RE: ACTION-219: review of CORE (more)

Bottom line: the section on intended models clearly relates only to
some dialect(s) of RIF.  That should at least be made clear in the
document.

P.S.  Appeals to authority, putting words in someone's mouth,
statements as to what most "real" so-and-so's think, and innuendos, do
not amount to valid arguments for anything.  That is something one
learns in elementary logic under the rubric "Informal Fallacies of
Reasoning."  

-----Original Message-----
From: kifer@cs.sunysb.edu [mailto:kifer@cs.sunysb.edu] 
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 6:15 PM
To: Ginsberg, Allen
Cc: public-rif-wg@w3.org
Subject: Re: ACTION-219: review of CORE (more) 


>  
> 
> > You didn't divulged too many details, but if what you are proposing
> makes
> > any sense, then a large number of idiots has been working on the
> problem
> > for 40 years for nothing. This includes John McCarthy, Vladimir
> Lifschitz,
> > Mel Fitting, Ray Reiter, and I just scratched the top of the list.
> 
> > (Sorry for the sarcasm.)
> 
> All I am saying is that logic tells me what follows from what.  If
you
> say that "p" follows, in some sense, from "p := not q"  then you are
> not using "not" in the same way as logic does. 


You are identifying logic==first-order-predicate-calculus.
This is a very narrow view. Most people who call themselves "a
logician"
won't agree with you.


> I never meant to imply that the people working on these
formalizations
> of reasoning (as opposed to logic) are wasting their time - I did say
I
> was playing "devil's advocate".  But I don't think those formalisms
> offer the only approach to dealing with these issues.  And it very
well
> could be that, in the end, i.e., at the application level, solutions
> based on pragmatics are always  required (or better).


There are already sound solutions that are far better than your
pragmatics.


> > > In what sense what you have in mind is more classical than, say,
the
> > > stable model semantics?
> > 
> > As far as I understand it, stable model "semantics" is basically a
> > procedural add-on to classical semantics involving an
implementation of
> > the closed-world-assumption.  It is, if you will, a way of
implementing
> > the assumption that everything that you know nothing about is
false.
> > Classical semantics makes no such assumption.
> 
> > Your understanding doesn't come from reading papers on this subject
then.
> > Or, if it does then you completely misunderstood these papers.
> 
> That is entirely possible.  I am not an expert on that.  But from
what
> I have read (including the Fitting survey you referenced) it does
seem
> to be a way of formalizing the closed-world-assumption, and that
> assumption is not consistent with classical semantics, i.e., logic.

Good morning! :-)
Of course this is not classical semantics!
We have been talking about this for months in this group.

But your "i.e., logic" is not shared by logicians. (I am not calling
myself
a "logician". I just know something about logic. I mean *real*
logicians.)


	--michael

Received on Tuesday, 13 February 2007 00:35:13 UTC