On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 03:46:30PM +0100, Barry Smith wrote:
> At 01:07 AM 1/18/2006, John F. Sowa wrote:
>
> > A _type_ t is a rule or specification for classifying entities,
> > concrete or abstract. Any entity that has the characteristics
> > specified by the type t is called an _instance_ of t.
>
> Something wrong here, surely.
>
> This would mean that Fido is an instance of a rule for classifying
> entities. (01)
Surely Barry is right. Classes -- or whatever we agree to call them --
are *semantic entities* (or, "Thingies", in my preferred technical
terminology :-), the semantic values of noun phrases like "dog" and
"tired, hungry philosopher". Rules and specifications are linguistic
items that can *refer* to classes, or perhaps provide a means for
identifying their instances, but a rule is no more a class than the name
"John Sowa" is a man. (02)
-chris (03)
ps: Pat has set up the ontac-dev list for this crowd -- let's use it! (04)
pps: While I'm in an obnoxious and overbearing netiquette guy role :-) ,
let me suggest that we revise Subject headers when msg content drifts
markedly in the course of a thread. (05)
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