Semantic Web (was Re: Thoughts/comments on "Philosophical Engineering: Toward a Philosophy of the Web")

Michael Brunnbauer <brunni@netestate.de> wrote:
 
> Why is the Semantic Web - which is based on formal logic to a good extent - 
> seen as natural next step in extending the human mind ? Chapter 9 seems to 
> underline this question (intentional or not).

I once attended a seminar in which Barry Smith argued that the semantic Web
could easily generate bad inferences. I'm not sure to what extent he saw this
problem as intractable, though, and my brief search didn't succeed in locating
a relevant paper. Thus before we consider whether the semantic Web can be an
extension of the human mind, it seems there are logical and semantic issues
that raise questions about its viability.

There are also good papers by Catherine Legg (Philosophy, University of
Waikato) on the semantic Web, including this overview:
http://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/2872/ontologies%20on%20the%20semantic%20web.pdf

My research background is in philosophy. I wrote a PhD on Robert Brandom's
inferentialist semantics, in the context of foundational debates among
philosophers of language (Dummett and McDowell specifically). From this you
can safely conclude that I tend toward the detailed, analytic side of
philosophy these days.

I've been involved with the W3C for many years, working on Web accessibility in
various working groups, currently the IndieUI working group.

Received on Monday, 30 December 2013 23:02:03 UTC