Re: problems with concise bounded descriptions

On Friday 2004-10-01 08:12, Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ext Benja Fallenstein [mailto:b.fallenstein@gmx.de]
> > Sent: 01 October, 2004 17:43
> > To: Stickler Patrick (Nokia-TP-MSW/Tampere)
> > Cc: pfps@research.bell-labs.com; www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> > Subject: Re: problems with concise bounded descriptions
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Patrick, hi Peter--
> >
> >
> > I believe that there are at least two general problems that Peter has
> > with the specification. First, the much discussed paragraph:
> >
> >      A concise bounded description of a resource is a body of
> > knowledge
> >      about that resource which does not include any explicit knowledge
> >      about any other resource which can be obtained
> > separately from the
> >      same source.
> >
> > Aside from the details you've discussed, the more fundamental
> > issue is
> > that Peter sees this as a *definition* of CBD: i.e., everything that
> > fits this description is a CBD.

Sorry, I haven't been following this closely.  I am going to try to produce a 
more rigorous statement of the definition.


Resource: undefined
Body of Knowledge: undefined
Explicit knowledge: undefined

Given a resource R[a] (a named set) and
Given Body of Knowledge K[a] (a set)

Then a Concise, Bounded Resource Description [sic] is defined as:

R[a], such that the contents of R[a] contain K[a] 
AND all elements of K[a] are about (that is, reference) R[a] (or objects in 
R[a]).

Furthermore:
Let  K[a'] be a subset of any explicit knowledge in K[a] (call this e(K[a])) 
where K[a'] references any member of the set not-R[a] (written ~R[a]) or any 
contents of ~R[a]. 
Then e(K[a]) includes no K[a']

=================

But that is as far as I get because the phrase "separately from the same 
source" could be interpreted as referring to EITHER R[a] or ~R[a] (though 
intuitively R[a] seems the better candidate.

===============

Note also that the fragment:

<quote>
R[a], such that the contents of R[a] contain K[a] 
AND all elements of K[a] are about (that is, reference) R[a] (or objects in 
R[a]).
</quote>

Would seem to define a set of knowledge rather than a resource _per se_, 
namely K[a] bounded by R[a].  K[a] is not necessarily a proper resource, but 
only implicitly a resource (that is we could give K[a] a name, that is a 
proper, explicit reference). The definition also has no content defining 
"concise" like requiring K[a] to be finite or in some sense minimal.  

We can think of other potential set algebraic properties that a bounded 
knowledge set, K[a] might have that could prove interesting.  (For now we 
forget about conciseness, since the original definition actually included 
nothing about conciseness like K[a] is finite, or K[a] is a minimal spanning 
set.)

K[a] might be "non-orthoganal" so that any reference chain traversing the set 
~R[a] to K[a] must originate with a properly named reference node in R[a].  
We could even require K[a] to be strongly non-orthoganal such that any 
reference chain to K[a] must originate with a named node in K[a].

K[a] might be closed, such that any and all references to K[a] or its elements 
do not exit to ~K[a] and all terminate in K[a].

Received on Friday, 1 October 2004 21:08:22 UTC