All, (01)
In my post of a few minutes ago, reproduced below, I introduced an aspect of
MACK which might be called type/instance duality, much as one talks in physics
of wave/particle duality. (02)
And just as in physics the phenomenon cannot really be grasped properly except
via the corresponding mathematics, so also can this Ontological phenomenon not
really be grasped properly without the planned runtime representations of it.
But they are, as I said in the post, fundamentally very natural, so I do not
foresee any the same understanding difficulties, not even for ordinary users,
once the new medium is launched (re that medium, cf http://TheMainstream.info,
but perhaps rather wait for the greatly updated site I'm still working on...). (03)
Sorry that's probably not much help at this stage, but it may be if you can
answer my question at the end of my post below in the affirmative? That is,
does there seem at this stage to be any sense in the picture I have just
sketched (below)? (If yes, I might try some other experimental angles, also to
help in the finalizing of my updated website.) (04)
Thanks in hopeful anticipation. (05)
Christopher (06)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Spottiswoode" <cms@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <doug@xxxxxxxxxx>; "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2010 6:28 PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Re Foundation ontology, CYC, and Mapping (07)
Doug, (08)
Sorry that this response is so late, but I'd missed your post at first...
Anyway, my response is so out of the line of the thread as it subsequently ran
that it doesn't really matter, I don't think. (09)
My comments are inline below. (010)
----- Original Message -----
From: "doug foxvog" <doug@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, March 26, 2010 7:27 PM [SAST, or UTC+2]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Re Foundation ontology, CYC, and Mapping (011)
> Christopher Spottiswoode argues that the idea of "individual" is intrinsic to
> the concept of Ontology. However, he then defines it on the basis of
> instantiation ("I am finding it impossible to conceive of "a" anything without
> a notion of Individual").
>
> This seems to me like instantiation, not instancehood. One can concieve of a
> class of objects; does that mean that the class is an individual? One can
> conceive of a relation between objects, is that also an individual? One can
> even conceive of a class of object types (e.g. BiologicalSpecies, each of
> whose instances (e.g., CanisLupus) is itself a class. Is such a meta-class to
> be considered an Individual? (012)
In "MACK" (my long-time though bad acronym for "The Mainstream Architecture for
Common Knowledge" which I am still working to pitch to this list in an
acceptable way), the simple answers are yes, yes, and yes. (013)
> I would suggest that instantiation is a relationship that holds between
> something and a class. (014)
Quite uncontroversial, I believe (though I would prefer "type" to "class"!)
However, I would note that that additional structure or form (i.e. the
instantiation relationship) is in fact also at the same fundamentally
"Ontological" level as any supposedly standalone instancehood or individualness.
That is, it is futile (at least...) to try to separate individualness from
instantiation. That is also part of what lies behind my final paragraph in my
original post which you included in your post, appended below, about not going
overboard in "lattice-ifying" our most basic ontologies. (015)
> Having an ontological category refering to such things, really is a feature of
> the language you are using, not of the thing being referenced. (016)
As I've already implied, I don't believe it meaningful to try to separate those
two in this case. (017)
> In a powerful enough ontology language, e.g. Cyc, every term (including ISA)
> is an instance of a class. (018)
As I've already answered, in MACK all relationships are individuals or instances
too. Likewise every term. (019)
> I would use the term "Individual" at the broadest level to refer to things
> that do not themselves have instances. (020)
This is where we may at first seem to part ways. (021)
Firstly, in MACK there is no need to fix any such attribute of any entity.
Individual-hood is already implicit in the use of a term with any denotation
whatever (though I'm not sure that everybody on this list would give the same
broad yet colloquial sense to that word "denotation" that I do here...). (022)
Secondly, and probably more novelly and significantly, in MACK your kind of
Individual is too fluid or dynamic a notion to warrant specifying or recognizing
except at runtime. There are various considerations which mitigate in favour of
such context-dependent fluidity, and I have habitually conceived of the
phenomenon as exemplying what I often think of as "the equivalence of type and
instance." Context-dependently, any entity or even any fact-triple may have a
type-like or an instance-like nature. At the most detailed level what we
usually conceive of as an individual (in your leaf sense) can be seen as rather
resembling a quale. (023)
Now I realize that talking of qualia is to risk opening a can of worms that will
spill out endlessly on a list such as this. But before trying to duck out of
further discussion on the matter let me mention one connection with parts of
this thread that is in a way consistent with that view. It is John's "sense of
redness" or "sense of frogness", which, here, when observed, are the instances
which "justify" or "indicate" the generic qualities of "red" or "frog".. But
what can this fluidity of interpretation mean in a formally "ontological" world?
The answer is extremely significant though it does point to one of the major
uniquenesses of MACK (which may at this stage unfortunately come across as
irrelevant or mystifying or even nonsensical... (but that, I assure you, would
merely be an unfortunate consequence of my having taken the opportunity of this
point in this thread to introduce what may seem a rather distant issue)). (024)
You see, in a MACK-realization, during runtime, there is a continual (and
multi-threaded!) switching between natures or implications, all in terms of (and
controlled by!) dynamically-combined and -applied Forms constituting the exact
contexts of the moment. (025)
And that simply means (amongst much else...) that anything can be a type or an
instance depending on the needs or momentarily-granted meanings of the facts as
seen in the present context, where "context" here is the set of presently-active
or deemed-relevant Forms (i.e. MACK Forms, your ontologies). (026)
And the exciting feature of that aspect is that the result (as I can quite
clearly see it coming) is really very natural and deals happily with many of the
problems, both explicit and implicit, which are discussed in lists like this, or
which can easily bedevil list discussions. (027)
Sorry to leave you with this so incompletely introduced and argued picture,
which is, I expect, apparently so vastly unfamiliar! However, may I ask at this
stage if any of that seems to make some sense to you (Doug or anyone else)? (028)
Christopher (029)
> A restriction of this class to exclude relations and functions is another,
> also useful category. A further restriction of this class to exclude numbers
> and character strings is also useful (in many ways, more useful).
>
> The "patterns" John Sowa discusses are narrower still. He is referring to a
> subclass of Individual that has spatio-temporal physical extent (a highly
> useful subclass of Individual) which, also, can be sensed in some way. Note
> that some spatio-temporal entities (e.g., a RestrictedZone) are
> spatio-temporal simply by definition, and can not, of themselves, be sensed.
>
> What are further properties of such classes (varieties of Individual)?
> Nothing that does not logically follow from their definitions. 3+1D and 4D
> subclasses of them can be defined such that an instance of one is not an
> instance of the other. However, rules can be written that would provide
> mappings between 3+1D and 4D statements.
>
> The patterns (of redness, frogness, etc.) that JS refers to are not restricted
> to either theory of dimensionality.
>
> I agree that they imply the existence of individuals -- but not whether such
> individuals are restricted to a certain spatio-temporal theory.
>
> -- doug foxvog (030)
Christopher Spottiswoode wrote:
> John,
>
> Thanks as usual for your patient and painstaking response. But my point was a
> different one than you addressed here: (031)
> John Sowa wrote:
>> CS> I'm afraid I have great difficulty in giving any sense to
>> > "a pattern of redness" or "a pattern of frogness" without any
>> > notion of individual (or entity, for that matter, which you
>> > also claimed to have dispensed with in your example of a very
>> > simple ontology). (032)
>> One way to think about a pure observation language is to imagine
>> that you're dreaming or looking at a movie screen. The patterns
>> you "see" might be pure illusions that have no connection to
>> any physical objects. The "sense" that you're asking for would
>> have to be added by making assumptions about what generates
>> those patterns. (033)
> My point was not a scientific or empirical one. I did not have illusions
> versus "reality" in mind. My point is an Ontological one. (034)
> To talk of "a" anything implies some notion and process of individuation ...
> there is an absolutely inescapable assumption in "a" anything - which my
> simple mind can only call Ontological as it's *so* basic to our conceptualized
> knowledge itself - that it can make sense to abstract individuals out from the
> raw flux of our otherwise unconceptualized or unformed physical or mental
> experience.
>
> ... I am finding it impossible to conceive of "a" anything without a notion of
> Individual. It's so basic as to deserve the status of being a matter of
> Ontology, and an absolutely inescapable one at that.
> ...
> So perhaps my point is that one must not go overboard in "lattice-ifying" our
> most basic ontologies? Perhaps there is no harm in assuming a wider and still
> universally-acceptable degree of commonality? Wider bases of agreement can
> uncomplicate more detailed discussion where it is more important.
>
> Christopher (035)
=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (036)
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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