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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-sw-meaning-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-sw-meaning-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
> Sent: Saturday, April 10, 2004 12:20 AM
> To: Dan Connolly
> Cc: public-sw-meaning@w3c.org
> Subject: Re: How does RDF/OWL formalism relate to meanings?
> 
> 
> 
> >I think I get it now...
> >
> >On Fri, 2004-04-09 at 16:19, Pat Hayes wrote:
> >[...]
> >>
> >>  HttpRange-14 is obviously relevant to this issue, but it doenst
> >>  resolve it. OK, suppose URIs can indeed denote real red cars and
> >>  imaginary white whales. That resolves httpRange14.  Now, 
> how does the
> >>  owner of a URI *say* that his URI shall be the name of 
> *particular*
> >>  red car or white whale?
> >>
> >>  BTW, it would be perfectly fine to say that there was no 
> general way
> >>  to do this, and that you just have to do your best to describe the
> >>  things as well as you can.
> >
> >OK, I suppose we can agree to that.
> >
> >>   At least then we would know where we stand. BUt then 
> y'all ought to
> >>  take out all that mantra about resources being uniquely 
> identified by
> >>  URIs.
> >
> >We have made some progress in that direction.
> 
> Great.  (Really !)
> 
> >I just scanned
> >the document, and nowhere does it say "each URI denotes a unique
> >resource"... at least not using the word "unique". I'll have
> >to re-read your message to public-webarch-comments, where
> >you excerpt lots of text that bothers you.
> >
> >I'm only aware of 1 at this point:
> >We still have "A URI must be assigned to a resource in order 
> for agents
> >to be able to refer to the resource" which overstates the case since
> >you can refer to things using owl:InverseFunctionalProperty 
> expressions
> >but without giving them URIs.
> >
> 

In the RDF Semantics Recomendation it states:

"1.2 URI references, Resources and Literals.
This document does not take any position on the way that URI references 
may be composed from other expressions, e.g. from relative URIs or 
QNames; the semantics simply assumes that such lexical issues have been 
resolved in some way that is globally coherent, so that a single URI 
reference can be taken to have the same meaning wherever it occurs."
- http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/#urisandlit

What is the effect of the language, "...so that a single URI
reference can be taken to have the same meaning wherever it occurs."?
How important is this assumption to RDF semantics?

John Black

Received on Sunday, 11 April 2004 23:04:45 UTC