- From: pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2001 14:37:15 -0500
- To: Aaron Swartz <aswartz@swartzfam.com>
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
>pat hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu> wrote:
>
> > The way to fix RDF is to admit that logical content requires the use
> > of some - maybe not many, but some - nontrivial syntactic
> > constructions, in particular the use of nested expressions and
> > quantifier scoping;
>
>Isn't this already available in RDF in one form or another?
No (Without (mis)using reification: see other recent messages on this
list for discussion.)
> > to abandon the idea that syntax is the same as,
> > or best coded using, reification;
>
>I don't believe anyone ever said syntax should be coded as reification.
That is the only mechanism available in RDF for doing so, and it has
been explicitly suggested by several RDF sources. Without it there is
no way to express anything in RDF other than a simple conjunction of
ground triples.
>Merely that reification had a precise meaning ("I'm not saying this -- I'm
>talking about it") and that it could be used to encode logical constructs
We must be at cross purposes. I am talking about (the syntax of)
logical constructs.
>without necessarily bringing them into RDF Core.
>
>Perhaps you could try hard to make it clear to those of us who are outside
>of the logic community's terminology?
>
> > W3 dream: a vision of a future where everything is on the Web and
> > everything has a single True Name which all beings will recognize. I
>
>No, of course not. As you say this is unlikely. While I sense that you are
>trolling, I feel it is worthwhile to respond. No one ever said things would
>have a One True Name. Instead, we merely have a system for giving all
>objects names
All objects? There are objects which have no name in any human
language. Subatomic particules and almost all stars have no names and
never will have. Even at a more mundane level, the world is full of
entities which have no names. My toenail clippings, for example, were
never christened.
Sorry if I am trolling (not sure what that means), but I am deadly
serious.Talking about a 'system for giving all objects names' is so
wonderfully, spectacularly, silly, that it strongly suggests that
whoever says it does not know what they are saying. It is right up
there at the Monty Python level. If I had any idea what it was that
you were intending to say, I would assume that was what you meant:
but I really do not know what you do mean.
> in a relatively distributed and at times decentralized manner.
>URIs allow people to give things names,
No; NAMES allow people to give things names. Do you seriously think
that people didn't give things names before the Web came along?
>and often provide ways to find out
>what they mean.
URL's provide a way to find out where some bytes are located. After
that, as far as I can see we are all on our own. None of this
provides a way to find out what anything MEANS, nor indeed could it
possibly do so.
Pat Hayes
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Received on Friday, 6 April 2001 15:35:15 UTC