Re: Time, Causality and Demand-Pull
> > Partridge:
> > > ...What I am still trying to understand is why PSL should choose a
> > > formulation whose natural interpretation seems to run contrary to (in
> > > my opinion) most peoples' natural intuition of the before relation
> > > between occurrences - when a more 'natural' formalisation seems
> > > possible.
>
> >Menzel:
> > Intervals and timepoints *both* seem to be part of a commonsense
> > ontology of activities, and there are ways of defining each in terms of
> > the other, so it doesn't really matter which we start with -- though
> > perhaps then both should be part of a basic formalization of the
> > commonsense ontology.
Auspitz:
> A question for Chris Menzel: Do I remember correctly that "discrete v.
> continuous" was one of the upper level master distinctions that came
> out of the Heidelberg meeting whose final statement you worked on?
Yes.
> If one is interested in integrating or aligning disparate ontologies,
> is the discrete-continuous distinction an indispensible upper level
> concept?
I'm fuzzy on what is supposed to count as "upper level" (which is
probably ok, since it's a fuzzy notion), but certainly it is critical
that the distinction can be drawn somewhere, presumably at some high
"level".
> How does it apply to time?
Well, of course, the structure of time can be represented as either
discrete or continuous. But you knew that. Are you asking for
something more?
> Would a process ontology like PSL based on a radical discretization of
> time be interoperable with one based on a continuous view within an
> upper level of the kind that was envsiaged at Heidelberg?
Oh, you suspect me of being ontologically fickle. Well, obviously, a
process ontology in which time is explicitly discrete would not be
interoperable with one in which it was continuous. But, as is clear
from its axioms, PSL's is not such an ontology. The PSL core
presupposes neither discreteness nor continuity with regard to time.
Either can be added as an extension to the core axioms as needed.
-chris
--
Christopher Menzel # web: philebus.tamu.edu/~cmenzel
Philosophy, Texas A&M University # net: chris.menzel@tamu.edu
College Station, TX 77843-4237 # vox: (409) 845-8764