On 03/18/2013 01:25 AM, Pat Hayes wrote:
On Mar 17, 2013, at 8:40 PM, David Booth wrote:
[ . . . ]
In the semantic web world, these "contextual scopes" are RDF
graphs.
No, they aren't. That interpretation of RDF graphs is in direct
violation of the RDF specifications. RDF graphs are simply sets of
assertions, all in a non-contextual (and non-indexical) logic with no
contextual sensitivity.
I think you're selling your work short. AFAICT, the notion of context
can work beautifully with the existing RDF Semantics. One way is to say
that the context is the given interpretation, by which an RDF graph's
truth-value is to be determined. That would make that graph's
truth-value relative to that interpretation, just as the RDF Semantics
currently defines it. Another way is to say that the context is the
given RDF graph whose truth-value is to be determined. That would also
make the truth-value relative to that RDF graph, just as the RDF
Semantics currently defines it.
The reason I prefer to think of the context as being the given RDF graph
is that (for me) a common usage mode is to start with an RDF graph and
use the RDF semantics to determine the set of interpretations that allow
that graph to be true. This allows useful work to be performed. For
example, given an RDF graph containing a URI whose resource identity I
wish to determine, I can turn the RDF Semantics crank and find out that
that URI must denote an :Apple .
David
