[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
Uche Ogbuji wrote:
>
> Also, I think that owl:sameIndividualAs might have been inspired by TM,
since
> the last time I remember discussion of standard assertion of the
equivalence
> of individuals, the key players were not keen on the idea.
>
Actually owl:sameIndividualAs was inspired by daml:equivalentTo... to make a
long and over the top technical story short(er), the issue was that classic
description logic formalisms make the distinction between classes and
individuals whereas RDF does not. OWL Lite and OWL DL (for 'description
logic') maintain this distinction, wheras OWL Full does not (classes can
themselves be invididuals -- *sort of* like a higher order logic thingie).
So from daml:equivalentTo we now have:
owl:sameClassAs
owl:sameIndividualAs
owl:sameAs
in certain cases there may be two classes that are the same, but they are
not the same individuals. The reason to make this distinction is *entirely*
based on the fact that there are existing and well characterized description
logic reasoning engines where the unconstrained RDF is still somewhat
experimental in the traditional logician's view (this is a gross
simplification)
OWL was inspired by a melding of the 'free wheeling' RDF ... anyone can say
anything about anything ... with the highly constrained description logic
view of the world. FWIW
Jonathan
|
