- From: Adrian Walker <adrianw@snet.net>
- Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:32:08 -0500
- To: Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>
- Cc: semantic-web@w3.org
Hi Harry -- At 02:25 PM 12/8/2005 +0000, you wrote: >While I appreciate Adrian's demonstrations, I'm just going to point out >that while phrasing things in natural language explanations will >clearly be useful for the semantic web, it doesn't correct - in fact it >makes worse - the questions of ambiguity that I think were trying to be >addressed by formal semantics to begin with. Hmm... Please remember that, underlying our demonstration system [1], there is a formal declarative semantics, and the inference method is based on proofs of soundness and completeness wrt to that [2]. On top of this, we add some lightweight English processing so that people can see what the concepts we reason with are supposed to mean in the real world [3]. So, saying that "natural language explanations will make things worse" would seem to be analogous to saying "don't ever put an English comment in your Java program -- it will only make things ambiguous". Actually, what the system does may usefully be thought of as "making comments directly executable". I hope this makes some sort of sense. Thanks in advance for feedback. -- Adrian [1] Internet Business logic, online at www.reengineeringllc.com. Shared use is free. [2] Backchain Iteration: Towards a Practical Inference Method that is Simple Enough to be Proved Terminating, Sound and Complete. Journal of Automated Reasoning, 11:1-22. [3] www.reengineeringllc.com/Internet_Business_Logic_e-Government_Presentation.pdf Adrian Walker Reengineering PO Box 1412 Bristol CT 06011-1412 USA Phone: USA 860 583 9677 Cell: USA 860 830 2085 Fax: USA 860 314 1029
Received on Thursday, 8 December 2005 20:32:31 UTC