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Re: [ontolog-forum] mKR programming language

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Richard H. McCullough" <rhm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 11:49:30 -0700
Message-id: <8D56F429870C475CA462F33E1486BAF0@rhm8200>

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christopher Menzel" <cmenzel@xxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2009 10:38 AM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] mKR programming language    (01)

>> You seem to imply that mKR is of no value without a formal semantic  
>> theory.  I totally disagree.
> 
> That much is clear. :-)
> 
>> Further, I assert that there are many meaningful exchanges taking  
>> place in this forum, even though we have no formal semantics for  
>> English.
> 
> Of course, but we have all learned English by being socialized into  
> various linguistic communities wherein the semantic conventions of  
> English have already been assimilated.  It is, of course, logically  
> possible that large communities of people sit down and hash out the  
> meanings of the mKR constructs informally and start adding them to the  
> way they speak and write -- although, as noted above, there seems  
> little reason to do so, as English appears to be doing just fine as a  
> medium of spoken and written communication between human agents in  
> most contexts.  But once again, if you want mKR to be of general use  
> as an ontology language that helps us to leverage high-speed computer  
> networks to share, integrate, and reason upon large bodies of  
> information, then mKR needs a formal semantics that (i) fixes the  
> meanings of its primitive constructs and (ii) assigns definite  
> meanings to complex expressions recursively in terms of the meanings  
> of their simpler parts.  Without this it is impossible to guarantee  
> that information has been exchanged and integrated accurately and that  
> inferences drawn on the basis of that information are sound.
> 
> Chris Menzel
> 
I am relying on the "linguistic communities wherein the semantic
conventions of English have already been assimilated".    (02)

I have stated, on my web site, that the meaning of an mKR proposition
is defined by the meaning of its English paraphrase.
I do not consider many pages of mathematical formulas to be an
appropriate definition of meaning in mKR.    (03)

Dick McCullough
http://mkrmke.org    (04)


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