Murray Altheim wrote:
Tom,
I've been watching you and Kal go around on this one for awhile
now, and neither of you seem to be getting any closer to an
understanding. Not having been present during the conversations
I believe Kal is alluding to, you seem to be having trouble
catching that what he's talking about has nothing to do with
computers or computer systems, that the concept of "the thing
we hang topics off of" (what Steve Newcomb and Eliot Kimber at
one time were calling a "binding point") *doesn't* exist in the
same way that a mathematical point doesn't exist (except as a
point),
Murray -
As you have probably seen by now, I have gotten to the same point, since
we chewed our way through the various other possibilities.
> which is the reason that there's no way to reify it. In
the conceptual model for topic maps we didn't include the concept
of binding point, but it assuredly both exists and doesn't exist,
just as the thing that can't be reified because its only purpose
is to *be* a binding point for topic characteristics that exist
but don't exist, except in a vacuum. This is in essense the "topic
identity" and should not be reified because it does not exist. If
it existed we could put a cherry on top of it and eat it.
I'm afraid I always have trouble with this kind of language. I'm sure
that it is just me and how my mind works. I need to have it be either
simpler or more concrete. To the extent that I understand it, I'm not
sure I agree that there is such a "binding point", either in the
Platonic cave (which I am not at all sure about either), or in the way
our minds work (which I **certainly** am not sure about).
I will go further. Considering that I really don't know what a
"concept" is, nor a "relationship", I have quite enough to deal with
just mapping the computer constructs to these mental ones that I
experience (and that I imagine others experience). I don't need any
"binding points" blocking what little understanding I do have. If
someone wants to use the term "binding point" as a shorthand for "the
subject that a topic is mapped to", I would be happy with that. Up
until today, I thought that was what it was supposed to be. Anything
else, I am just going to ignore it, for to me it would just be semantic
noise that would interfere with my meager understanding of a very murky
area.
I'm glad it conveys something useful to you, but it's noise to me.
As for a mathematical point, whether or not there is such a thing in the
physical world, I am clear that there is such a concept that has been
floating around as a subject of discourse for millennia. *That* concept
I am comfortable with representing by a topic.
Be that as it may, I claim that if it is whatever you have been talking
about in your previous paragraphs, if it is a reasonably well-defined
concept you can create a topic for it (maybe with the help of a PSI that
contains the text you just posted). Let's not get into what "reasonably
well-defined" means, OK? Please, please?
OTOH, if it's not a reasonably clear notion, or if there is nothing to
be said, well, the point is moot, is it not?
Cheers,
Tom P
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