Re: scientific publishing process (was Re: Cost and access)

Hello Paul,

> > Can you express this argument with triples?
[...]
>RDF(S) alone is unsuited for this, by design. It lacks negation and
>quantification.

It has existential quantification but lacks negation and a scope mechanism
for both to be full first order logic.

> Furthermore, traditional logic takes a different approach to argument from 
> the the mathematical logic notion of proof.

I do not know what you mean with "traditional logic" and take it to mean
"forms of cognition exhibited by humans".

> It should be possible to build for this purpose an RDF vocabulary and
> conventions for use (in the manner of SKOS and OWL).

OWL is more than a RDF vocabulary. It is a semantic extension of RDF.
With a normal RDF/RDFS/OWL vocabulary, you are stuck with the semantics and 
entailment regime of RDF/RDFS/OWL.

You can escape that without defining a semantic extension by adding additional
semantics via the comments of your vocabulary terms and use a rule engine
instead of or in addition to a reasoner to enforce it.

But if it would be easy to 

1) Define a formal system reproducing forms of cognition exhibited by humans

2) Define a universal vocabulary (to rule them all)

Artificial Intelligence would not be where it is now. In fact, many researchers
have adopted the stance that absolute word senses do not make sense (e.G. [1]).
I tend to agree with them.

IMO, any system of the form you are describing can never be universal and
will only be useful for some narrow task. It also seems that what machines can
do with natural language is quickly catching up with what machines can do with 
formal languages.

Regards,

Michael Brunnbauer

[1] http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/Publications/1997-K-CHum-believe.pdf

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