- From: Pat Hayes <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
- Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 14:46:33 -0600
- To: "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Cc: webont <www-webont-wg@w3.org>
>From: Ora Lassila <daml@lassila.org> >Subject: Re: Patel-Schneider Paradox ... >Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 11:03:16 -0500 > >> Peter, >> >> > > >3/ properties with no formal meaning >> >> >> >> OK, so what? They have no meaning, you can do what you like. That's >> >> not a problem. >> > >> >On the contrary, such constructs are endless sources of problems when they >> >occur in a specification. Sure they cause no formal problems, but they do >> >cause the generation of considerable amounts of non-luminous warmth. >> >> Unfortunately, these properties with no formal meaning have a great >> *practical* value to implemetors of real-world systems. Maybe that is >> not of interest to you ;-) > >Well, it is not of interest to me as a designer of a language. How can it >be, if there is no impact on the language? That reflects a rather narrow view of the role of a language designer, seems to me. >I agree with you that properties with no formal meaning do have value. But >I don't see any more meaning to rdf:subject than to foo:child (at least in >the formal part of RDF) Right, but we've agreed that we aren't talking about the formal part, right? >. If RDF is going to include a vocabulary for >statements, with no extra formal meaning for the constructs in this >vocabulary, then why should RDF not include a vocabulary for people? Several obvious answers, but chiefly that nobody is asking for that vocabulary, whereas there are people asking very loudly indeed for the reification vocabulary. BUt also because it is in a sense about the language itself, so (even if informally) refers to a domain which for which we have more responsibility than, say, people. >As far as I can see, there are only two aspects to such an inclusion: >1/ a hint that this vocabulary is the one to be used by everyone who wishes > to talk about statements (and/or statings) Right, that is how I see it. Its only a hint, as you say. But sometimes all the world needs is for someone to say 'lets do it this way', and then they can just get on with the work and stop worrying about it. If there are hundreds of people, and who knows how many dollars, just waiting for the WG to say 'use this vocabulary, guys', then it seems churlish to refuse to do so on logical-aesthetic grounds. > and >2/ the elevation of the status of debates over this vocabulary to the same > status as debates over the constructs of the language that do have > meaning. I would like to explicitly NOT do that, it to say loudly and clearly that while this is the recommended vocabulary, one should not assume that it means anything special as far as any in-house RDF is concerned. Pat -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 Monday, 18 February 2002 15:46:25 UTC