Re: complementOf -> viewOf: proposed text

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 18:01, Graham Klyne <GK@ninebynine.org> wrote:
>> alternateOf(paoloInCafe, customerOnRedChair)
>> alternateOf(stianInCafe, customerOnRedChair)
> Hmmm... I'm not sure these actually match my intuition about alternateOf;
> i.e. that they're both versions of some real-world thing.  What real-worlkd
> thing would that be?

It would be something like the atoms of the living person who sits
within the confines of the red chair. Perhaps it is more a case of
specialization than alternateOf in this case.  (and so a strong case
for why specializationOf is not a subproperty of alternateOf)

But this thing with the atoms is not true. A customer is not a set of
atoms. A cafe *customer* is a concept which depends on the
interactions with the cafe. While Paolo was in the cafe, he sat in the
red chair and ordered coffee - and so for a period (the full lifetime
of paoloInCafe) he also became customerOnRedChair.


This would probably be fine then:

specializationOf(paoloInCafe, customerOnRedChair)
specializationOf(paoloInCafe, paolo)

-->
alternateOf(paolo, customerOnRedChair)

which makes sense - they are both talking about the same thing.



but if we also have the equivalent assertions about Stian - but the
old characterisation interval of paoloInCafe never overlaps that of
stianInCafe - then I feel they should *not* be alternateOf each other,
because they did not exist at the same time.

So similarly I would not like to conclude alternateOf(Bush, Obama)

.. because if we do, then as far as I can tell there is not much value
in alternateOf() any more.



And that is perhaps my point. We can't have a single hierarchical
structure organizing everything that exists (and talk about "the same
real world thing"), because we include in "exists" various abstract
concepts and simplifications that are not easily mappable to our
understanding of the physical world.

I am sure we can agree that this email message can be characterised by
an entity. However you can't easily map that entity to electrons on
the wire or photons coming out of the screen - although we are of
course aware that the message would not exists without those.


-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester

Received on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 08:56:07 UTC