WebOnt response to RDF docs (was Re: LANG: need to CLOSE Issue 5.6 Imports as magic syntax)

At 10:04 AM -0500 10/30/02, Jeff Heflin wrote:
>Thanks for pointing this out, Peter:
>
>A particulary scary passage is from Section 2.3.3:
>
>Human publishers of RDF content commit themselves to the
>mechanically-inferred social obligations. The machines doing the
>inferences aren't expected to know about all these social conventions
>and          obligations.
>
>The social conventions used to interpret a graph may include assumed
>truths, for which no logical derivation is available, and socially
>accepted consequences whose rules of deduction are embedded in arbitrary
>decision-making processes.
>
>Semantic web vocabulary gains currency through use, so also do semantic
>web deductions have force through social acceptance. Semantic web
>deduction operates in a combination of logical and social (non-logical)
>dimensions.
>
>
>
>They seem to be saying they don't want RDF to be used by agents, because
>agents cannot possibly know these socially accepted consequences and
>thus cannot make any rational decisions on the behalf of users. If this
>is the W3C's vision of the Semantic Web then we may as well just shut
>down the WG and go home, cause it is doomed to failure.
>
>Jeff

I was getting ready to send a reply to Jeff (don't think this is what 
the RDF folks mean), but then realized that this is not the place for 
it - that discussion should go to RDF-logic.  Please keep this 
discussion focused on ONLY those aspects of RDF that directly and 
materially effect language features of OWL.

However, I do believe that Peter and Jeff are suggesting that we 
might consider a WG response to some particular RDF document (I'm 
actually not quite sure which).  It would certainly not be a bad 
thing for our WG to do this.  If someone wants to volunteer to read 
the appropriate document and draft a review, this would be great. 
Remember, process would be editor drafts a response,  this is 
discussed in the WG and, if we reach consensus on the response, send 
it in the WG's name to RDF Core.  We did this once before (our 
response to RDFS) and it is an approved (And encouraged) aspect of WG 
interaction.

  -JH

-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-731-3822 (Cell)
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Wednesday, 30 October 2002 10:33:24 UTC