On Dec 20, 2012, at 1:23 AM, Matthew West wrote: (01)
> Dear Pat,
>
>>> Dear Pat,
>>>
>>> That depends on how you define individual (of course).
>>
>> I had thought that there was a starting point here in which the force
>> of being an individual was that one does not have instances or
>> exemplars (or 'members'), so I have been using this idea for making
>> intuitive judgements of plausibility, rather than any formal
>> definition. This has nothing at all to do with being in space and time.
>
> MW: Someone (not me) proposed that, and I have been trying to say that
> whilst what I mean by a individual does not have members, that does not mean
> that everything that does not have members is an individual (e.g. the null
> set) and then you started shouting. (02)
:-) But Matthew, there is something peculiar going on here. There is a
:discussion going on using a word ("individual') which is really about an idea:
:a somewhat murky idea, with a long history, but still, an idea; the
:distinction between things that in some sense can have instances and those
:that are too 'particular' to have them, again in some murky sense. Then you
:arrive and tell us that you use this word in a wholly different way to refer
:to something completely different. Well, OK, you can be Humpty if you like,
:but what relevance does this remark have to the discussion at hand? If someone
:were to tell us that what they mean by "individual" is an umbrella made in
:Poland, then all that follows is that they are not having the same discussion
:that the rest of us are having. (03)
But put that aside, and I'll respond to the rest of your message as it is
written. (04)
> MW: But let's back up a bit, because Chris mentioned individual as a
> foundational object, and for what I mean, what I mean by individual is not
> really that either. So if I look at what I see (in my scheme of things, your
> mileage may vary) as foundational objects, my list would be:
> - set/class - things for which the membership/instance of relationship is
> valid)
> - spatio-temporal extent - things for which mereotopological relationships
> are valid. (05)
Are there things for which both membership and meretopology are valid? Do the
set/classes and spatiotemporals overlap, or are they disjoint? (Why?) (06)
> A spatio-temporal extent is a spatio-temporal part of (classical
> mereology) some possible world. (07)
Hmm. I would rather say that a possible world is a maximal extent (an upper
limit of the partof relation) and have the Kripkean alternativeness apply to
parts. You get a lot more expressivity that way. (08)
> - relationship - what one thing has to do with another (not to be confused
> with relations that are mathematical structures often used to represent
> relationships - or more properly classes of relationship). (09)
I dont follow the relationship/relation distinction here, but let it pass. (010)
> - number - things for which mathematical operators are valid. (011)
Again, must it be disjoint from the others? Why? (012)
>
> You could make an abstract/concrete divide between spatio-temporal extents
> and the rest (and I have in models) but I would agree that is not
> foundational and can be abandoned without losing anything.
>
> For me an individual is a kind of spatio-temporal extent. Specifically it is
> the whole of the life (not to be confused with lifecycle) of some object of
> interest in some possible world, e.g. me, the computer I am typing on, the
> singing of a song, Moby Dick. (013)
I have problems with Moby Dick; in what sense can you say that a literary work
has a *spatial* extent? (014)
> This contrasts with a state of individual
> which is a temporal part (the whole spatially, but a part temporally) of
> some individual (again classical mereology, so an individual is a subtype of
> state of individual). So me today, a singing of the first verse of a song,
> etc are states of individual. (015)
Yes, I do understand the 4-d picture; I used it in the old 'ontology of
liquids' paper. But there seem to be a host of entities that don't fit into
this scheme. Literary works, ideas, colors, measuring scales, physical
properties such as length or hardness, shapes, appearances (what do we see when
we see a face?), contracts, sounds, ... Even a body of water gives one trouble,
as I discussed long ago (is it the same lake when the water changes? Yes and
no.) (016)
> I'm not sure how one can define an individual in this sense at a logical
> level, in particular, what makes something an individual rather than just
> the background mish-mash. (If you have some suggestions I would appreciate
> them). But these are undoubtedly important things, and we seem to know them
> when we see them. (017)
Do we? I find it very hard to make reliable judgements about the difference
between your individual (a 'complete' history) and your state (a temporal
part). Seems to me that we are very flexible about this. When a dancer finishes
the dance, something certainly seems to have ceased to exist. Am I the same
person I was yesterday? And so on. But more to the point, why do you need to
make this distinction in the 4D ontology? I didnt find any need for it in the
(admittedly limited) uses I made of it. All that was necessary was the notion
of a history: a continguous 4-d chunk of space/time which had some interesting
properties, which covers your individuals and their states under one heading. (018)
Which illustrates what I believe to be an important methodological point.
Rather than debate such distinctions in the abstract, the way to make progress
is to note them, then deliberately ignore them and see how far one can get
without making them at all; thereby *discovering* what distinctions are needed
in order to state the axioms one wishes to write. If you discover how to use
your original distinctions, fine; but you may discover other distinctions which
are more suited to what you wish to say, and that your original distinctions
were based on flawed, or simplified, intuitions. What I discovered in the
liquids work, for example, was that the shape of a history comprising liquid
was a fundamental importance in writing axioms, and that the notion of a flow
through a piece of surface was critical, so I needed a notion of direction.
Both are kind of obvious once pointed out, but I did not notice them up front,
and I doubt if one would find them in Aristotle. (On the other hand,
distinctions between kinds of fluid, which I might well have gotten sidetracked
into cataloguing, were of no importance at all.) (019)
Pst (020)
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