- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>
- Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:11:37 -0500
- To: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
- Cc: www-tag@w3.org
>Ed Davies scripsit: > >> If somebody thinks the URIs under discussion aren't >> aliases then they presumably also think that it is >> invalid to translate the Dutch word "kat" to the >> English word "cat" because you can't look up "cat" >> in an Dutch dictionary. > >I am willing to bet, ignorant of Dutch as I am, that there is >a range of uses for "cat" which "kat" cannot bear, and perhaps >vice versa as well. Absolute synonymy is very rare even in >a single language (usually it shows up in technical terms, >like "Jakob-Creuzfeld disease" vs. "Creuzfeld-Jakob disease" >vs. "spongiform brain encephalopathy") and across different >languages it is unheard-of. > >> Doesn't "alias" (or owl:sameAs) mean just "refers to >> the same thing", not "identical for all possible >> purposes"? I don't think two terms being aliases (or >> owl:sameAs) implies that: > >That is a distinction without a difference, for it is the >very essence of identicals that they are indiscernible, or as >Mr. Spock once put it, a difference that makes no difference >is no difference. A still better way to put it is that there are no identical*s* (plural), since if A is identical to B then there is only one thing being talked about. Nothing is identical to anything *else*, only to itself. These are all synonyms: the set {A, B} has one thing in it; A and B are the very same thing; 'A' is just another name for B, and 'B' for A; A is identical to B; A=B; owl:sameAs :A :B . And that is *why* they... er, sorry, it, is indiscernible: because one cannot discern between something and itself. One might rationally decide that there could be distinct indiscernibles (elementary particles obeying Bose-Einstein statistics might count), there surely cannot be discernible identicals. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- IHMC (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973 home 40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office Pensacola (850)202 4440 fax FL 32502 (850)291 0667 cell phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes
Received on Wednesday, 25 July 2007 17:11:54 UTC