Re: ACTION-219: review of CORE (more)

On 14 Feb 2007, at 12:10, Gerd Wagner wrote:

>>> Not being "consistent with classical semantics" doesn't mean
>>> much for what we are trying to do. No important computational
>>> formalism I'm aware of is "consistent with classical semantics".
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I'm trying to reconcile the above with...

>> What about common logic?
>
> OWL-DL
   ^^^^^^^^

...this.

> people will probably tell you that it is not
> consistent with classical semantics :-)
> (since it includes some unorthodox extensions)
>
> It's also not really a computational formalism, at
> least I don't know any form of implementation of it.
[snip]
> -Gerd

I can't see anyone denying that OWL-DL (and most description logics)  
is consistent with classical semantics (being, typically, fragments  
of FOL).

Evidently, Gerd is aware of them (and of predicate logic and of  
propositional logic).

Clearly OWL-DL is a computational formalism, as all of the set  
{Propositional, Description, First order} logics have robust sets of  
implementations and strong, computationally minded communities.  
Indeed, the description logic community is very strongly driven by  
computational considerations, to a point where people complain about  
that!

So, all that's left is that they are unimportant. Regardless of  
whether you think this is true in general, it's clearly *not* true in  
the context of this working group. Consensus driven organization have  
to at least *acknowledge and respect* minority views (not that I  
think the view that bog standard first order predicate logic and its  
fragments are important computational formalism is a minority view in  
this group; I've not taken a survey; but clearly it is a view held by  
members of this working group).

So I take this to be similar to Allen's arrogation of the term  
"logic" to mean only classical logic.

Do these advance *any* cause? Does this help achieve consensus on  
*any* point?

I don't think so.

So I respectively request that people refrain from making such  
bombastic claims, regardless of their personal perceptions of the  
merits of those claims.

Thanks!

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Wednesday, 14 February 2007 12:50:09 UTC