Value (was: Mixing OO and DB)

Marshall wrote:
> mAsterdam wrote:

>> Marshall wrote:
>>
>>> THAT is a definition.
>> How can I rephrase this to qualify to your standards of what a
>> definition is?:
>>
>>    [Value]
>>      "A value is unique, eternal, immutable, and is not
>>       fixed in time or space (it has no address)."
>>                     - Darren Duncan
>>
>> Ok, ok. I'll unhide my hidden agenda: nobody responded
>> my proposal for the glossary until now :-)
>>
>> Any more silence I'll consider as approval.

Yes. I should have left out 'How'. I can't turn this into a definition by just rephrasing (maybe someone else can, but I can't, we can't).

Example failure: "A value is a blurk that is unique, eternal, immutable, and is not fixed in time or space". We all have some familiarity, or intuitive notion about uniqueness, eternity, mutation, and about having something fixed in time and space, so the next question wou be: "what's a blurk?" - and I would have no answer to that.

A reply, though, could be: 'Oh that's a term just made up to get some desirable properties in, without getting into tribal connotations I'ld have when using a familiar word.

Try, instead of blurk: object, entity, thing

> A set of descriptive qualities is not a definition.

If "blurk" would be previously defined or familiar, it would, right?

> Unfortunately where "value" is concerned, it is often the
> most low-level terms that are the hardest to define.

Explaining the unexplainable we get into descriptions, postulates, primitives, dogmas, axioms, assumptions.

So maybe it's one of those?
I do think DD's Value plork (plork = element of the set {postulate, primitive term, dogma, axiom, assumption, description} captures the notion of value rather well.

> By way of example, I'm paying a modest amount of
> attention to set theory lately, and it uses terms like
> "set" and the membership relation but explicitly does
> not define them.
>
> For what it's worth, lately when I think of "value", I just think
> "a member of a set."

Is it right to say: you are trying to avoid 'value' as primitive term? If so may I ask why? Received on Sat Feb 23 2008 - 12:55:50 CET