Re: Datatyping

Patrick Stickler wrote:

>I think that we can get the MT to say just about anything
>we want. I'll leave it to Pat and others to comment more about
>that.
>
>I'm working under the assumption that terms in RDF statements
>are intended in some way to reflect the world (not components
>of structured markup) and that assertions such as those made by 
>rdfs:range are saying something about the thing in the world 
>denoted by the object of the property.
>
If the lexical thing "10" denotes itself, then it *is* the a thing in 
the world of our interpertation.  

>If the object of the property has fixed meaning, then clearly
>there is a fundamental conflict in the core machinery.
>
Well it is not at all clear to me.

>It is true that one way to "punt" on the whole issue is to
>say that inline literal nodes have no interpretation in RDF
>whatsoever and are simply semantic "wildcards" for applications
>to interpret as they like. I.e. they denote neither strings
>nor values. They denote nothing, mean nothing, and any assertions
>in RDF regarding their meaning are vacuous. They are just syntactic 
>shadows in the abstract graph and the RDF MT does not license
>any entailments whatsoever for statements containing them.
>
Well in my proposal,  they denote themselves - see graph [2].  The bit 
pattern "010001001010" is a fixed constant thing that shows up in any 
computer machinery exactly the same.  It is a fixed thing from the world 
that shows up in our computer's memory.   The middle ware then 
processess that and presents the application something.  In our case,  
XML specification is the middle ware. RDF should just pass the 
application what XML gives it, with no interpertation,  *as the thing 
itself*.   I don't call that punting, I call that allowing the computer 
to model reality as it actually is.  

[2] http://robustai.net/mentography/jennyAge10_2.gif

Please consider Charles Sanders Peirce's  semantic triangle ... drawn 
here by John Sowa [3].   The lexical thing (inline literal as you call 
it) which the computer sees in it's memory *is* the object and is also 
the signans.  Computer technology just has it wired that way.  You seem 
to want to put everyting up in the concept (what is in the cloud at the 
apex of the diagram) and make RDF applications unaware (and unable to 
reason about) the concrete sensible sign (see reference [4])  that shows 
up in it's physical memory.  

[3] http://robustai.net/mentography/yojo.gif
[4] 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0253209595/103-1348480-7175801
     from Handbook of Semiotics by Winfried Noth.  
     page 88.

... thanks for the dialogue.

Seth Russell
http://radio.weblogs.com/0113759/

Received on Saturday, 28 September 2002 11:47:17 UTC