- From: Chris Little via GitHub <sysbot+gh@w3.org>
- Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2019 14:35:12 +0000
- To: public-sdwig@w3.org
@elf-pavlik @dr-shorthair I am slightly nervous about this proposal for instants being defined/instantiated/implemented (whatever the correct verb is). To quote Prof. J R Lucas [1] : "The distinction between instants and intervals is one that is difficult to draw clearly. It is dangerously easy to suppose that instants must be extremely short intervals." "The analogy between time and space, although useful here, is dangerous." I would like some assurance that the logic and deductions that would be performed on top of the ontology, however long and big, would not get us into the difficult mathematical arena he describes. In essence, by equating instants to the real numbers, there is potentially an uncountably infinite continuum of them, whereas specified intervals will presumably be only countably infinite, I.e. between ANY two instants, there will always be more instants (an infinite number in fact), and we choose intervals that we could potentially list. The problem is that we are now in an area of mathematical set theory, where some things have been proved that they cannot be proved true or false! I think that if the logic is always a discrete number of logical deductions, we are safe, but if there is some kind of quantative deduction involving arithmetic and measures, the logic cannot be guaranteed by mathematics. I am probably worrying unnecessarily. [1] "A Treatise on Time and Space", J R Lucas, Methuen & Co Ltd, 1973. ISBN 0416 75070 2. Chapter 3: Instants and Intervals. -- GitHub Notification of comment by chris-little Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/sdw/issues/1126#issuecomment-501730181 using your GitHub account
Received on Thursday, 13 June 2019 14:35:15 UTC