Re: An intuition pump

Le mercredi, 24 sep 2003, à 10:23 America/Montreal, Peter F. 
Patel-Schneider a écrit :
>> no. no, no - this is very different -- in English the string "person"
>> may have many definitions.  On the web the string
>> "http://www.../foo#person" may be said to refer to many concepts, but
>> the label is unambiguous
>
> I don't view it this way at all.  My view is that the English word
> ``person'' unambiguously labels the word ``person'', just as
> "http://www.../foo#person" unambiguously labels
> "http://www.../foo#person".

Do you mean that the URI is ***as ambiguous as the english word*** in 
terms of meaning?

Should I interpret your sentence	""" My view is that the 
***ambiguous*** English word ``person'' unambiguously labels the word 
``person'' """

still from Wordnet
http://www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn1.7.1?stage=1&word=person

1.  person, individual, someone, somebody, mortal, human, soul -- (a 
human being; "there was too much for one person to do")
  2.  person -- (a person's body (usually including their clothing); "a 
weapon was hidden on his person")
  3.  person -- (a grammatical category of pronouns and verb forms; 
"stop talking about yourself in the third person")

At least, we can identify two meanings here: the biological thing and 
the grammatical rule.
But you can also and sticking to english, imagine that:
	Some people thing that some other people are not persons (example in 
the history with slavery, or women history)

> - think of it as if in English I was to write
>>   "No(1), No(1), No(1), this(17) is(42) very(6) different(7)"
>> where each of the subscripts refers to a specific definition on a
>> specific page of a specific dictionary.
>
> And how is this different from
>
>     http://...#peter (http://xmlns.org/foaf) rdf:type 
> (http://...rdf...)
>     http://www.../foo#person (http://www.../foo).

Not only in this case the word but the word + its definition. And we 
know that definitions change in time too.

one of the definition of Earth is
	1.  Earth, world, globe -- (the 3rd planet from the sun; the planet on 
which we live; "the Earth moves around the sun"; "he sailed around the 
world")

A few centuries ago it was not a globe, but a flat thing and it was not 
the 3rd planet, it was the centre of Universe.


> The situations are even closer than this.  Pointers to dictionary 
> entries
> don't provide all the meaning of a word, nor do (single) Semantic Web
> documents provide all the meaning of a URI reference.

	Agreed.

>> yes, but it would require a new URI if we then wanted to name one of
>> these new concepts.
>
> Why?  Why would (should) a new URI be required?  Why can't (shouldn't) 
> I
> ``say anything about anything''?

	Because of social implications and interactions ? Will you agree if 
the meaning of the law (the references in the code) were fluctuating 
all the time?



--
Karl Dubost - http://www.w3.org/People/karl/
W3C Conformance Manager
*** Be Strict To Be Cool ***

Received on Wednesday, 24 September 2003 11:13:05 UTC