[sc34wg3] SAM-issue psi-generics (was: SAM-issue term-scope-def)

[Marc de Graauw]

[Bernard Vatant]
> *Lars Marius Garshol
>
> > Yes, but instanceOf assignment is a statement about the subject
> > represented by the topic, not about the topic. (Just as with all other
> > characteristic assignments.)
>
> Nope. I fundamentally disagree with that.

[...skipped...]

> 3. All assignments and characteristics declared inside a topic map are
formal assertions
> about formal topics

> So the topic "Marc" is an instanceOf the generic class topic. What's wrong
with that? It
> never meant that the subject "Marc" outthere is a topic ...
>

Very  interesting point of view.
But can you still distinguish between the following statements in a Topic
Map, where 'Marc' is a topic id:

'Marc has a name "Marc de Graauw" '
'Marc has one wife'
'Marc has two sons'
'Marc is an instance of class topic'
'Marc is serialized in XTM'
'Marc contains 6 assertions'

According to you, all of these would be statements about topic 'Marc', not
about subject 'Marc'. However, the first three seem to me to be of a
fundamentally different nature than the latter three. If we say that
assertions are statements about subject 'Marc', not topic 'Marc', then the
latter three as stated above are simple false. If we want to make them, we
would have to reify topic 'Marc' and then - correctly - say:

'Marc has a name "Marc de Graauw" '
'Marc has one wife'
'Marc has two sons'
'Topic "Marc" is an instance of topic'
'Topic "Marc" is serialized in XTM'
'Topic "Marc" contains 3 assertions'

This seems quite logical and intuitive to me, but it does mean the former
three statements are about subject 'Marc' and the latter three about subject
'Topic "Marc" ', so assertions are about subjects, not topics. It seems to
me in your way of looking at it we cannot distinguish anymore between saying
anything that is supposed to relate to me, as I am sitting here, and saying
things about a topic in a Topic Map someone has written about me.

So what do you think? Are the first 6 assertions unproblematic, or would you
solve this another way?

Marc