| To: | "John Black" <JohnBlack@xxxxxxxxxxx> |
|---|---|
| Cc: | ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
| From: | Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> |
| Date: | Tue, 15 Jan 2008 15:16:28 -0600 |
| Message-id: | <p0623091ec3b2c891a800@[10.100.0.28]> |
|
At 6:40 AM -0500 1/15/08, John Black wrote:
I think I spy a disconnect between our approaches to this problem. Specifically, you often seem to be taking the viewpoint of a browser client, or at least of some agent that can only know what HTTP, as a formal system, can communicate. Such a perspective is valuable when examining possible interpretations of the web Architecture document, or of the semantics of HTTP. Not exactly the viewpoint of, but yes, Im interested in getting
this discussion sufficiently precise that it can be used as the basis
for building ontology and SWeb software by dealing with appropriate
formalisms.
But there is another perspective we can take, and I am speaking from that perspective. We can take the view of a web scientist or ontology engineer. I don't think these are the same perspective. An ontology
engineer has to engineer ontologies, and they are formal, and
manipulated by software.
We can look at this example with the full power of human reason. Of course we CAN, but what would this have to do with an ontology
forum? And in any case (see below) even if we do this, as an exercise
in semiotics, we still need to be rather exact about what we are
talking about in order to not get muddled.
We can go behind the scenes and find out who maintains that resource at the W3C. Not using Web resources you can't. We might even be able to find out who first designed and implemented it and why. Ditto. Look, you can hire a detective to find out who is sleeping
with someone's wife, but what has that got to do with Web architecture
or ontology design?
So in what follows, I am often not disputing what you say, just looking at it from this other viewpoint. Right, from the viewpoint of the authors of that document and others, it is an "information resource" aka "web object" aka "http endpoint". But that is a general term. From the viewpoint of an investigative web scientist, we can say more specifically what it is. But you aren't denying that it is a 'web object', right?
But we know more about it than that. Now here is where the difference in viewpoints is critical. Yes, you are right, from the point of view of a machine doing interpretations of the syntax of HTTP according to web architecture doc, that is all "we" (a machine interpretation) can know. But from the view point of the investigative web scientist, we can know more. And I think if we did talk to the original designer of the 'resource' How could we possibly do that? How could YOU do that?
, he would tell us that, yes, the resource emitting the 'representations' was in fact a human symbolic artifact, Of course...
indexical in essense and intended use. ..but careful. The resource is simply a file located on a W3C
computer. It stays there and 'says' nothing. Copies of it are
used indexically.
As web scientists then, we may further realize that the function of HTTP, in this case, was little more than a location transducer.
The URI denotes that badge/image/web-resource/thingie. There is
only one of it, and it, itself, is never used to make any assertions.
The HTTP protocols supply us with a copy (webarch:representation) of
it, and we can then use that copy to human:assert something about the
page the copied image is on. OK, lets agree on all that.
But from our new vantage point, that of a web-scientist, we know more. From this viewpoint, the web is full of more particular things, we can see that the web is full of not just generic IMAGEs, or "information resources" but *specific* images, of Clinton, or Huckabee, or soldiers, or sports heros. Furthermore, we can see that many of the "information resources" on the web can be more particularly classified as home pages, or blog posts, or novels, etc, all of which are sub-classes of "information resources". And in fact, we can see that many "web objects" or "http endpoints" point to digital material that, in the full strength of human reason, appear to be kinds of *textual speech-acts*. We see "Offers to Sell", "reviews", legal "Complaints" and "Affidavits", and many others. No, you are right, they are not machine-readable, but they *are* real - very very real, and account for some of the great importance of the Web. My point is that, from the viewpoint of the web-scientist, we may examine and discuss these "textual speech-acts" as what they really are, rather than limit ourselves to the view point of a machine. OK, I have no objection to all this, though I still think its
irrelevant to ontology engineering. But you have to be very careful.
Exactly what makes something on a Web page be like a 'speech act' is
quite a delicate matter. Suppose I set out (as I am thinking of doing)
to sell some of my artworks, by having a website which advertises them
for sale. I might have a small image with a title and details and a
price indicated, and a button called "add to cart", and if
one follows this along one eventually gets to a button called
"place order". Now, is this a speech act? An offer, say, by
me to sell something to you? I'd say not. I'd say it is more like
putting something into a shop window, or on a supermarket shelf, with
a price label on it. In fact, I'd say that the best way to describe
this is that what is on my website is a agent which acts on my
behalf and itself performs 'acts', and indeed by displaying the
"place order" button it is making you an offer (which
amounts to an offer to take part in a contract) and by clicking on it
- a genuine act by you, though not a *speech* act - you have accepted
that offer made by my agent. But notice that the 'acts' here only
occur during an actual process of exchange between you and my agent:
they do not reside on a Web page. They are intrinsically dynamic
things, events that occur in time and within a social context (a 'web
conversation', perhaps), not textual or even indexical entities. It is
the act of displaying the "place order" button which
constitutes the making of the offer, not the button itself.
We know why those symbols represent the "web object". Again, that is correct from the point of view of a machine, trying to interpret messages received according to the webarch document. But as web scientists, we can, in this case, know more about the relationship between the symbols on the badge, which count as a localized image-text speech-act precisely because that is the way the designer of the resource designed them to function. OK, but that knowledge does not change anything I said in that
paragraph.
What we know, in fact, is that URI-CD denotes a "web object" that can be
No, just plain correct. The relationship between a web object
(information resource) and its copy (webarch:representation) has
nothing to do with any symbols encoded into the text of the
object/resource. This applies whether those symbols are human or
machine-readable. The same would be true if the resource were pure
RDF/XML.
And again, we, with our more advantagious viewpoint and superior knowledge of the case, can know that in this case, as in the vast majority of cases on the web, HTTP is acting as a mere location transducer, and that what is GETted, represents (here used in a more traditional way), in fact, pretty much copies, the resource in question. Well, yes, it copies it. So? What has that to do with any symbols
it might encode? When you take a platen imprint on a press, the paper
copies the ink shapes on the platen. That holds whether those shapes
are Roman letters or Arabic or a half-tone image of Abraham
Lincoln.
Well, OK, they are of course real and so can be denoted. What I
should have said is that it is a very different kind of thing than we
have been talking about so far in this discussion.
Consider The 'Pledge of Allegiance', which name denotes an indexical text Yes, a TEXT. asserting that the speaker, upon speaking it, assumes the state of 'allegiance' to the flag of the US. No. The text is such that, when spoken by person X, that speech
is a pledge of allegiance made by X to the flag. It is a script for
making pledges with, just as the marriage service is a script for
performing marriages. But until spoken, the text is not an act of any
kind. A speech act is an act performed BY SPEAKING.
They are on buttons, bumper stickers, signs, etc. And the difference that makes a difference between two bumper-stickers, for example, is just the human, symbol content, the message, the assertion that it contains. Internet badges are the same, there are hundreds of them, distinguished by nothing else but the different assertions they make. What is peculiar about denoting such an assertion? OK, I guess nothing. But please be careful to distinguish a text
from an act. They are not the same kind of thing.
I visited a web-site, http://www.cafepress.com/ibs_store/321477 , that sells stickers, it names each one, along with a price. For example, the first is named "Anarchy", which name denotes the assertion, "aNaRchy Never goEs ouT of style", price 3.99. NO! The name denotes the bumper sticker, or maybe its design. The
sticker is not itself an assertion. One can make the assertion by
displaying the sticker appropriately, or maybe by obliging someone to
read it visually, or reading it out loud. Im not entirely sure what
counts as asserting a bumper sticker. But you have to ASSERT it to get
an assertion.
I won't agree that "Anarchy" denotes just the sticker, because there are hundreds of stickers, or just a sticker with an image of some text, again, hundreds of those. This is just the type/token distinction. There is only one novel
"Moby Dick" but many instances/tokens/imprints of it. But
neither of them are acts.
No, the name denotes the very stuff that individuates it from all the other stickers, that assertion. Also, the same assertion can be tranported on a lapel-pin, sign, greeting card, etc., so I would consider those to be items in relation to the assertion or to be properties, and *what it is* to be the assertion itself. You are talking about the text, not the assertion. There is no
such thing as a "text act".
Yes, I am saying that, and it isn't what individuates. The text
(more generally, the visual design) is what individuates in your
sense. But this individuation criterion would apply to things that
cannot be used to assert with, such as images of faces or national
flags.
Second, you say that the badge does "become a symbol", with indexicality,
NO. The name of the badge denotes the badge. USING a TOKEN of
that badge in a certain way MAKES an assertion. But the name of the
badge doesn't denote the assertion made with a copy of the badge. It
also doesn't denote the web page on which the copy occurs, or the time
of day when it was published, or a host of other things closely
associated with it.
But if you So what? I can admire you because you are a pile of quarks too, that doesn't remove the additional layers of organization that make you a person. You miss my point. I am conceding that one can use the image to
make an assertion. My point is that the image is not identical with
the assertional act that uses it, nor with the content that is
expressed by such an act.
This reminds me of what Leonardo said about the reaction of many of his compatriots to his Notebooks, "And often, when I see one of these men take this work in his hand, I wonder that he does not put it to his nose, like a monkey, or ask me if it is something good to eat."
Of course, but that does not change my point.
Pat
Your haiku are dependent on the interpretations afforded by those factory chosen words. I know. My wife has a set too, on our refrigerator. My son liked the one that said, "dad" - so much so that he broke it into pieces. Now I can't make a haiku about me unless I call myself by some other name. If I write to the factory, I will ask for replacements of the "dad" magnet, by which name I intend to denote that particular dad magnet.
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