Re: Possible new issue: Things with and without identity?

Roy T. Fielding wrote,
> On Monday, September 9, 2002, at 08:44  PM, Miles Sabin wrote:
<snip/>
> > "that has identity" is redundant because *everything* has identity
> > in the only reasonably straightforward understanding of identity,
> > ie. the logical truth in all but the most obscure formal systems
> > that,
> >
> >   (Vx) x = x
>
> No, that is not the only reasonably straightforward understanding of
> identity.  That is the specific mathematical axiom of identity and
> not identity itself.  We already had that discussion on www-tag.
>
> Everything does not have identity.  "Everything" includes both things
> that have been identified and those that have not yet been
> identified. Something only becomes a resource after it has been
> identified, but not necessarily by a URI.

You're confusing identity with identification.

The two aren't the same. Someone, I've no idea who, will be the first 
person to call me on the phone tomorrow. I can't identify that person, 
but whoever it will be is a satisfier of x = x.

If identification really is the concept that's being appealed to in RFC 
2396, then it would clarify things if the clause were revised to say 
that a resource can be anything that can be identified.

Whatever the concept being appealed to, if it's not being used vacuously 
then it ought to be possible to give illustrative examples of both 
things which satisfy it and things which don't.

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Wednesday, 11 September 2002 05:29:06 UTC