Kashori - Semantics for Social Agents

Semantics for Agents

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Claims About the Power of URI References 

I read a lot of claims like the following found in a blog post by Lee Feigenbaum (aka http://thefigtrees.net/lee/ldf-card#LDF) titled "Semantic Web Technologies in the Enterprise",

"But when I assert facts about http://thefigtrees.net/lee/ldf-card#LDF, there's no chance of semantic ambiguity. Anyone sharing that URI is referencing the same concept that I am, and my software can take advantage of that. The structured, universal nature of URIs guarantees that two occurrences of the same identifier carry the same semantics."

I have always found this sort of statement disturbing, and I finally realized why. The problem I have is with the phrase, "that URI is referencing the same concept that I am" (emphasis mine). My problem is that my understanding of a "concept" is that it is, basically, a type of thought. Thus unless we hold the philosophical position of Platonism, and believe that concepts have an eternal existence outside of any being, concepts are a biological category. I mean that concepts are something that human animals have or do with their brains and other aspects of their biological nature. So I interpret Feigenbaum to be saying that that URI references the concept of, or thought of, Lee Feigenbaum.

On the other hand, on reading the article, I get the impression that, at other times, he intends for that URI to reference the real person, Lee Feigenbaum, and not the thought of, or concept of, Lee Feigenbaum. But which is it? Surely the two are different. I can make statements about the person Lee Feigenbaum that are not true or even nonsensical to say about the concept of Lee Feigenbaum. For example, I am fairly certain it is true to say that the person, Lee Feigenbaum, wrote a certain blog post about the semantic web. But it would be nonsensical to say that the concept of Lee Feigenbaum wrote a blog post.

# posted by John Black @ 11:15 AM
2 comments

2 Comments:

But what about the concept of Lee Sabow?

By  LS, at 10:33 PM  

All I have to say to both of you is this,

"Lee, Happy Birthday! --Lee".

(For the rest of my readers: this seems to be a private tradition between the person of Lee Feigenbaum. and the person of Lee Sabow - something I learned with Google by searching for the concept of Lee Sabow associated with the string "Lee Sabow")

By  John Black, at 7:52 AM  

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"We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name. Do you not understand?" "I do." "In the present case, then, let us take any multiplicity you please; for example, there are many couches and tables." "Of course." "But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table." "Yes." "And are we not also in the habit of saying that the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes on the idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other the tables that we use, and similarly of other things? For surely no craftsman makes the idea itself. How could he?" "By no means."
Plato, Republic X, page 596a

"This convention is not of the nature of a promise: For even promises themselves, as we shall see afterwards, arise from human conventions. It is only a general sense of common interest; which sense all the members of the society express to one another, and which induces them to regulate their conduct by certain rules. I observe, that it will be for my interest to leave another in the possession of his goods, provided he will act in the same manner with regard to me. He is sensible of a like interest in the regulation of his conduct. When this common sense of interest is mutually expressed, and is known to both, it produces a suitable resolution and behaviour. And this may properly enough be called a convention or agreement betwixt us, though without the interposition of a promise; since the actions of each of us have a reference to those of the other, and are performed upon the supposition, that something is to be performed on the other part. Two men, who pull the oars of a boat, do it by an agreement or convention, though they have never given promises to each other. Nor is the rule concerning the stability of possession the less derived from human conventions, that it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and. by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it. On the contrary, this experience assures us still more, that the sense of interest has become common to all our fellows, and gives us a confidence of the future regularity of their conduct: And it is only on the expectation of this, that our moderation and abstinence are founded. In like manner are languages gradually established by human conventions without any promise. ..." - A Treatise of Human Nature, Chapter 74 by David Hume

"...Semeiotike, or the doctrine of signs; the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Logike, logic: the business whereof is to consider the nature of signs, the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others. For, since the things the mind contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present to the understanding, it is necessary that something else, as a sign or representation of the thing it considers, should be present to it: and these are ideas. And because the scene of ideas that makes one man's thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory, a no very sure repository: therefore to communicate our thoughts to one another, as well as record them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also necessary: those which men have found most convenient, and therefore generally make use of, are articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no despicable part of their contemplation who would take a view of human knowledge in the whole extent of it. And perhaps if they were distinctly weighed, and duly considered, they would afford us another sort of logic and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted with." - AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING by John Locke 1690