Reflections [VI] Conceptual Spaces At Work: Adams & Raubal - CSML

The final day of the CS@W conference started with a topic I was really anticipating as per a previous blog post. Ben Adams and Martin Raubal had indicated by email that CSML was a work in progress and a chat after their session emphasized the same. The existence of CSML and looking at some code examples holds great promise.

Direction in Lund, Sweden May 2012 by Peter Jones

The motivation for their work stems from geographical information systems [GIS] and how to formalise conceptual spaces. Palmer (1978) was cited as providing one form of representation. Palmer's mental model being matched with formal conceptual spaces. As per Gardenfors' book Minkowski's vector space is central to this work and informs a previous paper by Raubal (2004).

Way-finding provided an example: how there are different domains with semantic distances and weights that can change according to context. The facades of buildings and the contexts of day and night. What features stand out in terms of the shape, colour, visibility, area of buildings?

Adams and Raubal moved to differentiating topological relations that emphasise dynamic concepts. Piaget's contribution was noted in how we perceive conceptual change and the work of Torsten Hägerstrand whose time geography was illustrated (the geographical aspect of their work).

Behind CSML is a conceptual space algebra that is still being developed. On conceptual spaces and the semantic web, Adams and Raubal observed through their slides that:

Description logics are limited in ability to represent semantic content (RDF, OWL).
They fail to easily express
    Semantic similarity which plays an important role in cognitive categorization.
    Complex concept combinations.
Present Semantic Web technologies are restricted in their ability to answer queries and make inferences.

My BA(Philosophy and Computing Joint Hons.) project was on the application of semantic networks in nursing. The hard work was done for me in that it was directed by existing work in GRAIL. The dissertation I produced was essentially descriptive looking at nursing examples, identifying care issues and modelling them using is_a relationships. Among a great many slides and fascinating explanations Adams and Raubal note that:

Is-A, Instance-Of
Strong – based on topological relationships
Weak – based on similarity relationships

- so the advent of conceptual spaces, CSML and their efforts to engage with the existing semantic web community shows the ongoing dynamic of the semantic web's development. They are pursuing a reification of OWL 2 CS file to OWL 2:

Unique IRI for OWL classes, individuals, properties
Unique IRI for CS domains, concepts, and instances

There may be a future website to follow in addition to the CSML source. Questions followed about whole spaces, contrast classes and support vectors.

Reflecting back, my studies from 1996-97 and the examples produced - mobility... did not really even scratch the surface. Ben and Martin's work begs the question of trying to develop CSML examples that go beyond the surface(s) and enter the conceptual space (or spaces) that is Hodges' model.

Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.

PJ's project [iii]: Hodges' model An aide mémoire, or candidate Gärdenforsian conceptual space?

If you have a 'project' then chances are at some point you're going to commit it to paper as a text or Gantt chart...

Last November I posted an outline and some reflections about a project that I suppose has been a career in the making. This blog is part of the 'output': a channel that is open.

I am writing this in Lund, Sweden. The people, weather, the lilac and other scents on the breeze are a real joy. I'm here to attend the Conceptual Spaces at Work conference which starts tomorrow.

Part of the rationale for attending is to see if I've found a tree worthy of stressing my vocal cords over. If you compare the copy below with November then some changes should be apparent. For example, I wasn't aware of CSML back then. This conference is not so much about trying to fill in gaps, but finding them. Here is the latest listing:

Abstract
    Preface
    Introduction
    1.1 Health and Social Care
    1.2 Recurring Issues in Health and Social Care
    2 Education
     Introduction
    2.1 Education in the 21st Century
    2.2 Recurring Issues in Education
    3 Nursing, Nursing Theory and Hodges' model
    Introduction
    3.1 Sciences, Medicine and Nursing Disciplines
    3.2 Scope of Nursing Practice
    3.3 The case for models of care: Simplification, speech, writing
    3.4 Nursing Process
    3.5 Data Initialisation In Nursing
    3.6 Nursing Theory : All In The Mind?
    3.7 Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model
    3.8 Problems With Models - Critique
    3.9 Problems with Hodges' health career – care domains – model
    4 Information
    Introduction
    4.1 Information, energy, records
    4.2 Clinical Classification and Coding
    5 Cognitive Science, Learning and Literacy, Computation
    Introduction
    5.1 Cognitive and Learning styles
    5.2 Models, Contexts, Situations, the Project and (Darwinian) Justification
    5.3 Forms of Literacy, Requirements and Socio-Technical Perspectives
    5.4 Computation and Computer Graphics
    5.5 Visual Software
    5.6 Software Development, data, models, applications
    5.7 Data Abstraction and Databases
    5.8 Object Oriented Programming
    5.9 Coding and Classification, Ontologies, RDF, Semantic Web
    6 Gardenfors' Conceptual Spaces
    Introduction
    6.1 Representation, Explanation and Construction
    6.2 Background on key research methods
    6.3 Gärdenfors conceptual spaces - selected definitions
    7 Hodges' model as a Conceptual Space
    Introduction
    7.1 Indicative Literature Review
    7.2 H2CM, Data, Data, Data, (Data!) and research methods
    7.3 Hodges’ model as a Conceptual Space
    7.4 Quality dimensions – discrete vs continuous and confluent
    8 Sandbox: Drupal, Ruby, CSML and SVG
    Introduction
    8.1 Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG): Web Graphics
    8.2 Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML)
    8.3 Drupal: Open source content management system
    8.4 Ruby
    8.5 Domains and Domain Specific Languages
    9 Closing Discussion: Values
    Introduction
    Figures
    Tables
    Acknowledgements

I would love to attend SVG Open - The Graphical Web in September, but I have to cut the cloth as a dad, boyfriend, and full-time nurse... This year, ten days unpaid leave will help me pursue this work. It's not that I can necessarily afford to sacrifice salary like this, but at present it suits the NHS and me.

As to the text there will be lots more changes to follow no doubt. Chapter 4 has latent emergent properties - I hope. One struggle is 'chapters' 1 & 2, which provide a background to healthcare and education; and the closing discussion. In C1 for example, the issues include person-centered care, multidisciplinary care, records, information. ... In a way they are also themes, it's finding the right descriptor. Actually, as I write perhaps this issues-themes thing is related to there being issues that are problems that have a solution if only we can find it?

It's a big ask, but C8 and reference to the sandbox says it all. Whether it is a case of issues, themes, or problems in nursing, health and social care it is values that count. I'm hoping there's a circle there that can be closed. Then the project really becomes a baton: and I can help pass it on ...

More to follow over the next few days.

Many thanks also to Rikard for the welcome at Hobykrok B&B and the loan of a power adapter!

Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web

I'll start May hopefully in tune with plans towards the month's end and attending Conceptual Spaces at Work.

The SCIENCES domain page has included Markup Languages (ML) for a great many years.

In the early versions of the h2cm website there were just two 'resource' pages. When the ongoing four page format arrived then markup languages had a place.

Looking at the programme for next month's Conceptual Spaces at Work the first session listed includes this reference:

Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.

Abstract—CSML is a semantic markup language created for the publishing and sharing of conceptual spaces, which are geometric structures that represent semantics at the conceptual level. CSML can be used to describe semantics that are not captured well by the ontology languages commonly used in the Semantic Web. Measurement of the semantic similarity of concepts as well as the combination of concepts without shared properties are common human cognitive tasks. However, these operations present sources of difficulty for tools reliant upon set-theoretic and syllogistic reasoning on symbolic ontologies. In contrast, these operations can be modeled naturally using conceptual spaces. This paper describes the design decisions behind CSML, introduces the key component elements of a CSML document, and presents examples of its usage.

This is an excellent source. CSML is a really significant development for me as Adams and Raubal highlight on the first page:

The computational foundation of the Semantic Web is the formal representation of concepts and their relationships using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) variants [5], [6]. These families of languages allow one to describe semantic relationships between concepts and ontologies, which can be queried using a first-order logic reasoner. An underlying assumption to these methods is the realist approach to semantics, which states that the meanings of concepts are in the real world. That is, there is a direct mapping between language terms and the world but there is no consideration of how individuals understand concepts differently. In contrast, cognitive semantics states that the meanings of terms are cognitive structures in people’s minds. This approach is of central importance for the Semantic Web, because web services interface with human users.

This isn't excellent or significant in the sense that the emergence of CSML demonstrates h2cm as a conceptual space.

Far from it.

Here and for h2cm CSML is obviously an essential tool to examine, understand and possibly extend. Anyone for PHP and XML (Drupal)? Reading the paper, it's clear that even thinking of applying CSML to Hodges' model demands answers to difficult and yet fascinating questions that involve nursing (theory, practice and values), informatics, philosophy and some maths too.

Image source:
http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/conceptual_spaces_wordl.png