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Re: [ontolog-forum] Oooh, FOL is too hard to learn.

To: ian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Christopher Menzel <cmenzel@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 15:39:09 -0500
Message-id: <4CBCB06D.5030902@xxxxxxxx>
On 10/18/2010 02:23 PM, Ian Bailey wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> You wrote:
>
> ... people said  "Oooh, FOL is too hard to learn."
>
> Which is true. CL (pick any dialect you like) is difficult to work with.
Which (just to be clear) is to say that first-order logic is difficult 
to work with.
> If
> it weren't so awkward, more people might use it for commercial applications.
> Until that day, people will work with more productive, intuitive notations,
> that unfortunately are somewhat less formal - they still work, mind you.
>    
So again, just to be clear, your claim is that no notation for 
first-order logic can be as productive as the more intuitive notations 
of which you speak.
> Maybe the CL/FOL community need to employ some HCI folks to help them
> develop the next generation of modelling notation, because what's there in
> CL now just isn't going to cut it with the average developer or data
> modeller.
>    
But now I'm confused.  Your claim is that it is first-order logic per se 
that is the problem.  If that is true, then it would make no sense for 
the CL/FOL to work with HCI folks to develop another notation, since it 
would be yet another FOL notation -- and hence yet another CL dialect 
and, hence, a notation that (according to you) no average developer or 
data modeler is ever going to work in.    (01)

Perhaps first-order logic isn't for the "average developer or data 
modeler" the way that a lot of useful higher mathematics isn't for the 
"average engineer"?    (02)

-chris    (03)



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