On May 20, 2013, at 12:55 PM, Patrick Cassidy wrote: (01)
> PatH:
>
> One issue in parthood as often used has been problematic for me: if it is
> true in mereology that:
>> If we are talking about
>> physical objects (the usual case) then it can be described as: if you
>> were to draw a tight spatiotemporal boundary around B, A would be
>> wholly included inside that boundary. So if a lock is part-of a door,
>> and a door is part-of a house, then yes, that lock is part-of that
>> house, because the door is inside the house-boundary and the lock is
>> inside the door-boundary.
>>
> IF we have a physical object (e.g. me) and at some time t a neutrino is
> passing through that object (me) so that it is enclosed within the convex
> hull of the physical object, does it follow that the neutrino is part of me
> at that time? (02)
Yes. That is however for a VERY short time. (03)
> If so, it complicates the logical description of real
> physical objects. (04)
Only if you want to also talk about neutrinos. Personally, I am happy to ignore
them. (05)
PatH (06)
>
> PatC
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> MICRA Inc.
> cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
> 908-561-3416
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes
>> Sent: Monday, May 20, 2013 1:36 PM
>> To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx
>> Cc: [ontolog-forum]
>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What is the role of an upper level
>> ontology?
>>
>>
>> On May 20, 2013, at 10:22 AM, doug foxvog wrote:
>>
>>> On 19 May 2013 07:26, Hassan Aït-Kaci wrote:
>>>> On 5/19/2013 1:43 AM, jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>>
>>>>> Could you provide example of a nontransitive part relation
>>>
>>>> A sport team is part of a sport club. A club is part of a sport
>> federation
>>>> if it has at least one team all of whose members are professional
>> players.
>>>> So a sport team may be part of a club, but not part of a federation.
>>>
>>>> --
>>>> -hak
>>>
>>> On Sun, May 19, 2013 06:26, Matthew West wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is conflating two things:
>>>>
>>>> a) Membership of a club to a sports federation, and of a player
>> to a
>>>> sports club
>>>
>>>> b) Whole-part.
>>>
>>>> I would argue that it is the membership relation that is not
>> transitive
>>>
>>> So subOrganizationOf is a specialization of partOf which is not
>> transitive.
>>> (subOrganizationOf GaithersburgMD StateOfMaryland)
>>> (subOrganizationOf StateOfMaryland UnitedStatesOfAmerica)
>>> (subOrganizationOf UnitedStatesOfAmerica UnitedNations)
>>> (not (subOrganizationOf GaithersburgMD UnitedNations)
>>>
>>>> but that it is quite reasonable to create a mereological sum
>>>> of the players of the clubs that are members of a sports club
>>>> and of a sports federation, and that this is transitive.
>>>
>>> OK, one can create a transitive partanomic relation that has
>> something
>>> to do with the non-transitive partanomic relation suggested. But the
>>> meaning of such a relation seems like it might be tricky to describe
>>> since the relationship between individual team members to their
>>> teams is different from their relationship to the club that their
>> team
>>> is a member of and still different from the relationship that they
>> have
>>> to the federation of clubs.
>>
>>
>> Matthew is quite correct, and mereology is not particularly tricky to
>> describe. But you do have to actually learn what it is that it is
>> talking about. Mereology - the ontology of parthood - is concerned with
>> the relation being-a-part-of, which is a rather particular relation,
>> and cannot be understood by just making vague analogies to how people
>> might express themselves in casual English conversation.
>>
>> Mereology (which was originally conceived as an alternative to set
>> theory, a foundational theory for mathematics) thinks of the world as
>> made up of lumps of anonymous stuff, and the basic relation between
>> these lumps is parthood. A is part of B when, if you "take" all of B,
>> you must "take" all of A with it. (It does NOT mean, you would say "A
>> is part of B" in normal idiomatic English.) If we are talking about
>> physical objects (the usual case) then it can be described as: if you
>> were to draw a tight spatiotemporal boundary around B, A would be
>> wholly included inside that boundary. So if a lock is part-of a door,
>> and a door is part-of a house, then yes, that lock is part-of that
>> house, because the door is inside the house-boundary and the lock is
>> inside the door-boundary.
>>
>> One might object, but the world is not made of lumps of anonymous stuff:
>> there are other kinds of things, and in any case the lumps have
>> properties, and roles and names, etc.. But mereology does not deny this,
>> of course: it simply ignores it when describing parthood. Or, one might
>> object, but that is not what *I* mean by 'part of'. Fine: your notion
>> is one relation, and mereological parthood is, apparently, a different
>> relation.
>>
>> Take the team/club example. It seems obvious to me that a team member
>> is indeed a mereological part-of the team, at least if we ignore
>> temporal extents (We might have to say, the temporal part of the member
>> during the time interval that the team exists, is part-of the team.) It
>> is far less obvious that the team is part-of the club; indeed, that
>> seems like a category mistake. (Does a club have a spatiotemporal
>> extent?) And it is surly not true to say that a club is part-of a
>> federation. I don't see a federation as being a mereological whole. So,
>> part-of is indeed transitive, its is easy to describe, and it has
>> nothing much to do with federations. That all seems pretty obvious to
>> me. Next question?
>>
>> Pat Hayes
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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