- From: Luc Moreau <L.Moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
- Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:52:46 +0000
- To: Graham Klyne <graham.klyne@zoo.ox.ac.uk>
- CC: Stian Soiland-Reyes <soiland-reyes@cs.manchester.ac.uk>, Paolo Missier <Paolo.Missier@ncl.ac.uk>, "public-prov-wg@w3.org" <public-prov-wg@w3.org>
Hi Graham, Paolo, all Given this, and to allow us to progress on the document, can we, for now, remove the transitivity property, and add a note in the document, stating that the transitivity property is still under investigation? Cheers, Luc On 01/19/2012 09:27 AM, Graham Klyne wrote: > Hmmm... this is starting to feel to me like a philosophical rathole. > > I think we may be muddling things and roles, as maybe illustrated by > your: > > So similarly I would not like to conclude alternateOf(Bush, Obama) > > This feels like a replay of the old Fregian "Hesperus and Phosporus" > sense and reference discussion. > > All this complexity is leading me to a view that while transitivity of > alternativeOf may be appealing at some levels of intuition, it may > carry too many traps and, absent a compelling requirement, we'd be > better to leave it. > > Which I think is what Paolo is suggesting. > > #g > -- > > On 18/01/2012 08:55, Stian Soiland-Reyes wrote: >> 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. >> >> -- Professor Luc Moreau Electronics and Computer Science tel: +44 23 8059 4487 University of Southampton fax: +44 23 8059 2865 Southampton SO17 1BJ email: l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk United Kingdom http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~lavm
Received on Thursday, 19 January 2012 09:53:25 UTC