During this talk I will present some ongoing and unfinished
research. I will briefly investigate the notion of semantic autonomy,
i.e. lack of centralized semantics, but presence of a type of semantic
coherence (formalised as a type of consistency). The analysis will
focus on rather inexpressive ontologies (similar to taxonomies) and
investigate the case where they and the mappings between them are
evolving.
The
motivating practical example that could benefit from this theoretical
framework is Distributed Knowledge Management (DKM). I will briefly
mention the organisational benefits of a DKM system that has semantic
autonomy. Selected related research will be mentioned, and some of it
originates from the field of the Semantic Web.
A
layered framework will be presented, that includes epistemological
assumptions and a logical formalization and a system that integrates
very simple reasoning with interaction. Finally, the question will be
asked if a system built using this framework scales, and I will touch
the issue of preliminary experimental results.