Re: semantics and knowledge

Hi Howard,

I would reiterate the answer I gave in my previous email to all of these 
points.

SKOS may not necessarily encode actual "knowledge", but it can still 
legitimately be referred to as a knowledge system tool.

Cheers,

-- Stephen.

Howard Burrows wrote:
> All,
> 
> I guess I don’t feel that we get to talk about “knowledge” at all if we 
> are limited to semantics alone.  As Antoine indicates, this project is 
> Semantic Web-biased.  In that context, we don’t get “simple 
> knowledge”--we don’t even enter the realm of knowledge.
> 
> Semantics allows us to agree on word usage and document/data formats, so 
> we can explicitly describe things to each other across communities—so we 
> can clearly elaborate distinctions between our beliefs and hypotheses.  
> Doesn’t “knowledge” require more than that--actually justifying which of 
> these beliefs and hypotheses are right and actionable?  Aren’t the 
> requirements for knowledge beyond what we’re doing here?
> 
> As an example, I’m hoping my concern with the use of the word 
> “knowledge” is **not** just semantics; I hope I’m raising a legitimate 
> issue, and not just drawing in a term from an ontology parallel and 
> possibly incommensurable with the one used here.  This is important as 
> the next phase of web development should go beyond just understanding 
> how words and data relate to each other.  We need to move into the 
> knowledge domain and establish standards of a different kind that allow 
> us to catalog statements, not just according to what we understand them 
> to mean, but by whether or not they are true (or at least sufficiently 
> justified to entitle us to use them in making decisions).
> 
> As another example, Aida’s hadron scheme states quite clearly a 
> hypothesis about the possible relations between agreed upon objects.  It 
> doesn’t get at whether this is the correct hypothesis--or how we would 
> tell.  What observations should count as data in establishing the truth 
> of this hypothesis?  Even if we have ways to justify this particular 
> hadron scheme, we still need to be able to locate competing hypotheses 
> to compare with this scheme.  And we need to be able to rank the whole 
> set of ideas that people have come up with according to how well each is 
> justified. 
> 
> All this seems somewhat beyond “semantics”.  I’m still not getting the 
> perspective that most of you seem to share that would entitle us to use 
> the word “knowledge” in the name of this valuable semantic web 
> standard.  Just organizing the list of hypotheses (both right and wrong) 
> and data (both relevant and irrelevant) doesn’t capture the critical 
> relation between them that generates knowledge.  Even if you prefilter 
> the set of hypotheses so you only include those hypotheses that qualify 
> as “known-to-be-true”, the correct statements are not the knowledge—what 
> justifies them is--otherwise you haven’t captured essential elements 
> that would allow you to apply them as knowledge.
> 
> Howard Burrows
> 
> Supporting Research
> 
> Durham, NH, USA

Received on Friday, 7 November 2008 11:34:06 UTC