Re: example of a non-monotonic inference needed for interpreting the social meaning of RDF in e-commerce

>re http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-rdfcore-wg/2003Feb/0164.html
>point #7
>
>... and then when you say :
>
>   In contrast, and to illustrate that this condition is nontrivial,
>   note that it would clearly be irrational to require the use of an
>   invalid inference process to preserve such social meanings.
>
>I am in the process of implementing something strangely similar to 
>your example for my online business [1].  I cannot see a way to 
>translate the onlinefeed of my catalog as defined by Google [2] into 
>RDF,  such that it would *not* require an "invalid inference 
>process" to preserve my intended social meaning.

My intention in the above was that it would be irrational to require 
that the use of *any* invalid process would preserve meanings. It is 
invalid, for example, to add "not" to the beginning of everything 
that one reads; but there is nothing to stop someone claiming that it 
is an inference process.  There may well be formally invalid 
inference processes which are useful and rational, but my point was 
directed in the other direction.

>   In particular I intend to providing the feed to Google in support 
>of their new Froogle service [3]  and also to publish it off my web 
>site as an RDF feed.  Were someone to use the RDF feed to determine 
>if I said that I could delive a particular product at any given 
>time, they would need to use a non-monotonic inference process.

Are you SURE it is nonmonotonic? If you are explicit about dates and 
what delivery date means, and if you have access to a clock/calendar 
as an external source of data, and if you time-stamp your 
information, then the overall pattern of reasoning can be monotonic. 
The nonmonotonicity will arise if you keep some or all of this under 
the hood, so to speak, and make inferences which depend on it, in 
fact, but do not openly acknowledge their dependency.

>For example my RDF feed might contain the triple:
>
>speaktomecatalog:SHAGGY froogle:exp_date "20031201"
>
>Then later my RDF feed might contain:
>
>speaktomecatalog:SHAGGY froogle:instock "N"
>
>The first triple entails the availibility of [4] the second denies 
>it. I would expect shopping agents to understand the meaning of the 
>second triple even in the presence of the first triple, and I do not 
>think that would be "clearly irrational" on my part.

Right, it would not. And in fact if you use RDF to encode the expiry 
date, then it would not even be formally invalid reasoning in some 
suitable semantic extension of that RDF.

Pat

>
>What do you think?
>
>[1] http://speaktomecatalog.com
>[2] http://robustai.net/RDF-COMMONS/datafeed.pdf
>[3] http://froogle.google.com/
>[4] http://www.speaktomecatalog.com/page/dogs.htm seeAlso [5]
>[5] http://www.google.com/search?q=%22luv%20pup%22%20shaggy
>
>Seth Russell


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC					(850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973   home
40 South Alcaniz St.			(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola              			(850)202 4440   fax
FL 32501           				(850)291 0667    cell
phayes@ai.uwf.edu	          http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
s.pam@ai.uwf.edu   for spam

Received on Monday, 24 February 2003 17:54:53 UTC