RE: reification and procedures [was: RE: RDF Terminologicus]

> As for the rest, I won't respond point by point because I 
> don't really 
> disagree with the essence of what you say.  The distinction 
> I'd draw is 
> that I'd like to define _meaning_ without reference to 
> procedure, even 
> though I acknowledge that the discovery of that meaning must 
> ultimately 
> depend upon a some procedure.  (I think there's a parallel 
> here with the 
> SWeb/DAML work on providing a common proof validity checker 
> that doesn't 
> care how the proof may be discovered.)
> 
> So, one may wish to compute the effect of retracting a 
> statement from a 
> statement set, and need an efficient procedure for doing this 
> in terms of:
> 
>     new_meaning := some_function( previous_meaning, statement_set, 
> retracted_stmt )
> 
> But I think that the meaning of some set of statements should not be 
> dependent on some prior dynamic computational state; e.g.
> 
>     meaning = some_function( statement_set )
> 
> or
> 
>     meaning = some_function( statement_set, context )
> 
> (where 'context' is a static, invariant environment to which 
> the statements 
> are bound for the purposes of evaluation).

I can appreciate this view, the consequences of computation are unpleasant
here: "programming with semantic side effects considered harmful."

Ok, I'm working through the M&S again and have got to para 4 in the
introduction. "The broad goal of RDF...". So it seems I have issues with a
stated goal of RDF, rather than anything you've said. Suffice to say, I
don't believe that broad goal is realisable: that is not to say it's not a
worthy goal. My gripe seems limited to a class of inferential applications
anyway and may be irrelevant for the most part of RDF processing.

-Bill

-----
Bill de hÓra  :  InterX  :  bdehora@interx.com

Received on Friday, 5 January 2001 08:29:48 UTC