Galilean or Newtonian) physics.
Of course the domain of discourse of the CRM is the one of cultural
heritage and history but considered from the perspective of space-time
relations of entities, i.e. of events happening in time and the physical
space, as the foundational stance.
As a matter of fact all events in CRMbase are subclasses of crm:E4
Period : "This class comprises sets of coherent phenomena or cultural
manifestations occurring in time and space."
And, as we all know, it is precisely the crm:E4 Period class that
introduces the two properties establishing a relationship of events to
space (crm:P8 took place on or within → crm:E18 Physical Thing ; crm:P7
took place at → crm:E53 Place) .
Furthermore, crm:E4 Period is at the same time a subclass of E2 Temporal
Entity, the class providing the time-span projection and the temporal
relationships, _*and* of_ E92 Spacetime Volume, last being defined as
comprising "4-dimensional point sets (volumes) in physical spacetime (in
contrast to mathematical models of it, or the models of quantum
mechanics) regardless their true geometric forms. They may derive their
identity from being the extent of a material phenomenon or from being
the interpretation of an expression defining an extent in spacetime."
Space-time (physical, not mathematical) is thus central in the
foundational view of the CRM.
In addition, crm:E52 Time-Span is defined as "abstract temporal extent,
in the sense of Galilean physics" and crm:E53 Place as an "extent in
space, in particular on the surface of the earth, in the pure sense of
physics: independent from temporal phenomena and matter". Both are
conceived as projections of physical phenomena into reference systems.
Finally, we can read in literature that the choice of not having phases
or states, in the CRM, but just events "was inspired by considerations
of modern physics, which considers Events as complex interactions with
non-negligible temporal extent, leading into phases of stability with
fuzzy (if any) temporal boundaries." This explains why "The CRM
encourages the description of transitions rather than the states or
situations in between them". Doerr Martin, Hunter Jane and Lagoze Carl,
Towards a Core Ontology for Information Integration. /Journal of Digital
Information/ 4 (1), 2003, 5.1 About Situations and Events
(http://journals.tdl.org/jodi/article/view/92).
With all this said (respectively before our eyes), it would be almost
impossible, for an informed observer, not to think that classical
physics provides the foundational perpective, or the fundamental insight
that establishes the essential ontological categories of the CRM events
and its analsys of the domain of discourse of "the scholarly views of
museum curators and a set of other disciplines dealing with historical
facts of the past". And that these facts are considered under the
perspective of their spatio-temporal extent and characteristics.
I do not criticise this choice at all or discuss it at all as it can be
considered as entirely appropriate in order to establish a ground
ontology aimed at integrating factual information about cultural
heritage physical objects.
Concerning conceptual objects, even the crm:E65 Creation class,
producing instances of the crm:E28 Conceptual Object class, is to be
considered in this view —insofar as it is a subclass of crm:E4 Period—
as an event happening in space and time, as the substratum of the
intellectual event happening in the mind of the artist or poet. The same
applies to social events, such as the crm:E66 Formation of a group or
crm:E8 Acquisition of a physical thing: it this their projection in
physical reality that is considered, in application of the applied
foundational view, not their social dimension and the analysis of what
happens in the minds of the participants.
Thus, the point I was making, and that started our exchanges, is that if
we want to model social events or phenomena *as such*, like acquisitions
and ownership, joining groups and memberships, shared opinions in social
networks and radicalisations, etc., i.e. as phenomena in human minds,
individually or collectively, we need an extension of CRM applying a
different and complementary foundational perspective.
As a matter of fact, social philosophy, social psychology and social
sciences generally consider —as a standard view— that this kind of
social phenomena happen in the minds and the social space as a
collective space of the activities of individual human minds and as a
result of individual, shared and/or collective intentionality (cf. e.g.
Gallotti Mattia and Michael John (éds.), /Perspectives on Social
Ontology and Social Cognition/, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands, 2014 or
Sammut Gordon et al. (éds.), /The Cambridge Handbook of Social
Representations/, Cambridge, University Press, 2015).
In the CRMsoc extensions that George and myself are developing, and
already proposed and will propose to discussion to the next SIG, we
therefore propose to adopt the foundational perspecive of a
phenomenology of social phenomena compatible with standard approaches
both in social philosophy and in social sciences as an effort to
carefully distinguish the physical and the social space and to add a
well grounded layer of social events and states ontop of the events in
the physical world that is consistent with CRMbase and its focus.
Therefore, in my perspective, "the speech act/social event is *not*
identical to the crm:E8 Acquisition" (see below), the latter being the
projection or setting in the physical world of the former which happens
in the minds of the participants and the social space – and is not seen
by our dogs. According to the distinction of foundational approaches,
and the epistemological layering, the same human happening can be split
into distinct physical and social events (in an appropriate extension)
and this allows to capture the complexity of the happening, from
different perspectives, as shown in the examples brought into the
discussion by Rob and George : an archeological expedition (as social
and physical endeavour) ended with 'came home empty handed' (or no death
after a murder attempt): this is a specifically individual and social
failure in relation to a personal/social project or plan, or an
expectation by the funding agency, but not a physical event.
I consider that we should have an open discussion on ways of modelling
social phenomena, and try to find a common vision in the SIG, in order
to produce extensions of the CRM grounded in scientific standards that
are not the same in different domains of discourse, and disciplines.
And, indeed, it will be a pleasure for me to resume in the next future
our exchanges, as in the past, in preparation for the next SIG.
I also kindly ask to have this post as a new issue on foundational
perspectives and stances in CRM base and extentions.
All the best
Francesco
Le 07.01.22 à 20:33, Martin Doerr a écrit :
Dear Francesco,
Please let us not confuse everything. The CRM is in no ways grounded
in physics. It is grounded in the scholarly views of museum curators
and a set of other disciplines dealing with historical facts of the
past in careful collaborations over 25 years. Please study the history
of the CRM, beginning from the Smithsonian in Washington. The CRM is
compatible with GIS systems, physics, biology and othersciences, but
does not describe their theories, but exclusively particular facts of
the past. It includes social constructs already, and no no ways
excludes social disciplines.
The only real bias of the CRM is purely technological and inevitable:
Information integration via machines based on binary logic, as a means
to link context-free identifiable individuals from human provided
data, which form a small but important subset of historical data,
which the a collaborative empirical result of the work of the CRM-SIG.
This determines the modelling principles of the CRM.
If you introduce other functions or principles of modeling, we have
first to understand their new epistemic function in the scientific
discourse, and understand if and how binary logic based machines etc,
may be able to process them epistemically correctly for the intended
purpose. If you introduce other functions or principles of modeling,
the model will necessarily be different from the CRM itself and
possibly incompatible.
This *cannot* be discussed vi a e-mail exchange, it is too complex.
Any such attempt would increase the already existing confusion of
epistemic and technological insights and necessities. We have to
organize vitual face-to-face meetings for that purpose.
My previous messages where *solely* about the word "outcome" and its
polysemy. I perfectly understand the word. I only tried to make the
CRM audience aware of the ontological methodologic questions necessary
to reveal the polysemy of this word and enable choosing the senses
that can be modelled adequately. I also tried, without success, to
make you aware of the extreme context dependency of any such word. If
this has been misunderstood, we need to discuss this *face-to-face
*with enough time. The necessary explanations and disambiguations
definitely exceed my writing capacities.
Looking forward to a substantial face-to-face discussion and
resolution of any misunderstanding,
Best wishes,
Martin
On 1/6/2022 9:03 PM, Francesco Beretta wrote:
Dear Martin, and (indirectly) Rob and George,
Thank you for your comments.
Le 06.01.22 à 18:13, Martin Doerr via Crm-sig a écrit :
Dear Francesco,
Your arguments well taken, I repeat:
The *speech act in CRM is identical to the sale, (Acquisition),* if
at all the speech act has a legal character, and if at all the sale
is executed via speech act, and not via e-commerce or whatsoever.
The point is: why care at all about building CRMsoc if everything is
already present in CRMbase? And, furthermore, are we sure that we
have a well grounded foundational analysis of social facts in
CRMbase? Especially as we know that it's grounded in the epistemic
view of classical physic (I mean not quantic)? Isn't this a somehow
different domain of discourse from social life as such? And shouldn't
we take car not to model a domain without taking into account the
paradigms of the disciplines studying the domain under consideration,
i.e. social life?
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