[cap-talk] "Composite", was "Same" key

[Mark S. Miller]

Charles Landau wrote:
> No, I think the choices are:
> 
>                1                          >1                 >=1
> 1 (MarkM)   Object                   Composite           ?
> 2 (Hopwood) Object or Abstraction    Abstraction         Abstraction
> 3 (Landau)  Atomic object            Composite object    Object


I'd represent my position as

                  1                        >=0
     (MarkM)   Object                   Composite

This is consistent with my

# For compactness of description, we often aggregate a set of objects into
# a composite.

which is not meant to exclude the null set. This is important when using 
aggregation to reason about a multiplicity of concrete situations. Fred makes 
much use of such abstraction-by-aggregation in his thesis. Imagine how much 
more complex Fred's reasoning would need to be if his aggregates could only 
describe non-empty sets of objects.

I do not dispute that this makes the "composite" term yet stranger from a 
conventional English usage perspective. But I don't think any of the 
alternatives proposed so far are better.

-- 
Text by me above is hereby placed in the public domain

     Cheers,
     --MarkM