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Re: [ontolog-forum] {Disarmed} Re: OWL and lack of identifiers

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Waclaw Kusnierczyk <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:58:50 +0200
Message-id: <46289CEA.5010200@xxxxxxxxxxx>


Steve Newcomb wrote:
> Waclaw Kusnierczyk <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> 
>> It appears to me that in most circumstances you will not be able to
>> provide the context, but rather a proxy, another expression describing
>> the context.  Now we get the pains of infinite regress:  to know what
>> the context is, the expression intended to be a proxy of the context has
>> to be provided with a context (another proxy, I guess), and so on.  With
>> a finite and ungrounded representational artifact, it means that it
>> would be impossible to interpret any expression.
> 
> Very true.      (01)

And the proxy for a context may be not an expression *describing* the 
context, but just a *name*, in which case it itself requires 
interpretation even more than if it were a description.    (02)

> 
>> The only way out that I can see is to assume, at some iteration, that
>> the interpreter will itself/himself/herself interpret the expression (be
>> it the primary expression or any of its context-...-contexts) in the
>> correct way, that is, that the interpreter is able to (or is forced to,
>> by its nature) apply the correct context.
> 
> Yes, of course.
> 
>> But if such assumption has to be made, then I see no reason, in
>> principle, for why it would be reasonable to assume that the interpreter
>> can apply the correct context for interpreting an expression's context
>> expression, but it/he/she cannot apply the correct context for
>> interpreting the primary expression without it being enclosed in a
>> context-expression.
> 
>> Could you justify your point?  (Or explain where I am wrong, if I am.)
> 
> I'm not sure what you're asking me to do, here.  I'm going to guess
> that you're asking about the bootstrapping/grounding problem: that the
> process whereby interpretive guidance is known must actually land
> somewhere.    (03)

Yes, I think this is very close.  That is, if you claim that to assure 
that an expression will be interpreted correctly one needs to add 
contextual information, one must be clear that it must either be assumed 
that that contextual information will be interpreted correctly without 
further (meta)context, or that (meta)context must be provided as well. 
The question is at which level n of context^n to stop to be sure about 
the interpretation;  you seemed to make the claim that an expression 
(about the domain, I guess, an expression I call, in this context ;) 
'primary') *must* be supplied with a context (expression), while you 
seem to implicitly assume that the context (expression) will be 
interpreted correctly without further effort.  While it is clear to me 
that grounding must take place at some context level, what you seem to 
claim appears to me to be an ad hoc solution.    (04)

> 
> I worried about this for a long time and I finally decided that I
> needed to demonstrate that the problem can be solved.  I wasn't smart
> enough to figure it out any other way.  And, at least for me, it
> proved to be very tedious and taxing to make a system that could
> bootstrap itself from within itself in the necessary self-exposing,
> self-disclosing way.  But it was, in fact, doable.  (I could do it
> better now, now that I know what to do, but the original code can be
> found at versavant.sourceforge.net.)
> 
> Basically, there needs to be a subject proxy for each universe of
> discourse, and each universe of discourse basically consists of a set
> of subject proxy property classes.  There needs to be at least one
> underlying "system universe of discourse" (in Versavant, this is
> called the "system topic map application" or "system TMA" or "Vsys"),
> which provides the property classes that are instantiated in the
> proxies whose subjects are themselves property classes.  The grounding
> problem is thus finessed: the "bottom turtle" in the stack of
> ontology-turtles is a self-grounding one.  (If my "stack of turtles"
> metaphor is opaque to you, see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down)
>     (05)

The issue is really about which context should we assume that the 
receipient of the message must, or simply will, share with the sender. 
You can wrap the term 'cell' with the context 'organism' to avoid 
confusion with, e.g,, cells in batteries, geometry, or prisons, but if 
you send the message to martians, you may need to wrap the term 
'organism' in some context as well -- assuming that at some point we 
share the way we interpret messages (or what appears to be a message; 
we clearly also need to share the way we interpret something as a 
message or not.)    (06)

In XML the situation is clearly in your favor, in that an unqualified 
identifier cannot be treated as unambiguous and must be interpreted only 
in the context of either an explicit or implicit namespace, as a 
qualified name or relative to the document base or the default 
namespace.  However, it all boils down to the assumption that namespaces 
themselves are unambiguous, and that a namespace does not need further 
(meta)namespace -- which may, in fact, be misleading, despite the clear 
specifications of intention of the authors of XML.    (07)

vQ    (08)


> 
> -- Steve
> 
> Steven R. Newcomb, Consultant
> Coolheads Consulting
> 
> Co-editor, Topic Maps International Standard (ISO/IEC 13250)
> Co-editor, draft Topic Maps -- Reference Model (ISO/IEC 13250-5)
> 
> srn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.coolheads.com
> 
> direct: +1 540 951 9773
> main:   +1 540 951 9774
> fax:    +1 540 951 9775
> 
> 208 Highview Drive
> Blacksburg, Virginia 24060 USA
> 
> 
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> irresponsible actions of the pusillanimous and corrupt 109th Congress,
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> wisely.)
> 
>  
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>      (09)

-- 
Wacek Kusnierczyk    (010)

------------------------------------------------------
Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
7027 Trondheim
Norway    (011)

tel.   0047 73591875
fax    0047 73594466
------------------------------------------------------    (012)

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