Re: What do the ontologists want

>pat hayes wrote:
> > >We're working on models for representing and reasoning about security,
> > >authorization, delegation etc and find a need to represent speech
> > >acts such as one agent's assertion that it delegates a permission to
> > >another agent.  An agent's obligations and permissions
> > >can be determined by reasoning from the representation of the security
> > >policy together with a set of validly signed public speech acts.
> > >Our approach is to try to use DAML to represent the FIPA 
>communicative acts and associated
> > >parameters as well as a FIPA compliant content language.
> >
> > OK, but what utility is quotation in describing speech acts?
>
>I don't know about quotation in general, but my understanding was
>that what's called reification in RDF will be what one would use
>to represent a statement and also that an agent has used that same
>statement as the content of an INFORM act.  Although this approach
>seems natural to me, it's probably not strictly required.

I guess the central point is whether the INFORM act refers to a 
statement considered as an object in some structural sense (Im trying 
to avoid the use of words like 'syntax' and 'quotation' since these 
seem to press unintended buttons), or to the *content* of such a 
statement, such as a proposition. Of course, either way we would be 
inclined to indicate the relevant thing by writing the statement in 
ordinary written language, although some of us mught be more inclined 
to be fussy about the presence or absence of quotation marks. But 
when giving a semantics of a formalism this distinction seems to be 
central, and a lot turns on the answer. If it really is the content 
which is involved in the INFORM (as I think has usually beeen the 
assumption in philosophical/logical analysis of speech acts - correct 
me if I am wrong), then it really is a mistake to use reification 
here, since the appropriate way to indicate content is to use, not 
mention, the sentence indicating the content. The result would be a 
kind of modal logic, and one would of course have to face up to the 
logical complications of opacity; but then reification is opaque in 
any case.

Pat Hayes

---------------------------------------------------------------------
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 20:15:25 UTC