[topicmapmail] Subject Identifiers metadata

[Thomas B. Passin]

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