- From: Jonathan Borden <jonathan@openhealth.org>
- Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2002 23:10:08 -0400
- To: "Miles Sabin" <miles@milessabin.com>, <www-tag@w3.org>
Miles Sabin wrote: > > If you want to say that URIs are logical constants in a uninterpreted > formal system, then fine: that gets rid of ambiguity there. But to be > relevant we need an interpretation (or a context if you'd prefer) which > pins denotations of identifiers and extensions of predicates down to > something tangible (cars or documents). And without a unique, > cannonical, unequivocally intended interpretation, it's not possible to > guarantee that interpreted uses of identifiers will be unambiguous, > because the users might not share the same interpretation. I don't claim that removing ambiguity about the mapping of URI to resource somehow removes all ambiguity in the system ... that would be a miracle. I think we need to move step by step and clarifying the relationship between URI resource and representation would be a great first step. > > > We may choose to believe either one or the other context, that is we > > may choose to believe either one or the other set of assertions about > > a resource. That we might do this doesn't change the fact that the > > resource is identified by a URI (under RDF and the RDF model theory > > http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt). > > Believing "one or the other context" is opting for one or other > interpretation of an uninterpreted system. That affects the truth > values of assertions by affecting the denotations of identifiers and > the extensions of predicates. Given the way you've set this up, your > resources look more like placeholders than actual referents, so I guess > they're unaffected. But the "meanings" of those resources most > certainly will be, and those are what's important (they're what > determine, ultimately, whether we're talking about cars or documents). > And without a unique, cannonical, unequivocally intended > interpretation, that's enough to get us ambiguity. This is largely correct. Perhaps ultimately the "meaning" of a URI/resource will be determined by social mechanisms. Even then, if we didn't have ambiguity, we wouldn't have civil courts. > > > "context" isn't a feature of RDF 1, but I think it's important. > > This I agree with, wholeheartedly. But I can't help wondering why _you_ > think it's necessary: context is important for disambiguation, but if > there's no ambiguity ... ? > When did I say there was no ambiguity? All I am saying is that a URI uniquely identifies a single resource, that is there is a 1:1 mapping between URI and resource. Surely that alone doesn't solve the world's problems :-) Jonathan
Received on Saturday, 3 August 2002 23:25:57 UTC