Re: #rdfms-difference-between-ID-and-about (every document is in the Web)

>Brian McBride wrote:
> >
> > Dan Connolly wrote:
> >
> > > You trust that I have a birthday even though you don't
> > > know it, right? By the same token, it seems easy
> > > enough to accept that resources have URIs even though
> > > those URIs aren't always specified.
> >
> > Forgive me butting in.  Is the set of real numbers
> > a subset of the set of resources?  After all, they have identity.
> > Note that URI's are countable and real numbers are not.
>
>That's the subtlety I meant to set aside when I wrote:
>
>| I think you've slightly overstated the case there,
>| but the argument holds even the way you've phrased it, so...
> -- Fri, 15 Jun 2001 09:20:55 -0500
>
>The way he phrased it, every resource has a URI-name.
>The way I see it, any particular resource can be named
>with a URI; that doesn't mean they all have (unambiguous) names,
>as you point out: all real numbers are resources;
>only denumerably many of them can be named with URIs.
>
>Another subtlety that isn't relevant to the ID/about
>issue is whether 'resource' is used in the general
>sense of 'anything in the domain of discourse'
>(i.e. things you can refer to using absolute-URIs-with-fragments)

In general, there may be more things in the domain of discourse than 
one can name in the (any) language. Certainly there are if we start 
quantifying over sets, numbers, etc. .

>or in the stricter sense of, roughly, 'something you can
>get at via the network' (i.e. things you
>can refer to using absolute-URIs-without-fragments).
>
>I'd like for the revised RDF specs to use 'resource'
>in the stricter sense, but in speaking of real
>numbers as resources, of course we're using it
>in the general sense.

As far as I can tell, nobody outside the W3C uses it in this sense.

>The traditional logic-literature
>term for the more general concept is 'object'; I'd
>be happy to start using that in these WG discussions.

Actually even that has some 'physical' baggage. The most universally 
inclusive term is probably "entity".

Pat Hayes

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Received on Thursday, 21 June 2001 15:57:12 UTC