- From: RDF Working Group Issue Tracker <sysbot+tracker@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2013 10:36:44 +0000
- To: public-rdf-wg@w3.org
RDF-ISSUE-145: Identify vs. Denote distinction is not helpful [RDF Semantics] http://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/145 Raised by: Guus Schreiber On product: RDF Semantics Comment by David Booth: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-rdf-comments/2013Oct/0004.html https://dvcs.w3.org/hg/rdf/raw-file/default/rdf-mt/index.html In Section 4, The distinction between "identify" and "denote" does not seem helpful. I think it adds more confusion than clarity. AFAICT a key point of using the notion of interpretations is to allow IRIs to be mapped to entities in one's universe of discourse -- whatever real world entities one wishes to talk about. By distinguishing between "identify" and "denote" in essence *two* mappings are being created: an identifies-mapping and a denotes-mapping. This gives the impression that the identifies-mapping is the one that is used colloquially, but the denotes-mapping is the formal one addressed in the RDF Semantics. It seems to me that this dichotomy defeats the purpose of interpretations. Interpretations are supposed to allow us to connect the formal semantics to the real world universe of discourse that we care about -- not to some universe of irrelevant, fictional entities that exist only in the idealized world of the RDF Semantics. In reading this section, I also get the impression that the motivation for this distinction is to avoid quandaries cased by having an IRI that may ambiguously denote two different things. Defining two different notions of mapping from IRIs to resources is the *wrong* solution to that problem. There is no justification for preferentially choosing one of those mappings over the other. They can both perfectly well be denotes-mappings, but under different *interpretations*. (Remember: the same IRI can perfectly well map to *different* resources in different interpretations.) This already works perfectly under the existing RDF Semantics. In short, I think the definition of "identify" should be eliminated, as it adds confusion rather than helping. David
Received on Wednesday, 2 October 2013 10:36:45 UTC