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

Al Gilman wrote,
> URIs operate within a set of communicative gestures we term 
> 'reference' and not all of them deal in the identity properties of
> things, or in persistently entified 'things' at all.

Some examples would be nice.

I take your point about stuffs, but only as metaphysics. In practical 
terms reference always goes hand in hand with individuation. Stuffs are 
referred to and manipulated in countable portions: eg. I can't buy 
unquantified oil-stuff, but I can buy 50 gallons of oil.

In any case for all practical purposes, stuffs can be traded off against 
properties ... which are at least reasonably well understood. That's 
not an argument that stuff is an empty concept, but it's evidence that 
we can do perfectly well without it.

Cheers,


Miles

Received on Wednesday, 11 September 2002 05:50:28 UTC