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Re: [ontolog-forum] Presentism (was Re: Ontology of Rough Sets)

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Ronald Stamper <stamper.measur@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2011 17:37:10 +0000
Message-id: <E2C642DD-D6C5-4E9D-A760-A2AD8B663C07@xxxxxxxxx>

Dear Rich,

I don’t fully understand your message but the following explanation of the system we have built may help you understand my lack of understanding! 

Our presentist system recognises that the only things that exists are perceived as invariant repertoires of behaviour presently available to a perceiving agent.  All the currently available affordances contribute to the agent’s perception of the present, which is not, therefore, an instant of time.  Time is something that the agent must construct.    

These invariant repertoires of behaviour we call ‘affordances’, following James Gibson.  Groups of people have affordances not available to individuals.  For all practical purposes the only things that exist are the affordances of some agent or other.

A simple agent can experience only a very limited world.  Human beings experience vicariously a vast reality mediated to us by other people semiologically.  Hence, for all business and administrative systems, Society is the root agent.

Each affordance starts and finishes its existence and remains invariant in that interval, contributing to the agent’s perceived present.  However, the start and finish of x and y, having no persistence are not affordances but they can be spoken of in the present using expressions such as “the start of x”, “the finish of y”.  Using current affordances and memories/records of past ones and their associated starts and finishes, we can construct time semiologically giving it a structure by adding ordering relationships, for which chronometers are most helpful but not necessary.

Similarly, the agent begins to construct its experience of space with itself as the origin and later adopting other more convenient origins for other purposes, such as a transit telescope at Greenwich for navigation at sea.  The natural coordinates of space include many instances of affordances that may be involved in relationships involving affordances of motion.  Map references are useful, sophisticated abstractions.

Presentism is imposed in the practical models we build by ontological dependency relationships.  Every affordance depends for its existence on an agent but, more generally, each affordance depends directly for its existence on one or a maximum of two direct antecedents, which in turn . . .  etc, until the lattice of ontological dependencies reaches back to the root agent.  All the affordances in that lattice must coexist for the extremal affordance to exist. 

The implementation of our semantic temporal database using this structure is elegantly simple.  Moreover, the ontological dependency structure (a Semantic Normal Form) displays a high degree of stability that hugely improves the quality of systems based on it.

You will find a few tiny examples in the two papers on my most inadequate website:

www.rstamper.co.uk.

This may be presentism in an unusual form.

Ronald

 

 
On 27 Jan 2011, at 17:39, Rich Cooper wrote:

Hi Ronald,

 

Agreed.  I am not aware at this time of a practical alternative to the state based systems concepts for many, many engineering applications.  Bui I have participated in the design and analysis of hundreds of linear systems, and not yet found an unworkable representation based on the methods.  .  

 

The theory of linear systems, which underlies control theory, sensor theory, optimization, filtering, and many other practical, well functioning systems are presentist in that sense.  

 

-Rich

 

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2


From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ronald Stamper
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2011 5:01 AM
To: tara_athan@xxxxxxxxxx; [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Presentism (was Re: Ontology of Rough Sets)

 

The only things deemed to exist in a presentist ontology (metaphysical sense) exist now.  The present is no prison because we now have signs that stand for things we wish to know about in the past and future.  Presentism, I contend, provides a valuable discipline for engineers of information systems because that's the kind of world we deal with.

 

Ronald

 

 

On 26 Jan 2011, at 21:49, Tara Athan wrote:



While admittedly not bothering with the details of how it would be implemented, presentism strikes me as a temporal reference frame with origin = now, rather than origin =  big bang or  January 1st, 1970, or ...
Geographers get accustomed to dealing with multiple spatial reference frames, I don't see why we can't accept multiple temporal reference frames as well. The key is to specify what reference frame you are working in (another sense of context for Pat Hayes list?) and have invertible, well-posed transformations for lifting knowledge between them. A simple shift in time seems trivial compared to the gymnastics we go through to convert between WGS84 and UTM NAD83.

May I suggest an example I consider more apropos (than databases) as a source with a presentist reference frame? : real-time data services.

Tara

PS. And speaking of context, may I suggest another thread?  While I take great pride in having a role in stirring up the hornet's nest with our original rough set discussion, that subject line is no longer very informative ...

Rich Cooper wrote:

Further agreed.
 
Knowledge can be modeled as timeless, but the intuitive notion of learning
expects knowledge to increase with experience.  The generally accepted rule
of thumb is that efficiency increases by 20 to 30 percent for every doubling
of experience.  Therefore knowledge does, in fact, increase with the
learning individual.  
 
So any timeless model will have to have projections of the timeless
individuals onto useful classes of present individuals otherwise filtered
into the context.  Whether the context can be modeled as timeless is a
completely different question, and just as complex.  
 
-Rich
 
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Ronald Stamper
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 12:40 PM
To: [ontolog-forum] 
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology of Rough Sets
 
Agreed!
 
Ronald
 
On 26 Jan 2011, at 12:44, John F. Sowa wrote:
 
  
Ronald and Pat,
 
There is no such thing as a single, ideal ontology that captures
every useful way of looking at everything from every possible
perspective and granularity for every purpose.
 
There are many different theories of contexts, situations,
and situated communicating and interacting agents.  Those
systems, theories, and implementations are valuable and
efficient for many kinds of purposes.  In fact, they reflect
the way people happen to be situated in some finite chunk
of reality from one moment to the next.
 
But other representations are useful for different applications,
and there are systematic ways of converting one to the other.
In particular, it's important to communicate with situated agents
in terms of the situation in which they are operating.
 
When an accident is imminent, you don't want to send a driver
(or the car) a fully-qualified 4D specification.  You just want
to say "STOP!"
 
Fundamental principle:  Any single uniform universal representation
is guaranteed to be awkward, inconvenient, or inefficient for a huge
number of critical applications.
 
John
 
 
 
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-- 
Tara Athan
Owner, Athan Ecological Reconciliation Services
tara_athan at alt2is.com
707-272-2115 (cell, preferred)
707-485-1198 (office)
249 W. Gobbi St. #A
Ukiah, CA 95482


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