Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"

to Eric, et al

Roughly speaking, namespaces & ontologies
are poor approximations to contexts.

Even if they were contexts,
RDF/OWL doesn't know what a context is.

Dick McCullough
http://mKRmKE.org/
Ayn Rand do speak od mKR done;
knowledge := man do identify od existent done;
knowledge haspart proposition list;
mKE do enhance od Real Intelligence done;

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Alan Ruttenberg 
  To: Sherman Monroe 
  Cc: erichoffer@yahoo.com ; martin.hepp@uibk.ac.at ; Richard H. McCullough ; Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) ; Ian Emmons ; semantic-web@w3c.org 
  Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 2:13 PM
  Subject: Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"




  On Jul 18, 2008, at 4:35 PM, Sherman Monroe wrote:


    Eric,

    But not all URI's are bound (formally) to a particular ontology, or it may be that the URI is bound to multiple ontologies (e.g. a person (foaf ontology) who is a manager (northwind ontology) who needs a plumber (tiwan ontology)).
  What does it mean for a URI to be bound to an ontology?
  -Alan




    -sherman


    On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 3:08 PM, Eric Hoffer <erichoffer@yahoo.com> wrote:

            What I meant was simply that by specifying particular namespaces and ontologies (unless we're talking upper-), aren't you thereby indicating the intended context and/or perspective?


            --- On Fri, 7/18/08, Richard H. McCullough <rhm@pioneerca.com> wrote:

              From: Richard H. McCullough <rhm@pioneerca.com>
              Subject: Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"

              To: erichoffer@yahoo.com, martin.hepp@uibk.ac.at, "Alan Ruttenberg" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>

              Cc: "Booth, David (HP Software - Boston)" <dbooth@hp.com>, "Ian Emmons" <iemmons@bbn.com>, semantic-web@w3c.org

              Date: Friday, July 18, 2008, 3:41 PM



              Eric

              I hardly know where to start, since I don't understand
              "applicability of rule/relationship sets".  
              Could you please explain what that means?

              It is easy to explain what I mean by "context", 
              as implemented in the mKR language.  
              I will ignore space,time subcontext for now.

              A "proposition" in mKR takes the form

                  at view = v { sentence };

              "v" names the context of the sentence.  
              The context is a list of propositions; 
              it includes definitions of all terms used in "sentence".
              "sentence" is an English-like statement, question or command.

              Dick McCullough
              http://mKRmKE.org/
              Ayn Rand do speak od mKR done;
              knowledge := man do identify od existent done;
              knowledge haspart proposition list;
              mKE do enhance od Real Intelligence done;

                ----- Original Message ----- 
                From: Eric Hoffer 
                To: martin.hepp@uibk.ac.at ; Alan Ruttenberg ; Richard H. McCullough 
                Cc: Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) ; Ian Emmons ; semantic-web@w3c.org 
                Sent: Friday, July 18, 2008 9:11 AM
                Subject: Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"


                      Apologies in advance - twofold
                      - first for picking a mid-thread post to respond to, and
                      - for my lay-person's perspective/level, but...

                      But isn't the applicability of rule/relationship sets exactly what constitutes "context"?
                      And isn't that what namespaces are delineating?

                      (and what then is being suggested differently here?)


                      --- On Wed, 7/16/08, Richard H. McCullough <rhm@pioneerca.com> wrote:

                        From: Richard H. McCullough <rhm@pioneerca.com>
                        Subject: Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"
                        To: martin.hepp@uibk.ac.at, "Alan Ruttenberg" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
                        Cc: "Booth, David (HP Software - Boston)" <dbooth@hp.com>, "Ian Emmons" <iemmons@bbn.com>, semantic-web@w3c.org
                        Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2008, 4:58 AM


Let's be explicit.Any thoughts of "negotiating" or "refining" the meaning ofa term --we're talking about the "context" in which the term is defined.
RDF/OWL people have little experience with "context" -- to themit's basically a namespace.  RDF/OWL really doesn't have"context"in its vocabulary.OpenCyc explicitly addresses "context", which is referred to as
a "microtheory" (forgetting space,time for the moment).OpenCyc, in its attempt to capture common-sense knowledge,has defined  thousands of microtheories.  They are facing the"context"issue head on, and are making some progress.
Until RDF/OWL introduces the concept of "context",in a form similar to CycL's "microtheory', or mKR's"view",you won't make any progress in this area. .Dick McCullough
http://mKRmKE.org/Ayn Rand do speak od mKR done;knowledge :=
 man do identify od existent done;knowledge haspart proposition list;mKE do enhance od Real Intelligence done;----- Original Message ----- From: "Martin Hepp" <martin.hepp@uibk.ac.at>
To: "Alan Ruttenberg" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>Cc: "Booth, David (HP Software - Boston)" <dbooth@hp.com>;
"Ian Emmons" <iemmons@bbn.com>; <semantic-web@w3c.org>Sent: Tuesday, July 15, 2008 11:53 PM
Subject: Re: "In Defense of Ambiguity"Hi Alan:Basically all I wanted to say is that in human communication, we clarifyand refine the meaning associated to words in the course ofcommunication, while the current SW infrastructure requires us to define
the meaning of a conceptual element identified by a URI beforehand.Quite clearly, there can be multiple similar elements with differentURIs. But we cannot currently negotiate the meaning of this very URI.My main
 concern is that reducing query answering to querying a staticrepresentation may be too simple an approach, same as matchmaking forneeded products is not a simple query, but often a complex communicationprocess. For example, we learn of the option space by seeing the results
to our initial queries and then typically refine our usage of thevocabulary."..Language is a living organism that adapts to the development and thetrends of society as a whole."[1]Best
Martin[1] Umberto Eco in his nice preface "The Meaning of The Meaning ofMeaning" to Ogden/Richards „The Meaning of Meaning"Alan Ruttenberg wrote:>> On Jul 11, 2008, at 6:09 PM, Booth, David (HP Software - Boston) wrote:
>>>> On Jul 10, 2008, at 7:09 PM, Martin Hepp wrote:>>>>>> Current ontology infrastructure requires that we reach>>> consensus first.
 Human communication on the contrary allows>>> us to postpone dispute and clarification to a later point in>>> time in which the disagreement becomes relevant, if it ever>>> gets relevant.
>>>> This sounds overly pessimistic to me. Yes, some things in the>> semantic web *do* need to be agreed in advance, such as the general>> rules for determining the meaning of a statement. But individual
>> ontologies do not -- they can be developed independently and only>> adopted as needed -- and there is nothing to stop an application from>> taking a lazy evaluation approach to semantic web data just as humans
>> do. An application could postpone determining the meaning of a>> particular RDF statement (which involves determining the meaning of>> its constituent URIs) until it is needed>> Huh? Figuring out exactly
 what someone meant when they said something> after the fact is a huge problem. In a previous job it was routine to> go around to the various people who documented their experiments in> lab books because the lab books in isolation were too difficult to
> understand. Understanding them after the people who wrote them left> the company was often impossible.>> If people can't do it, why would you expect some application would?>>> , sort of like a backward chaining reasoning style: start with the
>> goal, and then figure out what information is needed to reach thatgoal.>> The problem is that the information is encoded in the language used in> the statement. If you don't understand the terms you can't even
get at> the information.>>> And if a particular statement never ends up being needed, so be it.>> Sure. But if a
 statement *is* needed you're out of luck.>> -Alan>>-- -----------------------------------martin hepp, http://www.heppnetz.de
mhepp@computer.org, skype mfhepp 

           





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Received on Friday, 18 July 2008 23:32:45 UTC