RE: Person and fictional Re: VideoGame proposal

This solution might be controversial, but an abstract notion of Aristotles’ Poetics could be represented as such using schema:ProductModel like so:

dbpedia:Poetics_(Aristotle)
                a schema:Book, schema:ProductModel;
                schema:name “Περὶ ποιητικῆς”, “Poetics”;
                schema:about dbpedia:Drama, dbpedia:Comedy, dbpedia:Tragedy;
                schema:author dbpedia:Aristotle;
                .

The (fictional) copy that was written in poison ink can be represented using schema:IndividualProduct and schema:model like so:

_:A0
                a schema:Book, schema:IndividualProduct, schema:FictionalThing;
                schema:itemCondition [
schema:description “written in poision ink”
];
                schema:model dbpedia:Poetics_(Aristotle);
                .

That poisioned copy can be related to the “The Name of the Rose” like so:

dbpedia:The_Name_of_the_Rose
                a schema:Book;
                schema:genre “Fiction”;
                schema:about _:A0;
                .

Jeff

From: chaals@yandex-team.ru [mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru]
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 10:59 AM
To: Wallis,Richard; Simon Spero
Cc: Martin Hepp; Dan Brickley; Peter F.Patel-Schneider; <public-vocabs@w3.org>; Thad Guidry; Karen Coyle; Dan Scott; Young,Jeff (OR)
Subject: Re: Person and fictional Re: VideoGame proposal

I agree that it is important not to get too hung up on metaphysics. But it is also important not to get hoisted on our petards…

21.10.2014, 03:56, "Wallis,Richard" <Richard.Wallis@oclc.org<mailto:Richard.Wallis@oclc.org>>:

On 21 Oct 2014, at 01:45, Simon Spero <sesuncedu@gmail.com<mailto:sesuncedu@gmail.com>> wrote:



Further clarifying questions:

If someone is looking for a list of British Public Schools, should that list include Eton, Harrow, and Hogwarts?
Depends who/where you are looking.  If that somewhere contains all three then yes, but one is also a fictional thing (Hogwarts)
Right.

In the context of the Harry Potter books, is Hogwarts a fictional thing?
Yes.


Is the play "Hamlet" a Fictional Thing ?
No it is a real CreativeWork/play, but it’s contents [if described] are fictional things, hence:


Is the play "The Murder of Gonzaga" a Fictional Thing?
Yes.

But Aristotle's book of Poetics entitled "Comedy", as used in "The Name of the Rose" to make a story, may or may not be a fictional thing. The copy with the poisonous ink is, but the book may have been written.

It would seem unwise to make changes that would have such dramatic effects on all existing application of the schema.org<http://schema.org/> ontology to avoid the use of union types in situations where fictional entities are permitted.
That’s why I prefer multi typing as a solution, it is only applied as and when needed. Not an option lurking in every type inherited from Thing.

[Existence as a predicate of an individual is a controversial stance.
Pegasus says: step away from the metaphysics.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/ ]
If we get too metaphysical on this we are lost. I think we should apply the 'man [or webmaster] in the street' test to this one:
Sometimes I want to assert that somethings are fictional, but I don’t want to have to worry about asserting that real things are not [fictional].

So it seems we can have a fictionalThing, and a fictionalPresentation (or something like that). So the play Hamlet becomes a a schema:fictionalPresentation of things including Denmark (which is real, although Shakespeare's construction perhaps less so than some others), a ghost (a shema:Person; a fictionalThing), and so on.

(A couple of other examples would be good. If we decide to do this I'll volunteer to ensure that they happen).

A fictionalThing is something that (probably) isn't "real", and its domain includes Thing. A fictionalPresentation is a creativeWork that does not claim to depict or describe "reality".

cheers

--
Charles McCathie Nevile - web standards - CTO Office, Yandex
chaals@yandex-team.ru<mailto:chaals@yandex-team.ru> - - - Find more at http://yandex.com<http://yandex.com/>