Re: RDF Investigations

Hello Gregg,

my remarks:

-Classical logic is called classical for a reason

-There may be different ways to think about RDF abstract syntax but those
 other ways IMO will not provide additional value. Other useful logics, for 
 example many-valued logic, require additional syntactic elements.

-The RDF syntax is incomplete ? You cannot construct a contructive calculus
 for triples and graphs from the rules in the specification ? I don't believe
 this.

-RDF does not specify an inferential calculus ? The RDF semantics document 
 contains an inferential calculus for RDF and RDFS entailment and a proof 
 that they are correct and complete: http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/#rules

Regards,

Michael Brunnbauer

On Sun, Jun 23, 2013 at 11:49:17AM -0500, Gregg Reynolds wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> A couple of years ago I got the idea of finding alternatives to the
> official definition of RDF, especially the semantics.  I've always
> found the official docs less than crystal clear, and have always
> harbored the suspicion that the model-theoretic definition of RDF
> semantics offered in http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/ was unnecessary, or
> at least unnecessarily complicated.  Needless to say that is my own
> personal aesthetic judgment, but it did motivate my little project.
> 
> I guess the past two years have not been completely wasted on me; what
> was a somewhat vague intuition back then seems to have matured into a
> pretty clear idea of how RDF ought to be conceptualized and formally
> defined.  Clear to me, anyway; whether it is to others, and whether it
> is correct or not is a whole 'nother matter.
> 
> Since pursuing this idea will involve a lot of writing I won't pursue
> it here; instead I've described the the basic ideas in a blog post at
> http://blog.mobileink.com/.  The allusion to Wittgenstein, that great
> philosophical therapist, is entirely intentional.  You (or at least I)
> find out a lot of things when you analyze a concept very closely; if
> my analysis is not mistaken, there are some fundamental problems in
> the land of RDF.  For example, it is possible to show, among other
> things, that the concept of a graph is not essential to RDF; nor is
> the treatment of the Property node of a triple as an arrow or relation
> necessary; nor is the concrete semantics defined in the RDF Semantics
> document the only or even the best "theory" of RDF.  (Maybe this is
> all obvious to the cognoscenti, but insistence that RDF just is a
> graph is very common.) On the positive side, thinking about RDF as a
> mathematical domain (or domains), independent of RDF as a language,
> leads to a pretty substantial improvement in clarity; and since it
> requires a certain amount of creativity it's just fun.
> 
> The reason I'm posting this here is because I will need some help,
> especially from real mathematicians and logicians.  A category
> theorist, for example.  Not only to check my reasoning; my hope is
> that others interested in pursuing this line of thought might come up
> with yet other fresh ideas.
> 
> Plus, I've had a lot of fun thinking along those lines, and since a
> lot of people on this list spend a lot of time thinking about RDF
> (among other things), I thought they might find it interesting and fun
> as well.  The plan is to post a series of blog articles fleshing out
> the ideas in coming months, so if anybody would like to help or
> collaborate please let me know.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Gregg Reynolds

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