Thesis
A philosophical analysis of the Web that relies on the construal of information and a definition of knowledge as public and explicit information leads to a functional framework for Web Services and the possibility of using Semantic Web knowledge representations as an ``open world'' type system for this framework. However, this notion of information and knowledge also undermine traditional notions of the individual as a basic ontological category.
Approach
We're going to have use an interdisciplinary approach from two rarely connected fields: philosophy and the World Wide Web.
Apologies for taking so long!
Are Computers a valid subject matter of philosophy?
Is "Philosophy of the Mind" valid?
In this sense, the term "embodied" is a lexical band-aid covering a 350-year-old wound generated and kept suppurating by a schizoid metaphysics. M. Sheets-Johnstone
Why the Web? Why not philosophy of unicorns? Or Kings of France?
The Web is crucially important, unlike unicorns.
More Objections: Neural Salvationism (Churchlands), Consciousness First! (Searle), Reduction to Physics, Reduction to Mathematics
The Eiffel Tower versus a web-page about the Eiffel Tower: Isn't there something fundamentally different? And what URI do you use for the Eiffel Tower qua Eiffel Tower?
The URI of the web-page is clearly http://www.tour-eiffel.fr/.
Information Resource
The distinguishing characteristic of these resources is that all of their essential characteristics can be conveyed in a message(Jacobs and Walsh, 2005)
Non-Information Resource?
Other things, such as cars and dogs (and, if you've printed this document on physical sheets of paper, the artifact that you are holding in your hand), are resources too. They are not information resources, however, because their essence is not information. Although it is possible to describe a great many things about a car or a dog in a sequence of bits, the sum of those things will invariably be an approximation of the essential character of the resource. (Jacobs and Walsh, 2005)
The Epistemological Assumption
The use of "knowledge" or "certainty" to define whether or not a sender has received a message, and exactly what they received.
The Metaphysical Assumption
The sender and receiver are discrete individuals (although not necessarily different, as it can be the same individual spread out over time)
A stack of philosophical and formal analysis for Web architecture
What is Knowledge?
Since Plato knowledge has often been defined as \textbf{justified true belief}. It is unclear what ``justified'' means, and this definitions fall victim to the Gettier problems (Gettier, 1963)
Just what exactly is that "Extra Special Something" that separates knowledge from ordinary belief and even more ordinary information?(Williamson, 200)
Note that this presupposes knowledge is an individual psychological state. What does this have to do with information or knowledge representation?
Dretske's Semantic Theory of Information
Key Observation: Telling someone how many bits they have does not tell them what information was transmitted.
Dretske's Definition of Information Content:"A signal r carries the information that s is F iff the conditional probability of s's being F, given r and k is 1 (where k is the knowledge of the receiver)" (Dretske, 1984)
Dretske's Definition of Knowledge:Information causually sustaining a belief (Dretkse, 1984)
Aren't these circular?
As being part and parcel of information, it has to be capable of being shared, and therefore "public"
UsefulKnowledge enables the possessor of the knowledge to commit a successful action. The definition of "success" is a dynamic norm rooted in the "cascade of Darwinian Algorithms" (Dennett, 2002) - related to neo-Fregean notions of truth.
ExplicitThe information specifies to the possessor completely how to commit the successful action, i.e. a constructivist or algorithmic approach.
Just when dynamicism and anti-represenationalism had won...
Just as we enter the age of embodiment in cognitive science, the Web is leading our lives to be increasingly disembodied.
Good Old Fashioned AI in the form of knowledge representation is back on the WebWe remain agnostic about whether there are " internal representations "
Yet there definitely are external representations, External representations may not be secondary case, but may in fact be the primary case.
Thus the ability to " deal with the visscitudes and vagarities of earthly existence" via perfect digital memory and precise computation.
Via the Extended Mind, these external, digital representations are just as cognitive as any internal ones.
The Web provides a universal place to access representations...
As latency decreases...it may not be so disembodied after all.
Too many standards - too little coherence
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But it's a Mess!
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Via the Typed Lambda Calculus
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Our basic ontology presumes individuals
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Is this a unified picture?
From information to knowledge to logic to typed functions
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