Hi Barry, (01)
Comments below. (02)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Smith, Barry
> Sent: 09 June 2007 13:54
> To: [ontolog-forum] ; '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Two ontologies that are inconsistent but
> bothneeded
>
> Responding to Chris's comments on Pat / Bill composite:
>
> At 05:32 AM 6/9/2007, Chris Partridge wrote:
>
> >Pat: 4) Again, following Quine's doctrine, what (03)
I think this might have been Bill - not Pat. (04)
> >are these things for which the
> >continuant/occurrent distinction is
> >incoherent? Presumably, you'd want to be
> >quantifying over some class of objects for which
> >you'd like to state some axioms governing, e.g.,
> >property change over time, however that comes
> >out in your favorite formalism. Then, by
> >Quine's doctrine you're committing to the
> >existence of those things. Let's call them
> >Continuoccurrents. Now you have to elaborate
> >your theory of Continuoccurrents and distinguish
> >them from temperatures, numbers, properties,
> >propositions and all the kinds of other things
> >you have in your ontology. Doesn't sound to me
> >like that project is any less problematic than
> >the defense of either bicategorialism, 4D, or
> >any other metaphysical framework. By this I
> >mean on a practical, engineering level.
> >
> >Chris: It seems, to me at least, there is a
> >difference between the continuant/occurrent
> >distinction and some of the other choices. These
> >other choices (e.g. 4D) seem to be metaphysical,
> >in that it is difficult to devise an empirical
> >check on whether they are correct. With the
> >continuant/occurrent distinction there seem to
> >be cases that question whether it partitions
> >objects. You know the standard philosophical
> >cases – avalanches and waves – as these have been discussed before.
>
> The problem here, I think, is that people assume
> that fast-moving and fast-changing continuants (05)
Agreed. (06)
>
> Consider a pack of monkeys moving through a
> forest, losing the odd monkey at the rear and
> gaining the odd monkey towards the front. The
> pack is a continuant. The processes of losing and
> gaining are occurrents. Waves are like that
> (monkeys = water molecules); organisms are like that (monkeys = cells).
>
> Avalanche theory is based on the distinction
> between granular layers (continuants) and flows
> (which when summed together make the avalanches themselves).
> (07)
So, waves are continuants and avalanches occurrents? Or slightly more
accurately, there are wave continuants and wave-life occurrents, whereas
there are only avalanche(-life) occurrents (i.e. there are no avalanche
continuants) - as flows and flow-sums are occurrents. Have I understood your
position correctly? (08)
I was going to ask this in my last email, but this provides a nice example.
I can see there may be some background theory (granular layers?) that you
could produce to motivate the distinction in particular cases. But how does
someone decide in general whether something is an occurrent or a continuant
- and how does this apply here. I would agree that there is probably a body
of cases where reasonable people would agree (Fritz, for example) - but I
think a claim as strong as that there are two distinct categories requires
something more sturdy. (09)
If there is no general rule, I have a particular practical concern. If, in
unclear cases, the decision is effectively a stipulation by some central
authority, this reduces the effectiveness of federated analyses. If
individuals make their own choices, this affects inter-operability. (010)
> > In ontologies that deal with engineering
> > artefact, the same phenomena seems to arise
> > when (when we have a similar structure where)
> > objects are the components for other objects
> > built out. A simple example would be a network
> > of systems, sometimes people see it as the
> > systems networking, sometime people see it as a
> > network that things happen to – e.g. it goes
> > down for a while. To go back to Barry’s
> > example, some biologists see human bodies, e.g.
> > Fritz’s, as a process, with temporal parts
>
> can you give me one or two examples of biologists who think that?
>
> >– and would find it odd to have to distinguish
> >between Fritz’s body and Fritz’s body’s life. It
> >seems more as if the distinction is about
> >different ways of looking at things, that
> >sometimes can usefully be applied to the same thing.
>
> No one is denying that there are different ways
> of looking at things. Perhaps someone can even
> look at Fritz's body and see it as a life, though I find it hard to do so. (011)
But how does your bicategoralism exclude this, as '4D' is one of the
categories? It is reasonably easy to determine the 4D extent of Fritz's body
- and so this exists. It seems reasonable to call this either Fritz's body
or his body's life. Are you objecting to the use of the term 'life'? (012)
Do not people talk about a pre-pubescent and pubescent stages of the body?
Aren't there also fetal stages? What are these stages of? (013)
>
> >
> >My personal experience is that when dealing with
> >the large bodies of data that exist in
> >operational systems, when constructing simple
> >taxonomies of the artefacts this data refers to,
> >I am (reasonably) often faced with a problem
> >about which category I want to put them in – and
> >what category to put there more general
> >supertypes that seem to include both occurrents
> >and continuants. Of course, I can devise a
> >practical workaround (for each of these
> >problematic classes of objects, introduce two
> >objects – the object and its life – and ignore
> >feelings that these seem reminiscent of
> >Ptolemy’s major epicycles) but this adds noise.
>
> So how do you deal with John's lung was healthy 5
> years ago and cancerous today? (014)
Did I miss the original example? I am not sure why this is problematic.
Presumably John's lung was in a state of being healthy five years ago -
there was a healthy temporal state of his lung five years ago (2002)- and
there is a cancerous state of his lung now (9th June). One can also see
John's state of having (or not having) a cancerous lung. (015)
>
> >
> >It also seems to me pragmatic to, when dealing
> >with large systems, try to ‘cut nature at its
> >joints’ and not have too many workarounds making
> >the systems more complicated than they need to
> >be. Hence my suspicions (and maybe Pat’s) of this distinction.
>
> Having worked long and hard with biologists it
> has become clear to me that the
> continuant/occurrent distinction is the most well
> entrenched of all the joints in nature (the
> distinction between anatomy and physiology, for
> example, is very old, and has not been threatened
> one iota by recent developments in, e.g. cellular anatomy.) (016)
I would agree with you if you said that these were two ways of looking at
things. What seems to me to be going too far is to assert that there are
separate categories. (017)
> BS
>
>
>
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