Re: Ambiguous names. was: Re: URL +1, LSID -1

[Marijke Keet]

Eric Jain ha scritto:

Marijke Keet wrote:

just because proteins are smaller than persons does not make them 
into mere abstractions--thingies of your imagination that only 
materialise by means of their representations in some information 
system. proteins were around for quite a while before you imagined 
them as mere abstract concepts, and will be so after you and any 
representation of proteins-as-records-in-an-information-system cease 
to exist.

The problem with proteins is that I haven't seen any biologists agree 
on a  general way to determine whether two proteins are the same or 
not, and in fact you could argue that the concept of any specific 
protein is a helpful simplification that allows people to get their 
job done -- but depending on what your job is, the optimal 
simplification may of course differ!

With people, I think there is less of a problem: If there is any 
uncertainty about whether two people are the same, this is more likely 
due to lack of knowledge than to different ideas of what a person is 
(though I'm sure there are a few gray areas here, too)...

"...due to lack of knowledge...": and I presume it may be that 
biologists disagree also because of insufficient knowledge about the 
protein, and/or its (over-)simplification, that is, comparing apples and 
oranges at a too coarse level of granularity. Moreover, that we don't 
know enough about all (types of) proteins and that biologists argue 
every now and then does not justify conflating the actual proteins and 
their representations in an information system. Lack of sufficient 
knowledge about a particular (biological) entity is a sideshow, not an 
argument, to the issue of distinguishing real proteins from their records.

Best regards,
Marijke