Re: SUO: Abstractions, universals, and signs
John,
A comment below:
At 11:09 PM 9/19/2000 -0400, John F. Sowa wrote:
[snip]
My category "abstract" is very close
to the category "information"
that Adam Pease gave above, but I would take exception to the
phrase
"object-like (rather than stuff-like)". I would prefer to
say that
the digital information in a CD is more "object-like" and the
analog
information in a vinyl recording is more "stuff-like", and I
would
call them both "abstract". We could, for example,
translate the bits
on a CD to analog information for an FM radio broadcast and then
record the reception on another CD. With current technology, we
would
probably lose some bits along the way, but with a sufficiently
broad
bandwidth on the FM broadcast, it would be possible to get a
recording
that was identical to the original.
I haven't defined my terminology I'm afraid. I'd suggest two
distinctions. One is object-like vs. stuff-like. Object-like
things cannot be divided and retain their identity. Examples would
be our old friend "Mozart's 40th Symphony" for if you remove
the 2nd movement, it's no longer "Mozart's 40th
Symphony". Another example would be that a scene from Hamlet
is not itself Hamlet.
Stuff-like things can be divided (although not necessarily indefinitely)
and retain their identity. Examples include clay and water.
The second distinction would be abstract vs. physical. Both
abstract and physical things can be either object-like or
stuff-like.
So, insofar as a CD is a "bucket of bits" or a vinyl recording
is a "collection of waveforms" they are stuff-like.
However, since both are composed of quanta at some level I don't think it
would be fair to label one as object like and not the other. And in
any case, it would be more meaningful to define a particular record as a
vinyl encoding of the Doors "Break on through to the other
side..." which would be indivisible and object-like, instead of as a
bag of arbitrary waveforms.
[snip]
Adam
-----------------
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
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