SUO: Re: Critique Of Non-Functional Reason
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| A. Automated Reasoning (AR)
|
| The standard will be suitable for automated logical inference
| to support knowledge-based reasoning applications.
|
| B. Inter-Operability (IO)
|
| The standard will provide a basis for achieving Inter-Operability
| among various software and database applications.
[AB]
One of the ways that we might build stronger and more realistic bonds
between our DB's and our KB's is by looking at the ways that constant
propositions in real-world theories and contingent propositions in
real-world factual assertions are "supported by" the sorts of data,
that is, actual measurements and empirical observations, that we
put in real-world databases.
From what I remember of the "real world",
it had to do with propositions like this:
1. If health care service provider J
assigns patient K to stereotype L,
then K will get care of quality M.
2. The prevalence of low-birth-weight babies
in health-care-underserved populations is
not just a fluke, but can be accounted to
the effects of lower quality health care.
Stuff like that ...
At this particular juncture I appear to be
stuck with Quine's slightly hokey example:
q = "If Perth is 400 miles from Omaha then Perth is in America".
Still, Quine's example does have non-trivial logical structure,
one that is even a little bit analogous to case number 1 above,
say, under the following transformation: J = Omaha, K = Perth,
L = 400 miles distant, and "care of quality M" = "in America".
The relationship through which a database "supports" a proposition is,
strange to say, a model-theoretic relationship. Indeed, there is good
reason to express the fact that DB(MapQuest) supports the proposition q
by writing out a symbolic formula of the following form:
DB(MQ) |= q.
The reason that this seems so "strange to say" is not the fault
of the claim itself, but due to the way that model theory seems
to have lost its way since it first set out, and even abandoned
almost altogether its initial attachment to notions of evidence
and rational grounds, all in the time since it began to take on
more formal airs.
Jon Awbrey
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