Re: Trying to define Surrogates

A few useful things have also come up for in the process of thinking about this:

1. It has cemented in my mind the knowledge that identification is what matters in data modelling, not identity. i.e. I can see two things are different, but if I want to talk about them, identification of that difference is the vital aspect. i.e.

maybe be perfectly /true/ but it is of little use unless I am able to identify how ¬x=y.

2) All items can be distinguished, if ultimately by nothing else than their location. In fact even change can be accounted for by identifying an item by its path in space over its lifetime. A magical identity (or genidentity, or perdurance, or whatever) is metaphysical nonsense.

3) Duplicate propositions are so wrong it hurts my head to think about them. I obviously understood this before in terms of the definition of a set, but now doubly so in the context of identification.

4) Lists don't belong at the lowest level of modelling. The items in a list are not duplicates even if they appear so. The 5th head in a list of coin throwing results is not the same thing as the first. It has distinguishing attributes, the time it occurred for instance, or the item that preceded it.

5) oid's are a nonsense in terms of data modelling. Distinguishing an assertion by pointing at it continually cannot be shared by a new observer (and so is of no use to databases) and is unnecessary given (2). It would be like trying to keep track of the identity of cans of campbells soup by pointing at them. You're going to run out of hands very quickly and you're in /serious/ trouble if you ever want a beer.

I know some of these things are intuitive to many on cdt, but I find it useful to know these conclusions can arise from examining exactly what identity and identification mean. Received on Sat Aug 19 2006 - 02:31:55 CEST