the chicken and the egg problem

Hello RDF community,

I have been reading theCandidate Recommendation RDF Schema Specification and found some strange
results in Appendix A: XML Serialization.

First of all: the "range" resource is introduced using property ... <rdfs:range
rdf:resource="#Class"/>. Am I reading this correctly!? Daddy, what is X? Well son, x is defined by
... eh ... x. Clear enough son?

Secondly: the resource "domain" has a likewise loop-way-of -thinking. "Domain" is defined using the
property "type", referring to a "Constraintproperty". The latter is defined using property
"Subclassof", which in turn is defined by using ... <rdfs:domain ...>!

This doesn't seem right to me. Definitions have to be based on previously determined items, not on
what yet has to follow. If one throws away this kind of reasoning, one can state almost anything:

"How to prove that B follows from A? Well: assume B follows from A, hence B follows from A. Result
proven.

I believe that many people disagree with this line of thinking. Of course, I may be overlooking
something. In that case, please enlighten me

Regards,

Tom.

Received on Wednesday, 29 March 2000 05:40:50 UTC