Re: SUO: Re: CG: Re: Common Logic Standard
On 4/6/02 18:21, "John F. Sowa" <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
>
> Jon,
>
> There is much more to knowledge representation than just FOL.
> FOL is a prerequisite to any and every full-bodied knowledge
> representation. It is necessary, but not sufficient.
> But nonetheless, it is necessary.
>
> Bottom line: If we don't provide FOL plus contexts plus metalevels
> (as the CL standard is designed to do), we are going to be stuck
> with kludges built on top of RDF and XML for another 50 years.
John has made my points much more effectively than my lame attempts to do
so. Point 1 was that FOL *must* be one tool in your toolbox - there will
undoubtedly be others. Point 2 was that FOL has enough expressive power to
do the vast majority of what we need. Neither of which is to be read as an
endorsement of KIF or any other concrete syntax.
As for Jon Awbrey's accomplishments in theorem proving, I say great! But I
think he and I are using the term "ontology" to describe very different
things. All I want is for a computer system, for example, to be capable of
detecting that a model that has a person being older than one of their
ancestors is a bad thing, and to be able to communicate that information to
other computer systems that claim to represent information about people,
parents, ancestors and so on.
I am NOT talking about the ability to prove novel theorems in mathematics.
As a builder of systems to represent information in such a way that sense
can be made of it, that it can be kept consistent with the agreed upon
meanings of terms in a community of use, and that it can be exchanged freely
within such communities, I am interested first and foremost in doing the
mundane things right. Once that is done, then maybe we can worry about
doing novel things. But we don't even do the mundane things right at this
point.
I challenge Jon (or anyone else) to give one example - just one - of some
*practical* representation task, having a bearing on the ontology task as
stated above, that cannot be done with FOL in whatever syntactic guise.
Actually, I can think of one - defining a relation to be finite - which I
understand is not expressible in FOL, and may be useful on a practical level
(not sure of this) for communicating the meaning of a term to a peer with
whom one (or some system) may want to communicate. So, I admit that there
is room for more tools and principles.
But, saying things like:
> [JA] Logic today is in a horrible mess -- it is dissociated from all of
> the real action in mathematics, programming, and science generally, and
> it is not fair to blame Peirce for the state that has resulted.
doesn't help. What is it exactly that Jon (or, not to pick on Jon, anyone
else) wants to do that requires that this "mess" be supplanted by other
principles. Why is it that we should be concerned with "the real action" in
mathematics, for example, if we can't even at this point, as I've stated
before, exchange my address book between a Palm Pilot and an email program
without screwing it up? If someone could demonstrate that, rather than just
talking in vague generalities, folks (including myself) may become more
inclined to listen.
.bill