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On inspection, this looks to be purely a data structure
description, i.e., on the order of tries and linked lists, rather than a
significant rendition of Peirce's conceptual notion. And it looks like it
addresses primarily ways to link sequences, mainly sequences of character data,
into a graph structure that minimizes structuring/representation of
tokens. That in itself could be good, if in fact it is better than
tries.
I had to poke around to find any accessible paper, but the
following paper turned up, which had the most information that I could find on
the topic:
"The Potential
for Recognizing Errors in a Dataset Using a Computer Memory Resident Data
Structure Based on the Phaneron of C. S. Peirce."
Jane Campbell
Mazzagatt. http://www.error06.econ.vt.edu/Mazzagatti.doc
The examples given in this paper are word
and phrase sequences of characters, i.e., character sequences constituting words
and then those word-sequences constituting sentence sequences, and apparently so
forth upward. However, there is no notion of semantics at all: it is purely a
syntactic data structure. To think that syntactic sequences will somehow lead to
a schema-less and semantics-free data modeling capability seems to me naive.
Also, I don't understand the paper's notion of "variable". What kind of variable
is this?
I think this is possibly a useful data
structure for representing uninterpreted (syntactic) data, and only that.
Does anyone think that the third
(interpretant) is really anything like the interpretation of the sign? I think
this is mumbo-jumbo utilizing the phraseology of Peirce. What can one make
of the following, for example:
"To make the discussion less abstract the symbols from the alphabet
are used as the initial SIGN-nodes or sensors and diagrammed as events from the
text universe." There is
a lot of quoting from Peirce, but as always, such implicit appeals to authority
find short-shrift in this forum -- or at least, I hope they
do.
But I invite folks to weigh in on this topic. Perhaps
you see more than I do. Please do correct me if I am wrong in my interpretation.
Is there any semantic value in this?
Also, it
scares me that this data structure has been patented.
My initial
interpretation: this is hogwash if it is promoted more than the syntactic data
structure that it is.
Thanks,
Leo
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo
Obrst The MITRE Corporation, Information
Semantics
lobrst@xxxxxxxxx Information Discovery
& Understanding, Command and Control Center
Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S
H305
Fax: 703-983-1379 McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA
Two
items just crossed my inbox that may be of interest to forum members.
1.
The Triadic Continuum: New data structure with homage to Charles
Sanders Peirce
http://www.dmreview.com/specialreports/2007_44/10000157-1.html?ET=dmreview:e149:2053012a:&st=email
http://jeffjonas.typepad.com/jeff_jonas/2007/11/the-triadic-con.html
2. Northeastern University
sues Google over patent infringement
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