Dear Tom,
Thanks for your persistence in straightening out this wrinkle.
You wrote:
As I
said, there is an epistemological interpretation of that passage, one without
ontological commitment. I'm fine with that, but it seems to me that Pat wants
“has identity” or “with (intact) identities” to carry ontological commitment.
I keep hearing this "ontological
commitment" thing, and I have yet to see it well enough defined to become
an clearly stated English paragraph. Can you explain it please? Why is there
no "Epistemological commitment", and why not?
Pat
said:<<<
He
(Matthew) said that the identity of each grain of sand is IN THE REAL WORLD,
WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN IT. He did not say that it depends upon
your perspective. You and your perspective could cease to exist, and the grains
of sand would still be real, in the real world, with their identities intact.
The identities of things in the real world do not depend upon your or anyone
else's perspectives upon them. They are, you see, REAL.
>>>
I got that part. That is why
I was describing trees falling in the forest without observers still making a
noise. The tree, and the noise, are there whether I care about them or not.
That part is very clear. The trees and the noise, as well as the grains of
sand which exist, are there even when they have nothing whatsoever to do with
me or my activities.
It
seems to me that, in this remark, Pat is taking you to be accusing Matthew of
being a subjective idealist, a position first developed by Bishop George
Berkeley (18th century). Berkeley said: “to be is to be perceived or
to perceive”, (although in castigating Berkeley, the “to perceive” part is
usually ignored).
I think to consciously be is
to perceive. Whether to be perceived or not has nothing to do with the
existence of the thing, IMHO.
This
is a position in ontology; it says what it is “to be”, i.e. to exist. But
nobody regards it any longer as anything but a piece of eccentric intellectual
history. Nobody takes it seriously anymore.
I
agree with Pat that subjective idealism is false.
If I knew precisely what you
meant (other than to perceive or not to perceive), I might be able to respond,
but that is still quite unclear - other than the perceive thing, there must be
something more to a phrase as long and full of syllables as that one.
But
I'm worried about you. In replying to Pat, you said: “I find the view that
something exists without someone to experience it unsatisfyingly theoretical”.
That sounds a lot like Berkeley.
Since I never met the man, I
have nothing to consider. What bothers me is the absence of ways in which the
information about what is perceived, can be grounded. If it can't be grounded,
then it must be abstract. That is why it is unsatisfyingly theoretical. There
is no earth in it, no standard contamination of reality. If all the Bishop can
talk about is abstractions, then his point of view is very limited, and less
informative.
But why worry about me?
Please explain. I don't want to cause you worry.
But
that still leaves my question about what identity is, and what it means to say
that things, with their identities, exist. And I would certainly hope to learn
more than that they are “REAL”.
My
best take on it, as I indicated before, is that to say that things, with their
identities, exist, is to say that for discrete (count noun) objects, if there
are no grounds on which we can distinguish them, then they aren't discrete
objects.
Whoah! The grains of sand
are real, and discrete, each grain. Pile enough grains together and you can
put them in a bag, box, container or bucket of waste water. That collection
might contain a large number of grains, but they are still discrete, even if
there are too many to individually identify.
They certainly aren't continuous,
if that is the antonym of your "discrete" adjective.
But my "perception"
of the grains, bags, etc is recorded in a database of those grains for which I
put together unique identifiers. If there are zillions of grains, I have no
interest in tracking all of them. If I am making concrete, I want to put a
certain mass of sand into the mixture. But I don't have to greet them
individually.
Are we still making progress here? Your terminology, and Pat's,
is partly understandable but partly opaque (in my perceptions). Perhaps you
can do another beautiful English email in which you describe this with less
philosophical verbiage.
But thanks for continuing the effort. I truly would like to get
to the bottom of this.
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper,
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
From: Thomas Johnston
[mailto:tmj44p@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 2:14 PM
To: Rich Cooper; '[ontolog-forum]'
Cc: 'Pat Hayes'
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm
Your question caught me out
in a bad habit. I should, when writing a comment in this forum, copy the
material I am commenting on into a word processor, and work on my reply there,
only then uploading it to the forum.
But I often don't do that,
and simply write and revise in place. The problem with doing it that way is
that I can't scroll back to the material I wanted to comment on. So I sometimes
don't get it exactly right. In this case, I got it pretty wrong.
So my apologies for sloppy
work.
But I do appear to have
described several things that Matthew could have meant, in the passage of his
that you quote. So it's definitely not as clear as Pat thinks it is.
As I said, there is an
epistemological interpretation of that passage, one without ontological
commitment. I'm fine with that, but it seems to me that Pat wants “has
identity” or “with (intact) identities” to carry ontological commitment. Pat
said:
He (Matthew) said that the
identity of each grain of sand is IN THE REAL WORLD, WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE
INTERESTED IN IT. He did not say that it depends upon your perspective. You and
your perspective could cease to exist, and the grains of sand would still be
real, in the real world, with their identities intact. The identities of things
in the real world do not depend upon your or anyone else's perspectives upon
them. They are, you see, REAL.
It seems to me that, in this
remark, Pat is taking you to be accusing Matthew of being a subjective
idealist, a position first developed by Bishop George Berkeley (18th
century). Berkeley said: “to be is to be perceived or to perceive”, (although
in castigating Berkeley, the “to perceive” part is usually ignored).
This is a position in
ontology; it says what it is “to be”, i.e. to exist. But nobody regards it any
longer as anything but a piece of eccentric intellectual history. Nobody takes
it seriously anymore.
I agree with Pat that
subjective idealism is false. But I'm worried about you. In replying to Pat,
you said: “I find the view that something exists without someone to experience
it unsatisfyingly theoretical”. That sounds a lot like Berkeley.
But that still leaves my
question about what identity is, and what it means to say that things, with
their identities, exist. And I would certainly hope to learn more than that
they are “REAL”.
My best take on it, as I
indicated before, is that to say that things, with their identities, exist, is
to say that for discrete (count noun) objects, if there are no grounds on which
we can distinguish them, then they aren't discrete objects.
On Thursday, June 18, 2015 2:55
PM, Rich Cooper <metasemantics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks for the lovely, well
organized, and well presented list of choices! It was beautifully done,
it seems complete to me, and it thoroughly summarizes the situation.
One small portion escapes my
understanding however. When you wrote:
what I called the "epistemological
interpretation" above (approximately Rich's position, I think),
you distinguished my
rendition to an "epistemological" interpretation, rather than an
ontological one, specifically. Could you explain to me why exactly you
make that distinction? Perhaps you could also identify what part of my
statement is epistemological in your opinion, versus the ontological.
Since you write so clearly
and so well, it would be very helpful to more fully understand your reasoning
re that distinction.
Chief Technology Officer,
MetaSemantics Corporation
MetaSemantics AT
EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
http://www.EnglishLogicKernel.com
From:
Thomas Johnston [mailto:tmj44p@xxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, June 18, 2015 11:27 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]; Rich Cooper
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The "qua-entities" paradigm
re Matthew's statement
that
<<<Each grain of sand exists in the
real world and has identity ...>>>
re Pat's comment, I do not agree that Matthew
clearly meant the exact opposite of what Rich thought he meant. What is
clear is that to say that something "in the real world ... has
identity" is not clear.
On an epistemological interpretation, it
would seem to mean something like "can be identified", where it is
some kind of conscious agent who could do the identifying. With Rich, I have no
problem with this interpretation.
On an ontological interpretation, having
identity is mysterious. Does a grain of sand "have" an identity
in the same sense that it has size and weight? Or in the same sense that it has
a location in space and time? If not, what does "has identity"
mean?
Perhaps you can clear up the mystery?
The best case I could make for an ontological
interpretation would be that Matthew (and you?) are, whether consciously or
not, expressing your agreement with Leibniz's principle of the identity of
indiscernibles. That is indeed an ontological claim, not just an
epistemological one. But it doesn't involve claiming that there is a
property/attribute/quality called "identity" that physical things
have.
So is Leibniz's principle what Matthew (and
you) mean? If so, it certainly wasn't clear to me, at least, from Matthew's
statement.
If that isn't what you mean, but what you do
mean is not what I called the "epistemological interpretation" above
(approximately Rich's position, I think), then what is it that Matthew meant,
and that is apparently clear to you?
Another avenue of response for you is some variant
of saying that, by just using "good old common sense", what Matthew
means is indeed clear, and that what I've suggested here is just philosophical
hair-splitting which only obscures otherwise plain and clear meanings. But, as
we are all ontologists, and if, as John Sowa's work makes completely clear
(8>), classical ontology and ontology engineering are both about
"ontology" in much the same sense, then I would hope that you don't
propose some variant of this response.
On Wednesday, June 17, 2015
9:29 PM, Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 17, 2015, at 11:39 AM, Rich Cooper <metasemantics@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Thanks Pat,
>
> for explaining your take on the idea, but we differ again on this
issue. Maybe if we keep this up another fifteen years, we will agree on
something. (:->)
>
> PH: NO, Rich, that is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what Matthew said. Did you
actually read his words? He said that the identity of each grain of sand is IN
THE REAL WORLD, WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN IT. He did not say that it
depends upon your perspective. You and your perspective could cease to exist,
and the grains of sand would still be real, in the real world, with their
identities intact. The identities of things in the real world do not depend
upon your or anyone else's perspectives upon them. They are, you see, REAL.
>
> RC: I find the view that something exists without someone to experience it
unsatisfyingly theoretical, Pat.
I was not trying to convince you of anything, nor expressing "my
take". I was making the point that you had completely misquoted, or
misunderstood, what Matthew actually SAID. Whether you agree with what he said
is another question altogether, and one I am not particularly interested in;
but unless you actually understand what others are saying, there is little
point in debating with them.
|