JS: (01)
> > and then the need to recognise it as an individual
> > becomes acute.
>
> What need? Car drivers have important responsibilities
> as well. But the *person* who has the driver's license
> is the *person* who has that responsibility, not some
> legal entity. If that *person* drives while intoxicated,
> it is the *person* who is fined or thrown in jail. And
> that *person* remains in jail despite losing the right
> to be a car driver. (02)
There is certainly in some sense an individual
involved. That is the qua-individual. This is something
that must exist since it has its own identity criteria,
can be counted, engages in distinctive activities,
etc. etc. That it is also necessarily in all cases dependent
on a further individual, the one who gets thrown in jail
(thereby becoming a further individual, the jailee), should
also not be a problem. I don't see the confusion that is
meant to arise---only the confusion that does arise when
the notion of individuals is restricted. (03)
> But that legal entity is not the
> human being, and it does not perform the official duties
> of the bishop. The real flesh-and-blood bishop does. (04)
Same thing. The points referred to in my previous
post with reference to the qua-individuals were not
addressed. It is not that the airlines may have
different numbers for their flights, it is the
fact that a single person may be a passenger more
than once. There is then an individual: (05)
person-who-is-travelling-on-flight-of-airline-X (06)
this is generally filled in each case of its
existence by a real person (probably, but
as with the mules as employees example, this might
not be necessary in all cases). Then I can motivate
curious derived calculations like: (07)
Airline-X has flown x-quadrillion passenger-miles
in 2007. (08)
The passengers in this calculations are not
(simply) people, since frequent flyers will be being counted
numerous times. They are ontologically dependent
on people as above. (09)
Now, whatever is left, can be counted and can be
subjected to all sorts of other constraints or
processes. It is not the *role* that is counted,
it is the particular fillers of the roles: that
is the instances involved, or participating
in, the role's being instantiated. (010)
Perhaps it does not make any difference what this
is called, as long as we can agree that there are
such things. Counting 'the times that the person
X has been carrying role Y' seems about the same
but a long circumlocution, not compatible with
bringing language and logic together (an aim that
I am not quite convinced is sensible or necessary,
but that's a different thread). (011)
John B. (012)
P.S. Most of the above is what I took away from
a Bottazzi/Ferrario/Guizzardi/Masolo/Vieu
paper on roles and qua-individuals; don't
know if it has appeared anywhere as yet.
I recommend it as required reading for this
thread. (013)
P.P.S. (wild speculation alert:) Even the following: (014)
> of them ever imply that any human being who plays
> those roles bifurcates into multiple individuals,
> no matter how many simultaneous roles there may be. (015)
may actually be more unclear than it might
at first glance seem. If we
observe neuroactivity and affordances while an
'individual' is carrying out different activities, I
wonder if we will see quite the integration that our language
usage imposes.... To the extent that the activities
overlap, there may be interference effects, but if the
activities (i.t.o. of neuroprocessing), don't interact,
then there may be radical multitasking.... one individual
or two? When the activities of two roles are significantly
at odds with one another, so that the 'individual' fails
to reconcile them and needs psychotherapy or
something: one individual or two?
Linguistically and sociologically, one; but
that is what language always does---throw together
different ontological levels as if they weren't
separate at all. The *assumption* of a single
individual simply gives one ontological stratum
the upper hand and denies the others: and that is probably
one of those ontological choices that is best
left to practice and requirements rather than
being legislated away. (016)
_________________________________________________________________
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 (017)
|