Dear Francesco, dear all,
There may be a misunderstanding regarding the class Legal Object
Relationship, which I explained in the presentation in the last sig
meeting: We defined this class in a sense of a state of ownership of
a ship, which is a kind of information that can be inferred
(implicit knowledge) and not directly observed – it can be
observed by the starting and terminating event of this state. It is
like the soc Bond, which describes social/legal relationships that
cannot be observed.
We strictly follow the modelling principle which refers that we
model from actual information sources that reveal actual practice-
according to the historians of the sealit project, a ship ownership
phase is described as a state with the only information documented
to be about the ship owner, the shares that may have and the name of
the ship, not the dates of this ownership (which is a quite complex
phenomenon to observe since a person e.g may possess up to 1/48 of a
ship, so you can understand how many ships shares a single person
could have in the same time and there is no documented information
on the timespan of this shareholding. Additionally, the ownership is
used to assign a name to a ship and a ship changes its name under an
ownership state. However, additional temporal information on these
names under ownership states is not documented in the source – the
Ownership phase can be traced by the ship registration activity
(that includes timespan information) that initiates it and by the
de-flagging, both events that are documented. This is material
evidence, coming from the source. If you open a Loyd catalogue, you
will find these information under ship registration without dates on
the owners of the ship.
Another modeling principle that is represented in our decision to
leave Legal Object Relationship as a subclass of E1 CRM Entity is
that we support the progressive improvement of classification
knowledge by IsA hierarchy. Since we don’t have enough knowledge
and we support the open world assumption, which means that new
evidence may change the classification, we prefer to model the more
general (here we classified under E1) and then, when we have more
precise knowledge by instances on the nature of this Legal
Ob.Relationship class, then we can progressively specialize and
refine the E1 and find the superclass under which Legal Object
Relationship fits.
Sealit is a model that is based on data input, it can be refined and
improved based on new knowledge, new instances.
I just wanted to explain this logic under which the model was
constructed and to prove that it is one of the most representative
documentations from material evidence we had, in our experience. So
I am a bit confused how this use case supports raising philosophical
questions regarding issue 581.
My BRs,
Athina
On 2022-02-25 12:29, Francesco Beretta via Crm-sig wrote:
Dear Martin, dear Franco,
I assume that the same question by Franco (Issue 581) is raised by
page 25 ?
" What goes on in our minds or is 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. "
" priority of integrating information based on material evidence
available for whatever human experience."
" The CIDOC CRM only commits to a unique material reality
independent
from the observer."
Cf. the new proposition below:
" As “available documented and empirical material evidence” are
regarded all types of material collected and displayed by museums
and
related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other collections
of
things providing evidence about the past, in-situ objects, sites,
monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields such as social
history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural
history, history of sciences and technology. "
It seems to me that these 'fussy' questions raise in fact, once
again,
the relevant Issue 504 concerning the philosophical underpinnings of
CRM.
The consequences of this approach are illustrated by the recently
published Sealit project ontology, class: Legal Object Relationship
(e.g. property of a ship by some actor): "This class comprises legal
object relationships of which the timespan and the state (of these
relationships) cannot be observed or documented. We can only observe
these relationships through the events that initialize or terminate
this state of relationship (starting event and terminating event). "
I'm not sure how many domain experts would agree with this
definition
because ownership of things, as a fact, is attested in written
texts,
or even in minds of living persons and expressed in utterances, and
these are empirically observable.
The here adopted foundational stance excludes this fact (i.e.
property) from being a subclass of E2 Temporal Entity. Legal Object
Relationship is declared as subclass of E1 Entity.
But on page 33 of the CRM documentation we can read: "The more
specific subclasses of E2 Temporal Entity enable the documentation
of
events pertaining to individually related/affected material, social
or
mental objects that have been described using subclasses of E77
Persistent Item. "
I must therefore admit that a careful reader is somewhat confused
and
that having an extension, such as CRMsoc, providing additional
classes
to deal with individual intentional and social life, and dealing
with
mental and social facts as empirically observable, intentional
(collective) facts as we propose, could only be an advantage.
This email therefore relates to issues 504 and 580. I'd kindly ask
to
put it there and add there links to the relevant other issues.
All the best
Francesco
On 14.02.22 20:38, Martin Doerr via Crm-sig wrote:
Dear All
Please vote "YES" for accept, "NO" for not accept:
Background
Proposal by Franco Niccolucci (9 January 2022)
With other colleagues, I am translating into Italian the CIDOC CRM
documentation. This forced me to (or if you prefer, it gave me the
opportunity of) reading it with great attention to minute details.
On page 10 of the Introduction I found a couple of things that may
need to be changed: both are in the bottom of the page describing
the CRM Intended Scope, where some expressions used in such
description are explained in greater detail.
1. In the first bullet point, the term “scientific and scholarly
documentation” is explained as compliant to the quality level
“expected and required by museum professionals and researchers in
the field.” What about archaeologists, architectural historians
etc.? I would replace this statement with “expected and required
by heritage professionals and researchers in the field.”, which
would also expand the “field” beyond museology as implied by the
other formulation, which is also contradictory with the much wider
ambit listed in the second bullet.
2. In the second bullet point the meaning of the term “available
documented and material evidence” is explained. Actually, a
different expression was used in the previous text, being clarified
here; “available documented and empirical evidence”. When
defining a term, I think it is preferable to avoid using different
albeit equivalent expressions. Moreover, the equivalence of
“empirical” and “material” is debatable: according to my
Oxford dictionary
empirical = based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation
or experience rather than theory or pure logic
material = denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than
the mind or spirit
I may agree with “empirical” but I am not sure I would agree
with “material”.
As you can see, this is a fussy comment. But the devil is in the
details... and in this case a naughty commenter (not my case) might
think that both are Freudian slips :)
3. In the third and fourth bullet points, collections are addressed.
But the third point considers “cultural heritage collections”
and the fourth “museum collections”, actually in the same
copy-paste sentence. Is this difference intentional, or again a
slip? I imagine in both cases “cultural heritage collections”
must be used.
-------------------------
PROPOSAL:
OLD:
SCOPE OF THE CIDOC CRM
The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in simple terms
as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a human scale.
However, a more detailed and useful definition can be articulated by
defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and maximally-inclusive
definition of general application principles, and the Practical
Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing
reference set of specific, identifiable documentation standards and
practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe,
restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the
Intended Scope.
The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and Practical
Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a
“bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood, actually and
widely used concepts of domain experts, which are disambiguated and
gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are encountered.
This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can
sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find
overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides stability
to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to identify
and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the communities
working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a well-defined
agenda for its evolution.
The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be defined as
all information required for the exchange and integration of
heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about the past
at a human scale and the available documented and empirical evidence
for this. This definition requires further elaboration:
· The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is
intended to convey the requirement that the depth and quality of
descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC CRM should
be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not mean that
information intended for presentation to members of the general
public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to provide
the level of detail and precision expected and required by heritage
professionals and researchers in the field.
· As “available documented and material evidence” are
regarded all types of material collected and displayed by museums
and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other
collections, in-situ objects, sites, monuments and intangible
heritage relating to fields such as social history, ethnography,
archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural history, history of
sciences and technology.
· The concept “documentation” includes the detailed
description of individual items, in situ or within collections,
groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as practices of
intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as well as
to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is specifically
intended to cover contextual information: the historical,
geographical and theoretical background that gives cultural heritage
collections much of their cultural significance and value.
· The documentation of collections includes the detailed
description of individual items within collections, groups of items
and collections as a whole. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended
to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and
theoretical background that gives museum collections much of their
cultural significance and value. NEW:
SCOPE OF THE CIDOC CRM
The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in simple terms
as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a human scale.
However, a more detailed and useful definition can be articulated by
defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and maximally-inclusive
definition of general application principles, and the Practical
Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing
reference set of specific, identifiable documentation standards and
practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe,
restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the
Intended Scope.
The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and Practical
Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a
“bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood, actually and
widely used concepts of domain experts, which are disambiguated and
gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are encountered.
This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can
sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find
overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides stability
to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to identify
and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the communities
working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a well-defined
agenda for its evolution.
The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be defined as
all information required for the exchange and integration of
heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about the past
at a human scale and the available documented and empirical evidence
for this. This definition requires further elaboration:
· The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is
intended to convey the requirement that the depth and quality of
descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC CRM should
be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not mean that
information intended for presentation to members of the general
public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to provide
the level of detail and precision expected and required by heritage
professionals engaged in cultural and scientific heritage and
researchers in these fields.
· As “available documented and empirical material evidence”
are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by
museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other
collections of things providing evidence about the past, in-situ
objects, sites, monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields
such as social history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied
arts, natural history, history of sciences and technology.
· The concept “documentation” includes the detailed
description of individual items, in situ or within collections,
groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as practices of
intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as well as
to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is specifically
intended to cover contextual information: the historical,
geographical and theoretical background that gives cultural heritage
collections much of their cultural significance and value.
· Delete the fourth paragraph, it is repeating the third!
-------------------------
[1] The ICOM Statutes provide a definition of the term “museum”
at http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2 The term “should” is used
in the sense of a binding recommendation by the standards. This is
what users adhering to the standard have to do. It “should” be
consistently used throughout the document.
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: mar...@ics.forth.gr
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
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