Re: [foaf-dev] Fwd: relationship vocab

Toby,

I agree with your point regarding relationship properties.  Further, it
would seem to me that relationship properties should be almost universally
expanded to refer to and imply that the entity having the property is a
foaf:Agent.  A simple example: the grocery store down the street is a
neighbour of the pharmacy next to it.  Neither is likely to be considered a
foaf:Person, but they are both reasonably foaf:Agents.  The only
relationship properties that seem inconsistent with non-foaf:Person entities
are some of the more formal ones (I just can't see the the grocery store
settling down, getting rel:engagedTo and becoming the rel:spouseOf the
pharmacy - what would they talk about?).

To put this in a practical form, a person may want to say that they work for
the grocery store next to the pharmacy.  With the current relationship
properties, that doesn't work properly.  They could assert that they are a
foaf:Person who is rel:employedBy (assuming the definition is expanded) the
grocery and that they are the rel:neighborOf a foaf:Person who is
rel:employedBy the pharmacy, but that would generally be interpreted as
"we're neighbours and we work at the grocery and the pharmacy,
respectively."

Cheers,
Kevin

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Toby Inkster <tai-hn3ClYY61nJaa/[email protected]> wrote:

> 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.
>
> 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.
>
>

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