Kashori - Semantics for Social Agents

Semantics for Agents

Saturday, May 08, 2004

Comment on "Meaning and the Semantic Web" 

In the WWW2004 conference poster paper, "Meaning and the Semantic Web",
Bijan Parsia and Peter F. Patel­-Schneider make the following statement:

"One might think that our account of meaning thus results in complete
anarchy in the Semantic Web. Even if so, we believe we have
embraced only those portions of anarchy that are necessary to prevent
totalitarianism, for any proposal for Semantic Web meaning
that cuts off easy access to disagreements will inevitably end up
stultifying the Semantic Web."

I am finding this reference to totalitarianism hard to accept.

In the first place, if they mean it literally, and a typical definition
of totalitarianism reads like this, "Of, relating to, being, or imposing
a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute
and centralized control over all aspects of life, the individual is
subordinated to the state, and opposing political and cultural
expression is suppressed: "A totalitarian regime crushes all autonomous
institutions in its drive to seize the human soul" (Arthur M.
Schlesinger, Jr.)."
totalitarianism
I would like them to explain how any of the proposals that have been discussed
could lead to this?

In the second place, hoping that they mean this loosely and
metaphorically, even given one of the many proposals for fixing
the meaning of URIs, assuming they could work, what would prevent
anyone from creating an entirely new set of URIs with which to use to
make whatever contrary statements they desired? Why is it *necessary*
for someone to use anyone else's URIs at all? If one is free to
create any URIs one may possibly need, with whatever meaning one may
wish to associate with them, in order to state whatever it is one wants
to state, how can one then say that another set of URIs forms a
totalitarianism? For I have never seen any proposal that requires
that there be only one URI for any referent, but only proposals that
any URI have only one referent. So there can be many URIs for any
referent. So if you want to dissent, you can always create a new URI.

The model theory seems to allow for this:
"There are several aspects of meaning in RDF which are ignored by this
semantics; in particular, it treats URI references as simple names,
ignoring aspects of meaning encoded in particular URI forms [RFC 2396]..."
RDF Semantics Thus one can create any *possible web* one
wants, in order to say anything one wants, and this would be true even if
all *actual web* URIs were somehow given fixed meanings.
This hardly seems a prescription for totalitarianism.

# posted by John Black @ 7:11 AM
0 comments

Author

• John Black

Backmatter

• Glossary
• References

Archives

• - Archives - 09/14/2003 - 09/21/2003 09/21/2003 - 09/28/2003 09/28/2003 - 10/05/2003 10/05/2003 - 10/12/2003 11/09/2003 - 11/16/2003 11/16/2003 - 11/23/2003 02/01/2004 - 02/08/2004 04/04/2004 - 04/11/2004 05/02/2004 - 05/09/2004 07/04/2004 - 07/11/2004 07/11/2004 - 07/18/2004 09/12/2004 - 09/19/2004 09/19/2004 - 09/26/2004 10/03/2004 - 10/10/2004 10/17/2004 - 10/24/2004 10/24/2004 - 10/31/2004 11/14/2004 - 11/21/2004 11/21/2004 - 11/28/2004 12/05/2004 - 12/12/2004 12/26/2004 - 01/02/2005 01/02/2005 - 01/09/2005 04/17/2005 - 04/24/2005 05/08/2005 - 05/15/2005 06/05/2005 - 06/12/2005 06/12/2005 - 06/19/2005 07/03/2005 - 07/10/2005 09/18/2005 - 09/25/2005 10/02/2005 - 10/09/2005 10/16/2005 - 10/23/2005 10/23/2005 - 10/30/2005 11/13/2005 - 11/20/2005 11/20/2005 - 11/27/2005 11/27/2005 - 12/04/2005 12/04/2005 - 12/11/2005 06/11/2006 - 06/18/2006 07/02/2006 - 07/09/2006 07/09/2006 - 07/16/2006 07/16/2006 - 07/23/2006 07/23/2006 - 07/30/2006 09/03/2006 - 09/10/2006 12/17/2006 - 12/24/2006 04/08/2007 - 04/15/2007 04/22/2007 - 04/29/2007 11/25/2007 - 12/02/2007 12/09/2007 - 12/16/2007 12/23/2007 - 12/30/2007 12/30/2007 - 01/06/2008 11/23/2008 - 11/30/2008 12/14/2008 - 12/21/2008 12/28/2008 - 01/04/2009

"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