Re: Schema.org in RDF ...

On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 19:56 -0400, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
> On Jun 11, 2011, at 5:57 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2011-06-11 at 17:55 +0100, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> > [ . . . ]
> >>> http://schema.org/Person is not the same as foaf:Person; one is a 
> >>> class of documents, the other the class of people.
> >> 
> >> I don't think that's correct at all. http://schema.org/Person is the 
> >> class of people and is equivalent to foaf:Person. It's just that the 
> >> schema.org designers don't seem to care much about the distinction
> >> between information resources and angels and pinheads. This is the
> >> prevalent attitude outside of this mailing list and we should come
> >> to terms with this.
> > 
> > Furthermore, the kind of ambiguity that this creates is *inescapable* in
> > general, and we simply need to learn to deal with it.  As long as an
> > application does not attempt to assert that foaf:Person is
> > owl:disjointWith the class of documents, there is no problem.  It is
> > only a problem for those applications the *need* to distinguish between
> > foaf:Persons and document.  Furthermore, there is a *cost* in making
> > finer distinctions than needed.  For example, an ontology that models
> > the world as flat costs less to process and maintain than one that
> > models the world as round, even though it is obviously "wrong" in some
> > sense.  But modeling the world as flat is *better* for an application
> > that is merely computing driving directions, because it is simpler, even
> > though it would be totally inadequate for an aircraft application.
> > 
> > Resource ambiguity is not something that should be viewed as an
> > absolute.  Rather, it is *relative* to a particular application: a URI
> > that is completely unambiguous to one application may be ambiguous to
> > another application that requires finer distinctions.
> 
> David, as you know, it is trivial to distinguish in representation the
> difference between an information object and a person. 

Correct.  And that distinction is important to some apps and not to
others.

> I don't understand why you keep repeating this misinformation. 

Huh???  That's a rather rude accusation.  What misinformation do you
mean?  Please be more specific. 

Ambiguity of reference is an inescapable fact of life that has been well
established in philosophy.  This fact may be unpalatable, but we cannot
do anything about it, so we *need* to learn to live with it.



-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Sunday, 12 June 2011 04:21:05 UTC