rdf-star#121 moots "Re: drop referentially opaque semantics in embedded triples"

good evening;

once a decision is reached on how to compare rdf-star triples[1], will that determination not render the issues concerning referential behaviour moot?


without regard to whether sameness is to be governed by term identity or value equality, in either case, the proposed resolution reads as if the relation is to be determined free of context.
on those terms, according to the sense of "referential transparency" which i would think carries over from programming language semantics[2] - and as such, would be one which i would chose to govern my implementation efforts, the embedded triples are referentially transparent.

the longer i have witnessed these discussions, the more they have confounded me.
during the 14.5.2021 call, in particular, where notions which had been discussed in other contexts in relation to n3 were introduced into the discussion, ostensibly in support of the "referential opacity" imperative, i was most confused, as my (mis?)understanding of the n3 situation - from having read the arndt-van-woensel and and berners-lee expositions [3,4], had been the opposite.

so i re-read arndt [3], again.
as it were, i am left still with the conclusion that, despite the rhetoric, the substance of the argument is that the expressions - in their case the n3 formulae and in the rdf-star case the embedded triples, are necessarily referentially transparent.
were that not the case, much of their argument would not be necessary and other aspects could not succeed.
what [3] describes is various ways to construct interpretation contexts and their consequential semantics.
in all cases, the formulae themselves are transparent: they, themselves, always refer respectively to the same thing.

from which perspective, the discussions related to rdf star can never resolve until they shift from the semantics of the triple - which the resolution to #121 will specify, to that of interpretation context(s).
the current approach - to argue about the one as a surrogate for the other, has yet to succeed.

best regards, from berlin,
- - -
[1] : https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star/issues/121
[2] : https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=The+Scott-Strachey+Approach+to+Programming+Language+Theory
[3] : http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2438/paper6.pdf
[4] : https://arxiv.org/pdf/0711.1533.pdf

Received on Saturday, 15 May 2021 21:41:30 UTC