Re: A real world example

Keith H Duggar wrote:
> JOG wrote:
> > It is important to see that "Me now" is a completely
> > different entity to "Me over my whole lifetime". The
> > temporal issue is irrelevant, all that matters is to
> > recognise they are just different entites. I know this is
> > initially seems an obtuse philosophical point, but it has
> > _real_ consequences for how to model those entities.
> >
> > Something must remain constant to compare entities -
> > something must identify them. If nothing remains constant
> > the things being compared, by liebniz equality, are
> > different things full stop. This is what mathematical
> > logic is grounded in, we can't just avoid it. You seem to
> > be saying it is possible that "every attribute of
> > something has changed, yet it is still the same
> > thing". Surely that's logical nonsense!
>
> It's not necessarily nonsense. It's the "endurance" concept
> of diachronic identity. There are certainly philosophers who
> stand by that view. However, I too feel that it leaves a lot
> to be desired. Personally I find the "perdurance" notion far
> more appealing. In that notion time is yet-another-attribute
> and the indentity of a thing is the totality of it's past,
> present, and future self. This view of the Universe as a
> static whole is appealing in many ways. The mystery it
> leaves us with is to explain our /perception/ of change.
> Oh and the asymmetric temporal distribution of entropy.
>
> -- Keith -- Fraud 6

Aye, identity is appealing to humans because we need the notion of self for our own sanity. As such essentialism biases how we view information, and so the preponderance with OID's, hidden surrogates, entity models, etc. Predicate logic is pretty immune to this though and that's part of why, imo, its a vital grounding point for data models.

Having said that, in general metaphysics for its own sake of it isn't of much interest to me (life's too short hey) - its only any use if the stuff has important consequences for the day to day practice of databases. Received on Wed Aug 16 2006 - 03:16:41 CEST