On Jan 21, 2009, at 5:00 PM, Matthew West wrote: (01)
> Dear Pat,
>
> <snip>
>>> Pat
>>> Hayes cannot have members, whereas the class of Welshmen can and
>> does.
>>
>> It is natural at first blush, but it gets quite hard to keep it up
>> for
>> an extended length of time. For example, one way to reconcile the
>> temporal fights is to introduce the notion of a series of time-
>> snapshots of a 4D entity, this being the nearest thing in the 4D
>> world
>> to a 3D continuant. If you do that to (the 4-D) Pat Hayes, then I
>> become the set of my instantaneous snapshots. Now, I am quite happy
>> to
>> be thought of this way, and it is sometimes very useful. But if we
>> have a logically rigid distinction between things with members and
>> things without, then this violates a fundamental partitioning of the
>> universe. LIke the continuant/occurrent distinction, this dichotomy
>> seems natural but in fact just gets in the way when one gets down to
>> serious ontology engineering. One of the great merits of the CL
>> absolute type freedom is that it imposes no a priori logical
>> obstacles
>> to such re-conceptualizations of entities.
>
> [MW] Whilst acknowledging of course that the set of your 4D slices
> is a
> valid object, I would have hoped you would have seen yourself as the
> aggregate (and hence still a 4D extent) of them rather than as an
> abstract
> set. (02)
Well, I do prefer the 4D version of me, but I'm willing to be a set if
that helps communicate things better. The real point here is not what
Pat Hayes *really* is, but whether the logic helps or hinders attempts
to resolve awkward ontological mismatches. I guess you have to be
there to fully understand, but it is amazingly liberating to be able
to have one entity 'be' a wide variety of kinds of thing as the
axiomatic occasion demands. (03)
Pat (04)
>
> Regards
>
> Matthew West
> http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
>
>
>
>>
>> Pat
>
>
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> (05)
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