Re: [ontolog-forum] Current Semantic Web Layer Cake

["Adrian Walker" <adriandwalker@xxxxxxxxx>]

John, Jack --

John's point that you can describe anything in English is well
taken.  However, although the tradition is to do this
computationally by means of a "controlled vocabulary", there is another
way.  It is in fact possible to get strict meanings using an
*open* vocabulary.   The system online at the site below shows how
to do this, and the associated papers suggest that there are
considerable practical advantages.  In particular, words and
sentences take their meaning from their current context, rather than
from a dictionary and grammar that someone wrote long ago, failing to
take into account (a) new  contexts and (b) the fact that English
is a moving target.

With regard to Jack's point about how to disambiguate names of people,
this is often done in the real world by means of context -- where does
he live, date of birth, mother's maiden name, and so on.  Once you
can write down the relevant disambiguation knowledge in (open
vocabulary) *executable * English, computers can do this too.

Hope this helps,

                                                            
-- Adrian

Internet Business Logic
A Wiki for Executable Open Vocabulary English
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com    Shared use is free

Adrian Walker
Reengineering

On 8/8/07, Jack Park <jack.park@xxxxxxx> wrote:

John F. Sowa wrote:
<masssive snippage>
>   4. The usual methods for using names to refer to individuals
>      in the domain of discourse (including the option of using
>      URIs as names).

Let me tell a short story.  Using the language you described, we are
discussing an individual with the name "Jack Park". The domain of
discourse is book authors. Now we must ask "which one?" Google tells me
that there is a Jack Park in Ohio that writes books about baseball, and
there's a geek in California that writes about wind power systems and
something called topic maps. Which one?

It's clear to me that the domain of discourse would have to be narrowed
down in order to avoid such ambiguity. Just picking a URI might not
help. Google doesn't know URIs for any of the Jack Park individuals it
"knows" about. There are probably thousands of them. The John Sowas of
the world might have it easier ;)

This situation suggests to me that the language you describe will
perhaps evolve some kind of "best practices" for subject identification.
My hunch is that subject identity by names alone will eventually prove
to be problematic. It already is when you look at the tens of thousands
of people on both the No Fly and Select lists from our nation's
transportation safety administration (motto: total safety at any cost).


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