Re: NULLs: theoretical problems?

From: Bob Badour <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca>
Date: Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:10:19 -0300
Message-ID: <46ba4d24$0$4032$9a566e8b@news.aliant.net>

Marshall wrote:

> On Aug 8, 1:20 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
>

>>Jan Hidders wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>>>How
>>>>>>exactly does that differ from scriptural interpretation and theories
>>>>>>thereof?
>>
>>>>>Exactly! Rejecting straight away null values in any form or shape
>>>>>without any sort of investigation of their properties would have been
>>>>>much more scientific. :-)
>>
>>>>That doesn't answer the question. How does it differ from scriptural
>>>>interpretation and theories thereof?
>>
>>>What makes you think they have anything in common?
>>
>>Each relates to interpretation and to an abstract entity taken as a given.

>
>
> If I may jump in, I see a clear distinction. Where the domain is
> abstraction
> itself, as is the case in mathematics or database theory or whatever,
> it is perfectly reasonable to just make stuff up and see how it
> behaves.
> If we get a useful formalism out of it, great; if not, we haven't
> lost anything except the time spent on the investigation.
>
> On the other hand, if we are discussing scriptural interpretation,
> then those engaged in the process do *not* consider the domain
> abstraction. Believers in deity x do not consider it an *abstraction*;
> rather it is an attempt to explain the natural world. If they didn't
> consider it "real" then they wouldn't be believers, would they?
>
> Concepts such as natural numbers or relations or functions
> do not exist in the same way that rocks and birds exist.
> NULL "exists" in exactly the same way that 5 exists; the
> only distinctions to be made between abstractions is in
> their behavior and our judgment of their usefulness. I say
> this even though I have a very low opinion of NULL.
>
> Even the most solid and established database theory or
> math is a purely human construct, and is generally understood
> to be so by theoreticians in the field. I will not address the
> question of what scripture *actually* is, but I will claim
> that it is not understood to be a purely human construct
> by its adherents.
>
> Marshall

I suggest that 5 represents a concrete concept. We spend much of our primary school years internalizing that concept and similar concepts. We understand the fiveness of the points of a star on the American flag versus the sixness of the points of a Star of David.

 From those concepts and from other concrete examples we build the concepts of rational, irrational and even complex numbers.

We note the usefulness of certain operations. We extend those to further useful operations. Eventually, we start to reason about the properties of operations like distributivity, for example, divorced from any specific operation.

Eventually, we start to reason about entire algebras.

Similarly, we can start with concrete concepts of true and false. We reason about conditions lacking certainty to invent probability and "fuzzy logic".

I just don't see where NULL comes from or where it goes. It seems to me like nothing more than a bad idea someone once thought would be expedient but was anything but. Received on Wed Aug 08 2007 - 18:10:19 CDT