- From: patrick hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Wed, 12 Jun 2002 00:41:26 -0500
- To: Drew McDermott <drew.mcdermott@yale.edu>
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> [Jim Hendler] > I can't help thinking that our problem is rhetoric and not > technology. .... > >It sure seems that way to this spectator of the conversation. >To end this dispute about terminology, let's just cede "RDF agent" to >the logicists, and use another term, say, "RDF-based agent," for an >inference engine that uses RDF as its input and output notation. > >The objection that there are no a-priori limits on what an RDF-based >agent can infer seems silly to me. Each RDF-based agent is to be >proposed in its own context and evaluated on whatever merits are >claimed for it. In which case, what is the point of even proposing to use RDF? What 'context' can there be for a semantic web agent, other than the entire semantic web? And isn't the whole point of the exercise to define a machine-processable notion of 'meaning' which can be used across the whole web, so that the writer of the meaning cannot possibly know in advance the 'context' of its use by some other software agent? And isn't the point - indeed, ultimately, the only possible point - of the RDF (and DAML+OIL and OWL and ...) standards to provide a uniform specification for that machine-processable content? And what other uniform specification can there be, other than the formal semantics of the language (and any processing models which are conformant to that formal semantics, of course)? And wouldn't it then be the case that any agent which drew inferences that were not valid according to the RDF specifications would in fact NOT be conformant to those specifications? I would certainly hope so. Don't get me wrong: such a nonconforming engine might be very useful, and I might use it myself. But I would like to know when it is using RDF and when it is just guessing. 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 Wednesday, 12 June 2002 01:41:29 UTC