Re: Understanding URI Hosting Practice as Support for Documentation Discovery: 'meaning of meaning'

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 12:30 PM, Larry Masinter <masinter@adobe.com> wrote:
> In "Understanding URI Hosting Practice as Support for  Documentation Discovery" section 7 "Disclaimer regarding the meaning of "meaning" which says, in part:
>
> " Larry Masinter is concerned that too cavalier a treatment of meaning may lead to mistakes."
>
>
> Which is a pretty obscure misstatement of what I said.

Since this is a misattribution, and since it is still the 29th, I have
just quietly removed the implication that you said this from the dated
version of the 29th. (Future readers of this exchange will have to
consult earlier versions to find out what you are talking about; this
is an instance of what you are talking about.)

> Let me try again:
>
> I think the questions the document tries to answer is cannot be answered without a model that takes into account identity, belief, communication, and time.
> In particular, a model that talks about "meaning" without being explicit about "to whom" and "when" cannot be used to explain and reason about meaning in a communication protocol.
>
> If party A sends URI U to party B, then you need to model A's intent and B's interpretation,  the context of the communication, and the timing of the interpretation.
>
> And most importantly, there is a presumption of persistence of "meaning" that is unfounded; in fact, a key issue is the persistence and evolution of the interpretation of meaning, and a clear idea of what it is that is expected to persist.

I'm not sure where you think this presumption manifests itself in the
document. I thought the section on inconsistency was pretty clear on
all the ways that communication can fail in the covered scenarios, and
impersistence is listed as one way among many.

My feeling is that RDF is simply not used in situations where
persistence matters, but this is hard to back up so I didn't think I
could say it in this document. The inconsistency risks section was my
attempt to deal with the question. If you have suggestions for what
the document should say on the matter I am all ears. I don't think
it's all that deep or complicated.

Jonathan

> Larry
> --
> http://larry.masinter.net

Received on Wednesday, 29 February 2012 18:44:25 UTC