Data Ontology: Data/Information as Ontological Category

[Azamat Abdoullaev]

I have an impression that many big problems in science and technology could be solved by recognizing 

Data as a Prime Ontological Category:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/world-data-ontology-science-ai-ml-deep-learning-graph-abdoullaev/

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-secret-sauce-behind-effective-artificial-intelligence-and-machine-learning-technology/answer/Kiryl-Persianov?__filter__=all&__nsrc__=notif_page&__sncid__=21622551487&__snid3__=29759625504

[John F Sowa]

Azamat> I have an impression that many big problems in science and technology could be solved by recognizing Data as a Prime Ontological Category

 

Yes, of course. That is absolutely true!!!!  The failure to recognize and emphasize that point is the primary reason why the ISO standard for ontology is hopelessly obsolete.

 

But instead of the word "Data", I recommend the more general word "Signs".  That term includes every kind of language, logic, patterns, notations, books, documents, web pages, representations, images, diagrams, virtual reality... independent of any media, substrate, or equipment on which the signs may be stored, displayed, processed, or transmitted.

 

In fact, an ontology that does not include signs as a fundamental category is incapable of representing or talking about itself.  Every theory of mathematics and logic is a formal system of signs that are related by formal signs called axioms and rules of inference.

 

For an ontology that has a two-way split at the top (Signs and Physics), see slide 30 of http://www.jfsowa.com/talks/patolog4.pdf

 

Those are the slides for day 4 of a short course on Patterns of Logic and Ontology.   For the slides of the other days, see patlog1, 2, 3, and 5.

 

John 

[John F Sowa]

Azamat,

 

The words 'data' and 'information' represent special cases of signs.

 

The word 'data' is Latin for "that which has been given" and the word 'information'  is an English word, derived from Latin, for that which informs.  But the word 'sign' is the general term that includes signs from any source for any purpose.  It includes all the signs that have been given (the data) and all the signs that have been used to inform (the information), and all the signs that any living thing from bacteria on up receive, perceive, process, generate, store, and communicate.

 

 

AA:  Data denotes the information conveyed in the sign, symbol or signal. Data could be coded and represented, measured and reported, analyzed and visualized, collected and stored, processed and communicated. As a general concept, it could cover information and knowledge, facts and statistics, values and variables, patterns and rules. 

 

No.   The word 'data' is more specialized than the word 'sign'.  It does not include knowledge, since  knowledge represents signs that are known.  And the signs of  knowledge may have been derived directly from perception (a process of interpreting signs derived by the senses).  The signs of knowledge may have been given by somebody as information, but more likely some sentient being obtained them through an interpretation of signs from the sense organs.  (And sentient beings include everything from bacteria on up.)  Viruses are not sentient beings.  They are signs that are interpreted by the cells of living things.)

 

AA: data is the new oil and gas, money and and any valuable assets of the digital age

 

There is nothing new about data, since computing devices have been given data since the punched card machines that processed the 1890 census.   The amount of data has been growing exponentially for the past 140 years.  That exp9nential increase has made a qualitative increase in the kinds of ways that machines can process the data.

 

But it's important to remember that the human brain has about 90 billion neurons, and each neuron can store an immense amount of bits internally and can be connected to a large number of other neurons in a large variety of ways.  The product of all those numbers is immense compared to the WWW.

 

Neuroscientists are just beginning to explore the potential for representing and processing that immensity.  Today's computer system are just beginning to catch up with the storage capacity of a small animal brain, but the current computational mechanisms are primitive compared to the complex connectivity of the neurons and their interconnections in the brain of a fruit fly.

 

As for ontology, I strongly recommend sli de 30 of http://jfsowa.com/talks/patolog4.pdf (and the other slides before and after plus all the references in the slides and at the end).

 

John

[Alex Shkotin]

Azamat,

data [1] is a special kind of information [2]. information is a special kind of knowledge [3]. 

Maybe knowledge should be a prime ontological category. And this is why Theaetetus with a help of Socrates himself could not find a definition of knowledge 2400 years ago.

Alex

пн, 6 дек. 2021 г. в 15:35, Azamat Abdoullaev <ontop...@gmail.com>:

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[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Dear Alex, 

Though one could define data, information, and knowledge in whatever way as these terms are used in no precise manner, I wouldn't do it in the way you suggested: If we understood knowledge as being memory-based,  information (the process of informing memory) is not a special kind of knowledge. Which makes information (the physical form that is informing memory) a type of data (namely potentially informing physical forms). Of course, data is used in a more specific manner when refering to information technology.

Best, 

Lars   

I think "data [1] is a special kind of information [2]. information is a special kind of knowledge [3]."

Alex Shkotin <alex.s...@gmail.com> hat am 07.12.2021 10:13 geschrieben:

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[Azamat Abdoullaev]

JS > The word 'data' is Latin for "that which has been given" and the word 'information'  is an English word, derived from Latin, for that which informs.  But the word 'sign' is the general term that includes signs from any source for any purpose.  It includes all the signs that have been given (the data) and all the signs that have been used to inform (the information), and all the signs that any living thing from bacteria on up receive, perceive, process, generate, store, and communicate.

Data, Quantity or Sign, Symbol or Signal, this is the matter of ontological grounding, as far as the goal of ontology is to determine which entities are fundamental and how the non-fundamental entities depend on them. Which one  is a ground and a grounded entity, truth-maker or truth-bearer, is an open question here. 

I follow here Augustine's theory of signs and his threefold division:

Some things are only things; some things are not only things, but the signs of other things; and some things are only signs, as words or ideas.

And the relationship of sign and things signified is grounded in the relationship of cause and effect.

Data as [physical] quantities and [environmental] variables are objective things of ontology.

Signs, as pointing to something or symbols standing for other things, are rather artificial constructs, helping to make sense of the world. Every thing or event could be the sign of something else, but for the sign reader, natural or artificial intelligence. It is critical for signification, meaning, or reasoning, be it musical notations, mathematical symbols, conventional or natural signs. 

Smoke is the sign of fire, but for some intelligent thing. As such, it is a physico-chemical substance, a collection of airborne particulates and gases, caused by some material burning, combustion or pyrolysis, all defined by some specific quantities, or data. 

Data are everywhere, as quantities and qualities, values and variables, facts and statistics, evidence and phenomena. They are the grounding truth-makers, while signs are truth-bearers...  

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[Alex Shkotin]

Dear Lars,

For me, it's better, to keep it simple, to begin from generally accepted definitions verified by linguists and collected in dictionaries like m-w.com. This is the base to move to one or another particular science to get more specific and precise knowledge of term usage. And nowadays when many different entities have a memory, to say "knowledge as being memory-based" is not enough. "information (the process of informing memory)" - I don't understand: for me, information is not a process. It looks like you have a theory - please give me a reference to read.

Best,

Alex

вт, 7 дек. 2021 г. в 12:29, Dr. Lars Ludwig <ma...@lars-ludwig.com>:

[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Dear Alex, 

knowledge, information, data - these are words in broad homonymic use, it is thus not relevant how you (or any linguists or other ontologist) define these words as long as you are able to disambiguate their different homonymic meanings (according to their different uses) and relations. You anyway can't escape inconsistencies and hypospecifications of actual word usage. If you are interested in getting an idea of what 'knowledge' would or could mean in the context of a consistent cognitive theory of mind and memory, check out the short chapter "4.4 WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE? – PHILOSOPHICAL EXCURSION INTO
KNOWLEDGE PROCESS AND KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES" in my book (https://kluedo.ub.uni-kl.de/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/3662/file/_Extended_Artificial_Memory_Dissertation_Lars_Ludwig.pdf).     

Best, 

Lars 

Alex Shkotin <alex.s...@gmail.com> hat am 07.12.2021 11:36 geschrieben:

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[Alex Shkotin]

Lars,

Thank you. This is what I kept in mind:-) "2.1.6.6 Technology cannot be used" sounds intriguing. For the weekend;-)

Alex

вт, 7 дек. 2021 г. в 15:16, Dr. Lars Ludwig <ma...@lars-ludwig.com>:

[William Frank]

As John Sowa said, all these, plus many more, are different types of 'signs'.   I prefer the current language that calls them 'speech acts'.   A key thing to note is that little of what people say to each other, or are concerned with, are facts or 'knowledge'.  (even in this forum).  

This is the logician's (and the data engineer's) blindness.  Most everything we say is a judgment,  a question, an expression of our feelings, a request, a modal, a poem, a play, a stop sign.  They all have in common that they are intentional entities = whose nature is determined by the intent of the creator of the act.   

One thing is that everything people say is at least implicitly modal or higher-order:  The proposition is what our express is ABOUT, but what we say has that proposition surrounded by our intension. For instance, the book is blue question, the book is blue command, the book is blue assertion.   Some languages, like Chinese, make this explicit.  Consider a file sent to a funds transfer system that contains a list of funds transfers.   These will be *requests* to execute a transfer. When a file with the same structure is sent to the data warehouse, it is no longer a request to execute, it is an assertion that a given event took place.  

And knowledge, despite lots of controversies and subtleties, is justified true belief.  What people (and machines) do is express a belief, which is a modal,  then justified belief is a kind of belief -- our determination that the belief is justified being another higher-order act, and true belief is another kind (which is where all the controversy starts).  (see Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - "The Analysis of Knowledge."

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[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Dear John, 

I somehow did not see your message on this topic: 

John F Sowa <so...@bestweb.net> hat am 07.12.2021 00:20 

> No.   The word 'data' is more specialized than the word 'sign'. It does not include knowledge, since  knowledge represents signs that are known. 

Maybe I am mistaken here, but I think it might not be wise to classify knowledge as signs, at least not if we understand knowledge to be memory imprints or states (cognition); as signs constitute themselves in relation to memory (states) [no memory (state), no sign(-construct)]. When knowledge is expressed, the expression of knowledge is a sign, but not the knowledge expressed. The reference point memory is not a reference point of itself, and it can only be communicated through expressions (a type of memory sign) This, however, is a mere cognitive perspective, not the view of a logician, I guess, - and I'd be happy to be corrected.

Best, 

Lars   

[Ravi Sharma]

Lars, John

Data or combinations of data lead to information, that can be stored including in memory and recall of information from memory is Not Knowledge!

Semantic cognitive synthesis of memory or recalled information can lead to knowledge which is again an expression of cognitive state.

In our Summits we have come to address Explanations, which as john says address follow on questions that give indication of Knowledge (and even the level if you prefer!).

Experience of recalling stored information can mimic knowledge.

I do not know how to iconize knowledge! except by expressions such as Awe, Y, N, such signs!

Regards

Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma)

Chair, Ontology Summit 2022

US Mobile 3132041740

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[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Dear Ravi, 

To make my position (or the point I make implicitely) clearer, let me comment on one of your remarks ("I do not know how to iconize knowledge! except by expressions such as Awe, Y, N, such signs!"). The extended artificial memory approach I describe in my book as a possible foundation of future technology differs from the computer ontology/linguistics/logics approach in that the relation between sign and (individual) memory is kept intact - as much as possible (memory being 'extended', rather than just expressed and objectified - as 'such signs'). The signs (expressions) of knowledge would therefore have, e.g., an attributes indicating the origin of the original information (memory impression) and the origin of expression (memory holder), and would be embedded into a wider structured/networked representation according to actual memory strucutres (as indicated perceptive/expressive language and visual chunks). One could think of it as an individual ontology (as bridge of thought). In my book I describe how the technological reflection and extension of cognitive/memory structures would or could change the foundations of information technology. The paradox of the claim of a memory-/mindless sign or knowledge or language (due to historic restrictions of communication media as I explain in my book) poses a challenge to the traditional theories of ontology/linguistics/logics which are focused on de-invidualized and de-cognitized, objectified word-signs (which causes a lot of practical and - as seems to me - as well as theoretical problems). 

Best, 

Lars        

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-lars-ludwig/

Book-Link: https://kluedo.ub.uni-kl.de/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/3662/file/_Extended_Artificial_Memory_Dissertation_Lars_Ludwig.pdf

Ravi Sharma <drravi...@gmail.com> hat am 07.12.2021 21:37 geschrieben:

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[Alex Shkotin]

William,

This is why for me "knowledge" looks more "primary" than "data".

And we talk mostly about a knowledge we can transfer by words - verbalizable knowledge. We use definitions to understand one another. Look at the screenshot of Lars's dissertation page [1] where ecphory is a basic term. But m-w.com does not have a definition for it [here]. This is a feature of Deep Science. Well, they have def for https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/ecphoria

"Medical Definition of ecphoria

: the rousing of an engram or system of engrams from a latent to an active state (as by repetition of the original stimulus or by mnemic excitation)"

And not all terms can be defined. then we use axioms to write their properties in connection with other primary terms.

But maybe I just do not understand Azamat's "prime" properly and it is not the same as my "primary":-)

Alex

[1] 

вт, 7 дек. 2021 г. в 18:58, William Frank <william...@gmail.com>:

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[Gillman, Daniel - BLS]

Dear Alex,

 

I don’t see how or why knowledge should be considered more primary than data. That says to me you are saying data are a kind of knowledge. Every definition or explanation of knowledge I’ve ever seen bases knowledge on facts and persistence. First, since data are signs, they include representations, a means for recording. Maybe knowledge is stored in our brains in a similar way, and there may even be some evidence to support this, but this is still speculative.

 

Data convey information (not knowledge, a priori) from their underlying meanings. Moreover, the underlying meanings aren’t necessarily facts, since each datum could be falsified (e.g., arbitrarily add 2 cm to every measurement of height), manufactured (not in the falsified sense – see below), or just poorly acquired (measurement error). We intend a datum to represent a fact, but it doesn’t have to. It seems to me a datum has to be a property of some object (real or imagined) to even have a possibility of being a fact. I can type the following token of a numeral, 5, and have it represent the number five. That’s a datum, but it isn’t a fact.

 

In statistical offices around the world, data have traditionally been collected via surveys. Response rates in these surveys have fallen for years, and much research has been devoted to account for those missing data. Sometimes these data are imputed, meaning they are added to records based on a statistical model. The issue is to make sure the resulting data don’t bias subsequent analyses. But, these underlying imputed data don’t represent facts, either.

 

Regards,

Dan

 

Dan Gillman

Information Scientist

US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Office of Survey Methods Research

2 Massachusetts Ave, NE

OSMR, Rm 5930

Washington, DC 21208 USA

Cell:    +1.410.624.9582

Office: +1.202.691.7523

Email Gillman...@BLS.Gov

________________________

“Whatever it is, I’m against it!

No matter what it is or who

commenced it, I’m against it!”

   ~ Groucho Marx

 

 

 

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Subject: [SOCIAL NETWORK] Re: [ontolog-forum] Data Ontology: Data/Information as Ontological Category

 

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William,

 

This is why for me "knowledge" looks more "primary" than "data".

And we talk mostly about a knowledge we can transfer by words - verbalizable knowledge. We use definitions to understand one another. Look at the screenshot of Lars's dissertation page [1] where ecphory is a basic term. But m-w.com does not have a definition for it [here]. This is a feature of Deep Science. Well, they have def for https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/ecphoria

"Medical Definition of ecphoria

: the rousing of an engram or system of engrams from a latent to an active state (as by repetition of the original stimulus or by mnemic excitation)"

 

And not all terms can be defined. then we use axioms to write their properties in connection with other primary terms.

 

But maybe I just do not understand Azamat's "prime" properly and it is not the same as my "primary":-)

 

Alex

 

[1] 

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[John F Sowa]

William and Lars,

 

The distinction I have emphasized is as old as Heraclitus (400 BC) and my namesake, John the Evangelist (100 AD):  Logos vs Physis.

 

Heraclitus and John:  "All things (panta( came to be (gignomai) [according to (kata for Heraclitus[ / through (dia for John)] this Logos."

 

Whatever you want  to call it, the content of those words or propositions or whatever must be distinguished from the physical material (paper, breath,, electrons, magnetic spots,...).

 

William:. I prefer the current language that calls them 'speech acts'. 

 

A speech act is a physical action that occurs in space-time.  The content of that act is a timeless abstraction.

 

William:  Most everything we say is a judgment,  a question, an expression of our feelings, a request, a modal, a poem, a play, rations a stop sign.  They all have in common that they are intentional entities = whose nature is determined by the intent of the creator of the act. 

 

That is true.  Every speech act A relates some abstract content C to some intention I.  The act A is a physical event that occurs in space-time.  The content C and the intention I are abstractions.  As abstractions, C and I can be transmitted via some physical media (vibrating air, telephone lines, radio waves...) be stored or replicated any number of times.

 

In terms of Peirce's theory of signs, (semiotic) , the content is an abstract type, which can be represented in an open ended number of tokens, each of which is encoded as a physically observable mark.

 

Lars: knowledge, information, data - these are words in broad homonymic use, it is thus not relevant how you (or any linguists or other ontologist) define these words as long as you are able to disambiguate their different homonymic meanings (according to their different uses) and relations.

 

That is true.  And Peirce's theory of signs (semiotic or semeiotic) provides a precise and systematic foundation for analyzing and defining alll the concepts and their interrelationships.

 

There is much more to say about all these issues.  But when we're talking about language, logic, and any comparison of human  thinking with computer processing, it's essential to distinguish the abstract content from the physical embodiment in any form -- paper, air waves, radio waves, computer bits, or neurons in the brain.

 

When any verb is related to that content, it;s important to distinguish how that verb is related to the abstract content, the physical embodiment, and any event or state in space and time.

 

John

[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Dear John, 

>A speech act is a physical action that occurs in space-time.  The content of that act is a >timeless abstraction.

The second sentence is a bold statement, John. - I'd rather think of abstractions (or content, knowledge, meaning) as historic individual cognitive processes. It's very much a feature of the human abstraction-replication-variation memory (and - as part of it - mind stage/thought/thinking) process, as I describe it. This results in expressions, interpretations, mnemic-individual as well as social replication & variation through communication, discontinuations, differing reinterpretations and recontextualizations, etc.

There is nothing timeless (I wouldn't and - I think - couldn't even know what this word means) in abstraction, it seems to me. Panta rhei, even though some basic conditions and relations seem to be very stable in our universe and thus allow for rather stable related sign systems to be communicated through generations (of physicists and mathematicians mostly, as autopoetic systems of reference such as biological, mnemic, and societal are contantly changing and evolving).

The paradox of 'content' (or meaning), however, is that whenever we look, it's there, and whenever we don't, it is not. Even an autopoietic alien or artificial intelligence system would need a perceptive-mnemic-replicative(-communicative) reference system for sign-content or meaning to be (shared).

Well, in order to not be too extreme in my view: Attributing a stable sign content (esp. in logics, information technology etc.) tends to be a good and stable approximation in most cases of present-day communication/technology, which does not mean that we couldn't still improve considerably.   

Best,

Lars

[Alex Shkotin]

Dear Dan,

Thank you for the useful answer. 10 years ago we proposed [1] and showed a way that all DB, Excel, etc. data (but BLOGs;-) should be converted to one or another natural language to become knowledge. From this I remember that data is knowledge - we just need to know how to read them:-) 

For any data for humans, we need a rule on how to read it and understand it. All your examples are from this area as knowledge may be falsified, based on an error of measurement, or derived from a model.

But if we take two computers with data interchange or just a process writing a block of data on disk we may say that they exchange and process data without understanding.

The Turing machine has data on its tape, not knowledge:-)

The relationship between data, information, and knowledge is more subtle than I declared to Azamat:-)

But we always should check if this particular data for humans may be verbalized ("spoken loudly" J. Corcoran). 

And I should look at Azamat's post carefully as at the beginning he cited JFS: 

"An ontology is a specification (axioms and definitions) of every kind of entity that may exist in the domain of discourse." John F. Sowa

For me, this is important as we need one step forward to meet a formal axiomatic theory: theorems and proofs:-)

I should be more careful with m-w.com definitions! In Russian we say "опростоволосился"

Thank you,

Alex

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51910491_Towards_OWL-based_Knowledge_Representation_in_Petrology

ср, 8 дек. 2021 г. в 20:20, 'Gillman, Daniel - BLS' via ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>:

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[John F Sowa]

Dear Lars,

 

Abstractions, by their very nature, cannot be located in space or time.   For example, consider "2 + 2 = 4".  That fact was true before any humans thought of it. In fact, it was true before any humans or alien beings existed anywhere in the universe.  It was true even before the Big Bang that started our universe. And its truth is independent of the existence of any universe or multiverse.

 

JFS:  A  speech act is a physical action that occurs in space-time.  The content of that act is a timeless abstraction.

 

Lars: The second sentence is a bold statement, John. - I'd rather think of abstractions (or content, knowledge, meaning) as historic individual cognitive processes. It's very much a feature of the human abstraction-replication-variation memory (and - as part of it - mind stage/thought/thinking) process, as I describe it. This results in expressions, interpretations, mnemic-individual as well as social replication & variation through communication, discontinuations, differing reinterpretations and recontextualizations, etc.

 

Note that your examples are all about physical things and events that occur in space and time.  They say noting about the abstract content.

 

The expression "2 + 2 =4" is displayed  as a pattern of LED lights on my screen as I write and as you read.  The same pattern was encoded in a wide range of physical matter/energy combinations on its way from my computer to many, many others along the way.  The association of that pattern with any of the physical things and processes is purely accidental.  But the content (a trivial theorem in number theory) is independent of any time, place, or physical embodiment.

 

Lars:  There is nothing timeless (I wouldn't and - I think - couldn't even know what this word means).

 

The content of the statement "2 + 2 = 4" is timeless in the sense that it's impossible to assign a meaningful time stamp to it.  At the top of this note, you will find the time stamp for the moment I hit SEND.  Your comp;uter can also assign a time stamp to the moment when it arrived.  But those times apply to some physical embodiment in my computer and yours.  There is no meaningful time or place that can be associated with "2 + 2 = 4"..

 

Furthermore, there is a countable infinity of integers.  But our universe, which is very large, is finite.  Therefore, it's impossible to assign a time stamp to every integer or to every theorem about the integers

 

And mathematics contains theories about infinite hierarchies of infinities.  That means there are countless infinities of mathematical entities and theorems about them.  It's impossible to assign times and locations to more than a tiny fraction of them.

 

John

[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

John, an interesting discussion. But I still beg to disagree. 

Abstractions, by their very nature, cannot be located in space or time.   For example, consider "2 + 2 = 4".  That fact was true before any humans thought of it.

Before any human there were no facts, these two are meaningful words, memory-related semantic constructs, that began to exist, are communicated, and might end or never started to exist in communication and 'meaningful' mnemic complexes of individuals (thinking of human groups not even using number terms in their thinking [Pirarrã]).

I'd even say that this very abstract fact is ONLY true (in the sense of st. existing independent of human thought) with humans thinking about it, as there is no relatable physical process associated to the thought processes and mnemic abstractions associated with "2 + 2 = 4". It's 100% a memory-construct. Thus in a sense, I wouldn't even denote it as a true fact other than an axiomatic agreement in the communicaiton between mathematicians. 

In my book, I discuss the process of cognitive abstraction and also cite Fauconnier & Turner ( The Way We Think - Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities, 2002, S. 111):

We hope to show that the study of blending, like chemistry,
has the potential to change our view of the world, subsuming
many disparate phenomena for which we had partial
descriptions, connecting them, and branching out to discover
new phenomena we had not seen. Many phenomena for which we
had partial descriptions - categorization, mathematical
invention, metaphor, analogy, grammar, counterfactual
thinking, event integration, various kinds of learning and
artistic creation, global insight integrating vital
relations like cause and effect - are products of the same,
well-defined imaginative operation.
(Fauconnier & Turner, 2002, S. 90)    

In other words, mathematical thinking is just a special case of language cognition.

As soon as we start analyzing the cognitive processes triggered by "2 + 2 = 4", we'll find a huge variation of ideas and thoughts, with a history of learning etc. As soon as we try to find concete (physical) examples for the thought abstractions in mathematical thinking, 2 + 2 = 4 can easily turn experiential false or unclear or not being an applicable abstraction anymore (Are two times two drops of milk into a glas 4 drops?  Do 2 atoms and 2 atoms combine into 4 atoms or a molecule? The abstraction of integers from perceptual objects and the reapplication of calcualtions into physical situations is often not realistic in any sense. That's also the reason why many mere logical inferences end in nonsense.       

Best, 

Lars

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[John F Sowa]

Lars, I fail to see any reason why you insist on putting time-stamps on abstractions. To claim that "2 + 2 = 4" must have a time stamp seems bizzare.  There must have been some human who first had that thought, but there may have been aliens in a distant galaxy who had the same or similar thought a billion years ago.  And whenever or wherever they had that thought is totally irrelevant to its truth.

 

Lars: Before any human there were no facts,

 

You have to distinguish facts (propositions) from statements (utterances).  A statement occurs at a particular time and place.  But a fact is independent of time and place.  In fact, there are infinitely many true propositions (facts) that nobody has ever stated, written, or observed.

 

John

[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

John, I think we revolve around the same basic problem: is there anything called 'abstraction' beyond instances of abstract cognition.

I wouldn't (and nobody could) know what this would be, as anytime one or any assumed alien looks or thinks about it, it would just be an instance of their cognition, or an instance of a mneme (if you think in terms of memory/thought processes).

I would rather think of the claim that there are 'timeless propositions' as bizarre, as I can observe or reconstruct, study, and compare abstractions (and logics, language, knowledge, ...) as cognition, and the (changing) role of sign systems in cognition, and I am thus able to relate different physical circumstances to memory processes. The moment you start claiming st. to be a 'timeless proposition' as compared to an utterance or memory state - you are thinking, communicating, and exchanging information, and oftentimes the way you think is varied and further evolved in the mnemic systems of the recipients of your utterances, and that is what is so important to understand: the mnemic system is an individually developing and socially evolving autopoietic system.    

In the cognitive sciences (as I explain in my book), scientists more and more start studying the workings of cognitive development and evolution instead of thinking of language and logics 'propositions'' existence as such, because the latter is a self-limiting view that tends towards de-invidualized, de-developmentalized, de-evolutionalized, and de-contextualized perspectives, while it is itself easy to study as a historic path of cognition. The traditional view you promolgate, John, falls short of reality, it seems to me. 

Best, 

Lars

      

Lars, I fail to see any reason why you insist on putting time-stamps on abstractions.

Lars: Before any human there were no facts,

You have to distinguish facts (propositions) from statements (utterances).  A statement occurs at a particular time and place.  But a fact is independent of time and place.  In fact, there are infinitely many true propositions (facts) that nobody has ever stated, written, or observed.

John

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[John F Sowa]

Lars> I think we revolve around the same basic problem: is there anything called 'abstraction' beyond instances of abstract cognition?

 

Yes. Those things are called "patterns".   And the formal study of patterns is called "mathematics".  And the foundation for cognition in every living thing from bacteria to humans is the perception of patterns.  And a pattern is a simplified image with some of the detail omitted.  Those simplifications are called "diagrams".  The simplest diagrams are called "graphs".

 

Lars> I wouldn't (and nobody could) know what this would be, as anytime one or any assumed alien looks or thinks about it, it would just be an instance of their cognition, or an instance of a mneme (if you think in terms of memory/thought processes).

 

No to the first part of that sentence.  And yes to the second part.

 

There is something fundamental that is common to all forms of cognition on planet earth:  simplified perception.  Since aliens that evolved on any planet in any galaxy in the universe would also need some form of perception, a reasonable assumption is that their cognition is based on a simplified version of their perception.

 

Since everything in our universe is based on the same physics and chemistry, it's very likely that any kind of biology and any kinds of patterns the aliens may encounter would have some similarities in the patterns they perceive.  Therefore, their cognition is likely to be based on simplified patterns that have some similarity to the patterns that scientists have observed on earth, our solar system, and our galaxy.

 

Lars> In the cognitive sciences (as I explain in my book), scientists more and more start studying the workings of cognitive development and evolution instead of thinking of language and logic...

 

That's a good start.  But I suggest that you go to a more fundamental level.  Perception is more fundamental to all living things than any kind of human cognition.  Images are a good start for anything that has eyes.  But structures are more fundamental for sentient beings without eyes.  And chemical distributions are more fundamental for single-celled beings.

 

For bacteria, a important feature of their perception enables them to swim upstream in a glucose gradient.  that  implies that chemistry plus plus a spatial direction is the most primitive form.  And that can be mapped to a simple kind of pattern.

 

Conclusion:  patterns are fundamental to perception, and the simplest patterns are directed graphs with labels that indicate good or bad directions.  That would be the simplest and most universal basis for cognition.

 

Can anyone think of anything simpler or more fundamental?

 

John

[Paul Tyson]

I assumed Lars was asserting that there is no knowledge without a knowing agent, and furthermore assuming that the only knowing agents under discussion are humans, who are time-scoped, then so is knowledge.

This assertion has nothing to do with the realist assertion that there is a reality ("facts") independent of any knowing agent. I think most realists would agree that facts do not come in and out of existence based on propositions (made by knowing agents) that assert them.

Regards,

--Paul

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[Nadin, Mihai]

Dear and respected colleagues,

Paul Tyson has it right. I was wondering how this discussion, that started with the distinction between data and information (knowledge was also present), degenerated into the old realism-nominalism dispute.

 

Regardless of the data type, data is the outcome of measuring. Information is data associated with meaning (cf. John Archibald Wheeler). My focus on these questions lead to publications that could help those engaged in the dialog: Predictive and Anticipatory Computing (Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology, Second Edition DOI: 10.1081/E-ECST2-120054027)-- https://www.nadin.ws/archives/2972 , Semiotics is Fundamental Science (in Knowledge discovery, transfer, and management in the information age / Murray E. Jennex, Editor, IGI Global book series Advances in Knowledge Acquisition, Transfer, and Management, 2014)-- https://www.nadin.ws/archives/2242

I apologize for mentioning my own work, but I thought it could help in the conversation.

Stay healthy!

 

Mihai Nadin

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[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

John,

just a few remarks: 

John: Yes. Those things are called "patterns".   And the formal study of patterns is called "mathematics".  And the foundation for cognition in every living thing from bacteria to humans is the perception of patterns.  And a pattern is a simplified image with some of the detail omitted.  Those simplifications are called "diagrams".  The simplest diagrams are called "graphs".

Well, by saying that a pattern is a simplified image with some details omitted, you are actually re-cognitizing (or perceptualizing) the term, which very much transforms patterns into (simple perceptual) cognitions. The perceptual system forms the most primitive and structurally stable neuronal (often innate) memory system. A term less bound to perception and more to the physical world might be 'structure' (I am not sure about this, however). In this sense, though, structure is st. I would see existing independent of perceptive-cognitive patterns. Abstraction I would always see as an achievement of cognition.   

John: Perception is more fundamental to all living things than any kind of human cognition.  

You are right. You are pointing into a direction of cognitive research that is very notable: The school of perception-action-research. See the works of Wolfgang Prinz, Max-Plack Institute for Cognitive- and Neuroscience in Munich, and the late theoretician Odmar Neumann, University of Bielefeld). They ingeniously researched and theorized on the most basic forms of action parameterization (called 'direct [perception-to-action] parameter specification'). It's an old neuronal system/pathway still active in humans (that was therfore studied in humans). Neumann, by the way, was my cognitive psychology teacher.  

Best, 

Lars  

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[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Paul,

Paul: I assumed Lars was asserting that there is no knowledge without a knowing agent, and furthermore assuming that the only knowing agents under discussion are humans, who are time-scoped, then so is knowledge. This assertion has nothing to do with the realist assertion that there is a reality ("facts") independent of any knowing agent. 

You are absolutely right. I wouldn't doubt that there is a reality informing cognitions such as  "the realist assertion that there is a reality".

Best, 

Lars

[Ravi Sharma]

Lars, Ed and participants:

Ed

You are right about language evolution and word meaning change. However, often I am in a more challenging situation - when you want to express the meaning of a word (in Sanskrit or Devanagari) where a direct translation is not easy, to say the least, you need transliteration rather than translation.

Here I think semantic vocabulary matching can be helpful. Hence a word, sign, or info element can be understood by mapping terms with longer explanations.

Lars - I do not have access to your book, but what you are describing implies that provenance, meaning at origin+extensions as bridge of thought is being held by an entity other than your own cognitive state at a given moment.

The state of cognitive alertness is important to even recall the original meaning and memory recalls vary!

Assuming that the human memory can learn extension techniques, what mind processes one would have to learn (e.g. meditation) to be able to not only recall data or signs or information, but go beyond and reach understanding or knowledge. An example would be brevity with a whole lot understood when mathematicians talk of Euclidean space or other type (Riemannian) spaces?

Regards.

Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma)

Chair, Ontology Summit 2022

US Mobile 3132041740

On Tue, Dec 14, 2021 at 10:53 AM Edward Barkmeyer <ebark...@thematix.com> wrote:

This argument is about “what X means by the term ‘data’”, and ‘data’ is a word that has many uses with many related meanings, some of which may be viewed as misuses by some people.  We as a community need a word that means ‘signs’ that represent and can convey elements of (purported) ‘knowledge’ to (suitably literate) persons and/or (suitably programmed) automata.  The word ‘data’ is often used with that intent (John argues that ‘data’ is a kind of ‘sign’), but Azamat’s usage is ambiguously stated.  An individual datum does in fact ‘denote the information’ (the ‘element of purported knowledge’) it is intended to convey, at least as ‘denote’ is commonly understood; but the *word* ‘data’ means the ‘sign’ to some and the ‘information’ to others, and many people don’t really make the distinction between the sign and the information (which can beget the ‘semiotic error’: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”).

 

In the words of Haim Kilov, “I won’t agree with anything you say unless you define your terms.” Azamat tried to define his terms.  We can argue that his usage is uncommon and may therefore be misunderstood, and John is arguing that Azamat’s usage is inappropriate for this community.  But the rest of Azamat’s thesis does in fact follow from his usage of the term.  I would add only that ‘data’ (in Azamat’s sense) also includes misinterpretations, un- or ill-founded beliefs, and outright lies, which can be equally well represented by similar signs.

 

I would also caution John that the evolution of language changes the specific meanings of terms over time.  What Julius Caesar meant by ‘data’ is primarily ‘gifts’.  And ‘informatio’ is a Medieval Latin term for the process of forming knowledge, of creating a mental model of whatever, and it then extended to the things that do that, in much the same way that ‘representation’ refers to both the process and the thing employed in it.  Language evolves. 

 

-Ed

 

"'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone,

'it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less.'"

  -- Lewis Carroll (C.L. Dodgson), "Through the Looking Glass"

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[Dr. Lars Ludwig]

Dear Ravi,

Ravi: Lars - I do not have access to your book, but what you are describing implies that provenance, meaning at origin+extensions as bridge of thought is being held by an entity other than your own cognitive state at a given moment ...

Here are two links for downloading the book: 

https://d-nb.info/1045194794/34

https://kluedo.ub.uni-kl.de/frontdoor/deliver/index/docId/3662/file/_Extended_Artificial_Memory_Dissertation_Lars_Ludwig.pdf

  

Best, 

Lars

[John F Sowa]

Ed,  You're preaching to the choir.    I changed the subject line to focus on the issues.

 

EJB>  I would also caution John that the evolution of language changes the specific meanings of terms over time. 

 

Yes indeed.  And the change over time can be minutes or even seconds.  The meaning of any word in any natural language depends very heavily on the context.  The same word in two different paragraphs of the same document written by the same author  on the same date can have different meanings.

 

See, for example, the slides about contexts, which I presented at an ontologogy summit meeting in 2017:  http://jfsowa.com/talks/contexts.pdf

 

To see some of the most difficult issues, just skip to slides 19, 20, and 21, which discuss the problems of an outsider trying to understand an actual conversation between a husband and wife.  There is no limit to the amount of knowledge required to understand the details of what they mean by the words.

 

In any case, the examples in the first ten slides of contexts.pdf don't require any prior knowledge of any theory.  By themselves, they are sufficient to show the wide variety of issues involved.  The remaining slides get into issues about logic and representation.

 

EJB> What Julius Caesar meant by ‘data’ is primarily ‘gifts’

 

That is true.  But the basic issue hasn't changed.  If Julius wanted to give a soldier a horse, he would transfer a physical object.  But if he wanted to give a centurion command over a hundred soldiers, he would do so by transmitting a sound wave or some writing on a piece of paper (or parchment or papyrus).  By whatever means he did the transmission, the abstract content is independent of the physical substrate.

 

John

[John F Sowa]

Bill,

 

As I said in recent notes, I am not impressed by any of the words people are throwing around:  metaverse, foundation, real AI, data, information, knowledge...

 

The single most difficult issue sounds very simple:  context.  Nobody is talking about context because that is the most serious  stumbling block.  And the systems that get the loudest amount of noise -- including Google's language completion tool -- are total failures in dealing with context.

 

For a quick overview of the issues about context, see the first 10 slides of http://jfsowa.com/talks/context.pdf

 

For a transcript of an actual husband-and-wife conversation with annotations about the required background knowledge, see slides 20 and 21 of context.pdf.  Slide 20 has a pointer to an article by Keith Devlin who discusses the very serious issues that plague any attempt to understand language in context.  Until AI systems can deal with context, the metaverse is just another bag of wind.

 

John

 

---------------------------------------

---

From: Burkett, William

Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2021 3:13 PM

 

I'm a little late to the party here.  The Data-Information-Knowledge topic is favorite of mine so I wanted to offer-up my two cents.  While I can’t argue or refute the great minds contributing to the discussion here, I didn’t see any descriptions that mirror my own simple definitions and uses of these terms.  The way I keep them straight is:

- Knowledge is what’s in a human being’s brain.  Full stop.  No need to explore the what or how.

- Data are physical, objective, perceivable phenomena (including man-made marks/signs/symbols) that have no inherent meaning on their own (this is where people get tripped up and conflate “data” and “information”).  Data just “are”; “meaning” necessitates having an interpreter.

- Information is: (a) the “stuff” obtained from data through interpretation by an interpreter based on their knowledge and the context in which the data is interpreted (why “a picture is worth a thousand words”) and added to/integrated with their knowledge; or (b) the “stuff” selected from knowledge and encoded into data by an author/creator/articulator/expressor (however elegantly or clumsily) for the purpose of conveying that selected bit of knowledge to an interpreter.

Different data can convey the same information.  The same data can convey different information.  Thus, they are not the same things.

Like I said, this is simple and there is likely a lot to argue with here, but for me and my purposes these are three clear distinctions that I find useful.

Bill Burkett

[Jack Park]

Try

http://jfsowa.com/talks/contexts.pdf

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[Alex Shkotin]

Bill,

a) Consider a situation where the brain is just a "thin client" like a smartphone but all valuable knowledge is in the cloud outside the brain. 

b) I am realistic - my knowledge is in my mind:-) If I remember some view and trained to paint I can try to make a material thing (aka picture) with the same view (from some point) as I have in my mind.

ba) a lot of knowledge is verbalizable i.e. materialized.

John,

As Jack mentioned the URL http://jfsowa.com/talks/context.pdf returns 

where the picture is a data raising the knowledge that URL is bad.

HNY,

Alex

пт, 31 дек. 2021 г. в 02:02, John F Sowa <so...@bestweb.net>:

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[Burkett, William [USA]]

Thanks for the response, John.

 

To the Data-Information-Knowledge mix you’ve added a fourth dimension: context.   Context is (in my view) a necessary part of obtaining (or deriving or decoding or interpreting) information from data.   Although I have/use simple definitions for data, information, and knowledge, those definitions are not a closed circuit – there are other factors involved.

 

In fact, there is yet another (fifth) factor that the semioticians out there will recognize (and I hope I grasp correctly): the “code” used to articulate and interpret the “data” (and thus send and obtain “information”).   “Data” as physical marks/symbols is created based on a community-accepted sign system where the signs have conventionally understood with socially-constructed meanings – the “code”.   The English language is the “code” we use here to communicate, and we all have very different contexts within which we interpret that code.  (Leading to all the fun and vigorous discussions we have here.  😊)    

 

Bill

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[Godfrey Rust]

John – your link didn’t work for me -  http://jfsowa.com/talks/context.pdf - is it a problem on your site or local to me?

 

Thanks

 

Godfrey

 

 

 

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[John F Sowa]

Godfrey>  your link didn't work for m

 

I apologize.  I try to check my URLs.  But some are so obvious that I don't check.  In this case, the plural seemed obvious when I wrote it, but I usually use the singular

 

It should be http://jfsowa.com/talks/contexts.pdf

 

I just checked it.

 

John

[Jack Park]

Add an "s" to context and that should fix it.

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