Re: [Proposal][SKOS-Core] skos:denotes

Leonard Will wrote:

>> Leonard Will said that thesaurus concepts, and thus presumably skos 
>> concepts, are never individuals but can be classes with one member.
> 
> I don't think I said that they can never be individuals, 

My apologies for the poor phrasing.

> and indeed if a 
> class is defined in such a way that it can never contain more than one 
> member (typically by specifying a unique proper name and/or further 
> identifying characteristics) then I don't see the distinction between an 
> individual and a "class-of-one" or the need for separate terms to 
> distinguish these.

The issue is that in OWL the notion of classes (including classes-of-one) 
and individuals are quite distinct and the difference does have 
implications for the inferences you are allowed to make. This skos:denotes* 
stuff seems to be attempting to bridge the thesaurus world and OWL world 
and so needs to try to mesh with expected practice at each end.

 From your earlier comments it seemed to me that linking a skos:Concept 
relating to one individual (e.g. identified by a proper name) to an 
owl:Class defined as the class containing just that OWL individual seemed 
the simplest way doing the mapping.

Dave

Received on Monday, 18 October 2004 12:51:14 UTC