Re: Proposed issue: What does using an URI require of me and my software?

At 14:49 23/09/03 -0400, Bijan Parsia wrote:
>---- Original message ----
> >At 11:00 23/09/03 -0400, Bijan Parsia wrote:
> >>The main line is "that use of a URI in RDF implies a commitment to its
> >>ontology".

[...]

> >I originally read that statement loosely as meaning something like "Using
> >the URI in RDF is to make statements about what the owner of the URI
>claims
> >it to identify".
>
>See Pat's claims that this kind of separation doesn't work for concepts and
>relations.

If you're referring to Pat's earlier posting to this list, I didn't observe 
any such claim.   (Quite possibly my oversight.)


My perspective is that there are, quite clearly in my mind, (at least) two 
kinds of "meaning" associated with RDF, or indeed any descriptive data:

(1) that which is defined in formal terms, and which can be subjected to 
formal analysis. ("formal meaning")

(2) that which exists by virtue of consensus between people. ("social meaning")

If one takes a purely formalistic stance, then the second kind is no 
meaning at all.  But surely there's more to life, the web and everything 
than formalism?  In particular...

>Plus, your reading seems pointless. Operationally, what does it affect?

... it affects the ways that people might write software to process RDF 
containing said URI.  (Does writing a program to process some URI in RDF is 
a particular way give some added formal meaning to the URI?  Whatever the 
answer, I don't see that it helps us to formally reason more thoroughly 
about the thing referenced.)

I perceive this debate arose because there is more meaning in RDF 
expressions than is captured by the formal semantics, but we couldn't agree 
how to describe the nature of that meaning.

One might take a view that if can't be formalized we've no business at all 
trying to describe this "social meaning".  I don't subscribe to that 
view.  If we don't try to describe the meaning that can't be formalized, 
then we have no basis to judge whether a program that operates on certain 
data in a certain way is behaving as we humans believe it should do.

Also, an informal description may often, I believe, be a precursor to 
formal definitions that capture more (but never all) of the intended 
"social meaning".

> > By this, using a URI *formally* means nothing.
>
>My understanding, both from looking at the text (see my earlier reading)
>and from conversation, is that this is not the case.
>
>I don't see how to read "committment to an ontology" in this context that
>*doesn't* have an effect on the formal meaning.

Well, maybe.  I don't want to get hung up on that text.  I don't think 
we're here to create new aspects of formal meaning.  We've got two working 
groups doing that already.

>I mean, really, what does this "identify what the URI claims it identifies"
>*mean*? Is it even true?

Er, I don't recognize that statement.  What I said was "Using the URI in 
RDF is to make statements about what the owner of the URI claims it to 
identify", which explicitly appeals to a human as opposed to a formal 
judgement of meaning.  Maybe you refer to something else?

#g


------------
Graham Klyne
GK@NineByNine.org

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2003 16:17:47 UTC