While computer programs and logical theories begin by declaring the concepts
of interest, be it as data types or as predicates, network computation does not
allow such global declarations, and requires *concept mining* and *concept
analysis* to extract shared semantics for different network nodes. Powerful
semantic analysis systems have been the drivers of nearly all paradigm shifts
on the web. In categorical terms, most of them can be described as
bicompletions of enriched matrices, generalizing the Dedekind-MacNeille-style
completions from posets to suitably enriched categories. Yet it has been well
known for more than 40 years that ordinary categories themselves in general do
not permit such completions. Armed with this new semantical view of
Dedekind-MacNeille completions, and of matrix bicompletions, we take another
look at this ancient mystery. It turns out that simple categorical versions of
the *limit superior* and *limit inferior* operations characterize a general
notion of Dedekind-MacNeille completion, that seems to be appropriate for
ordinary categories, and boils down to the more familiar enriched versions when
the limits inferior and superior coincide. This explains away the apparent gap
among the completions of ordinary categories, and broadens the path towards
categorical concept mining and analysis, opened in previous work.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures and 9 diagram
