Friday, October 22, 2004
[1] ß Discussion between Peter
Stephenson and Paul Prueitt
[3] ß Discussion on the Adi framework for knowledge processors
White Paper on Incident Information Orb
Architecture (IIOA) à
Adi Structural Ontology Part I à
Tom
Perhaps some of the others might make a comment about the interesting issue of whether the word "indicator" can be substituted for the word "realized" in the first paragraph of the current versions of Part I:
A statement follows <
realization may be a "process" view of something
whereas indicator may be a "object" view of something
> end statement
Tom, you have a more profound understanding of this when we look at the way in which words are used to express meaning. We agreed to be consistent with your intuitions, so as to describe the structured ontology that you have discovered
But for a moment, I will represent complexity theory and I ask others who may have an opinion to offer opinion in a formal and complete way so that we can think about how to say things properly. Peter Stephenson and I are talking about related issue in regards to the ontology for cyber vulnerabilities and threats. In the Stephenson Attack Taxonomy we need to talk about the endo and exo physics of human interactions with computers.
However, (and you may agree completely or only with a substantive nuance) the process view moves one towards the notion of holonomic, or globally diffused, constraints. The object view moves one toward the localized (hard) constraint (reactive) in complex systems theory. The process view moves one towards a higher order of things. In the stratified theory, the object view moves one towards a lower level of abstraction - if one is talking about abstractions.
In the physical layering of matter-energy-space interactions the object is something that emerges from a physical substructure, and in that substructure the emerging/aggregation phenomenon is a process and holonomic. So the object has an endophysical "interior" which is a process. The exophysical environment measures the object as an object.
An interesting visualization occurs that is not reducible to a coherent use of essential terms, like "indicators" and "realizations". The issue of completeness and consistency of a set of descriptive elements arises, as does the limitations in foundations of the Hilbert mathematics as discussed by Godel and others.
Aside from the distinction that can be made between the cloak and the mould theory of language, a parallel distinction can be made between a mere representation that indicates something's presence or non-presence, and a realization of something.
The issue has to be parsed very careful, because an abstraction can be realized in the mind. The realized thing is then an indicator of something that is external to the mind.
Stratification theory is a way to address this in a clear fashion. However with any stratification one admits a specific set of ambiguous points in the discourse that can be realized as what are, on the face of a coherent evaluation, contradictions. The challenge that we face is to be easy on the reader, when the reader first reads Part I. In Part II we may end up redefining certain things that were defined and set in stone in Part I.
On the phone we both agreed that the use of the term “indicator” in Part I is useful for reasons that have little do to with a precise description of the theory of types. And the use is not misleading. In Part II one may need to bracket the term and explain that there is something more to say, and that a process view of the abstractions that we are making is possible. These views then are like folded space, in which a category treated as one thing is a cloak for a spectrum of principled nuances.