- From: John Black <JohnBlack@deltek.com>
- Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 09:50:55 -0400
- To: "pat hayes" <phayes@ihmc.us>, <public-sw-meaning@w3.org>
on Thu 9/25/2003 11:23 PM Pat Hayes wrote: [snip] > 1. Let's stop talking about what the meaning of a URI is, or might > be. I suggest that the question is underdetermined, and cannot be > answered sensibly, since 'meaning' can only be said to apply to > larger pieces of representation than single words or URIs. We are > being misled by the analogy with NL. English words seem to have > meanings all by themselves, in isolation as it were, but in fact > those meanings are determined by a huge amount of surrounding > knowledge and presupposition and shared beliefs. Dictionary > definitions are not really definitions in any foundational sense: > they are kind of sketches of a meaning which themselves rely on the > same connected web of shared knowledge (some of it about language > itself) which they set out to explain. URIs don't have this > surrounding context of shared beliefs and so on; and in any case, > URIs are not NL words. > > In addition, it is notoriously hard to say what a 'meaning' really > is, and there seems to be little point in this group diving > head-first into a philosophical tar-pit as its first act. I disagree. Meaning may be a hard problem, but that is where the riches lie. And we are building a *semantic* web, after all, so the problem of meaning is central. Let's act like hackers, rather than philosophers, when we get to a tar-pit and say, "Run it and see if it works". Furthermore, no one before has had the world wide web to build on, so we can't base our expectations on all those prior failures. We have the advantage of standing on the shoulders of a giant success. We can see farther than ever before - so we should attempt to do more than ever before. More importantly, you brush on and then dismiss what seems to me is the essence of the solution to the meaning of URIs in the semantic web. The meaning of each individual URI is its place and connections to the semantic web. "URIs don't have this surrounding context..." - yet. But they will as the semantic web grows. A URI, like a natural language word, is senseless by itself, it gets *all* of its meaning through its context. A problem we have at this stage is that we must bootstrap all of this. But the meaning of each URI will increase every time another URI is added to the semantic web. It is the ultimate expression of the network effect. [snip] > More later, hopefully more organized than this has been. > > Pat > > -- > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home > 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office > Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax > FL 32501 (850)291 0667 cell > phayes@ihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes > > > John Black Deltek Systems, Inc. JohnBlack@deltek.com 703-885-9646 - Office (Tues,Wed,Thur) 434-964-1936 - Home Office (Mon,Fri) 434-825-3765 - Mobile (Anytime)
Received on Friday, 26 September 2003 09:50:57 UTC