- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 20:00:13 -0500
- To: Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
- Cc: w3c-rdfcore-wg@w3.org
>On Fri, 5 Oct 2001, Pat Hayes wrote: > >> >I've been thinking along very similar lines. See >> >http://ioctl.org/rdf/literals >> >which has a mix of related ideas, some good, some bad, some wrong. >> >> Let me pick up on one of them and chew on it: the idea that a literal >> is a self-denoting entity. This is a very appealing idea, and it >> works for strings, but I don't think it can be made to work (without >> modification) for any other kinds of literal. In particular, one of >> your examples is 'the number 12'. But numbers are denoted by >> numerals, not numbers; numerals, not numbers, are the syntactic >> labels that we use to label graph nodes. So I take it that the >> intention in treating '12' as a "literal number" is in fact that the >> *numeral* '12' is the literal, and that its interpretation is fixed >> to be the number 12 (that is, the number whose prime factors are 2,2 >> and 3; the square root of 144; denoted variously by the numerals '12' >> in decimal, '1100' in binary, and '14' in octal). But in none of >> these cases is the numerical literal *identical* to its >> interpretation. > >Actually, I had a stronger notion, which was that conceptually, the >number (not a numeral representation) should be the "label" in a graph. Ah, that is a nice idea. It has some odd consequences, though. Graphs with number labels cannot be stored inside computers, send over packet-switched networks, printed, etc... They have to be Platonic graphs, not data structures. And why stop at numbers? ;-) > (Forgive an argument by analogy, but > We accept concepts like "the set { 1, 2, 3 }" which is > conceptually a set of numbers, not numerals) > >So it really _is_ the number 1 labelling a node in the graph. > >However, any concrete realisation of such an RDF graph must, of course, >use a representation (be it numeral or otherwise); this is true whether >it's an "RDF database" or an "RDF/XML serialisation". If it makes any >sense, I'd like to separate the two notions. Hmm. That gives us an extra layer of representation, which I find clunky. There is the lexicalisation which encodes the graph-in-the-machine which represents the abstract graph which describes the interpretation.... >Talk is cheap: free, as in beer. As in Real Ale, not that Budweiser rubbish. I am proud to tell you that here in Pensacola, not half a mile from my house, is McGuires, the first micro-brewery in the US and still the maker of the best Red, Irish Pale Ale and stout you will find within 3000 miles. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 21:00:21 UTC