Re: [topicmapmail] Re: [topicmaps-comment] Notions have existence .....

[Sam Hunting <sam_hunting@yahoo.com>]

[steve newcomb]
> In order for a topic map to be valid, its creator must
> have had exactly one changeless and unique notion *in
> mind* as the thing for which each topic in the topic
> map is a surrogate. Topic maps simply aren't meaningful 
> unless each topic has exactly one changeless and eternal 
> subject.

A Platonist would be comfortable with rhetoric like "changeless and
eternal" but as a wannabe Pragmatist, I'm not. 

Fortunately, the topic map paradigm (as I understand it) doesn't
require me to buy into the reality of Platonic archetypes to author a
topic map. 

The discipline of ensuring that a topic is a proxy for "one single
clear idea" (Thomas Passim) can be enabled, if not enforced, at a more
humble and pragmatic level by agreements in communities of interest and
practice as expressed in published subjects. 

S.

P.S. When the fruits of these agreements are "sanctified" as contracts,
changlessness and eternity will as changeless and as eternal as the
signers of the contracts desire. 

This could be one approach to a definition of "the public interest",
but the notion of "eternal subjects" almost precludes any such
discussion, since the public interest exists only in time, not outside
of it.

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