On Wed, March 16, 2011 12:22, Ed Barkmeyer said:
> doug foxvog wrote:
>> On Tue, March 15, 2011 10:22, Simon Spero said:
>>> On Mar 15, 2011 1:26 AM, "doug foxvog" <doug@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> ...
>>>> "The War of 1812 lasted from 1812 to 1815."
>>>> "The duration of the War of 1812 was from 1812 to 1815."
>>>> "The US & UK fought from 1812 to 1815." (01)
>>> Minor but possibly relevant issues with the last paraphrase: the major
>>> actors in the event included Canada. (Implicature). (02)
>> Of course, Canada was a set of UK colonies at the time. On the US
>> invasions of Canada, they fought British forces. (03)
> And to be quite correct, the political entity was known in the time as
> "Great Britain", and not yet the "United Kingdom", (04)
?? We are discussing the period of 1812-15. The Acts of Union created
the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", which took effect
January 1, 1801. So the political entity was called (for short) the
"United Kingdom" at this time. (05)
> with the term
> "British Empire" intervening. Canada achieved Dominion status (self
> rule within the Empire) in 1867. (06)
over 50 years after the referenced time. There was an Upper Canada and
a Lower Canada at this time, no jurisdiction merely called "Canada". (07)
> It is worth noting that the Americans, ostensibly being allied to
> Napoleon in the time, (08)
The US was neutral between France and the UK at this time. It was
allied to neither and traded with both. (09)
> expected to find support among the Quebecois, but
> the militia of Quebec fought loyally (and well) for Great Britain. (010)
>>> Also, fighting between us and uk forces was discontinuous, and
>>> (accidentally) continued one day after the end of the War. (011)
The Treaty of Ghent was signed 24/12/1814; the Battle of New Orleans was
fought 15/1/1815; the Second Battle of Fort Bowyer was fought from 7/2 to
12/2/1815; the US Senate ratified the treaty 16/2/1815, and the
ratification papers were exchanged 18/2/1815. (012)
The British fleet stayed outside Mobile until it received word of the
ratification, but hearing of the treaty on 14/2 did not attack after
that point. The Second Battle of Fort Bowyer is considered the last
battle of the war between US & UK troops, however, fighting with
Native Americans allied with the UK continued for months. I'm not
sure what you mean about fighting continued one day after the end
of the war (and what date do you pick for the end of the war?). (013)
In the case that fighting in a war continues after the official or
declared end of a war, I would would consider there to be two
overlapping events, the "official" declared war, and the "actual" war.
These two events might have different starting and ending dates and
have different propositions true about them. (014)
>> Wars and the fighting of wars are discontinuous in space and time.
>> This is true of many other sorts of events, as well. A good ontology
>> of events would represent this. (015)
> This is a problem. While the _fighting_ of wars is historically
> discontinuous in space and time, the _state_ of war is continuous, from
> a military, diplomatic and economic point of view. And there are many
> other situations that have this problem in terms of relating a concept
> of occurrences to actualities in space/time. (016)
Why is the representation of discontinuous events a problem? The Cyc
temporal ontology has represented this well for over a dozen years. (017)
> A recent example is a company that maintains a continuous supply of
> parts over a time period, even though the suppliers and contracts change
> over that time period. The state 'there exists a supplier to company C
> for part P' holds -- the proposition remains true -- even if the
> existential is satisfied over the time period by different instances S1,
> S2, ... of 'supplier'. (018)
> Similarly, the War of 1812 existed officially from the declaration of
> war by the United States until the signing of the peace treaty in 1815, (019)
Actually, past the date of signing; the treaty stated the date at which
it took effect. (020)
> but as a set of occurrences of operations, each of which involved
> periods of preparation, periods of actual battle, and periods of retreat
> and recovery. The war at sea, for example, consisted entirely of
> sorties by individual warships (commerce raiders and escorts), with the
> exception of the British invasion of 1814 and the Battle of Lake Erie
> (which involved the sorriest fleets either nation ever fielded). (021)
> For the OMG Date/Time ontology, we decided it was better to think of
> events as concepts/relations that are instantiated in 4D space/time by
> 'occurrences' of states, rather than as truth of propositions. Put
> another way, you get propositions that are both true and false over some
> historical interval, and it is more workable to think of them as
> formulas that define relations rather than formulas that are propositions. (022)
The representation of Event as a type of Concept to which relations apply
is much more manageable than as a collection of propositions. For events
which involve human actions, it often is not possible to ensure that all
true propositions about them are in the knowledge base. (023)
>>> [ The war was a failed attempt to seize Canada (024)
>> It included such attempts. It involved other issues on both sides,
>> but those are not matters of discussion in this forum. (025)
> Indeed. It was an intersection of different political agendas in the
> U.S. Congress and in the Executive. In addition to the jingoist desire
> to conquer Canada, there was the impact of Britain's dominance of the
> seas on U.S. oceangoing commerce and the lumber, cotton and tobacco
> industries. (026)
The impressment of US seamen seized by British ships was a major reason in
the US for declaring war. The US also objected to British interference in
US commerce overseas. Needless to say, US schools, Canadian schools, and
UK schools teach about the war very differently. (027)
>> An ontology used for representing the war would need to specify
>> subevents of the war, charges made by different parties to the war,
>> and relationships between subevents of the main event and other events
>> that are not considered to be part of the main event. Representing
>> contexts would be important, as what are viewed as facts by one party
>> are viewed as false by another. (028)
> The idea of 'subevents' is definitely in the eye of the beholder. The
> same situation in space/time can satisfy many 'event' concepts.
> Strictly speaking 'A is a subevent of B' should mean (029)
I take "should mean", as used here, to mean "means in my ontology".
This is the reverse of Humpty Dumpty, who allows the user of a word
to select its meaning. (030)
> that the
> proposition whose instantaneous truth characterizes event A _entails_
> the proposition whose instantaneous truth characterizes event B. (031)
You've just slipped from having events defined as instances of concepts
to being propositions. Even so, shouldn't your entailment work in
the other direction? (032)
> By comparison, the use of 'subevent' here probably refers to some
> ill-defined part/whole relationship, (033)
I object to your guess that my use of a term is "ill-defined". My meaning
is cyc:subEvents, which is highly axiomatized. (034)
> and many of those come dangerously
> close to 'post hoc' interpretations (more accurately 'inter hoc':
> 'during' implies 'part of'). (035)
I agree that many creators of ontologies are sloppy. I find it insulting
that you assume that I fit in that category. (036)
>>> whilst British forces were
>>> engaged in the Peninsular Campaign to liberate (037)
> a word that reveals one Anglo bias, one not in fact shared by
> Wellington, who saw the Peninsular Campaign as a perfect example of
> Clausewitz's maxim: War is politics conducted by other means. (038)
>>> Spain and Portugal, and
>>> Napoleon was still in the thick black part of the graph.
>>> The war was pushed on the country by the western-most regions and
>>> opposed by everyone near a coastline. (039)
>> Certainly not *everyone*. (040)
> Exactly. In fact, the set of persons whose livelihood or fortune was
> based on oceangoing commerce tended to live and work near a coastline,
> perforce, and supported the war in large numbers. The jingoists were
> for the most part in the states that bordered Canada, but they were
> joined by others from Virginia and North Carolina who had visions of an
> American Empire. (041)
>>> After the first exile, the Royal Navy were free to transport and
>>> sustain
>>> battle hardened Marines and other forces, leading to the unfortunate
>>> events of Aug 24th. (042)
> Well, every cloud has its silver lining. One result was the
> construction of the ring of forts around Washington in the 1830s, one of
> which, Fort Totten, was built across the 1814 avenue of invasion (the
> Bladensburg Pike, aka New York Avenue). Another of them stopped Jubal
> Early's attack on Washington in 1864. (It is worth noting that Early
> marched down the same road that Dolly Madison and the White House staff
> used to escape in 1814 -- the 7th Street Pike, now called Georgia
> Avenue. Early was stopped at Fort Stevens, now the site of Walter Reed
> Army Medical Center, just inside the point that is the top of the DC
> diamond.) (043)
FWIW, there's a circular iron fence around the milestone that marks this
corner. an easy stone's throw from East-West Highway, which curves around
it. [But please don't throw stones (044)
Walter Reed & Fort Stevens are a little over a mile south of this point.
Fort Stevens is just north of Military Road, as are several other of
these forts. East of Georgia Avenue, Military Road has been renamed
Missouri Avenue, which runs just south of Fort Slocum. (045)
-- doug f (046)
> -Ed
>
>>
>> (inRetaliationFor BuringOfWashington BurningOfYorkCanada)
>>
>> -- doug foxvog
>>
>>
>>> This was just what the opponents of the war had expected.]
>>>
>>> Simon // Up Grads and at 'em
>> =============================================================
>> doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx (047)
> --
> Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
> National Institute of Standards & Technology
> Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
> 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
> Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800
>
> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
> and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."
> (048)
=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (049)
"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.
============================================================= (050)
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