- From: Peter Crowther <Peter.Crowther@melandra.com>
- Date: Wed, 7 Feb 2001 16:09:59 -0000
- To: "'Bill dehOra'" <BdehOra@interx.com>
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> From: Bill dehOra [mailto:BdehOra@interx.com] > Parts aren't always obvious though. Boston still "exists" in > the sense that > it can be a part of San Francisco if San Francisco (and > whoever gets to > declare OIDs) agrees that Boston is-a-part-of San Francisco > and not now > actually San Francisco. Is this where Jim Hendler's point comes in that it depends who you believe? One of the core ideas behind the Semantic Web is that no one body 'gets to declare' OIDs; anybody can define OIDs and (by extension) anybody can assert equality, is-kind-of, is-part-of, was-annexed-by, or indeed any other relationship they wish between the OID of the existing SF-concept and the OID of the existing Boston-concept. What *you* (or your automated reasoner) use as an axiom for further reasoning depends on which sources *you* use. It would be perfectly possible for two sources you trust to assert conflicting relationships between the concepts and (in DL terms) for all statements about Boston-concept or SF-concept to be unsatisfiable until you decide on which source you'll accept. Or am I diving off on a complete tangent here? - Peter
Received on Wednesday, 7 February 2001 11:10:20 UTC