- From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Fri, 31 Aug 2001 11:40:24 -0700
- To: Dan Brickley <danbri@w3.org>
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
>On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, pat hayes wrote: > > > [...] Really pinning down actual *reference* to *real things* is a > > very, very tricky business, one that is way beyond the ability of > > current semantic theories to analyse, and therefore probably best > > left aside for now in these discussions. > >Amen! This is however something that Semantic Web (via our use of both >URIs and of RDF descriptions for identification) will need to >engage with at some point. I agree, but be ready for having to do some hard, basic (and therefore slow) research. New syntaxes are easy, and model theories can be churned out to fit most any reasonable intuitions about consistency, but reference is harder. >Quite how much of the meaning of the URI spec >can be formalised is a rather interesting question. Indeed. I think that the move from URLs (which I see as being a kind of global file addressing scheme) to URIs (which seem to be intended to be a kind of Unicode for Naming) may have felt good, but I think will be seen in retrospect as having been a triumph of intellectual hubris over rationality. >While I'm worried by >the notion that we'll have to pick a favoured theory of reference, I do >think that the 'reference' aspect to 'meaning' is something we'll need to >deal with if SW is to fulfill expectations w.r.t. ecommerce etc. Ecommerce only requires something that works pragmatically. I'm sure there are several ways to make the SW work well enough for ecommerce, but if the $$ have to wait for a universal theory of reference, the investors had better be ready to take a very long view. Pat --------------------------------------------------------------------- (650)859 6569 w (650)494 3973 h (until September) phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Friday, 31 August 2001 14:39:24 UTC