- From: Wilson, MD \(Michael\) <m.d.wilson@rl.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 17:50:13 -0000
- To: "Danny Ayers" <danny.ayers@gmail.com>, "W3C SWEO IG" <public-sweo-ig@w3.org>
- Cc: "Story Henry" <henry.story@bblfish.net>
Danny, The authors make a fairly common, and cheap, academic argument that a theory or technology is inadequate because it does not address some issue that it was not intended to - it's like criticizing Darwin's theory of biological evolution for not providing a moral basis on which human's can make life choices, or Microsoft Word for not being an adequate systems programming environment, although it contains a macro language. Another cheap academic argument is to try to apply any theory of language or knowledge being proposed to the issue or paper in question. It would have been nice if the authors had gone this stage further since the Semantic Web exactly provides the technology to make explicit the fallacies in their argument. For example, they argue: The Semantic Web ISA Technology to represent the semantics of controlled vocabularies used on the web sufficiently to support their interoperability ISA theory of semantics ISA General theory of meaning AND To have academic merit, the proposal of a general theory of meaning must explain what has been explained by previous theories, and make testable advances on them in scope or detail THEREFORE The semantic web does not have merit One can make a Brachmanesque critique that the ISAs in this argument conflate a train of category inferences about class and role, and that it is exactly these inferences which the semantic web technologies make explicit so that such inferences will not be drawn falaciously as they are in the paper. Unfortunately the authors did not go this extra step - but it is an example which can be used in this way if anybody wants to. Michael Wilson -----Original Message----- From: public-sweo-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sweo-ig-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Danny Ayers Sent: 06 November 2007 13:34 To: W3C SWEO IG Cc: Story Henry Subject: Slides on the SemWeb's failure (!) http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2007/11/02/yes-the-semantic-w eb-is-flawed/ I responded in comments there - a little hastily, should have looked at the slides & his CV first: http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/about-me/ -- http://dannyayers.com
Received on Wednesday, 7 November 2007 17:50:31 UTC