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Re: [ontolog-forum] OWL and lack of identifiers

To: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>, Ontolog Forum <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Waclaw Kusnierczyk <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 17:17:12 +0200
Message-id: <46239378.5080102@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Pat Hayes wrote:
>>
>>>> , but we could say that u1 is the subject of the triple,
>>>> etc., but then we need to be clear in distinguishing the triple as an
>>>> expression and the proposition it expresses, of which u1 is not the
>>>> subject.)
>>>
>>> Right. The notion of proposition does not really get used in RDF. 
>>> Although if you check the recommended semantics for reified triples, 
>>> the reification is interpreted as a proposition rather than a 
>>> syntactic expression.
>>
>> In the docs, you differentiate between a triple (in the abstract) and 
>> a particular realization of it, in some physical document.  This is 
>> perhaps what you mean here, but this still does not seem to me to be 
>> the distinction between a proposition and an expression.
> 
> No, thats not what I meant. I was referring to the suggested truth 
> conditions for reified triples, in which the (take a deep breath) object 
> of the subject property is the referent of the subject URI of the 
> original triple, not the subject URI itself.
> ...    (01)

Still holding...  Yes, this is clear from the (suggested) semantics of 
the reification vocabulary.  But I were far from even mentioning 
reification.    (02)

> 
>>
>>>>
>>>> Note that an RDF(S) triple may have a literal rather than an identifier
>>>> as the object.  Using this form, you can explicitly connect a URI to
>>>> another URI, so that the latter is the referent of the former.  
>>>> Although
>>>> the core RDF(S) vocabulary does not provide you with a URI for the
>>>> relation of identity, there is nothing in the way to create one.
>>>
>>> But this relation isn't identity, its more like 'refers to' (actually 
>>> its inverse). BUt I agree, one can add this property. It can't be 
>>> described in OWL or even in normal FOL, so one needs some external 
>>> machinery or extension in any case.
>>
>> No, you're wrong here.  Since the URI in the subject position is 
>> treated as a reference and not as an entity, you can't make a 
>> statement such as 'u1 denotes u2'.
> 
> You can if you have a name for u1. Of course you cannot use the URI to 
> name itself, but you had already noted that point (on which we agree, of 
> course).     (03)

What I was saying is that you the triple    (04)

u1 u2 u3    (05)

does not *necessarily* say anything about the URI u1;  it may, though, 
if u1 is self-referential (and why couldn't it be?)  That is, there is 
nothing in the RDF semantics that would forbid a URI to name itself.    (06)

The *form* of the statement in RDF would be a triple like
> 
> u3 denotes u2 .
> 
> where 'u3' is the URI used to refer to the URI 'u1'. My point - and I 
> think we are in violent agreement here - is that the relationship of 
> naming, which has to hold between u3 and u1 in order for this to be any 
> use, is something outside the RDF model. But this should not be 
> surprising: RDF is very simple, and even its own reification vocabulary 
> needs some kind of external machinery to connect the subject URI of the 
> reification graph to the original triple which the reification is 
> supposed to describe.
> 
>>  You need to make a statement such as 'u1 is u2', where the first URI 
>> is dereferenced, and the other is not
> 
> You can't do it that way (in legal RDF) as the RDF spec requires all 
> URIs to be dereferenced.     (07)

I do can, since a URI is just a sequence of characters organized 
according to specific syntactic rules (this is a syntactically modified 
but semantically rather accurate definition of URI).  Thus, the 
following triple has the effect of asserting that a URI is self-referential:    (08)

protocol://domain/some-name protocol://domain/identity-relation 
"protocol://domain/some-name"    (09)

where "protocol://domain/some-name" is a string literal which happens to 
be a valid URI, the same as used in the subject (of the triple).  Thus, 
the referent of the URI protocol://domain/some-name is in the relation 
of identity (say) with the string enclosed in double quotes (which do 
not belong to the string!) -- that is the URI denotes itself.    (010)

There is no quotation in RDF. Perhaps we should
> have put it in, but its too late now. In fact, reification seems to have 
> died and not be widely mourned, so maybe this omission is not in fact of 
> great importance.    (011)

There is no quotation, but since URIs are strings, a string 
indiscernible from a URI is in effect identical with the URI.    (012)

But even if this fails, for some reason, you can use a URI to refer to 
itself by just intending to do so, as you would intend to use a URI to 
denote a dog, say.    (013)

vQ    (014)

> 
> Pat
> 
>> , which amounts to say that the referent of u1 *is* (and *not* refers 
>> to) u2 (and *not* the referent of u2).
>>
>> You can of course use in the predicate position a URI that denotes the 
>> relation of reference, but then 'u1 refers to u2' does not mean that 
>> u1 is a URI used to refer to u2, but rather that u1 refers to 
>> something (presumably a URI) that refers to u2.
>>
>>
>> vQ
>>
>>>
>>> Pat Hayes
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Consider this triple:
>>>>
>>>> <u1> <u2> u1^<uri>
>>>>
>>>> where <uri> is a URI for the xml-schema URI datatype.
>>>>
>>>> What the triple says is that the referent of u1 is in the relation
>>>> identified by u2 with the uri u1 (not with the referent of u1!).
>>>> If u2 identifies the relation of identity, then the triple effectively
>>>> asserts that u1 is self-referential, and any other triple with u1 as 
>>>> the
>>>> subject (the subject of the triple) is an assertion about u1 itself (u1
>>>> as the subject of the proposition).
>>>>
>>>> I find this far from unclear or confused;  the confusion arises, as far
>>>> as I can see, from improper interpretation of the syntax and semantics
>>>> of RDF(S).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Conclusion:  if you want to make assertions about URIs rather than 
>>>> about
>>>> their referents, use URIs that identify your URIs.
>>>>
>>>> (The original post was about OWL and URLs, but I hope that we can agree
>>>> that URLs are specialized URIs, and that OWL is an extension of RDF.)
>>>>
>>>> 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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>>>
>>>
>>
>> -- 
>> 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
>> ------------------------------------------------------
> 
>     (015)

-- 
Wacek Kusnierczyk    (016)

------------------------------------------------------
Department of Information and Computer Science (IDI)
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
Sem Saelandsv. 7-9
7027 Trondheim
Norway    (017)

tel.   0047 73591875
fax    0047 73594466
------------------------------------------------------    (018)

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