Re: possible semantic bugs concerning domain and range

>pat hayes wrote:
>>  >
>>  >Well, precisely because of the above example.  I believe that an
>>  >intersection of bar and baz is a range of foo.  If you believe in 'the'
>>  >range, then what else can it be for foo?
>>
>>  Yes, that is a good point, I confess, and one that forces me to admit
>>  that the idea of 'the' (singular) range has to be relaxed.  But even
>>  in this case I would prefer to say that both bar and baz are ranges,
>>  and that it therefore follows that any value of foo is in their
>>  intersection, but not that the intersection *was* a range.
>>
>
>This last part loses me. From a purely English point of view (English as the
>natural language that I happen to speak and that we are using, not English
>as a cultural bias etc.) when we say that multiple range restrictions are
>the conjunction of the individual ranges, isn't this saying that:
>
>foo rdfs:range bar .
>foo rdfs:range baz .
>
>=>
>
>foo rdfs:range _:x
>_:x owl:intersectionOf (bar baz) .
>
>I'm not sure how else to (formally) interpret this. Isn't this the same
>thing as saying that the intersection *is* a range, why not?.

Well, yes, as I said, this is a good point. But I don't think that 
one can rationally agree with this implication but not with the J 
entailment (which I understood you did not like, Jonathan, correct?) 
ie that any superclass of a range is also a range. Since if you 
accept the intersection rule, then you have to concede both that 
ranges can sensibly be inside one another (which on my 'intensional' 
interpretation is kind of silly, although not exactly incoherent) and 
that the minimal range might not be the one that you first thought 
of, as it were; and then there seems to be no objection to allowing 
larger sets to also be ranges (why not?) all the way up to the 
universe.

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 Tuesday, 24 September 2002 21:57:32 UTC