Re: Social Meaning Boston 6 March

Looking at my msg which Pat is replying to, I think I had better disown it!

I have found Bijan's comment a fairly thorough demolition job - and the 
question is: Is there anything worth salvaging from the rubble?

Bijan even makes good arguments against the formal entailments being 
somehow mandatory. (c) below.

See:
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/meetings/tech-200303/social-meaning#fish
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/meetings/tech-200303/social-meaning#meccano


Jeremy

pat hayes wrote:

>>  > Jeremy is suggesting - lets see if we can find a form of words that
>>
>>>  satisfies everyone.  I'm hoping that doesn't mean fudging the issue.
>>
>>
>> I would expect the WG to reject a form of words that satisfied 
>> everyone but
>> fudged the issue.
>>
>> I hope *I* would not be satisified with a fudge.
>>
>> I see the editorial task here as expressing the WG intent in such a 
>> way as
>> to avoid any unnecessary opposition.
>>
>> I believe this intent is reasonably clear:
> 
> 
> 
> The intent is OK, but the words are still giving trouble.
> 
>>
>> a) RDF has meaning that relates to the relate world.
> 
> 
> Obviously that is our *intent*, but it smacks of hubris (to put it 
> mildly) to come across as asserting this as though our asserting it made 
> it so. Lets be very careful, when saying things like this, to emphasis 
> that this is an expression of our *intent* for how RDF will be used.
> 
>> b) This meaning is preserved under formal entailments.
> 
> 
> This I think we can say pretty strongly, in a form that nobody can 
> complain about, by saying that if any kind of meaning which extends the 
> formal meaning is attributed to RDF, then we can guarantee that no valid 
> RDF reasoner will do anything to the RDF which would alter or change 
> that attribution of meaning. From which it follows that if anyone uses a 
> notion of meaning which can be altered by a valid RDF reasoner, then 
> they are going outside the normative spec.
> 
>> c) This meaning should be socially enforceable in the same way as the
>> meaning of other languages that relate to the real world (e.g. English).
> 
> 
> Who are we to say this? Even as a statement of intent? I think this is 
> what Peter and others are complaining about, it sounds like we are 
> expressing a view here about the way that the world should be organized. 
> Its none of our business.
> 
>> d) The document section should be normative.
>> e) The use of a word like "legal" is strongly preferred.
> 
> 
> I would disagree, I think that this is what has cased all the trouble, 
> and we don't need to get into legal issues. And we aren't competent to 
> get into them, either.
> 
>>
>> At this stage the only one of those that I think might be appropriate to
>> fudge is (e) if words like "socially enforceable" can be made to carry 
>> more
>> weight.
> 
> 
> I think that it is ridiculous to even set out to assert things like (c). 
> Is deletion a kind of fudging?
> 
>>
>> It may be beneficial to slightly fudge (b) by suggesting that contracts
>> underpinning multiparty systems that use RDF might specify which formal
>> system of entailments is intended (e.g. RDF entailments, RDFS 
>> entailments or
>> OWL entailments); I don't believe the WG ever reached closure on the
>> interaction between semantic extensions and social meaning.
> 
> 
> Never mind closure, I don't think we have even started to tackle this 
> issue.
> 
> Pat

Received on Friday, 28 February 2003 05:06:24 UTC