Re: performatives and trust

pat hayes wrote:

> No, I did not mean to imply that it was like HUMAN telepathy. I meant
> that the kind of internal/external contrast that is so central in
> human communication (as when you are not sure what someone is
> thinking in spite of what they are saying) seems to be missing for
> web ontology agents: they can see it all, as it were, and what they
> see is all there is.

Ah, I think that this last is a source of significant miscommunication among
us.  Web ontology agents *can't* see it all.  I mean this not just in
practice -- there's too much all out there for anyone to pragmatically
collect it, altavista/google's attempts notwithstanding -- but in principle
-- it's constantly changing, growing, customized and generated-on-demand,
and there is and can be no sensible notion of "all", even limiting yourself
to a particular moment in time.

I think that Pat will fundamentally disagree with what I just said, and I
expect that most who come from logicist backgrounds will join him in this.
On the other side, I think that Tim and others from the web world are likely
to agree with me.  I suspect that a certain amount of where we get lost with
one another derives from this fundamentally different base assumption.

I could say more about the rest of Pat's paragraph, but I think it would
only stir up more trouble :o)

> There aren't any other thoughts behind the ontologies, and they don't have
> to worry about whether the ontologies
> are thinking one thing and saying another. If ontology agents were
> humans - which of course they are not - we would call this telepathy.
> I probably shouldnt have used such a poetic way of expressing myself.
> Sorry if I caused confusion.
>
> Pat Hayes
>
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Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2001 15:49:53 UTC