Re: How semantic is semantic web?

Dear Chiara,

If you wish to be closer to the truth, then try and see the inverse approach 
to yours: ''ontologies do really deal with semantics, as they give reference 
to things in real world: they deal with reality and realities. As we build 
ontology, we are explaining the structure of the world and its domains, we 
are giving real meanings (i.e. a reference to things) to the terms and 
concepts we use; we are explaining the relationships between entities.''
This critical issue has been hotly discussed on this and other fora. For 
more info, look up at http://www.eis.com.cy/E-forums.pdf [E-FORA ON STANDARD 
UPPER ONTOLOGY, ONTAC, AND SEMANTIC WEB: What is Ontology, Meaning, and 
Semantics]

With Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chiara Carlino" <chiaracarlino@epistematica.com>
To: <semantic-web@w3.org>
Cc: <chiaracarlino@epistematica.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 1:49 PM
Subject: How semantic is semantic web?



I always find it quite hard to explain to people not directly involved
with semantic web technologies what do we mean by ?semantic web? and
in which sense it should be semantic. As I say ?semantic? everybody
always thinks about language and text-retrieving mechanisms.

Thinking about this and about what definitely ?semantic? means, I
realized that ontologies do not really deal with semantics, as they
give no reference to things in real world: they deal with knowledge.
We all know that, as we build an ontology, we are explaining the
structure of our knowledge, we are not giving a real meaning (i.e. a
reference to things) to the terms we use, we are just explaining the
relationships between concepts.
This is why I suggest to rename what we call semantic web using a new
term, related more to knowledge and less to meanings. The term I found
is epistematics, because of the relation with knowledge (epistéme) and
of the analogy with informatics: as informatics deals with the
automatic processing of informations, epistematics could point the
automatic processing of knowledge, as allowed by ontologies and
automatic reasonment.

I?d be glad to here your opinions about that;
you can find a detailed explanation of my arguments in pdf format
here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1683/epistematics .


Thanks,

Chiara Carlino


----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2007 15:32:10 UTC