Re: Madonna

Let's see the following triples...

madonna rdf:type owl:Class
madonna1 rdf:type madonna
madonna2 rdf:type madonna

madonna socialSecurityNumber "123"
madonna1 atMoment "M1"
madonna2 atMoment "M2"
madonna2 fingernail "clipped"
madonna2 toenail "clipped"


--
Jeremy

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Henry Story" <henry.story@bblfish.net>
To: <semantic-web@w3.org>
Cc: "Roy T. Fielding" <fielding@gbiv.com>; "Atom Syntax" 
<atom-syntax@imc.org>; "bloged" <users@bloged.dev.java.net>
Sent: Wednesday, February 09, 2005 5:42 PM
Subject: Madonna


>
> Just a point of clarification about identity. (I thought the example
> is fun enough that it may be of interest)
>
> As we all know Madonna is a material girl, and she lives in a material
> world [1].
>
> Madonna is a US citizen also. Let us imagine the day she received her
> social security card through the post. That day Madonna, the material
> girl, had a very specific material constitution. Let us call the set
> of cells, organic and inorganic material that composed Madonna that
> moment M1.
>
> Now let us stipulate that two material things are equal if they are
> made of exactly the same matter.
>
> That afternoon Madonna goes to the beauty salon where she gets her hair
> cut and fingernails and toe nails clipped. The resulting material girl
> call her M2 is no longer the same as M1, as M2 is M1 less some hair
> and nail material. M2 may also contain a little more water (she was
> drinking some beauty drink during the process). So M1 is not the same
> material thing as M2.
>
> Both M1 and M2 are also girls, and have a functional relation to a
> social security number. Ie M1 and M2 each only have 1 social security
> number. There are in fact a very large number of such material Madonnas
> Mx that have a functional relation to that same social security number.
> So clearly the inverse relation (from social security to temporal Material 
> Madonnas) is not functional.
>
> Now let us think of the mereological fusion [2] of all of these
> Material Madonnas, and let us call that MM. MM also has a functional
> relation to the social security number. But it is also clear that
> there is an inverse functional relation from social security number
> to MM.
>
> So the social security number identifies madonna in two ways.
>
> 1. via a functional relation
>     temporalId:  temporal material madonnas --> social security number
> 2. via an inverse functional relation
>     fusionId: MM --> social security number
>
> Given a social security number we can via the fusionId relation
> get a hold of the mereological fusion of that person, and from
> the mereological fusion we can find the individual temporal parts,
> each of which of course have a temporalId relation to the same social
> security number.
>
> The above can probably be also put in terms of set theory, and
> so in terms of rdf graphs. In which case it clearly shows how
> rdf can speak about temporal and non temporal identity.
>
> Henry Story
>
> [1] http://www.lyricsfreak.com/m/madonna/86925.html
>     audio clip: http://tinyurl.com/5k9et
> [2] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mereology/
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 9 February 2005 16:23:23 UTC