Dear Doug, (01)
You don't need all the information for there to be a 4D story. (02)
> We were discussing a theory-neutral semantics for describing that an
> individual is an instance of a class at a specific time. MW says
> it is more natural (in 4D) to state the start and end times for that
> individual's class membership. However, the information for that may
> not be available.
>
> Consider if the statements below refer to observations from a grade
> school
> science project. The student names her frog egg "Kermit" and on Friday
> records that it is an egg. On Monday, she records that it is a
> tadpole.
> She goes on a field trip for the rest of the week. The next Monday,
> she
> records that Kermit is a frog.
>
> The statements below express the student's findings. We are ignoring
> if she details the spatial coordinates of p1, p2, or p3. It is
> possible,
> even in a 4D world to have only 3 temporally defined observations to
> record. (03)
MW: Yes indeed. But the 4D statements I would want to make are that the
first observation was made during the egg state, the second during the
tadpole state, and the third during the frog state. I can also say that
there were events that were the start of the egg state, the transformation
from the egg state to the tadpole state, the transformation from the tadpole
state to the frog state, and that at some time the frog will die. All I do
not know are the times of those events, however what I say above can be
inferred from the students findings. (04)
MW: I suspect that there are limits to what it is useful to say in a neutral
underspecified way, because you lose the character of the foundation. I
would be quite happy to see just a subtype/supertype hierarchy that was
underspecified as to whether its members were sets or types. That would
already be a big bonus. (05)
Regards (06)
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 560 302 3685
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/ (07)
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