Dear All,
I wish you all a Happy New Year, successful and in good health.
Here my attempt to describe the reality concept of the CRM and its
relation to a knowledge base. Please comment!!
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Reality and Knowledge Bases
The CIDOC CRM is a formal ontology in the sense introduced by N.Guarino
[XXXX]. In order to understand the function of a formal ontology for
collecting information in research processes about the past that can be
shared, connected and integrated into coherent resources, one needs to
make the following distinctions:
a)a) The /material reality/. For the purpose of the CRM, it is taken as
that which is of a substance that can be perceived with senses or
instruments, such as people, a forest or a settlement environment, sea,
atmosphere, distant celestial or cellular micro structures, including
what we assume that could be potentially or theoretically perceived if
we could be there, such as the center of Earth or the sun, and all that
is past. It is constraint to space and time. What is going on in /our
minds/ and produced by our minds is also regarded as part of the
material reality, as it becomes materially evident to other people at
least by our utterances, behavior and products.
b)b) The units of description or /particulars/, i.e., the things and
relations as which we distinguish parts of reality when we refer to it,
such as Mount Ida, the Taj Mahal, the formation of Chinaby emperor Qin
Shi Huang(秦始皇) in 221BC,Tut-Ankh Amun and his embalmment, Prince Shotoku
of Japan sending a mission to China in 607AD, the participation
ofSocrates in the Battle of Potidaea or the radiocarbon dating of the
Iceman Ötzi[1] <#_ftn1>.
A formal ontology, such as the CIDOC CRM, constitutes a controlled
language for talking about particulars. I.e., it provides definitions of
classes and properties for categorizing particulars as so-called
“instances” in a way that their individuation, unity and relevant
properties are as unambiguous as possible. For instance, Tut-Ankh Amun
as instance of E21 Person /is/ the real pharaoh from his birth to death,
and not extending to his mummy, as follows from the specification of the
class E21 Person and its properties in the CRM.
For clarification, the CRM does not take a position against or in favor
of the existence of /spiritual /substance nor of substance not
accessible by either senses or instruments, nor does it suggest a
materialistic philosophy. However, for practical reasons, it relies on
the priority of integrating information based on material evidence
available for /whatever/ human experience. The CRM only commits to a
/unique material reality/ independent from the observer.
When we /provide descriptions/ of particulars, we need to refer to them
by unique names, titles or constructed identifiers, instances of E41
Appellation in the CRM, if the reference should be independent from
context, such as reference by pronouns or enumerations of characteristic
properties. The appellation itself, and the relation between the
appellation and the referred item or relationship, must not be confused
with the referred and its identity. Instances of the CRM are the /real
/particulars, not their names. Particulars are approximate
individuations, like sections, of parts of reality.
In contrast, a CRM-compatible /knowledge base/ is an information object,
instance of E73 Information Object in the CRM. It relates appellations
with identifiers of CRM-Concepts in propositions about a described
reality. Thereby users, in their capacity of having real-world knowledge
and cognition, may be able to relate these propositions to the reality
they are meant to characterize, and reason and research about their
validity. In other words, the formal instances in a knowledge base are
the /identifiers/, not the real things or phenomena. Therefore, a
knowledge base does not contain knowledge, but represents knowledge of
its maintainers, as long as there exist people that can resolve the used
identifiers to their referents.
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[1] <#_ftnref1> Kutschera, Walter. “Radiocarbon dating of the Iceman
Ötzi with accelerator mass spectrometry.” (2002).
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