Re: RDF vocabulary definitions

Richard H. McCullough wrote:
> This is where I draw the line in the sand.
> I am definitely saying that the concept of RDF Class is wrong.
> I'll try to answer each of your questions.  If I haven't answered some 
> to your satisfaction, speak up.
>  
> 1. a number is a class.
> "two" is the abstraction of "two apples", "two oranges", "two people", etc.
>  
> 2. an empty class is nonexistent.
> if the class has no members, it is a "floating abstraction", a 
> "contradiction"
> it does not exist
> it has no properties
> how many ways can I say it?

I think one of the main motivations with description logics is that you 
can partially describe things (configuration management systems make 
great use of this). Having an RDF graph that asserts the existence of 
some class - but that does not assert the existence of any members of 
that class - does not mean that no members exist. It just means we don't 
know about those members yet.

Cheers

-- 
Murray Spork
Centre for Information Technology Innovation (CITI)
The Redcone Project
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Phone: +61-7-3864-9488
Email: m.spork@qut.edu.au
Web: http://redcone.gbst.com/

Received on Thursday, 21 November 2002 20:33:11 UTC