Kashori - Semantics for Social Agents

Semantics for Agents

Monday, April 05, 2004

Stipulative Ontologies 

A consideration, relevant to the the discussion on the W3Cs Semantic Web
Meaning mailing list, is the degree of control desired by the author over the
meaning of a semantic web document. It seems to me desirable to add a
feature, or to create an application that allows an author to publish how much
of an ontology should be treated as stipulative and how much as lexical or
descriptive.

I believe the lack of this is at the heart of some of the debate on this list.
I think that some users of RDF assumed that by default most ontologies would
be taken as stipulative definitions of terms (URIs) owned by the author.
Others saw that much of natural language was based on uses that could only
later be formalized into descriptive definitions instead. They were afraid
that we were headed down a road requiring software to treat all ontologies as
stipulative, and thus missing the chance to create terms that could evolve
naturally.

As an example of what I mean by the use of stipulative definitions, consider
RFC 2119, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt. This is surely one of the most
commonly cited RFCs. Its sole purpose is to fix the meaning of certain terms
when those terms are used in other documents. It makes explicit a high degree
of commitment to a particular interpretation of the terms used. See from that
document the following section:

"Authors who follow these guidelines should incorporate this phrase
near the beginning of their document:

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL
NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
RFC 2119."

Stipulative definitions are used quite often in statutory law, contracts,
programming languages, and standards documents. They are used, it seems,
wherever the advantages of reduction of ambiguity and increased
precision are desired. They have disadvantages as well, and certainly
need not be used everywhere.

I believe we can formalize and thus automate the specification of the degree
of stipulation we desire over our ontologies and thus meet the needs of both
those who think that the author/owner of URIs should be able to stipulate
the meaning intended by publication of those URIs in certain contexts and
those who think the meaning of URIs should be free in all contexts to evolve
naturally towards whatever future they may have.

Having the explicit facility to do this will not inhibit either goal.

# posted by John Black @ 7:49 PM
0 comments

Author

• John Black

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"We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name. Do you not understand?" "I do." "In the present case, then, let us take any multiplicity you please; for example, there are many couches and tables." "Of course." "But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table." "Yes." "And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman makes the idea itself. How could he?" "By no means."
Plato, Republic X, page 596a

"This convention is not of the nature of a promise: For even promises themselves, as we shall see afterwards, arise from human conventions. It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be called a convention or agreement betwixt us, though without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are performed upon the supposition, that something is to be performed on the other part. Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other. Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less derived from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and. by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions without any promise. ..." - A Treatise of Human Nature, Chapter 74 by David Hume

"...Semeiotike, or the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Logike, logic: the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs, the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas. And because the scene of ideas that makes one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no very sure repository: therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary: those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their contemplation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it. And perhaps if they were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with." - AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING by John Locke 1690