Matthew, (01)
So how does one detect/ascertain the spatial extent of an organization using
physical phenomenology? How can one detect whether a person or an asset is a
member of or owned by an organization using physical phenomenology? Why do
we need bar codes and RF ID tags and ID cards, etc., etc. to determine
which organization some thing or body belongs to? Because this information
is not detectable in physical space otherwise! In other words, the
organization is invisible in physical reality. It exists only in various
collective mental/social realities in various ways. Maybe if we develop mind
readers we'll be able to "sense" organizations, at least for their people
component, but I don't see that happening soon. (02)
And as to money, sure there are physical phenomena somewhere in the physical
manifestation of cyberspace that represent your money from one moment to the
next (usually in multiple locations). But try to find it with any physical
sensors you care to employ. None of us would recognize the physical
manifestation as money, much less ours. Much easier to connect to cyber
representations of it via institutionally provided network services. So what
use to us is information about such money's spatial extent, as extremely
small as it is? (03)
I'm intrigued by your distinction between establishment of the organization
and its existence/evolution in 4D. People agreeing is certainly an activity
detectable and representable in 4D, but if you weren't around at the time
this activity took place, you would not know that an organization was
formed. And yes, people conducting activities in response to such an
agreement is certainly detectable, but you would not have any way of
knowing/detecting that they were conducting those activities in fulfillment
of said agreement through physical inspection without doing a lot of
inferencing. (04)
By the way, my whole motivation for this discussion are people who try to
develop systems which attempt to create a representation of reality from
physical sensors (radars, audio, infrared, chemical, etc. etc.) that
includes organizational affiliation. I have never seen this work reliably,
despite all kinds of probabilistic inferencing in tightly constrained
operational contexts. One must find sources of organizational affiliation
mapped to detectable physical attributes somewhere in cyberspace, such as
biometric data or surrogates such as ID cards, IFF and the like. Of course,
the latter aren't error-free either, but a lot better than relying on
physical phenomenology sensors to determine organizational affiliations (05)
So I usually ask people I meet on travel or at conferences who they work
for. Sometimes they wear company logo clothing, but that's not 100%
reliable. And some people work for/represent multiple organizations. And we
all work for ourselves, at least part of the time. (06)
Hans (07)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew West
Sent: Thursday, May 23, 2013 11:34 AM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What is the role of an upper level ontology? (08)
Dear Hans, (09)
> I think we've had this discussion before regarding what I called
"conceptual
> reality". I understand you have difficulty envisioning an organization
> as
not
> having any spatial extent, possibly because there is almost always
> some physical manifestation of the organization, such as assets and
members. (010)
MW: It would be more accurate to say that I reject conceptual individuals,
such as you claim organizations to be. (011)
> But
> members exist physically independent of the organization, and members
> come
and
> go while the organization continues (temporal extent independent of
> any specific members).
> And physical assets also have existence independent of the
> organization - they continue to exist if the organization disappears
> (due
to
> bankruptcy, for example). (012)
MW: That does not prevent organizations being constituted from temporal
parts of those things. (013)
> Such assets may be "owned" by the organization, but they don't define
> the organization or its existence. (014)
MW: They are not what brings it into being, but what brings something into
being is not usually the same as what constitutes something. (015)
> In most cases, formal
> organizations are defined by a piece of paper filed with some
> governing
body. (016)
MW: Indeed. The agreement that the piece of paper represents is what brings
the organization into existence. But as I pointed out above, that is not
what constitutes the organization. (017)
> But even that piece of paper is not the physical manifestation of the
> organization - if it gets destroyed (fire, tornado, etc.), it will be
readily
> replaced. (018)
MW: Quite. See above. (019)
> Fundamentally an organization is an agreement among participants to
> associate with each other for some stated purpose/duration under some
> governing rules (bylaws, regulations, etc.). (020)
MW: Well to be picky, the agreement is what brings the organization into
existence, it is the fulfilment of the agreement that is the organization
itself. (021)
> But the physicality of the
> participants doesn't define the spatial extent of the organization
> except
in
> some fairly narrow contexts/perspectives. (022)
MW: The fulfilment of an agreement is an activity, and an activity (in 4D at
least) consists of the temporal parts of the participants in that activity,
i.e. people in their organizational roles, and assets etc in theirs. (023)
> The agreement itself has no
> physicality or associated spatial extent aside from the piece of paper
that it
> might be written on. (024)
MW: Agreeing is also an activity, and so has spatio-temporal extent. The
piece of paper is obviously a spatio-temporal extent, but at least we agree
that this is not the organization. (025)
> And some organizations exist in virtual realities such as "Second
> Life" with no real world spatial dimensions at all - unless you
want
> to argue that they exist in physical reality as bits encoded in some
servers
> (and backup servers) somewhere on the net. (026)
MW: Yes I do of course. That is the spatio-temporal reality in this world -
without it there is on second life, the question is then what does it
represent. The answer is a possible world that happens in the cyber space
created. These are also spatio-temporal extents, just not ones in this
world, and not always with the same rules. (027)
> I guess I don't see how it is
> useful to know the spatial extent of those bits in order to consider
> an organization as an individual.
>
> Let's take another example - money. What are the spatial dimensions of
your
> financial assets, other than currency in your wallet and maybe a coin
> collection at home? For all practical purposes, I submit that most of
> our monetary assets have no discernible (or operative) spatial
> dimensions,
aside
> from being associated with digital bits somewhere in the environs of
> the planet Earth (and that may change before too long - when cloud
> computing becomes "nebula computing"). (028)
MW: You have answered your own question. Try having money without some
physical reality. It is not possible. (029)
> Some global disaster might prove me wrong - and push for that nebular
> computing environment. (030)
MW: The server farm will be somewhere, even if you do not know or care
where. (031)
Regards (032)
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 1489 880185
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
https://sites.google.com/site/drmatthewwest/
This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England
and Wales No. 6632177.
Registered office: 8 Ennismore Close, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire,
SG6 2SU. (033)
>
> Hans
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew
> West
> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 4:18 AM
> To: doug@xxxxxxxxxx; '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What is the role of an upper level ontology?
>
> Dear Doug,
>
> > On Tue, May 21, 2013 12:39, Matthew West wrote:
> > > Dear Doug,
> > > I would say that differently:
> >
> > In 4D, i would too. But i would consider the organization an object
> > with
> a
> > temporal, but not a spatial dimension.
>
> MW: That is a rather half hearted 4 dimensionalism. I go for strong 4D
which
> has the 4D extent as the identity of any individual (not a set or
> relationship). So I do not even know what it means to exist if you
> have a temporal but not a spatial extent.
> In the strong 4D that I use, an organization consists of the temporal
parts of
> the people involved in it, whilst they are in an organizational role.
> Note that I have no problem constructing one kind of object out of the
> temporal parts of another kind (or kinds) of object.
> In any case, given the nature of space-time, I don't know what it
> means
to
> exist with a temporal extent, but no spatial extent.
> I therefore reject abstract individuals as an unnecessary commitment.
> >
> > >> I consider the team to be an organization. People become for a
> > >> time organizational members. That is a relationship between them
> > >> and the intangible organization.
> >
> > > MW: I would say that there is temporal part of the person that is
> > > a spatio-temporal part of the organization. There is also the
> > > matter of the role they play, but that is another matter.
> >
> > I would say that there is a temporal part of a person that plays the
> > role
> of
> > member in the organization. I would not consider that temporal part
> > of
> the
> > person to be a spatial part of a non-spatial organization.
>
> MW: As I said above. Given the nature of space-time I don't know what
> it
is to
> exist with a temporal extent without also having a spatial extent.
> >
> > Would you say, "Part of the Red Sox has a daughter named Sue."?
>
> MW: That strikes me as rather unlikely, but not impossible. Let us
> look at
the
> case. Presumably you do not mean any part of the Red Sox (say all the
> pitchers, or the right arm of one of them) but a particular player. Of
course,
> a particular player is not the whole life of the person, but the
> temporal
part
> of the person whilst they are a player for the Red Sox. Now what has a
> daughter is a father (or mother - but I am going to presume that there
> are
no
> women players for the Red Sox). The father is the temporal part of the
person
> from when the daughter is born until they die (I presume that you
> remain a father until your death, even if your daughter dies before
> you
> - you could make other choices). Now it is true that a Red Sox player
> has
a
> daughter if the temporal part of the person is identical to (has the
> same spatio-temporal extent) as the father of the daughter. That is
> unlikely,
but
> if the person who had a temporal part that was a Red Sox Player, and
> had a temporal part that was a father and the daughter was born
> exactly when
they
> joined the Red Sox and they died whilst still a Red Sox player, then
indeed, a
> part of the Red Sox would have a daughter.
>
> Regards
>
> Matthew West
> Information Junction
> Tel: +44 1489 880185
> Mobile: +44 750 3385279
> Skype: dr.matthew.west
> matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
> https://sites.google.com/site/drmatthewwest/
> This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in
> England
and
> Wales No. 6632177.
> Registered office: 8 Ennismore Close, Letchworth Garden City,
Hertfordshire,
> SG6 2SU.
>
>
>
> >
> > -- doug foxvog
> >
> > > Regards
> > >
> > > Matthew West
> > > Information Junction
> > > Tel: +44 1489 880185
> > > Mobile: +44 750 3385279
> > > Skype: dr.matthew.west
> > > matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > > http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
> > > https://sites.google.com/site/drmatthewwest/
> > > This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in
> > > England and Wales No. 6632177.
> > > Registered office: 8 Ennismore Close, Letchworth Garden City,
> > > Hertfordshire,
> > > SG6 2SU.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
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