Re: another crack at 'information resource'

On Nov 8, 2010, at 4:46 PM, Jonathan Rees wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 8:17 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:
>> 
>> Hmm. Not sure if you mean to cast your net this widely, but there are plenty of counterexamples to this as a general principle. A particular photograph of an artwork might well be credited to (and owned by) the photographer, not the artist of the original work. Prints of engravings vary enormously in price depending on whether they were pulled by the artist or by someone else from the artist's plates: often it takes arcane expertise to be able to tell them apart. Im sure there are similar examples from the worlds of music and other arts.
> 
> Suppose we are talking about some book, say Pale Fire by Nabokov,
> about its prose style, wit, length, etc., but have never needed to
> discuss anything about the particular physical copies each of us has
> in hand. I may not even know what language your copy is written in.
> Suddenly you say "and it's cheap - I only paid $2000 for it" -
> something I can't corroborate. I'm completely baffled by this until,
> after a long and confusing conversation, we finally figure out that by
> "Pale Fire" you meant your particular signed copy of it, not the book
> in general.
> 
> I think a linguist would tell you that this scenario will not happen
> with ordinary competent speakers of English. You would have said "*my
> copy* was cheap". The price is simply not a property of Pale Fire. If
> you try to formalize this, you'll have three distinct individuals:
> Pale Fire, my copy of it, and your copy of it.
> 


Agree with all that. But that seems to be on a different topic than the one we (I) was referring to. For a book example, suppose that one edition of Pale Fire was a hand-made presentation copy made by a famous (and expensive) bookmaker, and collectable as part of a hand-made-book collection, regardless of its literary merits. Then if someone were to ask about the provenance of this copy, a full answer might well refer to Nabokov *and* the guy who made that particular book. 

Pat

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Received on Thursday, 11 November 2010 15:44:05 UTC