RE: Comment on "Meaning and the Semantic Web"

> From: Bijan Parsia
> Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 6:41 PM
>
>>>> So lets change the scene a little:
>>> [snipped silly caricature that not only makes Peter and me out to be
>>> Machiavellian morons, but doesn't even vaguely hook up to anything
>>> we've said]
>> It seems similarly unfair
> 
> This is my last post in this thread, and probably my last 
> post in reply 
> to you. You seem incapable of carrying on the debate in any sort of 
> sensible manner.

I realize you are far less concerned with continuing to dialogue with 
me than with Pat Hayes, but I would rather you not quit the discussion 
or block me from your inbox. So perhaps a public apology from me is in 
order as well.
 
> First, if it seems to you that what Peter and I wrote is 1) 
> very wrong 
> and and 2) that what you wrote is *similarly* wrong, how is 
> it that you 
> don't refrain or apologize for your behavior?

I apologize for casting you and Peter by name in my scene. I would 
be happy to post the scenario again with myself cast as the villain if 
that would help. But you are wrong in asserting that my motive was make 
you out as Machiavellian morons, or suggest that you had ever advocated 
inserting triples anywhere. Nor is it simply a bizarre fantasy. I was  
just trying to use what seems to be a standard tool in the philosophy of 
language, which I have started to read avidly, that of the staged scene, 
which brings to light some interesting twist on how language is used. I 
was thinking of Putnam's twin earth fantasy or Searle's American soldier 
captured by Italians in "Speech Acts". In fact, knowing your affinity 
for the philosophy of language, I was hoping you especially would 
appreciate it. More directly, my motive was to try to get you to see that 
a certain position that you have held, well, sort of rigidly to, would in  
circumstances other than those you are used to think of it in, would 
not work at all and would in fact be both technically and morally wrong.

> *I* think there's a 
> relevant asymmetry in what we've done. For one, we don't 
> literally cast 
> people into bizarre fantasies. We do claim that certain views lead to 
> situations relevantly analogous to certain aspects of totalitarianism 
> (e.g., that dissent about meaning is discouraged, or, more 
> worrisomely, 
> literally impossible). We may be wrong, but we didn't make any claims 
> *at all* about people's motives.
> 
> (I really wonder where the chair and the various friends of 
> charitable 
> readings are.)
> 
> I once was somewhat ambivalent about our use of 
> "totalitarian" (though 
> people don't seem unhappy with the metaphorical use of "anarchistic", 
> which we didn't start by a long shot). But it has been interesting to 
> see what it provokes. Note, I did not think it was 
> *provocative*, just 
> rather too cutsey.
> 
> >  to me that you and Peter make out anyone
> > who argues that "...the URI ownership system makes statements by
> > owners authoritative weight..." would lead the world down the road
> > of totalitarianism.
> 
> I'm so glad we didn't make anyone out that way.
> 
> > Nothing that Tim or others have proposed
> > warrants your repeated accusations that we are proposing to stifle
> > free-speech, crush dissent, stultify the semantic web, or otherwise
> > prevent disagreements and usher in Orwellian thought control.
> 
> There is a difference in proposing something that has negative 
> consequences, and proposing the negative consequences. One is 
> with the 
> former that when shown the negative consequences, one 
> reconsiders; with 
> the latter, if the negative consequences are shown *not* to 
> follow, one 
> reconsiders. I fail to see how anything Peter or I have 
> written, said, 
> suggested, dreamt of can be construed as suggesting that we think 
> anyone in this forum is advocating the negative consequences.
> 

Alright. Once again your precision and knowledge of argumentation 
just astounds me. I apologize for saying that you and Peter made anyone 
out as I described. I was mincing several emails from others together 
with statements in your paper and then, as you say, claiming you 
accused others of proposing the negative consequences, rather than 
proposing something that has negative consequences. On the other 
hand, when you make statements like the one I quoted, "...for any 
proposal for Semantic Web meaning that cuts off easy access to 
disagreements will inevitably end up stultifying the Semantic Web."
The distinction does start tending to blur, in my mind, for things 
that are inevitable are often obvious and proposing something that has 
obvious and inevitable consequences is getting sort of close to 
proposing the consequences themselves.

> > These are shock-jock type of arguments
> 
> Huh?
> 

Shock jocks make their ideas feel profoundly important by 
attaching other highly emotionally charged (shocking) ideas to 
them. The examples in Dan's and Jeremy's emails have that feel to 
me - anti-homosexual bias, racism, but so does totalitarianism. 

> > using guilt by association.
> 
> I *think* you mean "innuendo". hmm. I'm not sure what you 
> mean. Who did 
> we claim were associated with?
> 
> >  No one
> > that I know of who has ever offered a proposal for URI 
> ownership would
> > advocate homophobic, racist, fascist totalitarianism.
> 
> When I find someone who claims otherwise, I'll send them your way.
> 
> >> You might take a little time to edit your posts before 
> sending them.
> >> Restating an example you just posted not a full day 
> before, only this
> >> time incorporating your interlocutors in a fairly 
> derogatory way and
> >> yet not otherwise augmenting or elaborating the example is just a
> >> waste.
> >
> > I'll consider that.
> 
> It might have been better to consider it before you posted.
> 
> > You too, eh?
> 
> Fortunately, I'm not in the relevantly similar position. I may have 
> gotten a bit tart, but I don't believe I've either 
> misrepresented what 
> anyone else has said, nor made unfounded comments about anyone's 
> person.
> 
> I have been accused of a number of things in the course of 
> this debate. 
> Perhaps the most serious is not being charitable toward various 
> people's "intended meanings". 

As I said above, I apologize for any misrepresentation of your 
views along these lines.

> It is true that I started into this 
> discussion (by which I mean public-sw-meaning) in order to refute a 
> specific proposal made in a specific forum in a specific way. If this 
> "task force" had started otherwise, so might have I. I still 
> feel that 
> substantive text put forth in a formal forum deserves to be taken as 
> the primary artifact. I would have been happy if everyone had simply 
> *agreed* that the view I found in the original issue raising 
> (if we go 
> back to that) was not what we wanted, but it has been like pulling 
> teeth to get that far, and it's not clear that we're there.
> 
> 
> 
> >>> The point is that there are use cases where it would be critical
> >>> that an interpreting agent be required to discover and report
> >>> the actual meaning of a set of published documents.  And this
> >>> might be aided by giving URI authors facilities to specify what
> >>> that meaning is.
> >>
> >> We author documents, not URIs.

I missed this one. We author both. And this is relevant. URIs 
have a rich semantics, all by themselves. RDF semantics may 
ignore it, but that doesn't make it go away.

> >>
> >> I want my documents to be largely under my control. I
> >> prepared for some
> >> leeway in interpretation (e.g., looking at a document 
> purely as well
> >> formed XML rather than as the particular PSVI I intended),
> >> but I don't
> >> think that every use of a URI in document *content* should 
> give that
> >> URIs owner licence to insert whatever into my document. I'm
> >> not adverse
> >> to that entirely, obviously, since this pretty much is what
> >> owl:imports
> >> gives me.
> >>
> >> It's like the difference between an <a href=.. and an <img 
> src... You
> >> don't always want transclusion.
> >>
> >> None of this has a WHIT to do with some intermediary inserting or
> >> altering content "for my own good". Nothing. Nothing at all.
> >> Not even a
> >> little. Let go, ok?
> >
> > So drop the accusations of totalitarianism -
> 
> I see, blackmail. What does one have to do with the other? 

I apologize for the tit-for-tat sound of that remark. No 
blackmail intended. But do consider the effect of even the 
remote implication that I am proposing totalitarianism, which 
I truly abhor.

> Try refuting 
> our claims 

I have begun to do so in another post.

> instead of first attacking us, then 
> misrepresenting us, then 
> attacking the misrepresentation, then (stupidly) caracituring us.

Again, please accept my apology.

> > they don't have a place
> > in these discussions either. ok?
> 
> You are fond of faux symmetry lines, I see.
> 
> >> There is an interesting question of what aggregators and other
> >> republishers might reasonable want or be expected to do. But
> >> that is a
> >> separate issue.
> >
> > I'd much prefer to talk about that.
> 
> You're free to. Surprising that you need reminding.
> 
> I notice you don't address my reply to your distortions. I 
> defy you to 
> find support for your scenario in anything  I've written in 
> this forum 
> or in our poster.
> 
> > The fear of totalitarianism
> > seems to me to be the mother of all social meaning arguments,
> 
> I have no idea what you mean. 

Last year when I brought of the possibility of product liability 
and fraud in an email, you and Peter were both very negative 
to my expressed concerns. 
Peter: "Do you really expect the Semantic 
Web to prohibit lying? ... Do you really expect the Semantic Web to 
educate fools?" 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sw-meaning/2003Oct/0011.html

Bijan: "The analogies have well leaked over to the hysterical." and 
"At this point I become totally annoyed by the analogies. This is no 
longer argument, and the analogies stretch all credibility."
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-sw-meaning/2003Oct/0037.html

In a way, the fear of totalitarianism argument seems much like the original 
examples in Section 4. as well as others like mine about liability and 
fraud. And I feel the same way about the totalitarianism analogy as you did 
about mine, that it is hysterical and stretches all credibility.

> The world of your seeming seems 
> to me to 
> be a pretty strange place. I certainly don't understand it.
> 
> >  which
> > is surprising given your position on that topic.
> 
> Given how you "interpret" my positions, I'm not sure what can 
> surprise 
> you. However, I remain clueless to your meaning.
> 
> I take my leave of you.

I hope you don't after reading these sincere and public apologies.

John Black

> 
> Bijan Parsia.
> 
>

Received on Friday, 4 June 2004 14:09:24 UTC