- From: Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org>
- Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 19:01:15 +0100
- To: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
At 10:44 AM 5/15/01 -0500, pat hayes wrote: >>'Jon says "The sky is blue."' ? > >It is logically exotic, if I may be forgiven the terminology, since it >refers to a sentence by ostention, rather than by denotation. Actually, >even this is relatively harmless, as long as you simply quote. However, in >order to be useful, one usually has to be able to move between a quoted >sentence or expression and the use of that sentence or expression as part >of the language itself, and this 'reflexion' is what is really arcane and >tricky. Simple quotation is relatively harmless, I concede, but largely >useless: it is simply a way of referring to character strings. >For example, would you want to be able to infer, from your example, that >Jon said that the sky is blue? It doesnt follow from it, however, unless >you provide some machinery to de-quote a quoted string. Seems to me that >the latter is much more useful than the former: the relationship between >an agent and the *content* of what they say is more interesting, usually, >than the relationship between the agent and the *form of character >strings* that they use (except of course when the mapping between form and >meaning is central to the discussion, as it is in some legal settings; but >again, this seems exotic for our purposes.) To refer to the content of an >expression, however, one does not quote it: one simply uses it. Something that I very much wish to be able to do is something like this: 'Jon says "The sky is blue"' 'I believe Jon' => 'I believe (the sky is blue)' Or: 'Jon says "The sky is blue"' 'My oracle says "Jon is reliable"' => 'The sky is blue' I've deliberately not tried to state this rigorously, as I'd probably miss the mark if I did. I hope the general intent is reasonably clear. Maybe there is a way of formulating this that doesn't rely on logical exotica. But it does seem to rely on some form of "reflexion" -- a statement is used both as an object about which other statements are made, and as an assertion in its own right. #g ------------ Graham Klyne GK@NineByNine.org
Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2001 15:55:27 UTC