Hi Pat,
Clay, I think is an individual. Convention amongst extensional
mereologists (know ye of such a beast ?) suggest it’s the spatially
dissected individual that is all clay in the universe. The example usually used
for this is milk (I prefer the idea of a global beer continuum myself, but
philosophers seem to prefer milk…go figure). I have some problems with
these examples – the milk from different breeds of cows (indeed from different
cows, or the same cows on different days) will have different chemical
compositions…as for beer, it’s a veritable cornucopia. Same goes
for clay. You can get round all this by creating a set called “individuals
made of clay” though, and that’s probably what I’d do. Peter
Simon’s book “Parts” is very good on this – he’s
a chum of Matthew’s at Leeds Uni, I think.
Yes, I agree my use of terminology is loose, but I haven’t
been steeped in logic and philosophy like many of you. BORO, ISO15926 and IDEAS
appeal to my engineer’s instincts. I like the fact that BORO is
defensible and grounded in physical reality. I like the fact I don’t have
to prove any of this by working up from an empty set using logic alone. It does
give us a problem with numbers, you’re right. But as long as I know numbers
aren’t individuals (integers might just be, according to Partridge), and
I know they’re not tuples, then they must be types. What they’re
types of is anyone’s bloody guess – not sure Russell and Whitehead
sussed this out, so there’s not much chance of a halfwit like me cracking
it. So…types they are, and I have to live with the fact that I can’t
defend their extent from a physical basis. Again, hairy-arsed engineer’s
instinct suggests the mathematicians haven’t a clue on this either….though
I’m sure they’ve got some big words and blackboard full of
squiggles that will frighten off most people who dare to suggest their castle
is built on a swamp.
“Listen, lad. I built this kingdom up from nothing. When I
started here, all there was was swamp. Other kings said I was daft to build a
castle on a swamp, but I built it all the same, just to show 'em. It sank into
the swamp. So, I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a
third one. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp, but the
fourth one... stayed up! And that's what you're gonna get, lad: the strongest
castle in these islands.” Michael Palin in Monty Python’s Holy
Grail. In case you haven’t seen it, the castle is creaking, leaning and
falling apart in the film, but everyone is in a state of denial.
Cheers
--
Ian
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
Sent: 11 February 2009 19:45
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] standard ontology
On Feb 11, 2009, at 6:27 AM, Matthew West wrote:
Well I’ll take a crack at this.
OK, I've read all the way down.
Now, let me respond. First, OK y'all have described your system quite tightly
and thoroughly, which is good. But you are also stuck in a cul-de-sac,
apparently paying no attention to the rest of the world, which is not good. You
don't understand RDF and RDFS, which maybe isn't itself very important but I
fear may be only a symptom of a deeper malaise.
[MW] Actually Ian is pretty good at the techy stuff, even if he
does not explain it in standard philosophical terms.
You mis-use established
terminology ("individual" here being the worst culprit: that isn't
what everyone else means by "individual".
[MW] That’s a bit vacuous. There is hardly any word that
does not have a large number of meanings, and at least this is one of the
meanings that individual has been used for.
Perhaps I should have said, throughout the literature on
logic and knowledge representation.
For example, the number three is
an individual, but not one of yours.)
[MW] Well it doesn’t have a spatio-temporal extent does
it?
Right, because having a spatiotemporal extent has nothing to
do with being an individual.
I agree they are missing numbers, but they do not have to be
called individuals, whatever they are.
Just generally, you appear to not
know about basics like the distinction between syntax and semantics, what
'extensional' means, the difference between actual and possible, and so on.
Look, I'm not meaning to criticize or pull rank here, just letting you know
that there is a big ontological world out there, and before suggesting that
your brand-new minor variation on a theme by Aristotle is the final answer to
the world's problems, it might be a good idea to try reading a little more
about what others have done. You aren't the first people to invent a formalized
system for representing general knowledge, and you ought to at least know a
little bit about what was already done. After all, suggesting any ontology as a possible general ontology standard amounts to making a VERY large
philosophical claim, one that most professional philosophers or ontologists
would hesitate to even approach. At the very least, it surely behooves one to
know just a little about the field in which one is making such grand
suggestions. Like knowing what some of the long words mean, and being able, or
maybe willing, to actually read and understand the specifications of the
notations one is bandying about.
[MW] You realise this is Chris Partridge you are describing as
not well read and not knowing anything about ontology?
No, it was the author of the email I was responding to. If
Chris were to tell me that RDF was only a syntax, I would be very surprised,
but would have some confidence that after reading the specs he would revise his
opinion. I know Chris' philosophical angles, so I know what he would be saying
if he were to suggest this as a universal ontic framework. I havn't heard him
suggest that, however.
... Not sure I’d like to have to trade reading lists with
him...
Here's a few questions for y'all.
[MW] Well I’m pretty familiar with Chris’s positions
on most of these, so I’ll give this a go.
(1) Is
Sherlock Holmes an individual? [MW] Yes
One might say he is located in a possible space-time, but not in the actual one.
Do you want to say that? [MW] Yes
If so, how are the many possible but
non-actual space-times related to one another, if at all? [MW] By counterpart Theory
(David Lewis, straight down the line)
OK, but then you ought to be talking about possible
spatiotemporal extents, not actual ones. I believe Barry has made the same
point.
If not, what do you want to say
about S.H. ?
(2) How
much extent is required? Is the event of a quantum being emitted by a sodium
atom's moving from a higher to lower energetic state an Individual? [MW]Yes
(How does one kick that?) [MW]
Metaphorically (Ian was of course talking loosely)
Maybe he should talk a little less loosely, given that he is
claiming in the same message to be giving precise identity conditions.
Are things like vortices in a fluid, waves on
the ocean, burstings into flame, explosions all Individuals?[MW] Yes
(How does one kick them?) Is an
acceleration an Individual? (Say my truck goes from zero to 30 in about a
minute when I set off to work tomorrow. Is that acceleration an Individual? [MW]
Yes
OK, take that acceleration: is it part of my truck('s
history, ie my truck, in your extensionalist framework, right?)? But surely
that particular piece of space-time, my truck during its acceleration, has
other properties as well. Its not JUST an acceleration. Which part (?) or
aspect(?) or type(?) of it is the acceleration itself?
(3) You
say a type is identified by its members, which I take to mean
that if it has the same members, its the same type. That sounds like saying
that a type is a set. Is a type a set, in fact? [MW]
Yes
If not, how do they differ from sets? If they
are, are all sets types? [MW] Probably, but I’m not sure what the approach
would be to ordered sets, like temperature or the real numbers.
An ordered set is just a set with an associated ordering
relation, so it is still a set. You can ignore the ordering. But Im more
worried about sets which seem clearly to not be types in any sense, such as
sets of random things that are completely unrelated. If you want to say that
all sets are types, why do you need the new word? Why not just talk about
sets?
If not, what distinguishes the type-type sets
from the non-type-type sets? [MW]
Well that would be the ordering relation.
No, ordering has nothing to do with it.
(4) You
say that a type can be a member of a type (which is good, and not
un-extensional.) Can a type be a member of itself? More generally, can there be
circles of type-membership, so that A is a type of B is a type of C is a type
of A ? If not, why not? [MW] Not
sure. I would say yes, but I think Chris is uncertain. He leans towards type
theory rather than set theory (that might impact some earlier answers.
(5) Into
which basic ontic category would you put the following: the number three; the
color purple; the property of being square; the relation between people of being the natural mother of ;
the shape of a face (in the sense in which a death mask has the same shape as the face it is a casting of); the
Krebs cycle in cellular biology; Moby
Dick, the novel by Melville
(not any particular imprint or edition of it, but the work itself); a website
(c.f. the current W3C debates over the notion of an "information
resource"); an email message; the sentences in that same email message; a
substance (such as clay or air: not any particular piece of it, but the stuff
itself); a time-interval? I realize this is a longish list, but since you
have your identity criteria so well defined, you ought to be able to rattle
them off pretty quickly.
[MW] I think Ian has answered these, no they are not very
difficult.
He skipped the number and the Krebs cycle and the website
and the substance. BUt given his answers, I can guess what these would be.
"Clay" is the set, sorry type, of all things made of clay, and so
forth. I'm still wondering about the time-interval, though.
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