RE: How does RDF/OWL formalism relate to meanings?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-sw-meaning-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-sw-meaning-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 12:20 AM
> To: Dan Connolly
> Cc: public-sw-meaning@w3c.org
> Subject: Re: How does RDF/OWL formalism relate to meanings?
> 
> 
> 
> >I think I get it now...
> >
> >On Fri, 2004-04-09 at 16:19, Pat Hayes wrote:
> >[...]
> >>
> >>  HttpRange-14 is obviously relevant to this issue, but it doenst
> >>  resolve it. OK, suppose URIs can indeed denote real red cars and
> >>  imaginary white whales. That resolves httpRange14.  Now, 
> how does the
> >>  owner of a URI *say* that his URI shall be the name of 
> *particular*
> >>  red car or white whale?
> >>
> >>  BTW, it would be perfectly fine to say that there was no 
> general way
> >>  to do this, and that you just have to do your best to describe the
> >>  things as well as you can.
> >
> >OK, I suppose we can agree to that.
> >
> >>   At least then we would know where we stand. BUt then 
> y'all ought to
> >>  take out all that mantra about resources being uniquely 
> identified by
> >>  URIs.
> >
> >We have made some progress in that direction.
> 
> Great.  (Really !)
> 
> >I just scanned
> >the document, and nowhere does it say "each URI denotes a unique
> >resource"... at least not using the word "unique". I'll have
> >to re-read your message to public-webarch-comments, where
> >you excerpt lots of text that bothers you.
> >
> >I'm only aware of 1 at this point:
> >We still have "A URI must be assigned to a resource in order 
> for agents
> >to be able to refer to the resource" which overstates the case since
> >you can refer to things using owl:InverseFunctionalProperty 
> expressions
> >but without giving them URIs.
> >
> 

In the RDF Semantics Recomendation it states:

"1.2 URI references, Resources and Literals.
This document does not take any position on the way that URI references 
may be composed from other expressions, e.g. from relative URIs or 
QNames; the semantics simply assumes that such lexical issues have been 
resolved in some way that is globally coherent, so that a single URI 
reference can be taken to have the same meaning wherever it occurs."
- http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/#urisandlit

What is the effect of the language, "...so that a single URI
reference can be taken to have the same meaning wherever it occurs."?
How important is this assumption to RDF semantics?

John Black