Fwd: re: facts of reality, context, possible worlds

[Graham Klyne]

Matt,

If you're following this...

The excerpt below is from RDF-IG, the main comment being from Pat Hayes.

I think your comments at the recent FOAF meeting about attempts to describe 
the plot-lines of popular TV programs would be a perfect antidote for some 
of this debate (i.e. as an illustration of the logical point Pat makes) ...

#g
--

[[
>>The purpose of the Semantic Web is to provide man and machine with easy 
>>access to the facts of reality.
>
>I would characterize it somewhat differently. The purpose of the SW is to 
>make propositional content available to machine processing on the Web. 
>Indeed, most of the time, that content will *correspond to* the facts of 
>reality; but those facts themselves cannot be accessible to machines. One 
>cannot send a fact over an optic fiber; one can only send symbols; a 
>syntax of some kind. Now, exactly how a formal syntax can specify real 
>facts is a good question: as I said above, getting that correspondence 
>clear is what model-theoretic semantics is about.
]]
-- http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-interest/2002Dec/0030.html



-------------------
Graham Klyne
<GK at N...>