[Person-ontology] first contributions - is the Higgins top-level useful?

[Markus Sabadello]

Let me try to put this into actual RDF/XML based on higgins.owl

<higgins:DigitalSubject rdf:about="urn:adam">
  <hasHairColor rdf:resource="urn:value1">
</higgins:DigitalSubject>
<higgins:String rdf:about="urn:value1">
  <higgins:string>blond</higgins:string>
  <higgins:source>DMV</higgins:source>   <!-- This is a simplification,
"source" should actually have a SubjectRelation as value -->
  <higgins:expires>Jan 1, 2010</higgins:expires>
</higgins:String>

So while it is true that strictly speaking the metadata (expires, source) is
applied to value1 instead of the whole statement, it really doesn't matter,
since value1 is only used as the value of a single statement.

In fact we could also do the same thing with a blank node:

<higgins:DigitalSubject rdf:about="urn:adam">
  <hasHairColor rdf:parseType="Resource">
    <rdf:type rdf:resource="&higgins;String">
    <higgins:string>blond</higgins:string>
    <higgins:source>DMV</higgins:source>
    <higgins:expires>Jan 1, 2010</higgins:expires>
  </hasHairColor>
</higgins:DigitalSubject>

Markus

On 10/10/07, David Whitten <david.j.whitten at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oh,
> I expected that is exactly what you meant.
> Unfortunately, that is not what the logical statements were.
> You mentioned on another thread about difficulties with with reifying
> statements.
>
> You actually want the "expires jan 1, 2010" to apply to the reified
> statement that "Adam has HairColor blonde"
> rather than to the value of "Adam hasHairColor"
>
> As stated, you said the expires predicate applied to value1  and value of
> value1 is "blonde"
>
> (as an aside, isn't blonde the colour of women's hair and blond the color
> of men's hair? I seem to recall some English teacher drilling that into my
> head at some point...)
>
> I expected what you meant to say was:
>
>    value1 value (Adam hasHairColor "blonde")
>     value1 expires "Jan 1, 2010"
>    value1 source "Dept of Motor Vehicles"
>
>
> I used a parenthesis to indicate the predicate as a whole you should tell
> us what the syntax
> that you have in Higgins that you use to tie a value to a reified
> statement.
>
> Best Regards,
> David
>
> On 10/9/07, Paul Trevithick < paul at socialphysics.org> wrote:
> >
> >  What I meant by the two statements "value1 expires Jan 1, 2010" and
> > "value1 source DMV" taken together is that the fact that Adam has blonde
> > hair as attested by the DMV is a statement that is considered authoritative
> > on or before Jan 1, 2010. "DMV" is the source of the value, "Jan 1, 2010" is
> > the date after which they are no longer willing to stand behind that
> > assertion.
> >
> >
> >   ------------------------------
> >
> > *From:* David Whitten [mailto:david.j.whitten at gmail.com]
> > *Sent:* Tuesday, October 09, 2007 8:27 PM
> > *To:* Paul Trevithick
> > *Cc:* phmartin at phmartin.info; person-ontology at idcommons.net
> > *Subject:* Re: [Person-ontology] first contributions - is the Higgins
> > top-level useful?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On 10/9/07, *Paul Trevithick* <paul at socialphysics.org > wrote:
> >
> > If we just use a triple "Adam hasHairColor blonde" where blonde is a
> > literal, we've no ability to make statements about the value "blonde".
> > So
> > what we do in Higgins is use two triples shown loosely here:
> >
> >    Adam hasHairColor value1
> >    value1 value "blonde"
> >    value1 expires "Jan 1, 2010"
> >    value1 source "Dept of Motor Vehicles"
> >
> > Where "value1" is a subclass of Value (probably StringValue, to be
> > precise).
> >
> >
> >
> > Naively, I  wonder what you mean by value1 expires "Jan 1, 2010"
> > does the blonde-ness of Adam's hair expire?
> >
> > If you mean that the hair color information is known to be good on Jan
> > 1, 2010, good for you,
> > but I find even that confusing.
> >
> > In general, this seems like some categorial error of talking about a
> > value having an expiration date.
> > The best I can assume from this snippet is that Adam's driver's license
> > is expiring in Jan 1, 2010
> > which is totally different...
> >
> > David
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Person-ontology mailing list
> Person-ontology at idcommons.net
> http://idcommons.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/person-ontology
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://idcommons.net/pipermail/person-ontology/attachments/20071010/99213571/attachment.htm