Re: [Crm-sig] Membership Request PLEASE VOTE

[Guenther Goerz]

ok
-- Guenther

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 2:28 PM, martin  wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> I just received the membership request below.
> A Spanish partner will be much welcome I believe.
>
> PLEASE VOTE by Tuesday 22.
>
> Best,
>
> Martin
>
>  Original Message 
> Subject:CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model Special Interest Group
> Date:   Tue, 15 Mar 2011 12:03:47 +0100
> From:   merce.lopez.fort 
> To: 
>
>
>
> Dear Sir,
>
> My name is Mercè López, from the i2CAT Foundation. I’m glad to contact you
> as chair of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model Special Interest
> Group.**
>
> The i2CAT foundation is a non-profit organization whose aim is to promote
> research and innovation in advanced Internet technology. The i2CAT
> model aims to make Internet research and innovation accessible to the whole
> of society through collaboration between the public sector,
> businesses and research groups within universities and the educational
> world. Nowadays, we are working with the Department of Culture
> (Government of Catalonia) in
> an ontological approach (based on CIDOC CRM) of all culture
> heritage documentation related to catalan monuments and archeological
> sites. In addition, we are developing a graphical visualization
> (infograph) of all the ontology.
>
> We would be interested on being involved in the Working Group. We are not a
> CIDOC member yet, could you inform us what must we do? We would
> like to get involved on the future meetings and workshops. We have seen
> that the next CIDOC CRM meeting will be on May 2011, it would be
> possible to join the working group meetings?
>
> Thank you for your consideration.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Yours sincerely,
>
> Mercè López
>
> Mercè López Fort
> Fundació i2CAT, Internet i Innovació Digital a Catalunya
> www.i2cat.cat
>
> ___
> Crm-sig mailing list
> Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>

Re: [Crm-sig] about types draft

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Joao,

of course, you are completely right from the normative point of view.

My argument was motivated by the question how to deal with it in
practice if you have term lists or thesauri such as the AAT at hand
which do not obey those standards.  Whereas new thesauri will
(hopefully... but I am in doubt) obey the distinctions required by the
definition of SKOS, in particular the one between concepts and terms,
those legacy thesauri don't.  In order to meet the requirements of
SKOS, technically, an intermediate step is necessary. One solution
w.r.t. OWL-DL (!) --- which is incidentally the same as one we found
out independently --- is described in section 3.3 of the SKOS primer
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-primer-20080221/).
The ex:Painting term is an example of what I was thinking of.

My methodological concern was just that rechristening a term to a
concept by just putting string quotes around it or writing it in upper
case letters is a notational trick, but not a solution.  So I am happy
that you agree with me to keep the distinction.  This is not trivial,
because you can find it in the literature, also in papers on SKOS.
Getting to concepts for/in application domains requires an extra
effort.

I agree with you that my suggestion for a more liberal formulation may
lead to further misunderstandings, so probably keeping it as strict as
in Christian-Emils original wording is the better choice.  But what I
had in mind --- although it is too technical and too detailed to be
reformulated for the "Types" section --- is exactly the solution
mentioned above.

So, I think, we don't have a real disagreement and need not continue
the discussion.

Regards,
-- Guenther Goerz


On 11/6/08, João Oliveira Lima  wrote:
> Dear Guenther Goerz,
>
>  I fully agree with you in the several points, like: "concepts" and
> "technical terms" are disjoint classes.
>
>  The point is: the "E55 Type" class isA "E28 Conceptual Object". The
> CIDOC CRM ontology allows all classes/instances to be associated with
> multiple types and names (properties of E1 Entity). In my point of view, the
> correct place of "Technical Terms" is under "E75 Conceptual Object
> Appellation" class (direct subclass of E44 Appellation).
>
>  The new standards for thesaurus, like the British BS 8723
> (http://www.iskouk.org/presentations/will_21072008.pdf
> , see slide #2) and W3C SKOS
> (http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-primer-20080829/), have
> the "concept" (and not the name, label or technical term) as the basic unit
> of organization.
>
>  The BS 8723 (and ISO 2788, also) identifies 3 specializations of
> hierarchical relationship (BT/NT) between ThesaurusConcept instances (see
> slide #6): BTG/NTG (class/specie), BTP/NTP (whole-part), BTI/NTI
> (class-instance). I agree with you that ""narrower/broader term" is not the
> same relation as "sub/super-concept" in a concept hierarchy". But, the
> BTG/NTG relationship is equivalent to super/sub-Concept relationship.
>
> Regards,
>
> Joao Oliveira Lima
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 8:48 AM, Guenther Goerz 
> wrote:
>
> > Dear Joao,
> >
> >
> > On 11/6/08, João Oliveira Lima  wrote:
> > > Dear Guenther and Christian-Emil,
> > >
> > >  About your brief comment, I think that the "E55 Type as concept" is
> > > correct. The terms (or Labels) which concepts are knowed should be
> modelled
> > > in another class.
> >
> > I fear I don't get your point.  So, let me explain in more detail what
> > I meant:  Referring to the last paragraph in Christian-Emil's text, if
> > we introduce the type "artist" we could take this term from a
> > thesaurus like the AAT.  I would not presuppose that such a technical
> > term must have in any case the status of a concept, because then I
> > would exclude term lists and thesauri which talk just about technical
> > terms.  Maybe I have a more rigid use of "concept" because I do not
> > regard it as synonymous to "technical term": Technical terms are just
> > normalized words as in a controlled language, whereas concepts result
> > from an abstraction process.  And I think to keep the destinction
> > between "concept" and "technical term" is important from a
> > methodological point of view.  If such a term is embedded in a
> > "norrower/broader term" hierarchy in a thesaurus --- as one would
> > expect --- one can of course navigate in this hierarchy as well,
> > keeping in mind that "narrower/broader term" is not the same relation
> > as "sub/super-concept"

Re: [Crm-sig] about types draft

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Joao,

On 11/6/08, João Oliveira Lima  wrote:
> Dear Guenther and Christian-Emil,
>
>  About your brief comment, I think that the "E55 Type as concept" is
> correct. The terms (or Labels) which concepts are knowed should be modelled
> in another class.

I fear I don't get your point.  So, let me explain in more detail what
I meant:  Referring to the last paragraph in Christian-Emil's text, if
we introduce the type "artist" we could take this term from a
thesaurus like the AAT.  I would not presuppose that such a technical
term must have in any case the status of a concept, because then I
would exclude term lists and thesauri which talk just about technical
terms.  Maybe I have a more rigid use of "concept" because I do not
regard it as synonymous to "technical term": Technical terms are just
normalized words as in a controlled language, whereas concepts result
from an abstraction process.  And I think to keep the destinction
between "concept" and "technical term" is important from a
methodological point of view.  If such a term is embedded in a
"norrower/broader term" hierarchy in a thesaurus --- as one would
expect --- one can of course navigate in this hierarchy as well,
keeping in mind that "narrower/broader term" is not the same relation
as "sub/super-concept" in a concept hierarchy.

So, w.r.t. the practical use of E55, I would argue to keep the system
as open as possible from a methodological point of view and not
exclude to take terms for E55 Types from thesauri of the kind
mentioned above from the very beginning.

>  Making an analogy with FRBRoo entities, the "E55 Type" is located at
> same level of "F21 Individual Work" (abstract entity, without symbols or
> names), and the "E44 Appellation" (or Exx Type Appellation") is located at
> same level of "F2 Expression" (symbolic entity).

If this was the idea of the authors of FRBRoo I must confess that I do
not share the --- in my view rather obsolete --- metaphysical
assumption of abstract entities without symbols or names.

Regards,
-- Guenther Goerz


>
> Joao Oliveira Lima
>
>
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 9:59 PM, Guenther Goerz 
> wrote:
>
> >
> > A brief comment: In the first paragraph you write that instances of
> > E55 Type represent concepts.  I think this is unnecessarily
> > restrictive: They can just be terms (e.g. in a thesaurus) --- without
> > the claim that they must be concepts, i.e. results of an abstraction
> > step.
> >
> >
> > Cordially,
> > -- Guenther Goerz
> >
> >
> 
> > Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
> > Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
> > Department Informatik  8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
> > Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
> > D-91058 ERLANGEN
> >
> http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 11/5/08, Christian-Emil Ore  wrote:
> > > Dear all,
> > >  I attach a draft of a "about types".
> > >
> > >  It is based on the new scopenote, the orignal text, Martin's new and
> the
> > > comments from Erlangen.
> > >
> > >  Regards,
> > >  Christian-Emil
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > > ___
> > >  Crm-sig mailing list
> > >  Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> > >  http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > ___
> > Crm-sig mailing list
> > Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> > http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
> >
>
>

Re: [Crm-sig] about types draft

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Christian-Emil,

thank you very much for sending your proposal, which in my opinion is
a real improvement.

A brief comment: In the first paragraph you write that instances of
E55 Type represent concepts.  I think this is unnecessarily
restrictive: They can just be terms (e.g. in a thesaurus) --- without
the claim that they must be concepts, i.e. results of an abstraction
step.

Furthermore, I'm not sure whether the remarks about metaclasses and
second order in the very last paragraph are really transparent for
practioners.  When I asked the audience of my talk at the CIDOC
conference in Athens who would know what a metaclass is, three of
estimated 150 people raised their hands.  This means that we should
keep it simple.  A general hint to decidability as the reason for CRM
proposing the distinction as it is, should do.

By the way, I think subclass is one word, not two.

Cordially,
-- Guenther Goerz


Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Department Informatik  8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
   http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html


On 11/5/08, Christian-Emil Ore  wrote:
> Dear all,
>  I attach a draft of a "about types".
>
>  It is based on the new scopenote, the orignal text, Martin's new and the
> comments from Erlangen.
>
>  Regards,
>  Christian-Emil
>
>
> ___
>  Crm-sig mailing list
>  Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
>  http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>
>
>

Re: [Crm-sig] clarification needed

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Martin,

Because your last comment is shown somewhere in the text below, let me
answer here.  It's good to hear that my interpretation seems to match
with your intention, but then I don't understand the question in your
second paragraph.

1. Yes, "constant" is the term I used --- as opposed to "variable" ---
to explain the term "nominal", which may not be familiar to people
unfamiliar with description logics, to indicate that I talk about a
linguistic object which is used as an identifier for an individual, or
a "particular", if you prefer that. For general terms of logic, my
terminological references are works as the (online) Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy or the Routledge Encyclopedia, not some
coding experience you may associate.  Just a side remark: If you
suggest "particular" as a central CRM term, there should be a separate
entry for it in the glossary.  In 4.2.4, it is just mentioned in the
entry on "universal".

2. Perhaps you could be so kind to explain in more detail what you
mean by a mediation system where some instance of a table "agent"
would have type "artist"... etc. It seems to me that you are referring
to a relational data base with a schema which is not clear to me by
your short remark. I'm not sure whether you are asking to introduce
redundancy, which could be done, of course, but I don't see why.

My scenario was the following:

We associate a (domain ontology) class Artist with the CRM as a
subclass of E21 Person (just as FRBR classes are associated to CRM
classes) and we can then generate instances of this class, e.g. the
Artist "Vincent". We could modify that, of course, by instead make the
class Artist a subclass of E39 Actor.  If this is your argument, I
agree --- it's an improvement.  So, the Artist "Vincent" is an E39
Actor and as such an E21 Person.  Furthermore, we generate an instance
"Artist" (notice the string quotes) of E55 Type which is a term taken
from a thesaurus (let it still be WordNet).  So, the example has to be
modified in that now E39 Actor "Vincent" P2 has type E55 Type
"Artist". I don't see the need for any further changes, in particular
not to express something IN the thesaurus --- did you want to say
BETWEEN the thesaurus and the CRM??   The subsumption relation in CRM
in combination with the property P2 should be sufficient: From
"Vincent" we could get by the inverse relation of P2 is type of to E55
"Artist" and by the CRM subsumption hierarchy to E39 Actor and E21
Person, etc. So, there is no redundancy, but, as I said, to keep
semantic integrity --- i.e. that the meaning of the domain class
Artist and the E55 Type "Artist" coincide --- is the business of the
user who decides to use the E55 Type machinery.

Now you brought in a new term, "agent", as the identifier of some
(relational DBS) table.  Assuming that "agent" is also in the
thesaurus, you could of course generate another instance of E55 Type:
"Agent".

If "Artist" in the thesaurus is a narrower term than "Agent", we can
say that the thesaurus term "Agent" applies also "Vincent" because it
is a more general term than "Artist" to which Vincent is already
related by P2-inverse is type of: Referring to the thesaurus, whatever
we call an artist can also be called an agent. This should at least
cover a part of your question, but maybe I missed something due to the
brevity of your remark.  If the term "Agent" is not in the thesaurus
(it certainly is in WordNet...), we have to find another solution; in
this case we could look whether there is a means to express that it is
a synonym to some term in the thesaurus --- then the machinery works
as well.

3. Decidability: No, sorry, you are wrong. There is of course an
equivalent of undecidability in procedural languages (and Turing
machines --- this was Turing's point in his 1936 paper): endless loops
or infinite recursion, resp.  For further details, see David Harel's
nice book "Computers Ltd.: What They Really Can't Do" or some other
textbook in Theoretical Computer Science on the halting problem.  That
is the reason why I have been insisting on description logics (or
OWL-DL), because for any sentence to prove or query to answer the
reasoner stops and comes up with an answer. Provably, this is not the
case for full first-order logic and of course for any more powerful
languages (like those with metaclasses and any other higher order
constructs).  And, although it seems to be just a theoretical issue,
it is of utmost and immediate importance for practice (and
practitioners): What does it help if someone can express whatever he
wants but there are (provably) no means to decide whether it holds or
not?

Best regards,
-- Guenther

On 7/1/08, martin  wr

Re: [Crm-sig] clarification needed

[Guenther Goerz]

ower term relation in
WordNet.  Now we could "navigate" in the CRM class hierarchy
(i.e. perform subsumption inferences) and we could navigate in the
WordNet hierarchy, but to mix both needs further justification.  First
of all I think that a naive combination of both would make problems.

But there is a more sophisticated way to combine both, namely the one
I described in the third paragraph starting with "both representations
are not mutually exclusive..."  Let me repeat that in this case the
semantic integrity is within the user's responsibility.  In the last
paragraph of my last mail I referred to a technical solution we found
to do such a hybrid navigation by introducing a special property
"has-lexconcept" (and its inverse).  With CRM, we would instead have
E55 Type as the "interface" between CRM classes and terms from some
thesaurus related by the property P2 has type (is type of).  Instances
of CRM classes as E21 Person represent (domain) objects, whereas the
WordNet entries just represent words (terms) and their use.

With this background, let me try to understand your T21 example: Let's
connect E21 Person via P2 has-type E55 Type to the WordNet term
"person".  Making the transisition to WordNet, we could then navigate
to the subconcepts I mentioned, like "artist" (or do you mean
something different by a "person thesaurus"??).  Then we would find
that the term ("lexical concept" as we use to call it, because in
general it represents a synonym set which is an equivalence class)
"artist"/WordNet is a narrower term of T21 "person"/WordNet. We might
call the former T21-1 and we could use it to say by means of P2 that
some E21 Person instance P2 has type E55 Type (T21-1)
"artist"/WordNet.  Did I get you right???

Best regards,
-- Guenther


On 6/22/08, Christian-Emil Ore  wrote:
> Dear Günther,
>  One does not need to extend the CRM to get your first stroke paragraph. The
> CRM states that the class hierarchy under E55 type should have a sub class
> for each of the classes in the CRM.  This, of cause, opens for an endless
> recursion but that is not the point here. So for the class E21 Person there
> exists a sub...subclass of E55 Type, let us call it T21. The intention, at
> least according to my understanding, is that the terms in a Person thesaurus
> should be mapped to a type-(in the CRM sense) hierarchy under this type,
> T21, corresponding to the formal structure of the thesaurus. An instance of
> E21 Person can then be connected via P2 to an instance of a subclass in this
> hierarchy or to an instance of T21 itself. Due to the generalisation
> mechanism in the CRM all P2 insta
>
>  The latter case corresponds to your artist case. Could you please explain
> to me without referring to rdf/owl why this causes inconsistency I just
> don't understand your line of arguments.
>
>  Regards,
>  Christian-Emil
>
>
>
>  On 13.06.2008 15:24, Guenther Goerz wrote:
>
> > Dear all,
> >
> > As an attempt to clarify the problem of modelling alternatives with
> > CRM-types --- this is the term I will use to distinguish it from other
> > uses of "type", as e.g. in computer science --- let me start with
> > quoting a section from the paper I submitted to the CIDOC 2008
> > conference.  In order to avoid higher-order (logic) constructs which
> > in my view are probably hard to comprehend for practitioners anyway,
> > without excluding a weak form of reification completely, I suggested
> > two ways of representation:
> >
> > 
> > ``... E55 Type has been implemented as a class which ---
> > for the purpose of reasoning on the conceptual level --- may serve as
> > an interface to external concepts of formal domain ontologies (or
> > thesauri) as subclasses or as constants.  In fact, at least two
> > different representations are possible:
> >
> > - The usual way to attach concepts of a domain ontology to the CRM is
> >  direct subclassing, e.g., the (application domain) class Artist as a
> >  subclass of E21 Person.  So, ``Vincent van Gogh'' would be an
> >  instance of Artist and inherit all properties of E21 Person.  In
> >  that case to represent Artist also as a subclass of E55 Type would
> >  lead to contradictions.
> >
> > - Instead, a constant ``Artist'' may be used; in general, it will be a
> >  term of a domain-specific thesaurus.  Such constants
> >  (``individuals'') are admitted in T-Boxes by means of the ``one-of''
> >  OWL-DL language construct, i.e. an enumeration datatype.  They
> >  correspond to classes with singleton extensions.  So, we could
> >  represent ``Vin

Re: [Crm-sig] Fwd: About Types: ISSUE PLEASE VOTE

[Guenther Goerz]

ain ontology representing a rich domain
semantics on the one hand and a hierarchical lexicon --- WordNet in
our case --- on the other hand.  The ``terms'' above would correspond
to WordNet's ``synsets'', i.e. sets of synonymous words.  As synonymy
is an equivalence relation, we have a typical case of an abstraction
from word to (lexical) concepts: Each word in the synset may represent
the equivalence class.  Then we introduced a property
``has-lexconcept'' into the ontology which relates domain concepts to
the lexical concepts, i.e. words by which they are expressed.  But
this relation has to be maintained by the system implementors and must
be handled with care: Of course, it's up to them to care for semantic
integrity.  We can reason within the domain class hierarchy, as well
as within the lexical concept hierarchy (WordNet), but combined
inferences are possible as well.  In the case of subsumption
inferences, e.g., given a certain (domain) class and, by virtue of
lex-concept, the corresponding lexical concept(s), we could ask for
its superclass and the words it is related to.  Furthermore, we can
stay in the WordNet hierarchy, look for the broader lexical concept
(synset), and ask for the domain concept it corresponds --- if there
is one --- to by virtue of the inverse relation to has-lexconcept.

Best,
-- Guenther

On 6/9/08, Vladimir Ivanov  wrote:
> -- Forwarded message --
>  From: Vladimir Ivanov 
>  Date: 2008/6/9
>  Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] About Types: ISSUE PLEASE VOTE
>  To: Guenther Goerz 
>
>
>  Dear Guenther,
>
>  > Section 9: I don't understand it at all.  Could you please explain ---
>  > and perhaps also the colleagues who already voted for the text as a
>  > whole what they understand?  As a side remark, I cannot make any sense
>  > out of the last sentence.
>
>  The only sense of the last sentence I've made, was its correspondence
>  to OWL Full language.
>  If one allows to treat "E55.Types" both as classes and as instances,
>  you may face to problems with reasoning.
>
>  Excerpt from OWL spec. (http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/):
>  "... However, use of the OWL Full features means that one loses some 
> guarantees
>   that OWL DL and OWL Lite can provide for reasoning systems."
>
>  these "guarantees" are related to decidability of reasoning.
>
>  "Inference in OWL Full is clearly undecidable as OWL Full does not
>  include restrictions
>  on the use of transitive properties which are required in order to maintain
>  decidability." from
>  (http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~horrocks/Publications/download/2005/Horr05c.pdf
>   , p.2)
>
>  As for the sect. 9 as a whole,
>  I think the main idea was that
>  "you may implement a system of user-defined types (subclasses of E55
>  and properties)
>  at necessary (in your application) level of granularity, but it should
>  correspond to the CRM notion of type".
>
>  Best regards,
>  Vladimir.
>
>  >
>  > Best,
>  > -- Guenther
>  >
>  >
>  > On 6/4/08, martin  wrote:
>  >> Dear All,
>  >>
>  >>  Following the decision in the last meeting, we have to decide via e-mail
>  >> vote on
>  >>  the updated  attached text about types in the CRM document. I have
>  >> desparately tried to
>  >>  describe as exact as possible what the CRM does, and to avoid the 
> metaclass
>  >>  question, once this is a philosophical rather than an applied question in
>  >> the
>  >>  current form the CRM describes.
>  >>
>  >>  Please VOTE:
>  >>
>  >>  ACCEPT [ ]
>  >>
>  >>  REQUEST MODIFICATION: []
>  >>
>  >>  by June 12.
>  >>
>  >>  Best,
>  >>
>  >>  Martin
>  >>  --
>  >>
>  >> --
>  >>   Dr. Martin Doerr  |  Vox:+30(2810)391625|
>  >>   Principle Researcher  |  Fax:+30(2810)391638|
>  >>|  Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr |
>  >>  |
>  >>Center for Cultural Informatics   |
>  >>Information Systems Laboratory|
>  >> Institute of Computer Science|
>  >>Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)   |
>  >>  |
>  >>   Vassilika Vouton,P.O.Box1385,GR71110 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
>  >>  |
>  >>  Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl   |
>  >> --
>  >>
>  >>
>  >> ___
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>  >>  Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
>  >>  http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>  >>
>  >>
>  >>
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Re: [Crm-sig] About Types: ISSUE PLEASE VOTE

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Martin, dear all,

if the attached text is supposed to be a replacement of the text on
pp. xi and xii of the CRM document (v. 4.2.4), I maintain that it is
not technically mature to be voted on as a whole.

A possibility would be to vote on each section separately, because in
my opinion there are a few items which require clarification and
discussion.

I would like to remark in general that we should agree whether the
introduction of the CRM document should be methodological or technical
or both.  If both, methodological and technical arguments should not
be mixed up, as e.g. in section 1.  There may be issues for or against
which methodological justifications may be given, and there my be also
reasons why something is unfeasible or inappropriate on a technical
level, but one should not eliminate the other one.  And there is
common practice in some area; whether it should be taken up in a
positivistic way without asking for good reasons or whether it could
be improved is a matter of discussion ("Why are we doing things in
this way? Well, because we used to it all the time"...).

Another remark with a sideview on Christian-Emil's recent mails on
"dissemination" (and others) is to ask whether the text has become
easier to comprehend by practitioners.  Before including the text
perhaps some museum people should be asked whether and how they
understand it.

Here are some comments on details:

Section 1: No principled objection beyond the remark above.  As for
the last sentence, I don't see in which way "this interpretation
allows for describing the history of a term..."  If you mean by that
that it does not prohibit it, well, yes.  My interpretation of this
sentence is that you would like to attach a time stamp to a term,
i.e. in philology (e.g., in a TEI application) "edition:Lachmann",
i.e. "edition" in the understanding of Lachmann in the 19th century
--- which makes perfect sense.  Or is it more, and if so, what,
please?

Section 2: "... provides two basic properties": What is the second one?
I see only P2; is the second one the inverse relation (is type of)?

Section 5: "good"?  As opposed to bad thesauri?  Wouldn't it be better
to say: "Generally, thesauri are organized in
generalization-specialization hierarchies, ..." Nevertheless, I have
problems to understand the third sentence: how do those properties
"support" a "limited form of reasoning" --- what is "limited", which
kind of reasoning? Do you mean subsumption?  And what are "suitable
queries"? Queries to whom?

Section 8: "Finally, ..." well, do we need such universal statements?
And, honestly, I think metaphysical claims as "physical evidence of
types" are dispensable.  In sentence 2 I see a singular/plural problem
("is declared as A subclass ... to their (?) structural role ...").

Section 9: I don't understand it at all.  Could you please explain ---
and perhaps also the colleagues who already voted for the text as a
whole what they understand?  As a side remark, I cannot make any sense
out of the last sentence.

Best,
-- Guenther


On 6/4/08, martin  wrote:
> Dear All,
>
>  Following the decision in the last meeting, we have to decide via e-mail
> vote on
>  the updated  attached text about types in the CRM document. I have
> desparately tried to
>  describe as exact as possible what the CRM does, and to avoid the metaclass
>  question, once this is a philosophical rather than an applied question in
> the
>  current form the CRM describes.
>
>  Please VOTE:
>
>  ACCEPT [ ]
>
>  REQUEST MODIFICATION: []
>
>  by June 12.
>
>  Best,
>
>  Martin
>  --
>
> --
>   Dr. Martin Doerr  |  Vox:+30(2810)391625|
>   Principle Researcher  |  Fax:+30(2810)391638|
>|  Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr |
>  |
>Center for Cultural Informatics   |
>Information Systems Laboratory|
> Institute of Computer Science|
>Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)   |
>  |
>   Vassilika Vouton,P.O.Box1385,GR71110 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
>  |
>  Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl   |
> --
>
>
> ___
>  Crm-sig mailing list
>  Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
>  http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>
>
>

[Crm-sig] Ontology Languages: Decidability Issues

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear all,

for those of you who are interested in decidability questions in the context
of ontology languages, let me recommend a few readings:

For a general introduction and definition of the concept of
decidability, there are many textbooks which can be consulted, e.g.
 Barwise, J.; Etchemendy, J.: Language, Proof, and Logic.  CSLI
 Publications, New York: Seven-Bridges-Press, 2000
or lexicon articles like that in the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy on "Automatic Theorem Proving" (section 3):
 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-automated/

W.r.t. to RDF/S and OWL-DL (description logics) in particular, the
following paper is helpful:

Ian Horrocks, Peter F. Patel-Schneider: Three Theses of Representation
in the Semantic Web.  Proceedings of WWW2003, May 20-24, 2003,
Budapest, Hungary, 39--47

Some more background information can be found in:

Peter F. Patel-Schneider: Building the Semantic Web Tower from RDF
Straw.  Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial
Intelligence. Edinburgh, Scotland, August 2005.
(This paper shows that - and how - paradoxes can be formulated in
full RDF/S)

Peter Patel-Schneider, Jerome Simeon: The Yin/Yang Web: XML Syntax
and RDF Semantics. The Eleventh International World Wide Web
Conference. Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2002.

Jeff Z. Pan and Ian Horrocks: RDFS(FA): A DL-ised Sub-language of
RDFS.  Proc. of the 2003 Description Logic Workshop (DL 2003), Vol. 81
of CEUR Proceedings, Sunsite Aachen.

All of these papers can be retrieved from the Web.  Finally, I would
like to give a reading recommendation for those who are interested
in a methodological and constructive approach to predication, concept
formation, truth and verification, reasoning and the construction of
scientific theories.  It is a textbook on the freshman level (at least as
it used to be before our universities were punished with the introduction
of the Bachelor system...):

W. Kamlah, P. Lorenzen: Logical Propaedeutic.  Pre-School of
Reasonable Discourse. Lanham etc.: University Press of America, 1984

Hope this helps,
Best,
-- Guenther

[Crm-sig] A simplification of E55 Type

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Martin,

a few days ago I tried to send the following message to the crm-sig list, but
I received a message that it was not distributed (probably due to a large
attachment).  A day later, I tried to send it without the attachment, but I did
not yet receive it as a member of the list, so I don't know whether it has been
distributed.  I thought it would be useful if people --- at least those who meet
in Heraklion --- could read it in advance.  Although it may be too late now,
would you please distrbute the text to the list members, if the current CC:
fails again?

Thanks,
-- Guenther


Dear colleagues,

according to my criticism of the presentation of E55 Type in the
current CRM document as given in the paper I read at the last SIG
meeting in Nuremberg, let me present a reformulation of the sections
"About Types" and "Extensions" in the preamble and of the scope note
of E55 Type for discussion in Heraklion.

My intention was to change the existing text as little as necessary.
Certainly, there are opportunities for a much more radical
modification, but currently I don't see a real need for that.
Nevertheless, I would be grateful if some of the native speakers would
suggest stylistic improments --- many thanks in advance.

The idea behind the changes is a simplification of the text and a
demystification w.r.t. to the use of metaclasses --- for the need of
which nobody was able to present a convincing example up to now.  My
claim is that in the field of documentation the idea of interfacing to
external classes as (sub-)classes provides sufficient expressiveness.
I kindly ask all colleagues to realize that this suggestion introduces
a true simplification to the practice of documentation.

In particular, E55 Type was described up to now as a metaclass which
is a subclass of a normal CRM class and where at the same time
external, domain specific classes should be introduced as instances of
it.  Independent of the inconsistency of the definition in the CRM
document, such a use of metaclasses is undesirable not only because it
makes matters unnecessarily complicated, but also because it makes
the language undecidable (that is essentially the difference between
OWL Full and OWL-DL!); i.e. E55 Type as described in the document
cannot be used as described in any practical implementation.

Fur further arguments, those who did not attend the Nuremberg meeting
may consult the attached manuscript of my talk.

(A remark in parentheses for specialists only: Take the well-known CRM
Core example "Almod Blossom" where E21 Person = "Vincent van Gogh" -->
P2 has type --> E55 Type "Artist".  Let "Artist" be defined in a
domain ontology of Fine Arts.  According to my suggestion "Artist"
would be an (external) subclass to E55 Type.  In any decent reasoning
system we can infer on the class level, i.e. intensionally, with the
concept "Artist" ("categorically", as Martin would say), as well as on
the instance level, i.e. extensionally, with the set of all
Artists. Full stop.  This seems to me to be methodologically clean and
obvious to USE for any practicioner.)

Any place in the document where E55 Type is mentioned has to be
checked for compatibility with the proposed text, i.e. drop all
metaclass claims and provide compatibility with all properties, where
E55 appears as domain or range: P24, P32, P42, P71, P101, P103, P125,
P127 (see above), and P135, as well as all Pnnn.1 .

Best regards,
-- Guenther Goerz

Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
  http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html



NEW TEXT Preamble
--
About Types

Virtually all structured descriptions of museum objects begin with a
unique object identifier and information about the `type' (or `kind')
of the object, often in a set of fields with names like `Object Type,'
`Object Name,' `Category,' `Classification,' etc.  All these fields
are used for terms that declare that the object is a member of a
particular class or category of items in the particular domain of
interest.  As an interface to such domain specific categories, CRM
provides the generic class E55 type such that a connection between the
CRM and the particular domain category as its subclass can be
established.

The class E1 CRM Entity is the domain of the property P2 has type (is
type of), which has the range E55 Type.  Consequently, every class in
the CRM, with the exception of E59 Primitive Value, inherits the
property P2 has type (is type of).  This provide

Re: [Crm-sig] Issue: E89 Propositional Object and Symbolic Object, CRM compliant and museum doc.

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Martin and colleagues,

On 5/9/08, martin  wrote:
> Dear Guenther,
>
>  I believe that this view of how concepts can be defined is easy to
> understand but might be
>  overly optimistic and simplistic.

My idea was to give a few hints that basically matters are quite easy
to understand, and my intention was to keep it as simple as possible
and avoid unnecessary complications (vide Ockham).

>
>  Numbers may not be the best examples for everyday concepts. We can ask our
> biologists,

You are right, but I took it as a simple example where everybody
educated in simple math can see what the issue is and that we can deal
with the matter satisfactorily just on the logico-linguistic level.

>  who has so far been able to define the objective property set of at least a
> sparrow.
>  What worries me even more is, that the problem is pushed to the properties,
> as if they were
>  all obvious, objective and known. So, the approach does neither tell us how

No need to worry. I don't want to push the problem to the properties
(I didn't have a problem shift in mind), but I took it for granted and
self-evident, that first of all there is an agreement in a given
community about what properties are to be taken into account, how they
are defined and determined, including criteria for validity and
procedures for checking/determination/measurement, whatsoever.  Sorry,
but again numbers: The concept of prime number can be defined if there
is a consensus about the property of divisibility in advance. Somebody
else might find a likewise simple example in the physical world, e.g.
the property of shape...

> we get to properties,
>  nor how we can agree ("without secrets") on concepts once they are based on
> intuitive properties. Even the
>  concept of counting seems to me beyond true logical definition. See also

Well, I don't know what a "true logical definition" might be, but
counting can be introduced as we do with little children by using
fingers and counting signs.  Even without counting we can say what we
mean by "as many as", i.e. numeric equality: Take two collections and
then take out one individual from each at a time.  When you are done
there is nothing left in either heap, we say that they contained an
equal number of individuals.  So, first of all: pragmatics,
pragmatics, and pragmatics.

> David Wiggins, who claims
>  that some fundamental concepts exhibit cyclic dependencies in the
> discussion of identity, which is
>  a prerequisite of counting.

Identity is a different issue, equality can be done without, as outlined above.

>
>  I don't think that we can keep out cognitive psychology if we want to
> describe a reasonable set of
>  concepts (and properties) for cultural documentation. I prefer to regard

Yes, you are right, but we should distinguish two levels.  The first
one is documentation practice where we have a set of properties and
concepts on which a community has agreed and we have rules/procedures
how determine the values of these properties.  At this point, we need
not to reason about psychological issues; the agreement has to be
dicussed (and taught) as long as everybody understands it in terms of
doing the same thing --- take for example the bibliographic
description of books in a given library system.  This does not exclude
that some day somebody may come up with a problem due to
underspecification or ambiguity in common understanding --- in this
case the definitions have to be updated, and this is the way of normal
science.  If some disagreement exists, in a democratic setting we have
to discuss as long as we come up with an agreement --- or we document
the disagreement explicitly.  (Under authoritarian circumstances, we
might ask the pope instead...)

> concepts as an empirical fact,
>  in the sense that humans are capable to agree with a certain precision on
> concepts, however we come

Research in cognitive psychology or psycholinguistics may become
important on the second level, if we deal with the history of
epistemology (or historical epistemology) by, e.g. investigating
concept change, etc.  This would be an endeavor in history of science,
but only of indirect relevance for actual documentation practice
(eventually in cases where we take historical documentation into
account as biological classifications from the 17th century).

>  to their formation. As a practictioner, I do not need more than this
> ontological commitment.

Even simpler: I think the only commitment we need is what I said about
agreement above.

Best,

see you on Monday,
-- Guenther

>  Martin
>
>
>  Guenther Goerz wrote:
>
> > Dear Christian-Emil,
> >
> > I think there is no need to be worried.  Basically, things are quite
> > easy to understand and no set theory and no higher order logic are
> > required, although the proposed sco

[Crm-sig] A simpliification of E55 Type

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear colleagues,

according to my criticism of the presentation of E55 Type in the
current CRM document as given in the paper I read at the last SIG
meeting in Nuremberg, let me present a reformulation of the sections
"About Types" and "Extensions" in the preamble and of the scope note
of E55 Type for discussion in Heraklion.

My intention was to change the existing text as little as necessary.
Certainly, there are opportunities for a much more radical
modification, but currently I don't see a real need for that.
Nevertheless, I would be grateful if some of the native speakers would
suggest stylistic improments --- many thanks in advance.

The idea behind the changes is a simplification of the text and a
demystification w.r.t. to the use of metaclasses --- for the need of
which nobody was able to present a convincing example up to now.  My
claim is that in the field of documentation the idea of interfacing to
external classes as (sub-)classes provides sufficient expressiveness.
I kindly ask all colleagues to realize that this suggestion introduces
a true simplification to the practice of documentation.

In particular, E55 Type was described up to now as a metaclass which
is a subclass of a normal CRM class and where at the same time
external, domain specific classes should be introduced as instances of
it.  Independent of the inconsistency of the definition in the CRM
document, such a use of metaclasses is undesirable not only because it
makes matters unnecessarily complicated, but also because it makes
the language undecidable (that is essentially the difference between
OWL Full and OWL-DL!); i.e. E55 Type as described in the document
cannot be used as described in any practical implementation.

Fur further arguments, those who did not attend the Nuremberg meeting
may consult the manuscript of my talk; unfortuately, it is too voluminous for
an attachment, but can be obtained through Martin or myself.

(A remark in parentheses for specialists only: Take the well-known CRM
Core example "Almod Blossom" where E21 Person = "Vincent van Gogh" -->
P2 has type --> E55 Type "Artist".  Let "Artist" be defined in a
domain ontology of Fine Arts.  According to my suggestion "Artist"
would be an (external) subclass to E55 Type.  In any decent reasoning
system we can infer on the class level, i.e. intensionally, with the
concept "Artist" ("categorically", as Martin would say), as well as on
the instance level, i.e. extensionally, with the set of all
Artists. Full stop.  This seems to me to be methodologically clean and
obvious to USE for any practicioner.)

Any place in the document where E55 Type is mentioned has to be
checked for compatibility with the proposed text, i.e. drop all
metaclass claims and provide compatibility with all properties, where
E55 appears as domain or range: P24, P32, P42, P71, P101, P103, P125,
P127 (see above), and P135, as well as all Pnnn.1 .

Best regards,
-- Guenther Goerz

Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
  http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html



NEW TEXT Preamble
--
About Types

Virtually all structured descriptions of museum objects begin with a
unique object identifier and information about the `type' (or `kind')
of the object, often in a set of fields with names like `Object Type,'
`Object Name,' `Category,' `Classification,' etc.  All these fields
are used for terms that declare that the object is a member of a
particular class or category of items in the particular domain of
interest.  As an interface to such domain specific categories, CRM
provides the generic class E55 type such that a connection between the
CRM and the particular domain category as its subclass can be
established.

The class E1 CRM Entity is the domain of the property P2 has type (is
type of), which has the range E55 Type.  Consequently, every class in
the CRM, with the exception of E59 Primitive Value, inherits the
property P2 has type (is type of).  This provides a general mechanism
for refining the classification of CRM instances to any level of
detail, by linking to external vocabulary sources, thesauri,
classification schema or ontologies that function as extensions to the
CRM class and property hierarchies.  The external vocabularies
themselves do not fall within the scope of the CRM.

The class E55 Type also serves as the range of properties that relate
to categorical knowledge commonly found in cultural documentation.
For example, the property P125 used

[Crm-sig] A simplification of E55 Type

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear colleagues,

according to my criticism of the presentation of E55 Type in the
current CRM document as given in the paper I read at the last SIG
meeting in Nuremberg, let me present a reformulation of the sections
"About Types" and "Extensions" in the preamble and of the scope note
of E55 Type for discussion in Heraklion.

My intention was to change the existing text as little as necessary.
Certainly, there are opportunities for a much more radical
modification, but currently I don't see a real need for that.
Nevertheless, I would be grateful if some of the native speakers would
suggest stylistic improments --- many thanks in advance.

The idea behind the changes is a simplification of the text and a
demystification w.r.t. to the use of metaclasses --- for the need of
which nobody was able to present a convincing example up to now.  My
claim is that in the field of documentation the idea of interfacing to
external classes as (sub-)classes provides sufficient expressiveness.
I kindly ask all colleagues to realize that this suggestion introduces
a true simplification to the practice of documentation.

In particular, E55 Type was described up to now as a metaclass which
is a subclass of a normal CRM class and where at the same time
external, domain specific classes should be introduced as instances of
it.  Independent of the inconsistency of the definition in the CRM
document, such a use of metaclasses is undesirable not only because it
makes matters unnecessarily complicated, but also because it makes
the language undecidable (that is essentially the difference between
OWL Full and OWL-DL!); i.e. E55 Type as described in the document
cannot be used as described in any practical implementation.

Fur further arguments, those who did not attend the Nuremberg meeting
may consult the manuscript of my talk (I can't attach it because it is too big,
but I sent a copy to Martin).

(A remark in parentheses for specialists only: Take the well-known CRM
Core example "Almod Blossom" where E21 Person = "Vincent van Gogh" -->
P2 has type --> E55 Type "Artist".  Let "Artist" be defined in a
domain ontology of Fine Arts.  According to my suggestion "Artist"
would be an (external) subclass to E55 Type.  In any decent reasoning
system we can infer on the class level, i.e. intensionally, with the
concept "Artist" ("categorically", as Martin would say), as well as on
the instance level, i.e. extensionally, with the set of all
Artists. Full stop.  This seems to me to be methodologically clean and
obvious to USE for any practicioner.)

Any place in the document where E55 Type is mentioned has to be
checked for compatibility with the proposed text, i.e. drop all
metaclass claims and provide compatibility with all properties, where
E55 appears as domain or range: P24, P32, P42, P71, P101, P103, P125,
P127 (see above), and P135, as well as all Pnnn.1 .

Best regards,
-- Guenther Goerz

Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
  http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html



NEW TEXT Preamble
--
About Types

Virtually all structured descriptions of museum objects begin with a
unique object identifier and information about the `type' (or `kind')
of the object, often in a set of fields with names like `Object Type,'
`Object Name,' `Category,' `Classification,' etc.  All these fields
are used for terms that declare that the object is a member of a
particular class or category of items in the particular domain of
interest.  As an interface to such domain specific categories, CRM
provides the generic class E55 type such that a connection between the
CRM and the particular domain category as its subclass can be
established.

The class E1 CRM Entity is the domain of the property P2 has type (is
type of), which has the range E55 Type.  Consequently, every class in
the CRM, with the exception of E59 Primitive Value, inherits the
property P2 has type (is type of).  This provides a general mechanism
for refining the classification of CRM instances to any level of
detail, by linking to external vocabulary sources, thesauri,
classification schema or ontologies that function as extensions to the
CRM class and property hierarchies.  The external vocabularies
themselves do not fall within the scope of the CRM.

The class E55 Type also serves as the range of properties that relate
to categorical knowledge commonly found in cultural documentation.
For example, the property P125 used object of type (was type of

[Crm-sig] A simplification of E55 Type

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear colleagues,

according to my criticism of the presentation of E55 Type in the
current CRM document as given in the paper I read at the last SIG
meeting in Nuremberg, let me present a reformulation of the sections
"About Types" and "Extensions" in the preamble and of the scope note
of E55 Type for discussion in Heraklion.

My intention was to change the existing text as little as necessary.
Certainly, there are opportunities for a much more radical
modification, but currently I don't see a real need for that.
Nevertheless, I would be grateful if some of the native speakers would
suggest stylistic improments --- many thanks in advance.

The idea behind the changes is a simplification of the text and a
demystification w.r.t. to the use of metaclasses --- for the need of
which nobody was able to present a convincing example up to now.  My
claim is that in the field of documentation the idea of interfacing to
external classes as (sub-)classes provides sufficient expressiveness.
I kindly ask all colleagues to realize that this suggestion introduces
a true simplification to the practice of documentation.

In particular, E55 Type was described up to now as a metaclass which
is a subclass of a normal CRM class and where at the same time
external, domain specific classes should be introduced as instances of
it.  Independent of the inconsistency of the definition in the CRM
document, such a use of metaclasses is undesirable not only because it
makes matters unnecessarily complicated, but also because it makes
the language undecidable (that is essentially the difference between
OWL Full and OWL-DL!); i.e. E55 Type as described in the document
cannot be used as described in any practical implementation.

Fur further arguments, those who did not attend the Nuremberg meeting
may consult the attached manuscript of my talk.

(A remark in parentheses for specialists only: Take the well-known CRM
Core example "Almod Blossom" where E21 Person = "Vincent van Gogh" -->
P2 has type --> E55 Type "Artist".  Let "Artist" be defined in a
domain ontology of Fine Arts.  According to my suggestion "Artist"
would be an (external) subclass to E55 Type.  In any decent reasoning
system we can infer on the class level, i.e. intensionally, with the
concept "Artist" ("categorically", as Martin would say), as well as on
the instance level, i.e. extensionally, with the set of all
Artists. Full stop.  This seems to me to be methodologically clean and
obvious to USE for any practicioner.)

Any place in the document where E55 Type is mentioned has to be
checked for compatibility with the proposed text, i.e. drop all
metaclass claims and provide compatibility with all properties, where
E55 appears as domain or range: P24, P32, P42, P71, P101, P103, P125,
P127 (see above), and P135, as well as all Pnnn.1 .

Best regards,
-- Guenther Goerz

Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
   http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html



NEW TEXT Preamble
--
About Types

Virtually all structured descriptions of museum objects begin with a
unique object identifier and information about the `type' (or `kind')
of the object, often in a set of fields with names like `Object Type,'
`Object Name,' `Category,' `Classification,' etc.  All these fields
are used for terms that declare that the object is a member of a
particular class or category of items in the particular domain of
interest.  As an interface to such domain specific categories, CRM
provides the generic class E55 type such that a connection between the
CRM and the particular domain category as its subclass can be
established.

The class E1 CRM Entity is the domain of the property P2 has type (is
type of), which has the range E55 Type.  Consequently, every class in
the CRM, with the exception of E59 Primitive Value, inherits the
property P2 has type (is type of).  This provides a general mechanism
for refining the classification of CRM instances to any level of
detail, by linking to external vocabulary sources, thesauri,
classification schema or ontologies that function as extensions to the
CRM class and property hierarchies.  The external vocabularies
themselves do not fall within the scope of the CRM.

The class E55 Type also serves as the range of properties that relate
to categorical knowledge commonly found in cultural documentation.
For example, the property P125 used object of type (was type of object
used in) enables the CRM to express statements such as `th

Re: [Crm-sig] Issue: E89 Propositional Object and Symbolic Object, CRM compliant and museum doc.

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Christian-Emil,
I completely agree with you. The original idea should be kept: The CRM claim
to be a tool for documentation in the first place. The idea behind my
remarks was to indicate that I think the basic matters are quite simple and
that we do not have to conduct a big philosophical debate.  We might do so
on some issues where the CRM document is still to imprecise --- internally,
but not in front of practitioners.  They should get something which is
terminologically clear and distinct (to use Descartes' terms).  But, of
course, we are in formal ontologies (and if we were in ER-diagram design,
matters wouldn't be simpler). What they need are many good examples, perhaps
starting with CRM Core.  And we should not be dogmatic about events --- some
remarks in the recent discussion about "CRM compatibility" seemed as
if... Unfortunately, some of the available teaching material is in fact too
complicated for documentation people to begin with, e.g. the diagrams in the
most recent ER conference tutorial. Well, if Steve has a transcript at hand
it would be fine (I've never seen it).  Patrick too started a while ago with
an introductory text but he wrote me that he gave up.  So, I think, we don't
have any disagreement.

Best,
see you soon,
-- Günther

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 12:34 PM, Christian-Emil Ore 
wrote:

> Dear Günther
> There may be a misunderstanding here. I have no problems personally with
> the CRM. I am completely aware that we don't need neither set theory or
> higher order type theory. I also appreciate Frege for example his definition
> of a number: The number 5 is 'to count to 5'. Altenatively, the number 5 is
> what is common for all sets containing 5 elements. This is in fact very
> parallel to what the nat.historians try to express with their species
> concept.
>
> My main concern is how we should disseminate a good understanding of what
> the CRM is and why it is useful as a (conceptual) tool for integrating
> information in the cultural heritage sector.
>
> It is clear that the activities in the CRM SIG are and perhaps also should
> be focused on the development of the CRM as an ontology. It may also be so
> that the CRM SIG for these reasons no longer (perhaps it has never been) is
> a group primarily for museum documentalists but for people interested in
> analytic philosophy, ontologies and semantics and the semantic web (in the
> computer science understanding). I have no problems with that.
>
> Still I think we should keep in mind why the work on the CRM was
> initiated: The CIDOC ER model was not satisfactory and one saw the need for
> a better model for data interchange in the cultural heritage sector. The
> development of the CRM is a great success but if all memory institutions use
> DC instead we have failed and the CRM will just be another interesting
> exercise. I too often meet people who says the CRM is too abstract or
> somewhat better' we have been inspired by the CRM but the entire model is
> too complex for our needs'. This is an attitude I have observed also among
> advanced groups in humanities' computing. This worries me.
>
> Compared to standard practice and models in the cultural heritage sector
> there are three major new features in the CRM: Events, abstract objects
> (abstract content of intellectual works, concepts (e.g. species in nat.hist)
> and more specific abstract motifs of images) and the strict distinction
> between a name and the object it denotes. In most museum databases there are
> no explicit events, implicit events are thought to be identical to their
> identifier and the databases are focused only on material objects even in
> art museum database. We all know this.
>
> In my opinion we need both to continue to develop the CRM and to make it
> more accessible. If we could convince the museum community that they should
> start to document events, abstract objects and make a distinction between
> the denotation and the denoted object The CRM core is a step to make the CRM
> more easily understandable. The main question is: How do we find resources
> to write tutorial material and make it more understandable to a wider
> community. At the Heraklion meeting in 2006, I said that a transcript of
> Stephen Stead's introduction would be a good starting point. I still below
> it would be.
>
> Regards,
> Christian-Emil
>
>
>
>
> On 30.04.2008 00:48, Guenther Goerz wrote:
>
> > Dear Christian-Emil,
> >
> > I think there is no need to be worried.  Basically, things are quite
> > easy to understand and no set theory and no higher order logic are
> > required, although the proposed scope note for E89 seems to me rather
> > myterious and not very helpful. I think, the essentials can be
&

Re: [Crm-sig] Issue: E89 Propositional Object and Symbolic Object, CRM compliant and museum doc.

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear Christian-Emil,

I think there is no need to be worried.  Basically, things are quite
easy to understand and no set theory and no higher order logic are
required, although the proposed scope note for E89 seems to me rather
myterious and not very helpful. I think, the essentials can be
explained in a rather simple way which everybody will be able to
understand.

So let's start with a basic everyday scenario: Given a material object
we can point to --- common agreement about that simple fact assumed
---, we could use
a) a proper noun to address it (like "Emil"), or
b) a common noun or a definite description (as "man")
to refer to it.  The second case explains the use of the term "man" by
pointing to examples (and counterexamples).  In this way, we can only
address or refer to individuals, but not concepts: you can point to
the sign "III" or "VII" or --- taken the cultural history of
number writng systems for granted --- the sign "7" , but not to the
concept of "number 7" oder just the concept of "number".  Predication,
of course, is not a definition.  If we want to define the concept of
"man" or "number", we need some more linguistic expressivity.

How do we get to concepts?  Frege says, by abstraction, in the
following way: Under a given goal or purpose, we name explicitly and
positively certain properties, and we collect individuals which have
the same properties in a class, e.g. we collect all objects
representing the same number of counting signs in a class.
Mathematically spoken, this is an equivalence class partition, but
this can be handled by practicioners without understanding equivalence
relations at all.  The decisive point is that we make a
linguistic/logical transition (only, no psychological operation etc.
--- keep in mind that Frege's abstraction was introduced at the time
where psychologism in mathematics was heavily criticzed) in that we
now speak about "abstract objects", but those are nothing else than
equivalence classes where any element may be used as a representative:
take seven strokes at the wall or seven nodes in a quipu or seven eggs
in a basket... No secret at all behind the concept of "number". So,
abstraction is a methodological "facon de parler", we speak about the
same individual objects in a new fashion: Abstracta are
linguistic/logical constructs, i.e. objects of language, and nothing
mental (as the tradition from Aristotle through Ockham --- yes, also
the Nominalists were mentalists --- to Descartes claimed).

If we build sentences which contain a defined concept as, e.g.,
"number", we speak "about" it, e.g. "The number 7 is a prime number"
(given the definition of prime numbers in advance).

This should be sufficient to demystify the Dahlberg diagram (although
I don't agree with everything she claims): We have an object, item of
reference, we use a linguistic sign to refer to it and we build
abstractions ("synthesis") by explicitly naming relevant properties.
Furthermore, we can construct sentences which say something "about" an
item of reference, i.e. by subsuming it under a given class, talk
about values of its properties, etc. So, I think, quite simple, no
artificial popularization level required, and no reason to worry.

The object-centered perspective comes in if we arrange concepts in a
hierarchy, i.e. if we describe prime numbers as a special kind of
numbers, etc., given by a terminological rule "if n is a prime number
then n is a number", etc.  Assuming  appropriate definitions, then
prime numbers "inherit" all general properties any number has... a
rather obvious idea.  As for granularity, there is no general
recommendation except the fact that the degree of detail of a
description depends on the what you want to do with it; even as a
physicist you will not describe a piece of wood in quantum mechanical
terms if you want to build a table, but if you are planning some a
material science experiment you might want to extend your description
to the atomic level for obvious reasons.

Would you think that I left out something VERY important??

Hope this helps,
best wishes,
-- Guenther Goerz

On 4/29/08, Christian-Emil Ore  wrote:
> Dear all,
>  I follow the interesting discussion about E89 Propositional Object and
>  Symbolic Object, 'refer to' and 'is about'. This is a non trivial topic
>  and  specially interesting for people with background in formal
>  philosophy or logic. That is ok for me since I have this background (set
>  theoretical models for higher order type theory).
>
>  The introduction of  higher level philosophical concepts in the model
>  may make the model harder to understand for persons without special
>  training in and/or interest in formal logic. This worries me.
&

Re: [Crm-sig] Issue: E89 Propositional Object and Symbolic Object

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear all,
just two brief questions about the first diagram:
- what is a "true predication"?  Are there also "false" predications, and if
so, what are they?  If you talk about predication, do you need a theory of
truth in advance?
- what is the meaning of "concept" in the middle of the triangle? Do you
understand by "concept" anything different from what Frege meant by concepts
as results of abstraction?

Best regards,
-- Guenther Goerz

--------
Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
   http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html



On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 11:03 PM, João Oliveira  wrote:

> Dear Martin,
>
> Attached my contribution to the Propositional Object and Symbolic
> Object discussion.
>
> I've created a modified version {Slide 4} of your graph.
> Basically, the differences could be summarized as:
>
>   (a) A new property definition:
>  [ E89 Propositional Object ] Rxx is realized in (realizes) [ E90
> Symbolic Object ]
>   with quantification '(1,1:1,1) necessary dependent';
>   (a.1) A new subproperty definition:
>  [ R15 is realized in (realizes) ] isA [ Rxx is realized in
> (realizes)];
>   (a.2) Exclusion of one E89 subclass declaration:
>  [ E73 Information Object ] isA [ E89 Propositional Object];
>   (a.3) A new class definition: "Fnn Self Contained Individual Work"
>   (a.3.1) A new subproperty definition: [ F15 Individual Work ] Ryy has
> component (is component of) [ Fnn Self Contained Individual Work ].
>
>   (b) Exclusion of one subproperty declaration:
>  [ P129 is about (is subject of) ] isA [ P67 refers to (is
> referred to by) ];
>   (b.1) Modification of P67 property domain:
>  from [ E89 Propositional Object ] to [ E90 Symbolic Object ];
>
>   (c) Modification of R5 superproperty:
> from [ P148 has component (is component of) ]
> to [ P106 is composed of (forms parts of) ]
>
> Regarding (a), (a.1), (a.2), (a.3) and (a.3.1):
> ===
> The idea to define a "realizes" property between propositional and
> symbolic objects and to remove the subclass declaration between "E73
> Information Object" and "E89 Propositional Object" are based on Theory of
> Concept (Ingetraut Dahlberg, 1978), on Smiraglia's analogy of Works and Sign
> (Semiotic), and on the R15 property definition of FRBRoo.
>
> To Dahlberg, a concept (that could represent universals and
> individuals) has three components {ppt file - Slide 1}:
> (1) the Item of Reference (IR);
> (2) the set of true predications about IR;
> (3) and the synthesis of "true predications about IR" by a term/a name.
>
> In CIDOC CRM terms, we could make an analogy as: E1 Entity (as IR);
> E89 Propositional Object (as set of true predications about IR); and E90
> Symbolic Object (as the synthesis of "true predications about IR" by a
> term/a name) {ppt file - Slide 2}.
>
> An example that relates instances of "E31 Document", "F15 Individual
> Work" and "F22 Self Contained Expression " classes is presented at { Slide 3
> }.
> This analogy between Work and Dalhberg's Concept definition is similar
> to the analogy of Work and Sign (Semiotic) that was realized by Smiraglia in
> the paper "Musical Works as Information Retrieval Entities: Epistemological
> Perspectives"):
>
> // start of Smiraglia's quote
> "A work is a signifying, concrete set of ideational conceptions that finds
> realization through semantic or symbolic expression. That is, a work
> embraces a set of ideas that constitute both the conceptual (signified) and
> image (signifier) components of a sign. A work functions in society in the
> same manner that a sign functions in language. Works, like signs,
> demonstrate the characteristics of arbitrariness (the absence of a natural
> link between the signified and the signifier) and linearity (signifiers
> unfold sequentially over time). Therefore, works are subject to the natural
> ambiguity of signs, having
> both the properties of immutability (the fixed nature of a signifier in a
> given community) and mutability (change over time in their perception and
> use)."
> // end of Smiraglia's quote
>
>
> Regarding (b, and b.1):
> =
>
> 

Re: [Crm-sig] Issue: CRM compatibility

[Guenther Goerz]

iateness.  Therefore, there is a need for many "best
practice" examples.

Basically, for me there is some similarity to the question of a "compatible
text".  Maybe Martin had such a situation in mind when he wrote: "I suggest
to regard as minimal compatibility the ability to represent at least certain
kinds of possibly multiple events associated with a Thing or an Actor. This
needs further elaboration." YES!!! First of all, it needs further
explanation: I just don't understand it, honestly ("minimal
compatibility"??? What does "ability" refer to???  "certain kinds of
possibly multiple (???) events"???). A few examples would be helpful to turn
it into an operational constraint.

Whether in this second case a benchmark suite would be as helpful, is an
intricate question.  Which of the envisioned applications would correspond
to the input-transform-output scheme at all; i.e. are we just talking about
data transformation tools and nothing else?  And, of course, as for any
testing procedure: Testing can never prove correctness, it can only exhibit
errors.  To decide on semantic compatibility needs formal definitions and
formal proofs, sorry. A "sort-of-..." label is in my eyes worse than no
label at all.

Best regards,
-- Guenther

Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
   http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html


On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 12:43 PM, martin  wrote:

> Dear All,
>
> Recently there seem to be increasing claims of compatibility with the CIDOC
> CRM. May be our
> standard text is not clear enough about that. I suggest to regard as
> minimal compatibility the ability to
> represent at least certain kinds of possibly multiple events associated
> with a Thing or an Actor.
> This needs further elaboration.
>
> Best,
>
>
> Martin
> --
>
> --
>  Dr. Martin Doerr  |  Vox:+30(2810)391625|
>  Principle Researcher  |  Fax:+30(2810)391638|
>|  Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr |
>  |
>Center for Cultural Informatics   |
>Information Systems Laboratory|
> Institute of Computer Science|
>Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)   |
>  |
>  Vassilika Vouton,P.O.Box1385,GR71110 Heraklion,Crete,Greece |
>  |
>  Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl   |
> --
>
> ___
> Crm-sig mailing list
> Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>

Re: [Crm-sig] New Member - PLEASE VOTE

[Guenther Goerz]

I vote yes, too

-- Guenther

On 10/25/07, Christian-Emil Ore  wrote:
> Excellent, I vote yes
> Christian-Emil
>
> On 24.10.2007 18:55, martin wrote:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > Cultural Heritage Imaging (www.c-h-i.org), a non-profit organisation in
> > San Fransisco and ICOM member would like to become member of
> > crm-sig. Representative: Mark Mudge.
> >
> > If there are any objections, please answer until October 30.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > martin
>
> ___
> Crm-sig mailing list
> Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>

Re: [Crm-sig] Re.: [crm-sig] cidoc 4.2 in owl + alignment toDOLCE-Ultralight PLEASE RESPOND

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear all,

let me suggest a two-stage process:

- Up to the meeting in Nuremberg next December, we, i.e. Bernhard
Schiemann and myself, are ready to volunteer in terms of collecting
all recent OWL implementations of the CRM, making them available on a
web page --- including documentation, if available, and starting a
moderated Wiki about this subject.
- In Nuremberg, we should have a special session on CRM/OWL in order
to review what has been achieved so far and to set up an
organizational and technical  framework aiming at a coordinated
standardized OWL implementation.  We should find a coordinator for
this task, who is also ready to take care of maintenance and updating
to future versions of the CRM.
- Everything  related to the CRM is being hosted by FORTH and I don't
see any need to change that. Up to December we will offer a quick
solution on our website, but later on FORTH should take
responsibility.

So, please, send everything related to CRM/OWL to us (or, better, send
a link).  Of course, we got Aldo's code through the links he sent
already, and I think Detlev Balzer's version is already avaiable on
the FORTH web site (so there is no need for duplication, if there
haven't been changes since then). And please let us know whether you
are interested in a moderated Wiki as suggested by Mika.

Best regards,
-- Guenther


On 6/15/07, Detlev Balzer  wrote:

Dear all,

this is great. So I'll throw in yet another OWL representation
that I have done in 2004 (and which it is a bit aged by now), for
discussion and comparison:
  http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/OWL/releasenotes349.html

I agree with Martin's suggestion to nominate a coordinator and I'd
be happy if Günther Goerz would volunteer for this effort.

-- Detlev

P.S.: Apparently, this situation is not too unusual: The MPEG-7
community has managed to produce four or five OWL representations
of ISO 15938-5 largely independent of each other. And all of these
had even been described in journal and conference papers.
This is the information society at work ;)


Mika Nyman schrieb:
> Hello Guenther & others
>
> We have also done an OWL-implementation of the CIDOC-CRM 4.2 for our own
> use. We also have a separate version that includes the latest version of
> FRBRoo. Obviously I would be interested to participate in a co-operative
> effort to arrive to an official OWL rendering of CIDOC-CRM and FRBRoo.
>
> It might be a good idea to publish draft versions of our efforts on a closed
> wiki (=requiring login & authentication) and then have a mechanism for
> on-line annotation.
>
> We have used Protégé 3.2.1 in our work, so our version can be opened with
> Protégé. One option could be to distribute Protégé-versions and collect
> annotations in a wiki.
>
> Best regards,
> Mika
>
> 
>  Synapse Computing Oy, Arabiankatu 2, 00560 Helsinki
>  i...@synapse-computing.com
>  +358-9-8569 9696 puh/tel
>  +358-9-8569 9595 fax
> 
>
>
> -Alkuperäinen viesti-
> Lähettäjä: crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr
> [mailto:crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr] Puolesta Guenther Goerz
> Lähetetty: 14. kesäkuuta 2007 1:35
> Vastaanottaja: martin
> Kopio: crm-sig@ics.forth.gr; bernhard.schiem...@informatik.uni-erlangen.de;
> Guenther Goerz
> Aihe: Re: [Crm-sig] Re.: [crm-sig] cidoc 4.2 in owl + alignment
> toDOLCE-Ultralight PLEASE RESPOND
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> a while ago I wrote to Aldo whether he will continue to work on an OWL
> version of the CRM aiming at an upgrade to version 4.2.  At that time
> he answered that he was not planning to do that and he sent me the
> results of his work on version 3.4.9 to use it for further development
> if we like to. I  talked to Martin about that, expressing our interest
> to pursue this issue further, but of course avoiding duplicate work.
> Martin said that he was not aware of any other group --- including
> FORTH  already implementing or planning to implement a new OWL
> version in the near future. So, we looked for a student and finally
> found one who started to work on with a new implementation of 4.2 in
> OWL as a study project several months ago.  Now, he is nearly finished
> and of course we will make the result of our work --- OWL code and
> documentation (in German, sorry) --- available to the community as
> soon as it is ready.  Furthermore, we are planning to present it at
> the Nuremberg workshop.  So,  I was a bit surprised by Aldo's  last
> message --- obviously communication in our community is sort of
> suboptimal.  Of course, I strongly support any effort to integrate
> everything what has been done so far. Perhaps we should use the
> Nuremberg workshop to set up a subgro

Re: [Crm-sig] Re.: [crm-sig] cidoc 4.2 in owl + alignment to DOLCE-Ultralight PLEASE RESPOND

[Guenther Goerz]

Dear colleagues,

a while ago I wrote to Aldo whether he will continue to work on an OWL
version of the CRM aiming at an upgrade to version 4.2.  At that time
he answered that he was not planning to do that and he sent me the
results of his work on version 3.4.9 to use it for further development
if we like to. I  talked to Martin about that, expressing our interest
to pursue this issue further, but of course avoiding duplicate work.
Martin said that he was not aware of any other group --- including
FORTH  already implementing or planning to implement a new OWL
version in the near future. So, we looked for a student and finally
found one who started to work on with a new implementation of 4.2 in
OWL as a study project several months ago.  Now, he is nearly finished
and of course we will make the result of our work --- OWL code and
documentation (in German, sorry) --- available to the community as
soon as it is ready.  Furthermore, we are planning to present it at
the Nuremberg workshop.  So,  I was a bit surprised by Aldo's  last
message --- obviously communication in our community is sort of
suboptimal.  Of course, I strongly support any effort to integrate
everything what has been done so far. Perhaps we should use the
Nuremberg workshop to set up a subgroup aiming at the implementation
of a reference version 4.2+ in OWL; obviously there are several issues
we have to agree on: problems in the current 4.2 document,
representational alternatives, alignment with DOLCE, etc.
Furthermore, we should nominate a coordinator to avoid duplicate work
in the future.

Best regards,
-- Guenther

Prof. Dr. Guenther GoerzFon: (+49 9131) 852-8701; -8702
Univ. Erlangen-NuernbergFax: (+49 9131) 852-8986
Institut f. Informatik 8/KI goerz  AT informatik.uni-erlangen.de
Haberstrasse 2  ggoerz AT csli.stanford.edu
D-91058 ERLANGEN
  http://www8.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/inf8/en/goerz.html


On 6/13/07, martin  wrote:

Dear Detlev, Aldo,

I would much appreciate such an effort. We at FORTH would clearly participate.
Who else would like to participate? PLEASE RESPOND.
I will put the idea on the issues list, and suggest to discuss details in
the CRM-SIG meeting Dec. 4-7 in Nuremberg.

Best,

martin

Detlev Balzer wrote:
> Aldo Gangemi wrote:
>
>>Dear CRM specialists, I'd like to point you at a new OWL version of
>>CIDOC 4.2, which I have produced for other purposes. It is based on the
>>official RDFS version, and besides the semantic translation, it only
>>includes a guess about the datatypes used in some CIDOC properties.
>>Please refer to file documentation for details (I've put it in a ftp
>>area of my lab, but if you find it useful, please copy it where
>>appropriate:
>>
>>http://www.loa-cnr.it/ontologies/CIDOC/cidoc_v4.2.owl
>
>
> I like the idea of expressing alignments between ontologies
> using OWL constructs such as equivalentClass.
> However, a straight automatic translation from RDFS to OWL misses
> the opportunity to formalize some of the (textual) definitions
> from the CIDOC CRM that cannot be expressed in RDF Schema.
>
> Wouldn't it be useful to include some more definitions (explicit
> and implicit) from the reference model? As an example, pairs of
> inverse properties are identified by the letters B and F appended
> to the numerical part of the property name. This is mnemonics for
> humans, but not easily processed by machines. However, it can
> easily be made processable by using the owl:inverseOf statement.
> There are further examples such as the disjointness of some
> classes (explicitly mentioned in the text) or the transitivity of
> some properties (e.g. P120F.occurs_before). One could go even further
> and declare P57F.has_number_of_parts as owl:FunctionalProperty,
> assuming that no instance of E19.Physical_Object can consist of
> different numbers of parts at a given time.
>
> How does the SIG think about a coordinated effort that would
> eventually result in an official OWL representation of the model?
> Some work has already been done and I think it shouldn't be too
> hard to reach a consensus on what to express in OWL language
> constructs, and what to leave out.
>
> Best wishes,
> Detlev
>
> ___
> Crm-sig mailing list
> Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>


--

--
  Dr. Martin Doerr  |  Vox:+30(2810)391625|
  Principle Researcher  |  Fax:+30(2810)391638|
|  Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr |
  |