- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 09:38:15 -0500
- To: Patrick.Stickler@nokia.com
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org
> > ... but you can't apply that to >> literals because they can't be the subject of statements >> (unless that rule >> gets changed). > >This was one of my motivations for exploring the idea of tossing >out literals altogether, per se, and instead adopting a means >by which literals would be "first class" resources. > >Now, granted, a typed data value such as "5" is pretty semantically >"anemic", and there's probably not very many useful statements that >one could make about such 'resources', I'd like to take issue with this often-repeated claim. There are all kinds of useful things you could say about such things, most notably asserting that they were in some named classes (such as 'odd-integer' or 'goal-scores-of-Tottenham-Hotspur' ). Then other classes could have relationships with those classes and things; one could define classes of pairs of resources and literals, thereby encoding functions from resources to literal values. If RDF had the ability to assert properties of literals, the expressive power of the language would be quite radically increased. >but at least you *could* >make statements if you needed to if they were in fact first class >resources represented by URIs, and it would simplify (IMO) the >whole enchilada by not having to distinguish between typed data >literal resources and any other kind of resources. The conceptual >model then becomes simpler and the serialization model both >simpler and more consistent. Agreed. > >> I suggest, then, that RDF is the right layer for resolving >> this particular >> issue (depending, of course, on how you end up fixing it). > >For treating typed literals as resources, yes, RDF is the right layer. > >(but for treating two URIs that denote the same "thing" as equivalent, >no, RDF is IMO not the right layer, though probably RDFS is) For the record, I tend to be careless about the distinction between RDF and RDFS, which isn't particularly well-motivated or worth fussing about, IMHO. Pat Hayes -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax phayes@ai.uwf.edu http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes
Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 10:38:19 UTC