>Pat,
>
>I believe that is an important distinction:
>
>PH> You are referring to what I was calling a 'framework'. It
> > amounts to an agreed metaphysics, in effect: agreeing to adopt
> > a certain perspective on certain basic issues, often having
> > to do with relationships and time and necessity, and to use
> > a certain basic style of description when talking of these
> > things. DOLCE is in this category.
>
>The arguments I was having with Chris P. and John B. were about
>the underlying metaphysics. FOL, especially the Common Logic
>version of FOL, is about as neutral as one can get. But any
>strategy, such as DOLCE, which has metaphysical implications
>drags us into a swamp of endless debates. (01)
Indeed. And it is exactly these debates that I
think we can avoid by allowing everyone to
express themselves in their preferred way, and
writing conversion (what Ive been calling
fishplate) ontologies to translate between them,
in the IKRIS mode. So for example Bateman's
quasi-individuals translate into Sowa's roles;
and Johanssen, who believes in property
instances, can talk to Hayes, who doesn't, using
this as a fishplate (using IKL conventions): (02)
(= inheres (frameworkName JohanssenMetaph 'inheres'))
(= propInstance (frameworkName JohanssenMeta 'property instance')) (03)
(forall (x ...)(iff (x ...)(exists ((y propInstance))(and
(propInstance y x)(inheres x ...)(not (HayesMetaph y))
)) )) (04)
BTW, for "fishplate" see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishplate
This is what made 20' long steel rails into continent-spanning railways :-) (05)
>
>What I have always complained about DOLCE is the notion of
>"essential". That is a modal term, which, as I have said
>many times, is always determined by some implicit principle
>that makes something "essential". Instead of hiding behind
>a little box in modal logic, anyone who claims something is
>"essential" should state exactly what law or principle makes
>it essential. (06)
Or state *exactly* which quantified modal logic
they are using, and preferably which style of
translation they prefer from it to conventional
FOL. And if not the last, then to not complain
when others make that decision for them. (07)
>
>The other point is about the number of different "entities"
>implied by role language. I don't care what assumptions
>anyone makes, but I'd like to see them formulate them by
>stating exactly what they're quantifying over. Then they
>can state explicitly exactly how those roles are related
>to the things that are playing the roles. (08)
Right. In fact, I recommend a kind of universal
solvent for debates about what 'really' exists
(one that will make metaphysicians gnash their
teeth). They all exist. Logical quantifiers range
over all entities that anyone, anywhere, might
ever want to talk about. This is a much bigger
set than anyone (except maybe David Lewis) thinks
is the actual universe of real things that really
exist, so everyone should give their universe of
real things a name, and restrict their
quantifiers to it. (Yes, Virginia, existence is a
predicate.) Common logic provides a construction
called a 'module' to do this with minimum
syntactic fuss (in particular, you only have to
write out the restriction once, instead of
repeating it in every sentence.) (09)
In the IKL guide we called this being 'panoptic'.
Its essential for real interoperation. Nobody
ever intends to quantify over what other people
want to quantify over (c.f. the discussion here
about qua-individuals: myself, I wonder, with
Quine, how many qua-individuals can be found in
an empty doorway); so the only sensible stance to
adopt at the global level is that when exchanging
information, one is always talking about part of
the universe which is needed to be the common
ground of the conversation. (010)
Pat (011)
>
>John
>
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