Re: need to determine what RDF is

From: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>

> Suppose an agent is given
>
>   <ex:Student> <rdfs:subClassOf> <ex:Person> .
>   <ex:John> <rdf:type> <ex:Student> .
>   <rdfs:subClassOf> <rdf:type> <rdf:Property> .
>   <rdfs:subClassOf> <rdfs:domain> <rdfs:Class> .
>   <rdfs:subClassOf> <rdfs:range> <rdfs:Class> .
>   <rdfs:Class> <rdf:type> <rdfs:Class> .
>
> and responds that it entails
>
>   <ex:John> <rdf:type> <ex:Person> .
>
> This agent is not an RDF reasoner (is not doing RDF).  Its reasoning is
> unsound in RDF.  The agent may be an RDFS reasoner, but it is not doing
> RDF.

I agree, given *only* the assertions in the rdf namespace, there is no way
that an automated agent *could* arrive at that entailment.  But given the
logical interpretation of certain rdfs:comments, it certainly can be
entailed.   I seems to me that any automated agent that attempts to arrive
at conclusions about assertions, without knowing any rules that apply to its
predicate, would always be going beyond the data given.   Don't we all know
that?  Why is this important to us now?

A mentograph of the example:
http://robustai.net/mentography/rdf_entailment_pfpsQ.gif

Seth Russell

Received on Thursday, 30 May 2002 12:21:18 UTC