Re: New theories on how we are artificial intelligence.

> It is true that tuples with a relation (table) can have any arbitrary
> degree but they all must be of the same degree. It is possible that
> different tuples with in a single relation can have different degrees?

Not really, because the whole point of a relation is that it is grouping together similar propositions (hence the name "relation"). So we see that the propositions "John is 21", "Bill is 24" are related because they both fit into the predicate "<person> is <age>".

If you have too little structure, you can't do much very powerful with your model, but conversely if you have too much structure it's too restrictive.
So a collection of unrelated tuples would be very flexible but not very powerful.

> Is this similar to the name of a set defining the type of its
> elements?

Not really, because a set can contain elements of any type. Or do you mean that the particular sets that are relations define the type of their elements (which are tuples)? Because in this case it would be true: relations are set of tuples of a particular type. But note: not *all* tuples of that type, because you could have two tuples of the same type but with different semantics (meanings).

> Couldn't a tuple be restricted by its attributes alone, where the
> relation it belongs to is no different that any other attribute? Or
> looking at it the other way, doesn't a tuple simply belong to multiple
> relations?

No, it's really the semantics of the tuple that determine which relation it belongs to.

Paul. Received on Tue May 20 2003 - 10:19:36 CEST