Re: PROV-ISSUE-29 (mutual-iVP-of): can two bobs be mutually "IVP of" each other [Conceptual Model]

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012, Graham Klyne wrote:


> Personally, I prefer the choice that it is reflexive; i.e.
> specializationOf(a,a) always holds.  As I recall, that seems to simplify
> some other inferential machinery.
>

Yes, it solves the turtles-all-the-way problem last highlighted by Tim in
this thread, if we also made specializationOf(x,y) imply alternativeOf(x,y),
as the unknown top-level y can be specializationOf itself. However I think
we dismissed the need for such an inference.

Intuitively it sounds confusing to be an alternative to yourself, or a
specialisation of yourself, but as we see above there could be special
cases where you would want (a subproperty of)
specializationOf/alternativeOf to be reflective, so I would simply say +1 for
the conservative say-nothing approach for reflexivity.

-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes


-- 
Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
School of Computer Science
The University of Manchester