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Re: URIs are simply names was: Re: "Abstract" URIs

• To: jborden@a...
• Subject: Re: URIs are simply names was: Re: "Abstract" URIs
• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 18:05:17 -0500
• Cc: Alaric Snell <alaric@a...>, Paul Prescod <paul@p...>, xml-dev@l...
• References: <20020213221449.HKHN2951.rwcrmhc53.attbi.com@rwcrwbc55>
• User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.6) Gecko/20011120

jborden@a... wrote:


>>Anyhow, I too now have a URI:
>>
>>	http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/self.xtm#self
>>
> 
> Properly this is a URI reference.


So it is.

 
> so while you are (I assume) the authority on the type of 
> the resource identified 
> by:
> 
> http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/
> 
> and you are free to assert that it identifies a 
> hypertext document, there is 
> nothing that mandates this. Indeed you are also free to 
> assert that this URI represents _you_ if you so choose. 


I agree.  But it would not be Grice-anly cooperative to
assert that it represented *both* of them.  Thus if
someone queries the semantic web "Does http://www.ccil.org/self.xtm#self
contain 32 characters?" the answer would be "No",
since John Cowan is not representable in characters.


> The point is that URIs leverage the global naming and 
> registration system to allow people to create URIs and 
> define what these URIs represent.


Create, yes; define, how?  Only by some metadata
convention such as RDF or TM.


> in predicate logic:
> 
> for all ?person such that 
>      mailbox(?person,"mailto:jborden@m...";) and 
>      mailbox(?person,"mailto:jborden@a...";) 
>   implies 
>      name(?person, "Jonathan Borden")


Sure, absolutely.  The same can be said of me and my
two mailboxes.  But since a resource is anything that
has identity, and every resource can potentially have
a URI, we still must:

1) decide the URI of ?person such that name(?person,
    "Jonathan Borden")

2) figure out how to make this URI available to others.


> Considering that such logics have been around and well 
> characterized for many decades, I am not sure what topic 
> maps bring to the table. I do think that I need 
> something like a topic map to see how these concepts 
> relate between TM, RDF, FOPL etc.


TM and RDF are equivalent in power.  TM predefines certain
predicates such as nameOf, trueWithRespectTo, typeOf,
instanceOf, playsRole, and provides a syntax for
expressing them.  I owe several people a paper explaining
the details, and I'm basically hung up on a single
RDF detail -- and lack of time, of course, lack of time.

Both TM and RDF are capable of expressing FOPL ground terms
only: they have no concept of quantified variables.
(The obsolescent RDF concepts of aboutEach and aboutEachPrefix
were a minor exception.)  One could easily write code to
transform a TM or RDFbase into a bunch of Prolog facts.

> The term "subject" is 
> in grave danger of becoming as overloaded as "resource"


"[A] subject is anything whatsoever, regardless of whether it exists or
has any other specific characteristics, about which anything whatsoever
may be asserted by any means whatsoever."
	--the XTM specification

So a subject is a resource and vice versa.

-- 
John Cowan <jcowan@r...>     http://www.reutershealth.com
I amar prestar aen, han mathon ne nen,    http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
han mathon ne chae, a han noston ne 'wilith.  --Galadriel, _LOTR:FOTR_

• Follow-Ups:
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