Re: a URI is a name (tel uri scheme and VCARD RDF)

I think maybe I know what's confusing you.  You were probably thinking of Linus Thorvalds as a attribute of the Torvalds document,  i.e., something like:

    Torvalds document  has  descriptionOf  =  Linus Torvalds

Remember that Linus Thorvalds is a name that means an individual Person:

    Linus Thorvalds  isa  Person

I think it's appropriate to consider how we talk when Linus Thorvalds dies.  I'd say that the name Linus Thorvalds still means the same Person, even though he is no longer alive.  But I will leave it up to you to decide what "dead" means.

I would advise everyone to avoid "speaking syntactically" about anything.  In my view, syntax is only a set of rules which is designed to assist you in "speaking semantically".
============ 
Dick McCullough 
knowledge := man do identify od existent done
knowledge haspart list of proposition

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Seth Russell 
  To: Richard H. McCullough 
  Cc: Doug Ransom ; www-rdf-interest@w3.org 
  Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2002 12:36 PM
  Subject: Re: a URI is a name (tel uri scheme and VCARD RDF)


  Richard H. McCullough wrote:

    I have a problem with calling Linus Torvalds an "abstract thing".
    I would say that Linus Torvalds, the Torvalds document and the Torvalds graph are all individuals -- concrete physical things.
  Point taken. But (what kind of a thing Linus Torvalds is ) is a matter of your ontology.   Questions like whether Linus exists after his physical body is dust cannot be answered here and should be allowed to differ according to point of view.  But speaking strictly syntactically we can say, with hopefully very little debate, that Linus does not existe physically in the Internet information space in the same sense that a HTML or RDF document exists in that space.  Consequently to that space the acutal Linus (whatever he may be) is an abstraction.  That was the sense I meant.  Perhaps 'abstract' is the wrong word for it.  

  Seth Russell