Re[2]: Semantic Layers (Was Interpretation of RDF reification)

Harry,
It's a good question about a formalization of Pragmatics !
See a direction in this activity in my paper "To keep abreast of the
21st Century" - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abreast.htm .
"There is a need to turn minds back to the Peirce's semiotics with it’s “syntactique” ,
“semantique” and “pragmatique” and to modern activities around it. Only one example of
such “semiotics” description of  “pressure” Property of  such physical object as pump.
From the syntactic point of view a “Format” is determined for the pressure. From the
semantic point of view a “quantitative” measure scale is determined for it  with
proper units of measure. From the pragmatic point of view some “order” scales of
estimation may be defined for the pressure with such values for example as “low”,
“normal” , “high” . At last the relations between the semantic scale values and
pragmatic scales values must be defined. The pressure property can be generalized
for more wide classes of objects in the Repository. From the semantic and pragmatic
points of view such generalizations may be different . Such from the semantic point
of view the generalization can be run up to “pressure in liquid and/or gas” but for
the pragmatic point of view there is a need in much more details."

Leonid Ototsky - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it


> Quick notes:

>     1) 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 :) Now, if someone has a good theory formal
> pragmatics, go for it and forward me the links off-list, but I  bet is
> that pragmatics are too context-dependent to formalize properly. So,
> blaming the SemWeb for not doing pragmatics is a bit unfair. 

>     2) Re syntax, XML people *like* XML, just in the same manner as
> McCarthy was somewhat shocked to find out people actually liked
> programming in S-Expressions. Also, RDF is not a programming language.
> Therefore, one can do great RDF processing in LISP, where one can car
> and cdr (head and tail) to one's delight. It seems like because it has a
> formal semantics, once could define a multiplicity of syntax. Lastly,
> the SemWeb is a stack, and the logic programming parts of it are in
> development right now - I'm sure Sandro can tell us more, and they just
> e-mailed their requirements to this list.


> John F. Sowa wrote:

>> Leonid and Henry,
>>
>> I am very much in sympathy with Leonid's comments,
>> *especially* with the point that pragmatics comes first
>> in any kind of design, semantics comes next, and syntax
>> should be tailored to the semantics and the pragmatics.
>>
>>> Let me add some more items to the things you like .
>>> - To extend the Triples approach by the Classificaton Theory
>>> integrated with Measurment Theory ;
>>> - To use the Pragmatics above the Semantics ;
>>> - To use the Pragmatism "relativity" between Ontology and
>>> Epistemology(Cognitology);
>>> - To add the VSM of Stafford Beer
>>> (http://www.ototsky.mgn.ru/it/beer_vsm.html)
>>> to Upper Ontology ;
>>> - To add the "metasystem transition" as "natural generalization" way.
>>> ---------------------------
>>> See some more details in - http://ototsky.mgn.ru/it/21abreast.htm
>>
>>
>> The details of the systems Leonid cites are very interesting
>> and should be considered, but there are also a lot of other
>> interesting systems that should be considered.  I don't want
>> to obscure the important principle above by quibbling over
>> the other details.
>>
>> The following comment by Henry illustrates the difficulty:
>>
>> > OWL and RDF are not a syntax. They are a semantics. If you want
>> > to make your life easier just use Turtle, or if you want more
>> > power than what has yet been standardized, use N3. Here is an
>> > atom feed rewritten using N3 (turtle) syntax with the AtomOwl
>> > ontology [2]
>>
>> In politics, statements like the first two sentences above are
>> technically known as "spin".  Although I was not involved in the
>> design of RDF and OWL, I have read and heard enough about the
>> process to know that the designers went through enormously
>> complex contortions to shoehorn the finally agreed semantics
>> into the syntax policy that was edicted a priori.
>>
>> Any syntax that is so difficult to use that it requires all the
>> effort that Tim Bray and others expended on it just to express
>> triples (and which Tim admits was a mistake) has something
>> seriously wrong with it.  And if it requires tools as powerful
>> as Turtle and N3 to make it humanly usable, that is further
>> evidence that something is very seriously wrong.  And if the
>> result is so bloated that it requires compression algorithms
>> to reduce storage space and transmission time, that is
>> abundant evidence that something is horribly wrong.
>>
>> The *only* argument that makes the slightest amount of sense
>> is that the RDF and OWL syntax enables the reuse of parsers
>> designed for XML.   That argument is undermined by the very
>> simple observation that the notation (R arg1 arg2 ... argN)
>> can be parsed with two functions built into many languages.
>>
>> In many commonly used languages, the two functions are called
>> Head and Tail.  But whatever they are called, they provide
>> a two-operator parser that comes for free with the language:
>>
>>  1. For any tuple list L, Head(L) is the first tuple, and
>>     Tail(L) is the remaining list.
>>
>>  2. For any tuple T, Head(T) is the relation name, and
>>     Tail(T) is the list of arguments.
>>
>> Henry's example (copy below) illustrates the kind of metalevel
>> notation that is valuable for large documents (and in some cases
>> even for a single tuple).  But in many applications, it is
>> counterproductive for the metalevel to overwhelm the content.
>> If you have a billion tuples (as many systems do), you don't
>> want to annotate every last one of them individually.
>>
>> Recommendation:  Allow RDF and OWL to remain as they are, but
>> provide an optional form along the lines of the tuple list I
>> suggested in my previous note.  If you want to annotate a single
>> tuple in the form Henry suggested, then use the following notation.
>> But if you have a billion tuples (or even just a dozen), factor
>> out the metanotation and put the content in a simple tuple list.
>>
>> As Tim Bray commented about the mistakes in the design of RDF:
>>
>>    It's the syntax, stupid!
>>
>> John Sowa
>> __________________________________________________________________
>>
>> [ a :Feed, :Version;
>>
>>    :title [ :value "Example Feed";
>>             :type "text/plain" ];
>>    :link  [ :href <http://example.org/>;
>>             :rel iana:alternate ];
>>    :updated "2003-12-13T18:30:02Z"^^xsd:dateTime;
>>    :author [ :name "John Doe" ];
>>    :id <urn:uuid:60a76c80-d399-11d9-b93C-0003939e0af6>;
>>
>>    :entry [ a :Entry, :Version;
>>             :title [ :value "Atom-Powered Robots Run Amok";
>>                      :type "text/plain" ];
>>             :link [  :href <http://example.org/2003/12/13/atom03>;
>>                      :rel iana:alternate ];
>>             :id <urn:uuid:1225c695-cfb8-4ebb-aaaa-80da344efa6a>;
>>             :updated "2003-12-13T18:30:02Z"^^xsd:dateTime;
>>             :summary [  :value "some text";
>>                         :type "text/plain" ]
>>           ];
>> ] .
>>




-- 
С уважением,
 Leonid                          mailto:leo@mgn.ru

Received on Thursday, 30 March 2006 02:43:46 UTC