Re: An intuition pump

From: Karl Dubost <karl@w3.org>
Subject: Re: An intuition pump
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2003 11:13:04 -0400

> Le mercredi, 24 sep 2003, à 10:23 America/Montreal, Peter F. 
> Patel-Schneider a écrit :
> >> no. no, no - this is very different -- in English the string "person"
> >> may have many definitions.  On the web the string
> >> "http://www.../foo#person" may be said to refer to many concepts, but
> >> the label is unambiguous
> >
> > I don't view it this way at all.  My view is that the English word
> > ``person'' unambiguously labels the word ``person'', just as
> > "http://www.../foo#person" unambiguously labels
> > "http://www.../foo#person".
> 
> Do you mean that the URI is ***as ambiguous as the english word*** in 
> terms of meaning?
> 
> Should I interpret your sentence	""" My view is that the 
> ***ambiguous*** English word ``person'' unambiguously labels the word 
> ``person'' """
> 
> still from Wordnet
> http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn1.7.1?stage=1&word=person
> 
> 1.  person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, human, soul -- (a 
> human being; "there was too much for one person to do")
>   2.  person -- (a person's body (usually including their clothing); "a 
> weapon was hidden on his person")
>   3.  person -- (a grammatical category of pronouns and verb forms; 
> "stop talking about yourself in the third person")
> 
> At least, we can identify two meanings here: the biological thing and 
> the grammatical rule.
> But you can also and sticking to english, imagine that:
> 	Some people thing that some other people are not persons (example in 
> the history with slavery, or women history)

All I'm trying to say here is that A is the same as A, and that there is no
difference here between the Semantic Web and English (or French, or ...).

> > - think of it as if in English I was to write
> >>   "No(1), No(1), No(1), this(17) is(42) very(6) different(7)"
> >> where each of the subscripts refers to a specific definition on a
> >> specific page of a specific dictionary.
> >
> > And how is this different from
> >
> >     http://...#peter (http://xmlns.org/foaf) rdf:type 
> > (http://...rdf...)
> >     http://www.../foo#person (http://www.../foo).
> 
> Not only in this case the word but the word + its definition. And we 
> know that definitions change in time too.
> 
> one of the definition of Earth is
> 	1.  Earth, world, globe -- (the 3rd planet from the sun; the planet on 
> which we live; "the Earth moves around the sun"; "he sailed around the 
> world")
> 
> A few centuries ago it was not a globe, but a flat thing and it was not 
> the 3rd planet, it was the centre of Universe.

I would prefer not to have to do into changing definitions or even adding
new definitions.
> 
> > The situations are even closer than this.  Pointers to dictionary 
> > entries
> > don't provide all the meaning of a word, nor do (single) Semantic Web
> > documents provide all the meaning of a URI reference.
> 
> 	Agreed.
> 
> >> yes, but it would require a new URI if we then wanted to name one of
> >> these new concepts.
> >
> > Why?  Why would (should) a new URI be required?  Why can't (shouldn't) 
> > I
> > ``say anything about anything''?
> 
> 	Because of social implications and interactions ? 

I don't see that this has any bearing.  Even if I agreed that social
implications and interactions provide some component of meaning, I wouldn't
go so far as to argue that the Semantic Web should *prevent* the flouting
of these social implications and interactions, nor even that it should
state that such flouting is allowed but considered to be a bad thing.
Flouting social implications and interactions has a cost, but that is
totally different from being forbidden or even from being strongly
discouraged.

> Will you agree if 
> the meaning of the law (the references in the code) were fluctuating 
> all the time?

Huh?  This is how the situation really is.  The meaning of legal terms
fluctuates all the time and between different people, at least in legal
systems derived from English common law.  (The situation with respect to
the Napoleanic code may be different, at least in principle.)  The debate
over the US constitution is only a very extreme example of this
fluctuation.

Peter F. Patel-Schneider

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 11:33:51 UTC