Re: Selective Transparency of Claims

> On 11. Jan 2024, at 15:59, Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On 1/9/24 05:04, Niklas Lindström wrote:
>> In the now ongoing proposal [1], a triple itself, as an abstract
>> object, needs to be referentially opaque (like in the CG report), in
>> the sense that it is not known which interpreted meaning it has (it is
>> not *in* the graph).
>> With named triples this must also by default be the case.  This is
>> clearly so, since otherwise, if this:
>>     <x> | <s> <p> <o> .
>>     <y> | <s> <p> <o2> .
>>     <o> owl:sameAs <o2> .
>> would also imply:
>>     <x> owl:sameAs <y> .
>> then, obviously, anything stated about `<x>` is also stated about
>> `<y>`, and vice versa. Thus, claims cannot be transparent and remain
>> distinct under such entailment.
> 
> From https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star-wg/wiki/Triple%E2%80%90Edge-subgroup-proposals:
> An RDF-star simple interpretation I is a structure <IR, IP, IS, IL, IEXT, IT, IO> consisting of:
> A binary relation IO over IR x (IR x IP x IR), called the occurrence of a triple term.
> 
> As far as I can tell, IO is not restricted to be injective.
> So I don't see any reason for
>    <x> | <s> <p> <o> .
>    <y> | <s> <p> <o2> .
>    <o> owl:sameAs <o2> .
> to imply
>    <x> owl:sameAs <y> .

I hope Peter is right in his reading of the formal semantics. In my understanding the name should not be a function of the triple. The name itself provides identity. True, the two triples in the example have the same meaning, and still the names refer to different acts/events/instantiations/occurrences, which have different properties. Only that way can one differentiate between Alice and Bob saying the same thing from Alice and Bob saying the same thing at exactly the same time and place in unison (maybe as part of a chorus).

If a claim should be referred to via its syntactic form (ie as a form of quotation, referentially opaque) IMO remains a question of use case. As we have established in December 2023 SemanticsTF meetings, most use cases ask for referential transparency.

Thomas

Received on Thursday, 11 January 2024 15:19:53 UTC