Re: How does RDF/OWL formalism relate to meanings?

Dan Brickley wrote:

> 
> Yes, I like this direction. We should be careful also to allow the 
> possibility that the reference-by-description can be done with 
> Literal-valued properties, as well as URI-valued properties (and for
> that matter, bNode-valued properties, if such scenarios can plausibly be
> concocted). Literal-valued properties are very useful for this, I think.
> <c:Company c:nasdaqCode="MSFT" c:name="Microsoft"/> and suchlike can be
> useful packets of information, without using URIs for anything beyond
> the terms in the ontology. 
> 
> So I would change ending of your last sentence towards something like:
> "...are suitably related to resources that are themselves 
> unambiguously identified through appropriate descriptions or URIs"
> (too wordy to actually use, but in that vein ok?)
> 
> 
>>maybe with a disclaimer about this being relatively new and not fully 
>>explored technology yet, or some such. 

There is also the interesting matter of what you might call probablistic 
identification by description.  Here's what I mean -

"A man who has brown hair" does not serve identify an individual 
because too many people have brown hair, but

"A man who has brown hair and whose first name is "John" and who lives 
in the southern part of Cairo, IL, and who is married to a woman named 
"Betty" amd who drives a brown Taurus  and who is 6 ft. tall" - well, 
this is getting pretty close to inverseFunctional when you take it all 
together.

Cheers,

Tom P

Received on Saturday, 10 April 2004 01:13:48 UTC