Re: SUO: On the supreme supertype
Aldo Gangemi wrote:
> >On further thought, I'd like to suggest a different possible name for the
> >supreme supertype, other than "thing" or "entity" which seem to be
> >traditional...
> >
> >Perhaps a better word for the supreme supertype could be "referent", meaning
> >that which can be referenced.
> >
> >I'm thinking along the following lines: Whatever cannot be referenced cannot
> >be described and hence cannot be categorized or placed in an ontology. Of
> >that which cannot be referenced, we must be silent...
This doesn't seem like a good idea to me. In mathematics, at least,
there are lots of things that can't be referenced but about which we
are not silent. For instance, any property that we prove holds of all
real numbers says something about all the reals, even those for which
we could never have sort any procedure that would enable us to pick
them out and refer to them explicitly.
If you respond that such numbers are still, in some abstract sense,
capable of being referenced, then it seems to me that your notion of
"referent" has lost any bite that distinguishes it from "thing" and
"entity".
Regards,
Chris Menzel