Re: Representing quantification in RDF

From: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>

> > Every computer has "active components";  they are called programs.  Any
> > program can be given a URI;  therefore it can be referred to from the
> > "syntactic formalism" of an RDF graph.  We should be able to easily
design a
> > schema in RDF to point to object oriented programs that would implement
any
> > known behavior such as the computing of inferred statements.
> >
>
> But RDF has no notion of a program, so this doesn't help!  You would need
> to have a semantics for a programming language as part of the meaning of
RDF.
> If you have no idea within RDF of what the active components are doing,
> then there is no way to representing anything using these active
> components.

The meaning and behavior (to a running system) of every arc label can be
described in RDF syntax to whatever level of detail that we wish.  I have no
idea what you mean by "as part of the meaning of RDF" since RDF has nothing
that I would call meaning ... as per your own words, it is just syntax.

> Remember, the idea is not to implement active behavior, the idea is to
> incorporate active behavior into RDF.

I don't know what it might mean to "incorporate active behavior into RDF" or
in any kind of wffs for that matter.   Behavior is in a totally different
dimension from strings of signs.  Now the transmission, reception, and
respond to strings of signs by agents,  that is behavior.

>To do that the active behavior has
> to be explained within the semantics for RDF.

We can specify the algorithms of active behavior in RDF, and we can
represent the semantics of the arc labels we use to represent those
algorithms, and we can connect those representations to computer resources
that will animate the behavior described by the algorithms in the
appropriate context.  Other than that, I don't see any usefulness.

I am a dyed in the wool pragmatist ... meaning can only be found in action
and interaction ... to me the rest is just smoke and mirrors and shuffling
of signs... it never gets anywhere.

Seth

Received on Saturday, 5 May 2001 15:14:54 UTC