Re: Reification Quoting in RDF/N3

Dan Brickley wrote:
> 
> Yes and no ...
> Yes we can identify through
> descriptions as well as URIs;
> but no, contrary to
>
> http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/Primer
>
> there are a bunch of propblems
> (mostly involving quotation and trust)
> that imho this> doesn't entirely work for.

<...>

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Dan,

Thanks for the pointer to the primer, and if it is not
too annoying to answer questions of a tutorial nature --
if it is don't bother about it, I will just keep reading --
and then I will go ahead and ask them, anyway, but I did
have a bit of a revelation at this one point in the text:

> Primer:  Getting into RDF & Semantic Web using N3
> -------------------------------------------------
> 
> The world of the semantic web, as based on RDF, is really
> simple at the base.  This article shows you how to get started.
> It uses a simplified teaching language -- Notation 3 or N3 --
> which is basically equivalent to RDF in its XML syntax,
> but easier to scribble when getting started.
> 
> Subject, verb, and object
> 
> In RDF, information is simply a collection of statements,
> each with a subject, verb, and object -- and nothing else.

No trouble with tripples -- we Peirce Trekkies just love tripples!

> In N3, you can write an RDF triple just like that, with a period:
> 
> <#pat> <#knows> <#jo> .
> 
> Everything, be it subject, verb, or object, is identified with
> a Universal Resource Identifier.  This is something like
>
> <http://www.w3.org/> or
> <http://www.w3.org/2000/10/swap/test/s1.n3#includes>,
>
> but when everything is missed out before the "#"
> it identifies <#pat> in the current document whatever it is.
> 
> There is one exception that the object (only)
> can be a string representing a value:
> 
> <#pat> <#knows> <#jo> .
> <#pat> <#age> "24" .
> 
> The verb "knows" is in RDF called a "property"
> and thought of as a noun expressing a relation
> between the two.  In fact you can write
> 
> <#pat> <#child> <#al> .
> 
> alternatively, to make it more readable, as either
> 
> <#pat> has <#child> of <#al> .
> 
> or
> 
> <#al> is <#child> of <#pat> .

Now, this thing that was just done here,
of passing from an expression of the form

"<#pat> <#child> <#al> ."

to an expression of the form

"<#pat> has <#child> of <#al> ."

if it is permissible for us, at least, in the present context, anyway,
to use our own nearly unlimited resources of quotation marks that way,

well that is just what Perseans -- and I think most other logicians
of the philosophical persuasion -- call "reification", in the sense
of making, or at least marking, an "abstractive hypostasis" (AH),
as I prefer to talk about it, or a "hypostatic abstraction" (HA),
as it is more commonly called.

Okay, I had better stop here before I try to go any further,
and check out my e-mediate sense of the text with the group:

Does that make any sense to you who speak this way? --
I did not mean to pick on you as my sole informant! --
so let me just ask it of the whole usage community:
Do you intend a deliberate relation between quotes,
negation, and "reification" (in any sense) by this?

Many Regards,

Jon Awbrey

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Received on Friday, 19 January 2001 08:43:51 UTC