John (01)
> CP> As I have researched it, the situation was that bishops
> > have always kept their property intact - not the person
> > occupying the position.
>
> I have no quarrel with that point. I also accept the fact
> that a clerk who receives a payment in a store is obliged
> to put it into the company's coffers, not his or her purse.
>
> But as I'm typing this email note, I also have a cup of coffee
> on the desk. As I alternate between the roles of Typist and
> CoffeeDrinker, I take care not to pour coffee into the keyboard
> or poke my fingers into hot coffee. But I don't become two
> different individuals as I switch between those roles.
> (02)
I think there are different kinds of roles. Margaret Gilbert makes this
point very well in On Social Facts. There comes a point where a role
acquires responsibilities - and then the need to recognise it as an
individual becomes acute. MargaretG is excellent with her examples, arguing
that even something as innocent as a conversation can be regarded as a
subject with responsibilities. (03)
For Bishops the requirement for an individual is acute, for CoffeeDrinkers
it seems to me less acute. So my position is that there is a difference in
(some sort of) kind between CoffeeDrinker and Bishop. One can have
responsibilities, the other does not (at least, as I understand it). (04)
However, like MatthewW, in my 4D world I would want to see a similar
temporal stage pattern for the individuation of Bishops and CoffeeDrinkers.
What I wanted to point out is that the same luxury in not available in the
3D scheme of things, where CoffeeDrinkers can be roles of person, but
Bishops (and conversations?) need to be individuals. There is an interesting
asymmetry here. I would argue that this points to an advantage of 4D over 3D
- but do not want to cover too much old ground. (05)
> The same kind of alternation of activity occurs when clerks and
> bishops perform actions for their organizations or for themselves.
> Most people can "walk and chew gum at the same time" without
> becoming schizophrenic.
> (06)
Agreed. (07)
Regards,
Chris (08)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
> Sent: 20 March 2007 17:17
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology and methodology
>
> Dear Matthew, Pat, Chris, Ingvar, Florian, and Erick,
>
> MW> Pat took the words out of my mouth.
>
> PH> We are quantifying over 4-d entities, ie 'slices' of
> > a 'history-worm' ... which I will write by pairing a name
> > with a time-interval, eg [PatH, 1997-2007]. Person, to wit
> > [PatH, (lifetimeOf PatH)]. It is not a Person. So
> >
> > forall x Employee(x) implies Person(x)
> >
> > is false: in fact, this is a counterexample.
> > So Employee is not < Person.
>
> OK. I accept the point that the definition of
> "Employee < Person" is equivalent to
>
> forall x Employee(x) implies Person(x)
>
> in a 3D ontology, but it creates problems in 4D.
>
> However, in ordinary English, which is soaked through and
> through with 3D-ism, it is natural to say that every employee
> is a person. Since one of my primary goals is to support a
> smooth mapping between language and logic, I put a very high
> priority on being able to express logic in a natural form.
>
> In order to provide a mapping between a 3D or 4D perspective,
> there are two possible ways of defining "<" in a 4D ontology:
>
> 1. X<Y implies that every spatiotemporal extent in which
> predicate X is true is contained in the spatiotemporal
> extent in which Y is true.
>
> 2. The formula above can be retained by adding a restriction
> to the quantifier by defining "Employee < Person" as
>
> (forall ((x HistoryWorm))
> (if (Employee x) (Person x))
>
> CP> As I have researched it, the situation was that bishops
> > have always kept their property intact - not the person
> > occupying the position.
>
> I have no quarrel with that point. I also accept the fact
> that a clerk who receives a payment in a store is obliged
> to put it into the company's coffers, not his or her purse.
>
> But as I'm typing this email note, I also have a cup of coffee
> on the desk. As I alternate between the roles of Typist and
> CoffeeDrinker, I take care not to pour coffee into the keyboard
> or poke my fingers into hot coffee. But I don't become two
> different individuals as I switch between those roles.
>
> The same kind of alternation of activity occurs when clerks and
> bishops perform actions for their organizations or for themselves.
> Most people can "walk and chew gum at the same time" without
> becoming schizophrenic.
>
> IJ> No famous philosophical ontologist who posits physical (material)
> > things in space and time has argued that everything that exists
> > in space and time is physical (material); for instance, many claim
> > that property instances *inhere in* physical things, but this does
> > not mean that these spatiotemporal instances *are* physical entities.
>
> The terms "physical" and "abstract" have become loaded with too many
> connotations to permit us to reach a consensus on suitable definitions.
> Pat Hayes suggested the distinction between categories that are
> localizable in space-time or independent of any localization in space
> or time. Those entities that are localizable have a high overlap
> with physical entities, and those that are not localizable have
> a high overlap with at least the structures of pure mathematics.
>
> I believe we would make more progress by adopting this distinction
> as fundamental, and relegate the discussion of how it relates to
> the physical/abstract distinction to the pre-dinner cocktail hour.
>
> FP> Yet I am struggling, finding it difficult to work with roles
> > while not letting them take over the whole ontology. How to
> > "balance" the usage of roles in ontology engineering?
>
> Peirce had a solution. His three "metalevel" categories are
> Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. This is a metalevel
> distinction because it is not a single trichotomy at a fixed
> level of the ontology, but a principle that can be applied
> repetitively at *every* level (including recursively).
>
> I don't want to get into the details, but a simplified
> summary of that principle creates the following triad:
>
> 1. Inherent. A category defined by a predicate P(x), where
> the definition of P depends only on the structure or
> properties of x, independent of anything other than x.
>
> 2. Relative. A category defined by a predicate R(x,y), where
> the entity x is characterized by its relationship R to
> something y that is external to x.
>
> 3. Mediating. A category defined by a predicate M(x,y,z),
> where the entity x is characterized by the way it mediates
> the relationship(s) between y and z.
>
> Examples of the first are characteristics such as size, mass,
> shape, color, etc. Obviously, color is not observable without
> shining a light on the object, but the properties of an object
> that determine what light it reflects are present whether or
> not a light is shining on it.
>
> Examples of the second are Employee, Mother, CoffeeDrinker, etc.
> Anything that is classified by a dyadic relation R, such as
> Employee, also has prerequisites that are defined by a monadic
> predicate such as isHuman. Those monadic predicates justify
> a claim such as Employee<Human, but the dyadic relation R is
> what distinguishes anything of category Employee from human
> beings classified by other relations.
>
> Examples of the third include Causality, Intention, Possession,
> Goal, Purpose, Motivation, Enthusiasm, Tendency, Habit, Sign,
> Law, Default, Business, Organization, Government, and Life.
>
> FP> In natural language, it would be the normal way to refer
> > to the human, the employee and the father with, say, "Tom".
> > The same NAME refers to different entities. Here is, in
> > my understanding, where semantic heterogeneity is introduced.
>
> The question whether a name like "Tom" is heterogeneous is theory
> dependent. In Peirce's theory, proper names are grouped with
> indexicals such as "this" or "that". (Peirce, by the way, coined
> the word "indexical".) A name is a vocal way of pointing. The
> thing it points to can be classified in multiple ways -- first,
> by its inherent qualities; second, by its relationships; or third,
> by its mediating effects.
>
> I believe that Peirce's approach cuts through the mush and murk
> in a more precise and systematic way than anything else I have
> ever seen.
>
> EA> We are building an application ontology for the cell...
>
> Anything related to life involves Thirdness, e.g., function,
> purpose, etc. One of Peirce's prerequisites for life is the
> ability to respond to signs. By this criterion, a bacterium
> is alive, but a virus is not since a virus cannot respond to
> signs. In fact, a virus is itself a sign -- and a living
> cell responds to such signs by creating replicas.
>
> John
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> (09)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To Post: mailto:ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (010)
|