Re: [foaf-dev] Fwd: relationship vocab

On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 13:16 +0100, Dan Brickley wrote:
> If you want to say your cat is a person, you can do that. It's not
> wrong to do so, just a little unconventional or metaphorical. If you
> want to say something about your cat without asserting personhood,
> don't use foaf:Person. 

I am actually completely happy to assert personhood about my cats. My
own personal definition of personhood includes not just humans, but
anybody we'd say had a personality - most pets fall into that category -
at least as far as their owners are concerned.

But my broader point was that there are instances where one would want
to apply many of the relationship properties to non-human agents without
getting into a philosophical quandary.

Last week's episode of QI mentioned that all modern thoroughbred horses
are descended from at least one of just three stallions: the Byerley
Turk, the Darley Arabian, and the Godolphin Arabian. Thoroughbred horses
have their genealogy recorded in detail that you rarely see outside
records of genealogy of royalty. However, this couldn't be represented
using rel:descendantOf using the current definition of that property.

-- 
Toby A Inkster
<mailto:mail-0xSRQTJlU/5QSYw2qhZJOlpr/1R2p/[email protected]>
<http://tobyinkster.co.uk>