Re: RDF Semantics - Identify vs. Denote distinction is not helpful

I have a few minor wording changes - remove stuff that might be considered
to be condescending, remove first-person constructs - resulting in:


The working group does not propose to make any changes to the documents in
response to your comment.

The role of the RDF semantics is to give a precise account of the truth
conditions on RDF graphs (more generally, all constructs which use RDF
syntax.) These conditions involve, of course, the use of IRIs in RDF
triples, used there as denoting names. IRIs are, however, used widely
throughout the Web to informally "name" or "identify" entities in ways
which pre-date their use in RDF, and which are governed or influenced by
many other specifications (most notably HTTP and the various TAG
publications on IRI use and meaning) and in some cases simply by accepted
practices and conventions used in various Web applications or by
communities of use. Their use in RDF as referring names often conforms to
these widespread practices and conventions which are external to RDF, but
not always. In some cases, it is necessary to refer to these 'external'
mappings in order to properly define the intended meanings of RDF
constructs themselves. In the current semantics document, for example, it
is appealed to in section 7 when describing the semantics of datatype IRIs
used in typed literals.

The "identifies" terminology is widely use in pre-RDF Web standards and
recommendations as a general term for these various kinds of 'meanings' of
IRIs, motivating its use here.

You say that this dichotomy (between identify and refer) "defeats the
purpose of interpretations".  RDF interpretations are a formal device for
capturing the way that IRIs refer when they are used in RDF triples and
graphs, so they need the terminology for this particular formal
relationship.  In contrast, the "identify" terminology acknowledges that
there are other ways that IRIs can be attached to things, defined and
specified independently from RDF. Even if the world were so perfectly
arranged that all these uses of IRIs agreed harmoniously in every case
(this is not always true, but even if it were), it is still necessary to
make the distinction, so that the RDF uses can be stated to agree with the
pre-RDF usage without circularity,  as is done in section 7 of the
semantics document. Indeed, the terminology to which you object was
introduced in part so as to make it possible to state the datatype
semantics in section 7 clearly and with sufficient precision.

For these reasons, the working group intends to keep the terminological
distinction between "identifies" and "denotes" introduced in section 4.

Please reply to public-rdf-comments@w3.org indicating whether this message
responds adequately to your comment.



peter



On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 12:33 AM, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:

> DRAFT of a letter responding to David Booth re. Issue 145. I will send
> this as an official response unless anyone objects in the next 24 hours.
>
> -----------------------
>
>
> David, greetings. This is a response to your email, copied below, which
> was recorded as issue 145 by the RDF WG [1].
>
> We do not propose to make any changes to the documents in response to your
> comment, for reasons which I will explain.
>
> The role of the RDF semantics is to give a precise account of the truth
> conditions on RDF graphs (more generally, all constructs which use RDF
> syntax.) These conditions involve, of course, the use of IRIs in RDF
> triples, used there as denoting names. IRIs are, however, used widely
> throughout the Web to informally "name" or "identify" entities in ways
> which pre-date their use in RDF, and which are governed or influenced by
> many other specifications (most notably HTTP and the various TAG
> publications on IRI use and meaning) and in some cases simply by accepted
> practices and conventions used in various Web applications or by
> communities of use. Their use in RDF as referring names often conforms to
> these widespread practices and conventions which are external to RDF, but
> not always. In some cases, it is necessary to refer to these 'external'
> mappings in order to properly define the intended meanings of RDF
> constructs themselves. In the current semantics document, for example, it
> is appealed to in section 7 when describing the semantics of datatype IRIs
> used in typed literals.
>
> The "identifies" terminology is widely use in pre-RDF Web standards and
> recommendations as a general term for these various kinds of 'meanings' of
> IRIs, motivating its use here.
>
> You say that this dichotomy (between identify and refer) "defeats the
> purpose of interpretations". We disagree. RDF interpretations are a formal
> device for capturing the way that IRIs refer when they are used in RDF
> triples and graphs. The "identify" terminology acknowledges that there are
> other ways that IRIs can be attached to things, defined and specified
> independently from RDF. Even if the world were so perfectly arranged that
> all these uses of IRIs agreed harmoniously in every case (this is not
> always true, but even if it were), it is still necessary to make the
> distinction, so that the RDF uses can be stated to agree with the pre-RDF
> usage without circularity,  as we do in section 7 of the semantics
> document. Indeed, the terminology to which you object was introduced in
> order to make it possible to state the datatype semantics in section 7
> clearly and with sufficient precision.
>
> For these reasons, we intend to keep the terminological distinction
> between "identifies" and "denotes" introduced in section 4.
>
> Please reply to public-rdf-comments@w3.org indicating whether this
> message responds adequately to your comment.
>
> Pat Hayes (for the RDF WG)
>
> [1] https://www.w3.org/2011/rdf-wg/track/issues/145
>
>
> On Oct 1, 2013, at 8:30 PM, David Booth wrote:
>
> > First off, I apologize for the lateness of these comments and how
> hastily they are written.  Given that people who are not members of the RDF
> working group cannot subscribe to the RDF mailing list -- even in read-only
> mode -- and there was no mention of it on the rdf-comments list (to which
> non-members can subscribe), and no mention of it in the editor's draft
> documents that i've been reading (in order to read the most up-to-date
> text), I did not realize that these documents were in Last Call.  Sorry!
> I'll try to break my comments up into separately addressable issues.  Here
> is the first.
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
>
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