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Re: [ontolog-forum] A different approach to ontology

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <rick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 11 May 2008 11:44:14 -0400
Message-id: <4827144E.4010607@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John, Pat, Chris & All:    (01)

Over the past few months I've been a bit of a bookworm trying to better 
understand interpretation and meaning. I have a few questions about a) 
RDF and CL interpretations and b) what Jospeh Goguen called "a 
relational theory of meaning" here ...    (02)

http://cse.ucsd.edu/~goguen/pps/notn.ps    (03)

Many thanks in advance for your time in answering my questions.    (04)

John F. Sowa wrote:
> I received the following offline question:
> 
>> I don't have it clear in my mind why a formal ontology
>> (a particular method of documenting relationships)
>> would be "a prerequisite for a formal language that
>> says anything meaningful about any subject domain."
> 
> The words or other symbols must have some connection to
> the world in order to make any statement about any aspect
> of the world (i.e., some subject domain).    (05)

The RDF semantics states a) that it restricts meaning to what "can be 
captured in mechanical inference rules" and b) that equates a particular 
world with an interpretation.    (06)

The papers I've seen on possible worlds seem to cover a wide variety of 
other topics like, necessity, possibility, etc ...    (07)

http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~jperry/PHILPAPERS/posswld.pdf    (08)

Would you happen to have a reference to an academic paper the defines an 
interpretation as a world ?    (09)

I've read Tarski's Semantic Conception of Truth which defines truth as 
material adequacy, but this definition seems to require structures 
derived from sentences to "fully interpret" the sentences they represent.    (010)

CL model theory doesn't make the same claim: that an interpretation is a 
world. Why ?    (011)

> If the symbols don't have any such connection, you have
> a meaningless formal language such as the list of
> strings Chris Menzel mentioned:  ab, aabb, aaabbb, ...
> Some such strings might be interesting to analyze,
> but they don't say anything.  They're formal, but
> they're as irrelevant to anything in the world as
> a game of chess or a Sudoku puzzle.    (012)

Is it fair to say that vocabularies that satisfy interpretations under 
RDF and CL allow us to extend meaning with to what Goguen called 
representational and relational theories or meaning. For example, in a 
semiotic vocabulary in which various signs without interpretants could 
satisfy a representational theory of meaning, Then interpretants could 
satisfy for relational theory of meaning?    (013)

Again, many thanks in advance !    (014)

> 
> John Sowa
> 
>  
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-- 
Thanks Rick,
blog http://spout.rickmurphy.org
web  http://www.rickmurphy.org
cell 703-201-9129    (016)

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