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RE: Shortcomings of Predicate Logic? (was RE: [xml-dev ] RDF

• To: 'Arjun Ray' <aray@n...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: Shortcomings of Predicate Logic? (was RE: [xml-dev ] RDF Interpretation of XML documents )
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...>
• Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 16:21:31 -0500

Yes.  Without testing, just assertions.  Facts are harder 
to come by depending on the topic.  My Sorbonne-graduate 
logic teacher (notice that I am attempting to credit 
him with authority :-)), taught us that logic was not a 
means to establish fact: it was a system to 
determine that given a premise, one could truthfully 
reason.  He said it better than that but I have been 
out of school too long.

Unlike the postmodernists, I don't believe that all 
things are relative and have only interior truth. A 
fall from a tall building will still kill one with 
a pretty reasonable certainty.  What I do believe is 
that what one thinks about on the way down is quite 
relative and quite interior and that a brief discussion 
with anyone during the fall will produce documents 
open to interpretation but few reliable facts.

On the other hand, the conversation makes for 
thrilling literature capable of producing effects.

len

From: Arjun Ray [mailto:aray@n...]

"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@i...> wrote:

| There is something to be said for the position that all we get 
| back from topic maps or the semantic web is opinions.

Hearsay would be more accurate, I think.

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