Re: Columns without names

JOG wrote:

> David Cressey wrote:
>

>>"JOG" <jog_at_cs.nott.ac.uk> wrote in message
>>news:1158372047.852132.130270_at_p79g2000cwp.googlegroups.com...
>>
>>>These are potentially different statements to those such as "There is a
>>>person, Sally" because the latter is stating "There is a person where
>>>name:Sally". The values held in the former assertions have no
>>>discernable attribute name - rather than a tuple such as {
>>>(name:Sally), (age:28)} I just have { (7) } or { (b) }.
>>
>>Actually, "7" is the name of a number, and not the number itself.

7, vii, seven, sieben, sept and a whole host of other symbols are all names for the same thing. That thing is an abstract concept for which we all have some concrete understanding. As children, we were conditioned to associate those symbols and certain spoken syllables with various physical counters grouped in a specific quantity. We associated different symbols and syllables with different quantities of the same physical counters.

Similarly, my name is Bob. I was conditioned from a young age to respond to the above symbol and to the spoken syllable associated with it. I have an abstract sense of self and others have some abstract concept of me separate from my name. We have all been conditioned to associate those abstract concepts with my name.

Likewise for your name, my dogs' names etc. Dog owners and dog trainers are particularly aware of the conditioning aspect of names.

Just as I am not my name, the numeric value represented by the literal 7 is not the literal 7, where I use 'literal' in its computing sense as a type of symbol. The value is the abstract concept and the symbol is how we communicate the concept. Received on Sun Sep 17 2006 - 20:43:57 CEST