Dear George,
Yes, I am very much aware of what you are describing and completely
agree. 🙂I am right now looking for the original text. The text itself
in Bekker's edition constitutes a Symbolic Object with propositional
meaning, an Expression in the sense of FRBR.
The search for precision is one aspect of what we do.
The other aspect is accepting a certain fuzziness. The class E89
Propositional Object was introduced to capture the sense of FRBR Work,
which, /in one interpretation/, constitutes an abstraction of meaning
from the symbolic form, in particular from translations.
As "knowledge engineer" I just neutrally observe, that sufficient people
support the idea of some sort of preservation of meaning across
translations, and others vehemently oppose. In the christian theological
background, authorized translations are regarded as "the Word of God",
i.e., transferring an even identical and in any case comprehensible
meaning, which, within this tradition, must not be questioned. Medieval
theological and philosophical tradition was widely using Aristotle in
Latin translation without questioning the essential transfer of meaning
by the Latin text.
We need also not forget that early Latin (and Arabic) translators were
much closer to the common senses of the ancient Greek world. As such,
our ability today approximating the Greek original meaning from its
linguistic expression only may not necessarily be superior to consulting
also relevant translations.
As such, my position about the preservation of meaning across
translations is an observational one.
I assume you agree, that undeniably scholars around the world cite such
texts in translated form, and refer via Bekker identifiers in their
citations, often without referring to the translator at all (regarded as
"editor" and not "author" as I just read in a scholarly text !),
expressing that they mean the intended meaning of the corresponding
original, approximated by the translation provided.
Since the CRM project is not about absolute precision, but about
"minimal ontological commitment" in the sense of Thomas Gruber, for the
purpose of /information integration/, rather than resolution, I maintain
that we need to model two different senses:
A) the actual intended meaning, which is over thousands of years more
and more approximated by scholarly commentaries, and
B) the minimal common or approximate meaning, as rendered by several
good translations.
I would model A) as instance of Information Object, as it gives priority
to the original wording, implicitly Propositional Object as intended by
the author, as you correctly stress in your message below,
and B) as E89 Propositional Object only, as E89 is about meaning
possibly abstract from symbolic form.
The latter sense should be expressed in the example. I propose to talk
about the
approximate meaning of Met.Đ“ 4.3,1005b 19-20,
and add a comment with translations in 3 languages and the original. I
currently have a German and two English ones (below) at hand:
“the same thing cannot at the same time belong and also not belong to
the same thing and in the same respect”
"It is impossible for the same attribute at once to belong and not to
belong [20] to the same thing and in the same relation;
(Met.Đ“ 4.3,1005b19-20)
Thus stated, users can make up their own mind about the common meaning
in this example, isn't it?🙂
Would that find your agreement?
Best,
Martin
On 1/10/2024 8:30 AM, George Bruseker wrote:
Dear Martin,
As a scholar of ancient philosophy, I do love Bekker numbers, but I am
curious why they would be an example of propositional object. They are
a reference to a particular chunk of text in the original Greek as
setup in the Bekker edition. As such, I think as a scholar using
ancient texts, I use it to locate the original Information Object upon
which an interpretation (formulation of the proposition(s) that we
think thinker X was making) is based. The exact propositional content
of that information object is usually the subject of debate rather
than the object of reference. Did Aristotle mean X or Y in passage 99a
of the Posterior Analytics, is the usual topic of conversation. If we
knew the exact propositional content, we'd be golden, but usually that
is the very topic we want to endlessly swirl around and the Bekker
number is the pointer for people who can read ancient Greek in order
to be able to find the original passage, read it, translate it and
cogitate on what was really meant there (the propositions encoded).
But perhaps you have another use in mind?
 Best,
George
On Sat, Jan 6, 2024 at 7:25 PM Martin Doerr via Crm-sig
<crm-sig@ics.forth.gr> wrote:
Dear All,
I suggest to create an example using Bekker numbers. They
constitute excellent examples of identifiers for propositional
content.
See https://guides.library.duq.edu/c.php?g=1030408&p=7468217
<https://guides.library.duq.edu/c.php?g=1030408&p=7468217>
--
------------------------------------
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
Email:mar...@ics.forth.gr
Web-site:http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
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--
------------------------------------
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
Email:mar...@ics.forth.gr
Web-site:http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
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