RE: Named graphs etc

>A few comments ...
>
>>  >
>>  >Publication of a graph, or an RDF/XML instance, should not equate to
>>  >assertion.
>>
>>  I don't think that follows. And in any case, its too late to try to
>>  change this now, seems to me.
>
>
>Some published RDF/XML docs are asserted, some are not (e.g. WG test cases).
>We dropped the sections of RDF Concepts that presumed that
>publishing=asserting, partly because there was no consensus.
>

I know, but that section had a lot more controversial stuff in it 
than just this. Since there are no deployed ways of distinguishing 
asserted from non-asserted publications, it seems unlikely that the 
planet will now decide that all the published OWL and RDF and RDFS is 
all just kind of lying there until someone finds a way to get it 
asserted.

>  > Asserting isn't a kind of logical sentence, it's a speech act. It
>>  stands outside the logical semantics.
>
>English works both to carry content and speech acts,

But there is a clear distinction; and in fact, English speech acts 
are conveyed more by things like intonation and contextual clues than 
in the language itself. You usually just assert or just promise: you 
only say you are asserting or promising in order to emphasize, or for 
rhetorical or ceremonial reasons. Same in all NatLangs.

>I think the suggestion
>is that RDF can carry its own speech act status

But the problem is that one is not enough. Well, actually, I think 
that one is enough but only if its the publish=assert case. Otherwise 
you can't get any asserting bootstrapped off the ground.

Also, allowing speech act status to follow by reasoning is likely to 
produce unpredictable things happening in OWL, maybe even in RDF. 
Like, whether or not it gets asserted depends on how clever your 
reasoner is. So I think having explicit tags somewhere on the edge of 
the RDF is likely to be simpler than trying to do it in RDF.

RDF is a pretty weak foundation already, and we have overloaded it 
just by putting OWL on it. It can't take any more :-)

>, and the bootstrapping is in
>the user perceptions (the trust layer).
>
>>  Well, how about this. Publication is assertion: but what gets
>>  asserted depends on the publication mode, which is set by an optional
>>  'publishMode' property in the RDF XML element tag. If it isnt set,
>>  then the graph is asserted by the publication: the default case. If
>>  the mode="quote" then what is asserted by the publication is simply
>>  that the graph exists and has the name that it has, ie this
>>  publication is like saying
>>
>>  here is the graph named "ex:foo" : "......"
>>
>>  without asserting the graph itself. This still allows other people to
>>  import it if they want to assert it.
>>  The combination of a publication with mode="quote" and then having
>>  another asserted graph which just imports he first graph is almost
>>  exactly like publishing the graph plain.
>>
>>  This mechanism is obviously expandable by allowing other values for
>>  that property, eg maybe someone wants to say publishMode="deny" or
>>  publishMode="archaic". It even allows for URIs in there pointing to
>>  hypothetical future ontologies of publication mode types, whatever.
>>  And it doesn't require any modification to RDF or to OWL, and its
>>  uniform across media types.
>>
>
>I was initially taking this point of view, but it is just more data, and
>apart from the bootstrapping problem, putting it all in RDF does seem more
>minimalist.

But I really don't think it makes sense. And what is more minimal 
than a single XML tag?

>Things can be bootstrapped from English ...

But this is a cop-out. We expect software agents to be using this 
stuff, right? If we could bootstrap from English, who needs RDF in 
the first place?

>The fact that the WG Tests are not asserted is found in the Test Cases
>Recommendations (not that they say so explicitly).

I propose that the way this will actually get done is that their 
objective publication status is vague and underdefined, but since 
they have no warrant, no serious agent is going to take them on trust 
as asserted, which is all that will matter.

>Jeremy

Pat
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC	(850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973   home
40 South Alcaniz St.	(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola			(850)202 4440   fax
FL 32501			(850)291 0667    cell
phayes@ihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

Received on Tuesday, 9 March 2004 13:20:43 UTC