Dear Nicola,
Thanks for the link to your paper. It is interesting to note just the shear variety of approaches to system components and social roles as an example of them.
I have had a read through your draft paper, and have a number of comments. I think it is probably best to give them each a separate thread.
I don’t intentionality as a historical property, but as a continuing one. Consider the stone Laure has made a paperweight. If she ceases to consider it a paperweight, and throws it back on the beach, it is once again just a stone.
I would consider that it is necessarily a different paperweight if Stefano picks it up rather than Laure, not least because having been picked up by different people they will be in different possible worlds. You might wish to finesse that another way.
I find levels of reality a useful way to think about this. At different levels of reality something is added, in the physical realm it is usually structure. When you move from physical objects to simple artefacts it is intentionality that is added. Note that even with objects in the physical realm, it is not until the structure is added that the object at the higher level comes into being.
If you do not admit a distinction here, I wonder how you will get on when we turn paper into money.
Enough on this for the moment.
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/
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England and Wales No. 6632177.
Registered office: 2 Brookside, Meadow Way, Letchworth Garden City, Hertfordshire, SG6 3JE.
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Nicola Guarino
Sent: 30 January 2012 22:51
To: Ontology Summit 2012 discussion
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] System Components
Dear Matthew,
just a few clarifications concerning my lab's work. Note that I am just trying to catch up with the (main points of the) discussion, and I am probably missing many things. I look forward to seeing the discussion synthesised somewhere, in order to allow everybody to understand how we progress.
Matthew West writes (answering to Giancarlo Guizzardi):
MW: This is very similar to the 4D, but is relatively opaque, and gives more individuals than if you adopt extensional identity in 4D. In this case playing multiple roles simultaneously does not give multiple states, but one state playing multiple roles. A bit more elegant I think.
MW: This seems to generalise the idea above a bit. One problem I have with both of these is that (if I understand it correctly) they treat social and other roles as purely classes. This gives me a problem if I want to shake the hand of the president, or start P101, because classes are abstract, and these are just things you can’t do to them. This is central to what I find unsatisfactory with these kinds of approaches. The situation is confused by there being several different meanings to role, from the participant role in an activity or state, to the component in a system, or social role with significant differences in character between them.
The second paper is still work in progress, while the first one is more established. In both cases, however, for sure the approach does not only admit roles as "pure classes", and new kinds of individuals are introduced. I defend a similar, although slightly different approach in the paper below, which explicitly considers the parts replacement problem (among other things) by introducing the notion of a "virtual individual" (NOTE - this is still a draft - comments welcome):