- From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 14:58:39 -0500
- To: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>
- Cc: Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>, www-rdf-logic@w3.org
>pat hayes wrote: >[...] > > > The relationship between a URL and the > > file it locates is not the same as that between a logical name and > > what it denotes > >Er... huh? To me, the whole premise of rdf-logic is that >the relationship between a URI (URL, if you like) *is* >the same as that between a logical name and what it denotes. I know that is widely accepted as a premis. I also think it is wrong,[later: see next para] which is one reason why rdf-logic is in such a tangle. It is symptomatic of the general carelessness about use versus mention. The point of a URL in large part is that it provides an electronic route map to the thing it locates. What you get to is something that is readable and from which you might be able to make inferences, right? Something like a collection of expressions, in fact. Contrast that with a logical name, or indeed a name in general. It is not a route map, it does not tell you how to locate or arrive at the thing it names, and if you do get hold of the thing it names, there's a very good chance that that thing is not something that you can read and draw conclusions from. If you start with "Pat Hayes" for example and somehow find its denotation, you will finish up with something without a single expression on it anywhere but which weighs about 170 pounds and has a headache. Actually to speak more carefully, since the relationship of denotation is so weakly specified, what I should have said is that the URL/locatee relationship is at best a very, very special case of the name/denotation relationship; so special that its connection to denotation is hard to even specify other than by just kind of declaring that URL shall denote the files they locate (so there) as a meta-stipulation. But in this sense, just about any relationship between a symbol and anything could be declared to be denotation. > > (for example, the locatee is not determined relative > > to an interpretation, but is fixed by the operational circumstances.) > >Ben Grosof suggested to me (in the RDF IG meeting in >Cambridge in Feb) that having a "standard interpretation" >for a large class of logical names is not unusual; >i.e. we can take those "operational circumstances" >as an interpretation. > >Not so? OK, so. Point taken. But then you have to fess up to the fact that the relationship between any kind of machine-processable inferencing and this standard interpretation has to be grounded in some non-logical machinery. Pat --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2001 15:58:42 UTC