The year of rules?
by Bijan Parsia
(Title lifted, with irony, from B. Grosof’s proclamation at the end of ISWSC 2005 and the start of the RuleML Conference. Note that the “OWL workshop” (i.e., OWL: Experiences and Directions) was not “included” in the RuleML. We were co-located. I was an organizer so I should know. I do know. That bit of aggrandizement by Grosof is not too surprising, and fits with the proclamation.)
Or perhaps, My Year of Rules. Though there are like two years scheduled. Yes, the W3C has decided to start up a Rules Working Group. Yours truenfalsely is on it, and shall attend the first face to face, though I surely have better things to be doing. And worse things which need doing.
I am not a Rules Believer, and I get annoyed at them. Rules are not magic (neither are description logics) and Rules (note the magic caps) have their problems (including that the term is too generic, glossing over tons of useful distinctions).
I gave a presentation of my position paper for the Rules workshop, and it went over very well. I don’t know that we’ll see much like what I advocated, but there is Respect For OWL built in to the charter.
(I only want Respect For OWL because I’ve invested a lot in it. OWL isn’t magic either! I do think it has some advantages, e.g., object/class centrism, classification & realization, expressiveness; but some of those those can be weaknesses too.)
As I contemplated the dreary task of writing an introduction , impelled by the steady dripping of email bearing hopes, dreams, and use cases, I thought of one of my favorite quotes from the Tractatus (6.4312):
Not only is there no guarantee of the temporal immortality of the human soul, that is to say of its eternal survival after death; but, in any case, this assumption completely fails to accomplish the purpose for which it has always been intended. Or is some riddle solved by my surviving forever? Is not this eternal life itself as much of a riddle as our present life?
It fits all too well.
Please remember to experience moral revulsion at torture. Advocates for torture are monsters; morally crippled and bereft of moral sense. Try to help them transcend their profound failure, but do not coddle or condone.
