contradiction and controversy - was: Is it necessary for the semantic web to be self contradictory? -

> On 27 May 2015, at 03:14, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com> wrote:
> 
> Missing reference, what is the distinction before “Form” and “forms”?
> But the Semantic Web is a web of utterances by distributed players which are all intrinsically ambiguous and highly likely to be full of contradictions and differences of opinion.
> The main ‘invention’ of the web (and Gopher before it) was the distributed authority of having uncoordinated but linked data resources. A semantic WEB needs the same freedom for different serves to make contradictory assertions… is that what you mean?

I agree. 

What has not yet happened is specification of vocabulary for disagreement. Various philosophers in France, including Bernard Stiegler and Bruno Latour, have put a lot of emphasis lately on the importance of controversy.  

Even though a controversy could emerge from a pure logical contradiction such as the following example illustrated in the diagram below, where we imaging a well established ontology from a prestigious organisation that creates two disjoint categories of bosons and anti-bosons. Then we can imagine well respected scientists B that classifies an object as a Boson, and yet scientist H that then later classifies the
same object as an Anti-Boson.

As he discovers this difference, H adds that the information on B's </thesis> resource is a falsehood.
This is neither a Like nor a Dislike. It's both in some sense, as controversies can be very fruitful. At the minimum it is a pointer to reasoning engines that they should not merge both graphs.





As is well know in logic everything follows from a contradiction: i.e. no distinctions can be made. And indeed once a contradiction is reached everything can be questions. In this case the controversy could question:

 * the ontology
 * the statement by any of the scientists, or the procedures they used to reach those statements ( where they referring to the same entity? )
 * the logical engines that showed these two as contradictory
 * ...

A discussion on each side could bring to bear different points of views on the subject. At the end this could lead to a split of both communities, or a retraction of one of the three of some relation.

Not all controversies need be logical based. Someone could publish a relation such as 

<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Muhammad>
     <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/depiction> 
<https://eagereyes.org/media/2010/empty-frame.jpg <https://eagereyes.org/media/2010/empty-frame.jpg>> .

And that could in certain circles be controversial. 

Henry

> 
> Larry
> —
> http://larry.masinter.net
> 
> 
> 
> http://masinter.blogspot.com/2014/11/ambiguity-semantic-web-speech-acts.html <http://masinter.blogspot.com/2014/11/ambiguity-semantic-web-speech-acts.html>
> 
> On 5/26/15, 1:59 PM, "Melvin Carvalho" <melvincarvalho@gmail.com <mailto:melvincarvalho@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> I was reading this quote lately:
> 
> In order for the Global Semantic System to be able to produce creative utterances, it is necessary that it be self-contradictory and that no Form of content exist, only forms of content
> 
> I was wondering if it applies also the semantic web and decentralization.  

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