Skywritings Comments

Stevan Harnad: Skywriting (c. 1987)

amsciforum@gmail.com (Stevan Harnad) — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 04:23:39 +0000

You're right on all your points: Authors won't provide OA to save universities money; but they will provide OA if it is shown to be in their interest (increased impact for their work) and it is mandated by their institutions and funders. And of course the way to do it is to self-archive (Green OA) not to pay to publish in an OA journal (Gold OA).

Sukanta: Skywriting (c. 1987)

filippo.piras@gmail.com (Sukanta) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:30:45 +0100

Glad I could be thought-provoking! To your earlier point, incentives are the key here, and as far as I can tell, there are few reasons for an author TO self-archive or seek publication in an OA journal. This is the same problem as with most public goods (like recycling) wherein the potential participant is largely indifferent to contributing to the good (it doesn't take much effort to throw a can in a recycling bin or self-archive a pre-print) but can see only minimal impact from abstaining (my newspapers are still made from 100% post-consumer product and there are still lots of freely-available journal articles regardless of what I do). What "other than idealism" would compel the author to publish OA? What may compound the issue in the case of OA is that most authors belong to institutions that already have access to toll journals. While they understand that there is a cost for those journals, they are, for the most part, disconnected from the purchasing decision and ignorant of the (often extremely high) price. Employees will waste paper at an office even though they know paper costs their employer money that might otherwise go to better benefits or increased wages because the perceived cost is so low and the bearer of the cost (as determined by who makes the purchase) is not themselves. The perceived benefit of contributing to OA is low since the institution will still spend the same on toll journals in the short run regardless of the decision of the author and since the author and his or her colleagues will have access to that article in the short run, OA or not. Publishing OA has clear long-term benefits, but people are notoriously bad at acting in their long-term best interests. We eat poorly, smoke cigarettes, invest in costly fad mutual funds, and borrow more than we can afford. This is why regulations like cigarette taxes are more effective than warning labels at to curbing bad behaviors: the near-term costs are obvious. This is the same reason that OA mandates are so important at this stage. Even if there's no penalty for noncompliance, there is a psychological cost to breaking the mandate, so most people comply. In my opinion, authors would also respond to a visible near-term benefit to publish OA. Show them a product that makes their lives better (a larger audience what will cite them more; faster, easier, cheaper publication; a higher value-add and more transparent peer-review process; more prestige to show foundations) and they'll change their habits.In short, authors don't self-archive / don't publish in OA journals because they don't realize they need it (yet).

Vladimir Boyko: The Syntactic Web

success@seotop.in.ua (Vladimir Boyko) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:10:12 +0100

Steven, "The "semantic web" will never be semantic, because neither are its symbols grounded (for that, the web would have to be an autonomous robot), nor does the web feel." - I absolutely agree with you.

Nigel: The Syntactic Web

nigelbiggs2007@hotmail.com (Nigel) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 15:55:04 +0100

Quite interesting. Some Semantic Web authors conceive it as a hierarchy of "semantic interpretations" (a meta-ontology provides "semantics" to the bottom ontologies). In this particular tree, the top structure would be -as you mention- merely syntactic (and its semantic interpretation is provided by humans). I think this happens all through computing (UML schemas giving semantics to objects, database schemas to registers, etc.) but also, I believe, in human cognition (where consciousness could be defined as recognizing oneself as a semantic interpreter). This could be seen as an "unlimited semiosis" (after Eco). In this view -maybe I am completely wrong-, humans have also at their top level mere syntactic structures (i.e. brain physiology, Chomsky) whose semantic interpretation is reality itself ("sensorimotor capacity," as you put it). One question would be: would machines ever be intelligent to us providing that humans give their top semantic interpretation?
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This is not -I think- an absolute problem (as Searle believes) since we humans also operate with nothing more than syntax (of a higher level) and there are many upper levels (molecules, DNA) that provide syntax for reality (matter) itself.

Ark: The Cognitive Killer-App

osfer04@yahoo.com (Ark) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 22:10:36 +0100

I agree in a lot of what you wrote there, though KK is a very interesting writer. But you have to understand what writers do (and some philosophers too) they always use metaphors, and metaphores are very dangerous when we are trying to describe a complex subjetc. This is why we have to interpret what he wrote, and I think he misused the term "brain", as a whole complex mechanism, with some of its functions (such as memory, cognitive control, etc).

I think your blog it is a great idea for introducing people into the field of cognitive science. I am already in and still come here...

Stevan Harnad: The Syntactic Web

(Stevan Harnad) — Tue, 09 May 2006 12:59:30 +0100

STEVAN HARNAD: As long as the semantic interpretations are being done by external human interpreters, the semantics is ungrounded. But autonomous sensorimotor grounding is not yet meaning either: it's just grounding. For meaning you need grounding as well as feeling -- i.e., there is something it feels like to mean X. Otherwise X is merely a grounded symbol (i.e., grounded syntax).

(Note that this is merely a phenomenological requirement, not a functional one. Feeling is functionally superfluous, hence there is no functional explanation of why we are not all just grounded, insentient robots. But we're not. And that's the mind/body problem...)

The "semantic web" will never be semantic, because neither are its symbols grounded (for that, the web would have to be an autonomous robot), nor does the web feel.

Antar: The Syntactic Web

antar832@wanadoo.es (Antar) — Tue, 09 May 2006 09:05:34 +0100

Quite interesting. Some Semantic Web authors conceive it as a hierarchy of "semantic interpretations" (a meta-ontology provides "semantics" to the bottom ontologies). In this particular tree, the top structure would be -as you mention- merely syntactic (and its semantic interpretation is provided by humans). I think this happens all through computing (UML schemas giving semantics to objects, database schemas to registers, etc.) but also, I believe, in human cognition (where consciousness could be defined as recognizing oneself as a semantic interpreter). This could be seen as an "unlimited semiosis" (after Eco). In this view -maybe I am completely wrong-, humans have also at their top level mere syntactic structures (i.e. brain physiology, Chomsky) whose semantic interpretation is reality itself ("sensorimotor capacity," as you put it). One question would be: would machines ever be intelligent to us providing that humans give their top semantic interpretation? This is not -I think- an absolute problem (as Searle believes) since we humans also operate with nothing more than syntax (of a higher level) and there are many upper levels (molecules, DNA) that provide syntax for reality (matter) itself.