Re: Semantic Layers (Was Interpretation of RDF reification)

The "formalization" is not even the problem with pragmatics - it's just
there's not even good "informal" theories of pragmatics. In linguistics,
there is so sort-of useful stuff in Searle's speech acts, Grosz's
attention-belief-intention model, and of course "relevance" theory (and
we all see how well similar ideas worked out with Cyc) and some rather
unreadable Habermas. But most of that stuff is only semi-useful to
computing, and always needs to be formalized - and often is formalized
in completely orthogonal ways by different implementations.

So, there's lots of good pragmatic documents. Lots of RFCs, TAG work,
work from Apache etc. is says very straightforward and useful stuff
about the pragmatics of particular applications and domains and very
relevant to the Web. But as far as pragmatics as a distinct subject
matter and discipline goes, I would go as far to say that there aren't
even any good second-rate theories, much less first-rate theories. And
without an even informal theory, one can't formalize (or even vacuously
formalize), much less standardize in the domain independent way needed
by the SemWeb and other KR.

That's a problem with KR in general, not just the SemWeb, and resolving
that problem lies in the hands of SemWeb application deployment, which
would vary from context to context. And that appears to be one of the
problems that led to AI winter.

John F. Sowa wrote:

>
> Harry,
>
> As much as I like logic, I admit that the most important
> questions of life (and of engineering, which is what we're
> talking about in this round of notes) have never been and
> probably never will be formalized.
>
> > There is, as far as I can tell, no good theories of pragmatics
> > that are capable of being formalized. "Pragmatics", at least
> > in linguistics where I come from, is usually a sort of fuzzy
> > "hand-waving" solution to any hard problem, much as the terms
> > "world-knowledge" and "common-sense" knowledge are. Whenever
> > I hear the word pragmatics I want to reach for my axe  :)
>
> Fuzzy hand-waving is generally bad, but it can be used to support
> any topic whatever.  Just because something is covered with a
> veneer of formalism doesn't mean it's good.  And just because
> some people have used a term while waving their hands doesn't
> mean its bad.  (By that criterion, the SemWeb would be bad.)
>
> For an example of what good common sense and an intuitive feeling
> for pragmatics can do, I suggest you compare the sales of Apple's
> iPod to anything comparable that has come from Sony.
>
> For an example of good pragmatics, I recommend John McCarthy's
> Elephant paper, which I believe should have been required reading
> for anybody working on the SemWeb:
>
>    http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/elephant/elephant.html
>
> That paper was one of the inspirations for a paper I published in 2002:
>
>    http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/arch.htm
>    Architectures for Intelligent Systems
>
> The Flexible Modular Framework (FMF), which is described in that paper
> has become the primary platform for developing and deploying everything
> we're doing in our VivoMind company.  Compared to that, everything
> I've seen from the SemWeb is legacy stuff that's trivial to deal with
> by importing it and converting it to usable formats.
>
> I'm perfectly happy to let the rest of the world suffer with RDF and OWL
> because they just kill off any competition we might encounter.
>
> John
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 29 March 2006 17:55:41 UTC