Re: What do the ontologists want

> 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.

I should note that I think you, Jonathan Borden and I are talking about one 
thing, and Pat Hayes is talking about an entirely different thing.  I think 
Pat is correct in his domain of discussion, but I personally am not working in 
that area in the forseeable future.

I do think that RDF reification is an essential part of expressing what you, 
Jonathan and I have been talking about.

However, I am curious as to an accessible treatment of the logical rigor 
behind reification.  Clearly traditional FOL does not have the concept 
(although prolog introduces limited reification by such concepts as the 
definition of predicates).  Is it something that can be worked smoothly into 
the logical calculus?  I'd be surprised if not, given that I think it's such a 
natural fit in a system where propositions are modeled as a graph, as they are 
in RDF.


-- 
Uche Ogbuji                               Principal Consultant
uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com               +1 303 583 9900 x 101
Fourthought, Inc.                         http://Fourthought.com 
4735 East Walnut St, Ste. C, Boulder, CO 80301-2537, USA
Software-engineering, knowledge-management, XML, CORBA, Linux, Python

Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2001 16:18:32 UTC