On Aug 6, 2009, at 7:15 PM, Mike Bennett wrote: (01)
> Wouldn't a trope (if it was represented in OWL for example) be an
> individual as opposed to a class? Presumably the same concept would
> apply in other notations. (02)
You could take it either way. I guess my (actually Johns) point could
be summarized by the claim that its more useful to treat them as very
'small' OWL properties which have domains which are singleton
classes. Sounds complicated, but it keeps them in the same category as
other properties, which makes the ontology cleaner. So for example if
hasColor is a property which applies to PhysicalSurfaces with values
like red, blue, etc., all in the Color class, then the color trope of
my nose would be a subproperty of hasColor whose domain of application
is restricted to the singleton class containing
the_surface_of_Pats_nose and the value reddishPink, say. The color
here is the *value* of the property, which makes color tropes not
exactly comparable to colors themselves; but that might be an
advantage, in fact. It lets us say that the color of my nose is the
same as the color of my finger, without saying that the tropes are the
same. (03)
But all this is ontology-hacking, which is probably slightly premature
at this stage. Brief summary: if you are willing to allow a bit of
OWL hacking, tropes come for free, so you don't need to make the base
ontology more complicated by putting them in explicitly. (04)
Pat H (05)
>
> In which case, I would take it as a given that any proposed, reusable
> ontology is unlikely to include any individual / instance information
> anyway, except for specific instances that are referred to in class
> definitions of other kinds of thing.
>
> But I agree that this is all the more reason to include the definition
> of this in any discourse around the subject.
>
> Mike
>
> Pat Hayes wrote:
>> On Aug 6, 2009, at 12:33 PM, ingvar_johansson wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Pat Hayes wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I think this is not what is meant, if I understand the 'trope'
>>>> language. Take a concrete case, a measurement of length in meters
>>>> and
>>>> two identical sticks A and B, with exactly the same length. There
>>>> is
>>>> one property here, called "length", which applies to both sticks
>>>> and
>>>> produces the same value in each case, say 3.1 meters. So: two
>>>> sticks,
>>>> one property, one length value of that property.
>>>>
>>> I think the solution is to accept the existence of both properties
>>> and
>>> tropes (property instances). So: two sticks, one property, two
>>> property
>>> instances, one length value of that property that are instantiated
>>> twice.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Well, my purpose was only to make the difference clear; but as to my
>> own opinion, I see no good reason to allow tropes. They serve only to
>> confuse things, and have no useful ontological role. As John Sowa has
>> mentioned, one can always consider a trope to be a subproperty of the
>> original property, one which applies only to one individual. That is
>> if tropes are felt to be indispensable in your metaphysics. On this
>> view, the length of A is identical to the length of B, and the A-
>> length of A is equal to the length of A, but B simply does not have
>> an
>> A-length.
>>
>> Pat
>>
>>
>>
>>> Ingvar Johansson
>>>
>>>
>>>
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