Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, Mathew,

I have been patiently waiting for someone to say what you say below, in that I believe that the 'mutiplicity of entities' or the 'counting problem' is an artifact of believing it makes sense to have ANY comprehensive, fully specified 'upper otology' which would enable us to catalog or identify all instances of 'things'.  Rather, what we take to be a thing, a first class object, something worthy of identifying, are those things that are of key (first class) interest in a particular domain.  

I only take exception with one of your choices of words, in that you talk about 'having' an identity, as if identity were some kind of property of a things, that is, as at least second class citizen).

Things might, for instance, 'have' colors. But they do not 'have' identies.  (Similarly, the do not 'have' existence. Neither existence nor identity are predicates).   Using the _expression_ 'has identity' can lead to lots of confusion, and I think it already did, in Rich's response to you.   **If* it is a thing, then it exists and could be identified.

Treating 'identity, a radical abstraction, as if IT were a second class property, (not even to say a first class thing, is the source of lots of conumdrums.  

Rather, the primary thing we find in the world with respect to identity is what several on this thread have mentioned: the act of identification.  Identification is itself a complex series of action between a pair consisting of an identifier and the identified thing.   Identification is the act of experience a set of phenomina and concluding that this set of phenomina is a representation of the SAME 'thing' as some other set of phenomina.  (for example, 'that is the SAME BEAR that stole my birdfeeder yesterday'. or 'no, it is a different bear.')   So, the first time I observe a phenominon, such as a bear on my terrace, and I think of it as a 'thing', I am recognizing that I could, if I am lucky and observant, apply identifying criteria to it.   When I see the wind blow the birdfeeder down, though, I am not going to think of the wind as a 'thing' of which I would say that is the same wind I say yesterday.  (Though I might tell my neighbor we both  experienced the same wind yesterday, that blew his trash cans and my birdfeeder. The identifying criteria for the wind being temporal and spacial contiguity etc.) 

Always bearing this in mind, saying a thing 'has an identity' is tantamount to saying that it **could** be identified by an observer.   So, for example, a grain of sand can be uniquely identified, were we to go to the trouble to do so, meaning, as you say, we have an interest in it.  So  too, could a bag of sand.  

But to talk about 'the identity of sand' is deeply confusing.  First of all, sand in English is a mass noun, like water, rice, hair, and air.  This means that we think of it as a substance, not a thing.   Only when we corral some of it, in a bag, etc., or identify a unit of it, as a grain of rice or a single hair or a lock of hair.  (Interesting to note that some things with natural units, like beans, are not treated in English as mass nouns, despite their similarity to rice, and that other languages draw the line in other places, as in French hair is a count noun.)  This forum has also made frequent mention of meriology, a mathematical theory particularly applicable to substances.   

On a personal note, I have been studying identity and definition for fifty years now ,from Artistotle and Confucius through Leibniz and Frege to its application in computational science and cyber security.   What troubles me, is that the world seems divided into those few who recognize all this basic stuff, as above, that I like to repeat,  but as professionals, feel the matter is one for making very fine distinctions, saying 'not quite' to anyone who says anything fundamental, and on the other hand people who just wing it, and feel justified in doing so in part because the people who know about it make it sound as if nobody actually knows anything.   For example, philosophers and liguists have built entire careers around mass nouns and count nouns.  They are not going to want to let somebody get away with a single inadequate paragraph on the subject.      

On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 5:25 AM, Matthew West <dr.matthew.west@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Rich,
Each grain of sand exists in the real world and has identity, whether or not
you are interested in them. That is something entirely different. A handful
of sand is also something that exists in the real world (the aggregate of
the grains of sand whilst they are in your hand) and whether you care about
that is also a different question.

Regards

Matthew West
Information  Junction
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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Registered office: 8 Ennismore Close, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire,
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-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: 17 June 2015 06:49
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm

Are you saying that identity must *always* be *unique*?  I can identify a
handful of sand at the beach without assigning an identity to each grain.
All grains look the same to me, therefore all sand has the same identity, so
I treat it as a unitless object, and the best I can do to subdivide it is to
organize it into specific volumes, weights and prices.

Sincerely,
Rich Cooper,

Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com ( 9 4 9 ) 5 2 5-5 7 1 2
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com


-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2015 10:30 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm

On 6/17/2015 1:12 AM, Rich Cooper wrote:
> you could say that the ID is the concatenated value of all
properties

I was trying to explain that similarity is observable, but identity is
always an inference.

It's irrelevant how you represent the properties or what conventions you
adopt for storing information about them.

You still have to observe the patterns before you can *infer* whether or not
they determine a unique item.

John

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