Re: Are generic resources intentional?

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 10:52 AM, Jonathan Rees<jar@creativecommons.org> wrote:
> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:47 AM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
>> I think I may understand phlogiston better than "intent" :) so I'm not
>> very hot on trying to capture "intent".  I'll get to an alternate
>> suggestion in a moment, but first a brief recap.
>
> How about if we call it "phlogiston" then.

I think I understand how this works now: The puzzle is, if all of an
IR's essential characteristics can be conveyed in a message, then how
can two IRs differ in any way other than in their representations?

Well, to induce the puzzle, you need two assumptions:
(1) that the message in question (the converyor) is one of the IR's
representations, as opposed to some other message,
(2) that a characteristic informative enough to differentiate IRs
having the same representations - "phlogiston" - must be an essential
one.

Relax either assumption, and now Tim's definition of generic resource
becomes consistent with AWWW's definition of information resource.

For example, in the time sheet example, the difference between the two
resources - namely, whose time sheet it is - might not be an essential
characteristic. Important, perhaps; interesting, perhaps;
consequential, perhaps; but not essential.

Or else the fact of ownership can be conveyed in some message
unrelated to the time sheet's representations. This seems less likely
to me.

Jonathan   (don't imagine I'm being serious)

Received on Tuesday, 16 June 2009 16:29:08 UTC