ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] "Data/digital Object" Identities

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Paul Tyson <phtyson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:05:06 -0500
Message-id: <1414026306.2358.21.camel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Wed, 2014-10-22 at 09:57 -0500, Pat Hayes wrote:
> On Oct 22, 2014, at 8:47 AM, William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Cyber Identity has been at the heart of my job for the last three years, 
>and identity an interest ever since I wrote my bachelor's thesis on Leibniz 
>and Master's thesis on Frege.
> > 
> > I agree with you, entirely Hans,  and would say that implicit in your 
>language is the essence of the problem: 'identity' is a kind of a very ghostly 
>abstraction without much mooring.  Identity is surely not an attribute of a 
>thing.   What HAS a mooring is the ACT of identification  As you put it Hans, 
>"assigning an identity."  The act of identification is, as you say, a social 
>act, and is of course context dependent.  
> > 
> > Also, I agree that identification in cyberspace is what creates the the 
>acute need for better understanding of identifications.
> > But, it is not an entirely new problem, applications and deeper dives into 
>what is already known might suffice.  
> > 
> > For example, Gary's questions: Is a data object in one format the same as a 
>data object in a different format or a different one?  The bit streams can 
>change but the original identity might be considered the same."  This applies 
>to *all* human artifacts.  When is Moby Dick the 'same' book?
> 
> It applies to everything, natural or artificial. When is Iceland the same 
>island? How many lakes are there in Norway? It is endemic in the way we use 
>language (and probably in how we think about the world.) 
> 
> >    However, a new huge confusion has arisen, the conflating of identifiers 
>with identities.  
> 
> This is also an old problem, but I agree it is a confusion. It is a 
>beguilingly natural confusion, since the identifier does define *some* 
>identity, but it may not be the identity that readers have in mind (and that 
>software built by users implicitly presumes).
> 
> > As Gary says, 'seems like a large claim."  Worse than large, if people 
>think that computers can provide mathematical certainly about things in the 
>real world, the assurance that, in effect, a passport MUST be a correct 
>indentifier, then we are another step along the way to handing over autocratic 
>authority to the machines.  Instead of 'we do not have a record of your 
>payment'. we go do 'you did not make the payment.'  
> 
> My credit standing was permanently damaged by the extended fallout from a 
>mistyped letter in an address line (W instead of E). Long story, involving 
>identity errors of several kinds. 
> 
> > I am not sure how Jack's point about URIs relates, except that surely, 'to 
>be is to be a URI" is another weird way the world might be going.    For cyber 
>thiings and their identifying characteristics, I would agree with you, Jack.  
>But, I also think that identification of *physical* objects might never or not 
>for a long time be replicatable with information about the object that can be 
>captured on a computer.  
> 
> In some ways the digital/semantic technologies are making this worse. 
>Ontologies impose artificial identity conditions of their own, which can clash 
>both with other ontologies and with human intuitions. For example, the widely 
>popular provenance ontology http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-primer/ views every 
>change as producing a new entity, so changing a tire on a car gives you a new 
>car. In contrast, the BFO basic ontology (http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/), used in 
>hundreds of bioinformatics applications, enforces a sharp, rigid distinction 
>between continuants and occurrents (roughly, objects and processes) with 
>completely different identity conditions across time. On the other hand, the 
>'oil and gas' (now generalized) ontology ISO 15926, widely used in industry, 
>treats everything as what BFO would call an occcurrent. All of these are 
>different and mutually incompatible basic assumptions about identity, but 
>likely would not even be actively considered by human users (except some 
>philosophers, maybe.) 
> 
> Pat Hayes
> 
> > 
> > Wm 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Jack Park <jackpark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > I've been importing ontologies into a topic map of late. It's rather 
>surprising how many URIs have been assigned to the concept with the label 
>"Person".
> > 
> > I think it is correct to argue that there are many different ways in which 
>some entity is identified by different individuals and communities, so it 
>would seem that any "Architecture" which grows up around digital objects -- 
>which, by many lights, are proxies for subjects one way or another-- should be 
>capable of capturing all knowable ways to identify that object, regardless of 
>the database identifier assigned to it locally.
> > 
> > 
> > On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Hans Polzer <hpolzer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Gary,
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > I tend to agree with your musings. The issue of identity (of whatever 
>entity) is certainly one that the network revolution has brought to increased 
>importance, if for no other reason than that it exposes the identities that 
>anyone assigns to an entity/object, be it digital or “real world” to those 
>who may assign a different identity to that same entity/object, however 
>“sameness” might be defined. The NCOIC Net Centric Principles grappled 
>with this issue by means of a principle called “Entity Primacy”, which 
>basically states that whatever identity you might assign to an entity/object, 
>it has other identities in other, usually collective, frames of reference. 
>Deal with that, as opposed to assuming that the identity you assigned has 
>primacy. Usually that would mean recognizing that the entity/object has other 
>identities in other frames of reference, and one should be prepared to map the 
>locally assigned identity to one or more other identities in other frames of 
>reference, presumably those used by actors with whom one might want to 
>exchange information about said entity/object.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Of course, one could argue that any entity/object has some “natural” or 
>“inherent” identity, such as the PID referenced below, UUID’s (Universal 
>Unique Identifiers), or a person’s DNA, or perhaps more pragmatically, the 
>VIN of an automobile. But even these assume a context of some, usually 
>implicit, scope and an associated frame of reference. In other words, such an 
>identity is inherently one of the collective within which the entity/object is 
>being identified. Entity Primacy therefore points out that no collective 
>context has a priori primacy for assigning identities to entities/objects. One 
>needs to specify which collective context a particular identity for an 
>entity/object is based on/derived from. And yes, this is recursive, since such 
>collective contexts for assigning identities will themselves have identities 
>in, presumably, larger contexts.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Humans just tend to glom onto some collective context (such as DNS) and 
>assume that everyone else will simply use that collective context for 
>identifying entities, forgetting that not everything uses DNS, even in the 
>networking domain. PIDs would certainly help things – but they are not 
>universal and they likely assume some representational context dimensions, as 
>you surmise in your email. That’s OK as long as one is explicit about what 
>those are and understand the scope limitations that they imply when 
>interacting with others who might not share those assumptions.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > Hans
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
>[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Gary Berg-Cross
> > Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 5:39 PM
> > To: [ontolog-forum]
> > Subject: [ontolog-forum] "Data/digital Object" Identities
> > 
> >  
> > 
> > There is a bit of a movement to discuss digital data in terms of Digital 
>Objects and an  "Architecture."  One rationale for this seems to be to provide 
>an easier mechanism for the "creation of, and access to, digital objects as 
>discrete data structures with unique, resolvable identifiers"  - From a 
>CNRI’s Press Release. 
> > 
> > It is further argued that such Digital Objects with a persistent ID (PID) 
>will "provide a foundation for representing and interacting with information 
>on the Internet."
> > 
> > Seems like a large claim and I wonder what this community thinks of this 
>idea. After all Identity is quite a semantic issue and intuitions about 
>identities for digital objects might cause some problems.  They seem quite 
>mutable and we'd need to distinguish the ID for the raw data from each 
>processing version of it.  Is a data object in one format the same as a data 
>object in a different format or a different one?  The bit streams can change 
>but the original identity might be considered the same.
> > 
> >  
> > 
> >  
> > Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.  
> > 
> > gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx     
> > 
> > http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross
> > 
> > NSF INTEROP Project  
> > 
> > http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0955816
> > 
> > SOCoP Executive Secretary
> > 
> > Independent Consultant
> > 
> > Potomac, MD
> > 
> > 240-426-0770
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> > Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> > Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> > Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> > To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> > Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> > Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> > Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> > To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
> > Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
> > Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> > Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
> > To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> IHMC                                     (850)434 8903 home
> 40 South Alcaniz St.            (850)202 4416   office
> Pensacola                            (850)202 4440   fax
> FL 32502                              (850)291 0667   mobile (preferred)
> phayes@xxxxxxx       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
>      (01)



_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (02)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>