a predicate for 'that described by URL'

From: "Lassila Ora (NRC/Boston)" <Ora.Lassila@nokia.com>

> Drew McDermott wrote:
> > I believe I am echoing Pat Hayes when I say that I don't understand
> > why it is considered desirable, let alone essential, let alone
> > *possible*, that there be only one name for each object.  What on
> > earth could guarantee such a thing?  Lasers in space that destroy any
> > computer found to have a nonofficial URI for an object?
> >
> Although I *really really* wouldn't want to contribute to this waaay too
> long discussion, I have to say that the issue is that one would like
> there only to be one *object* for any *name*, not the other way around
> (which you seem to be talking about - and I agree with your comments
> there).

... and, hopefully, that every time we use that name we refer to that same
object; because otherwise the first law of logic (identity) does not hold,
and sans that law, the next two (lem, and non-contradiction) are irrelevant.
Unfortunately the various standards have overloaded our URIs such that at
times they refer to the bits returned by some method and other times they
refers to things that cannot be put into bits.  Me thinks we need a 'that
described by' predicate in DAML so that we can use URLs for names in RDF
without introducing this confusion.

Seth Russell

Received on Thursday, 30 August 2001 15:00:05 UTC