- From: Ora Lassila <ora.lassila@nokia.com>
- Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 11:26:27 -0500
- To: Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>
Henry Story wrote: > I think the distinction is between what is, and what you can deduce. > If I steal your wallet I am a thief. You need not deduce that. But > that does not make it less so. The foaf ontology makes certain > statements about the relations between things. A consumer of these > statements need not be very intelligent, indeed it need not even be > able to make any inferences. It does not follow that those inferences > are not contained in the ontology. Granted I have only expended cursory attention to this discussion, but now I find myself either a) disagreeing or b) not understanding. As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the act of stealing that makes the perpetrator a thief *unless* we in fact deduce that. Perhaps the way we "think" in our daily lives intrudes here. Those who steal we consider thieves: we think that they *are* thieves, whereas in fact we have in fact *deduced* that. I guess when you say "what is" I interpret that as something having been *asserted*, whereas when we "deduce" I interpret that as a situation where I *could* assert the results of the deduction. Splitting hairs? Perhaps. Ignore all this at will. - Ora -- Ora Lassila mailto:ora.lassila@nokia.com http://www.lassila.org/ Research Fellow, Nokia Research Center / Boston
Received on Wednesday, 21 December 2005 16:36:03 UTC