W3C home > Mailing lists > Public > public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org > March 2009

Re: blog: semantic dissonance in uniprot

From: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:13:41 +0000
Message-Id: <F1057DD0-B62A-49E4-8BE7-A0903731961E@cs.man.ac.uk>
To: W3C HCLSIG hcls <public-semweb-lifesci@w3.org>
On 24 Mar 2009, at 13:01, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
[snip]
> Bijan,
>
> Is "Identity" important or not? That's the question here.

But it's not a well-defined question.

But let me make a well-defined version (not meant to capture your  
question, but just to be clear example). In XSD, 1.0^^xsd:double is  
not identical (is numerically distinct from) 1.0^^xsd:decimal. For  
counting successors, identity is critical. For numeric equality (for  
a given equality theory) and arithmetic (under that theory) it isn't.

> Is granularity important or not? A variation of the statement above.

I don't see how that is a variation of any variant of the question  
above.

> 303s are just about "Identity" at the datum level within the  
> context of the Web when using a particular form of HTTP based URI  
> scheme (the Slash based URI).

I don't understand that at all.

> Should we be able to reference a datum and de-reference a  
> representation of its description via the Web?

Sometimes? Maybe? I don't know? I'm close to not caring? I don't see  
the big impact on engineering, frankly, at a substantial level. It  
would depend on the context, the notion of datum, etc. etc.

Again, I prefer operational descriptions here. I'm being perfectly  
honest and as charitable as I know how when I say I have no idea what  
the "datum level within the context of the Web" *is*. Or, actually,  
why I should care about it when building an ontology.

And I am not naive in these matters.

Cheers,
Bijan.
Received on Tuesday, 24 March 2009 14:10:31 GMT

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0+W3C-0.50 : Tuesday, 24 March 2009 14:10:31 GMT