Re: Some thoughts on "intended Semantic Structures" section 3.8 of RIF-FLD

Dear David,

Thank you very much for your comments. Please see our comments within. 
David Mott wrote on 19 October 2009:
> I am trying to understand the section 3.8 on intended semantic 
structures. 
> I am not a deep expert in logic, so what may be obvious and implied to 
> experts is alas not obvious to me. (My goal is to develop a dialect 
> handling Naf amongst other things).
> 
> I have two comments/questions...
> 
> 1) Looking at the section 3.8 , I see the term "intended semantic 
> multi-structure". It is said that RIF-BLD does not specify what these 
> might be, and I am fine with that. However this section does not even 
> define (explicitly) what the "purpose" of such structures might be, nor 
> any criteria for knowing that you have selected the right set for a 
given 
> purpose. (Could the set be entirely random, I ask myself?)

We have added more explanations in that section, which should hopefully 
make the intent clear. The intended structures are by no means random. 
They should be defined by a trained logician who is familiar with the 
mode-theoretic semantics of rules. 
> Therefore I 
> look to the Shoham87 reference, and I read about "preferred" 
> interpretations. This gives a clear "purpose" to the relationship 
between 
> alternative interpretations, and I guess that this is what is meant by 
> intended semantic multistructure.
> 
> So is it correct to say that intended semantic multistructure  == 
> preferred interpretation? If so, could that be made explicit? If not, 
then 
> what is the "purpose"?

Yes, "intended" subsumes "preferred" in Shoham's terminology. Please see 
if the reworked explanations make the purpose any clearer. 
> 2) In the section 3.9 a definition for entailment is given, based upon 
the 
> lattice of truth values. However in the reference (again Shoham87) there 

> is no mention (as far as my non-expert eyes can see) of lattices of 
truth 
> values, only preference relations between interpretations.  So I am not 
> sure what the intended RIF-FLD relationship is between these two 
concepts.

This is a generalization of Shoham's notion to the case of multi-valued 
logics. Shoham considers only two-valued logics. Our notion reduces to 
Shohams for 2-valued dialects. 

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RIF WG
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