Communications on a National Project
John (Sowa)
As always you are a great teacher,
and certainly this dialog allows us to negotiate on the meaning of things expressed
previously in natural language.
Now the issue in knowledge
representation is not whether you and I feel satisfied in the end that we have
achieved that state of agreement -- what now do we make of it? How do we go
forward cementing that meaning into a form others might grasp as fully and
precisely as we think we have now achieved -- there's the rub?
To surrender our understanding back
into language is to loose all and bid later generations to start again with a fraction
of the resources we have now -- after decades of study. We study the writings of philosopher's
hundreds to thousands of years after they are written, yet at the same time we
know from both the Latin and Greek Thesaurus Projects that their language
meanings have changed faster than our philosophical advancements. That is the
classic semiotics complaint and Aristotle raised it over 2500 years ago.
My judgment is that natural and
artificial languages all survive out of necessities that have little to do with
knowledge representation and preservation. I think the survival objective of
natural language is diplomacy -- first and foremost -- the need to disagree
without being disagreeable. The cardinal rule of diplomacy -- "A problem
postponed is a problem solved".
Artificial languages, on the other
hand, frequently seek to modularize and encapsulate conventional practices and
to mechanize process around some most favored epistemological ideal. My work is
in creating a knowledge representation "platform" for all theories --
so it does not presuppose any process or value system or allow anything to be
implicitly understood. At this
point the semantic web with all the features noted in the Seybold article are a
best non-linguistic and axiological starting point.
You and Peirce and the synthesis
you cite in the ontology section of your Knowledge Representation book are
explicitly listed by me in that Seybold article -- as one essential starting
point for today's web. So your place remains front and center in explaining and
interpreting the web going forward -- you more than deserve that role. But as
you know, that lets me as your student advance beyond your views respectfully.
Most other philosophers escape hearing that so directly -- both the acclaim and
the upstart critique.
Dick (Ballard)