- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 09:25:59 -0500
- To: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
- Cc: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>, wangxiao@musc.edu, "Williams, Stuart (HP Labs, Bristol)" <skw@hp.com>, Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>, "www-tag@w3.org WG" <www-tag@w3.org>, Phil Archer <parcher@icra.org>
At 9:42 AM -0400 4/9/08, Alan Ruttenberg wrote: >On Apr 9, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Pat Hayes wrote: >>>I don't know what 'essential characteristics' are. Really. What >>>are the (erm...) characteristics of the 'essential >>>characteristics' of some [named type of] thing? Who gets to decide? >> >>I'm reading 'essential characteristics' as meaning, roughly, what >>in OntoClean are called 'rigid properties' and what are often >>called 'essential properties', meaning properties or aspects of a >>thing which it has necessarily, i.e. which if it didn't have those >>it would cease to be what it is. Among my essential >>characteristics, for example, is my being human; or if you prefer, >>mammalian. And although we have the word "human" in English, its >>impossible to convey the property of being human in a message. > >OK, this is helpful, with the caveat that rigid properties are not >absolute, but rather, an ontological choice. Many would disagree, but let that pass. > Formally they would depend on what range of possible worlds you allow. > >I've always had a bit of problem working through thinking of them, >though. How about this example from AWWW >>the resource is a periodically updated report on the weather in Oaxaca >> > >What are the rigid properties here, and how are they communicated? Well, for a report, I'd say that the rigid properties were its being a report, which is something analogous to its mime type, and the actual symbols (and maybe graphics) in the text of the report, ie enough information about them to reconstitute their appearance on a surface. Which is pretty much an html document with associated jpegs and so forth. Pat > >-Alan -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.flickr.com/pathayes/collections
Received on Wednesday, 9 April 2008 14:26:43 UTC