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[ontolog-forum] [Fwd: Re: {Disarmed} Re: OWL and lack of identifiers]

To: Ontolog Forum <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Waclaw Kusnierczyk <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:38:43 +0200
Message-id: <46235233.6070901@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Pat Hayes wrote:
>> Re: Peter F Brown's post (Sat, 14 Apr 2007 09:35:14)
>>
>> Peter writes:
>>
>> "
>> The spec is clear, yesŠ. but an object is not the same thing as the
>> address of the object ­ (according to the RFC, I *am* my address): the
>> object needs identity as much as the address of it does. That is where I
>> feel this axiom of the W3C falls downŠ
>> "
>>
>> Clearly there is a problem here.  But we should be careful to
>> distinguish confusedly designed frameworks from confused documentation
>> of well-designed ones.
>>
>> While RDF specifications, for example, are relatively clear and sound,
>> the RDF primer provides an abundance of examples such as:
>>
>> ex:index.html  exterms:creation-date  "August 16, 1999" .
>> ex:index.html  dc:language            "en" .
>>
>> supposed to state that "August 16, 1999" is the creation date of a page
>> and "en" is he language of a page, while both are literal strings and
>> *not* identifiers for a date and a language, respectively.
> 
> What??  Why should a string not be an identifier? In fact, it seems to 
> me that *all* identifiers are strings. And the second example uses a 
> language tag which is taken from an Internet standard for language 
> tagging: what could be a better example of an agreed identifier? Why is 
> this confused?    (01)

Hold on.  It is not whether something is a string or not which counts,
but how it is to be interpreted.  Of course, "August 16" can be an
identifier for anything you may wish.  But it is a string, not a date.
But as the object of a triple, "August 16" is a literal, not a URI, and
in RDF, a literal is (supposed to be) self-referential.  Thus, the
denotation of "August 16" is "August 16", not a date.  Thus,    (02)

<u1> <u2> "August 16"    (03)

effectively means that the denotation of u1 is in the denotation of
u2-relation with "August 16" (the string), not with a date.    (04)

> 
>>   But from
>> this apparently confused example one should not infer that RDF itself is
>> confused (in this respect).
>>
>> (This is not to say that RDF is not confused.)
> 
> One can make many valid criticisms of RDF, but being confused isn't one 
> of them.    (05)

I did not say that RDF was confused either.  I just said I hadn't said
it were.    (06)

vQ    (07)

> 
> Pat
> 
>>
>>
>> Wacek
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Wacek Kusnierczyk
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>> Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
>> Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
>> Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
>> 7027 Trondheim
>> Norway
>>
>> tel.   0047 73591875
>> fax    0047 73594466
>> ------------------------------------------------------
>>
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> 
>     (08)

-- 
Wacek Kusnierczyk    (09)

------------------------------------------------------
Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
7027 Trondheim
Norway    (010)

tel.   0047 73591875
fax    0047 73594466
------------------------------------------------------    (011)


-- 
Wacek Kusnierczyk    (012)

------------------------------------------------------
Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
7027 Trondheim
Norway    (013)

tel.   0047 73591875
fax    0047 73594466
------------------------------------------------------    (014)

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