Re: SUO: RE: Re: SUO Comment #2
Chris,
Some comments:
>I think that the etymology is important, but equally so is the way that
>words are actually used. My dictionary of choice (the full Oxford Enlish
>Dictionary) gives me both.
Yes, both are important. The OED is an excellent resource.
>I had already gone back to the dictionary when you email arrived. I might
>have had some reservations about what Matthew had written, but I am more
>unhappy about your reading.
>
>You state that 'An activity is a process' whereas the OED, with examples
>stretching from 1330 to this century, would have of process 'The fact of
>going on or being carried on, as an action, or a series of actions'. The
>series of actions or activities is, I would suggest, crucial in
>differentiating between the way that the terms are used.
The OED definition is consistent with my definition. The core
definition of "process" is "the fact of going on or being
carried on" and the following example "as an action, or a
series of actions", is a specialization or subtype of process.
>I agree that the notion of activity is accompanied by the notion of actor or
>agent - to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I do not
>admit, however, to a class of things that in other respects are like
>activities but which are not initiated in some way.
I agree. Every process has an efficient cause, but that cause
is not necessarily something that one would call an "agent",
even by some metaphorical extension of the term "agent". For
an extensive analysis of the concept of process and its
relationship to causality, see my paper on the subject:
http://www.bestweb.net/~sowa/ontology/causal.htm
I would accept Matthew's definition "something happening" as
a good short definition of "process", but I objected to his
use of that definition for "activity". I agree with your
point that an activity "is accompanied by a notion of actor
or agent." If you put those two points together, you get
the following pair of definitions, which I would accept as
a good, short summary:
process -- something happening.
activity -- a process initiated or carried out by something
considered to be an actor or agent.
>The OED has, as one (probably it's main) meaning of activity 'the state of
>being active'. I think that the difference between 'process' and 'activity'
>is that activity is about a state (something happening) whereas process
>encompasses the notion of a sequence of activities, a way of doing
>something, a procedure, how to set about doing something.
This paragraph introduces new terms that require further
analysis: "state", "sequence of activities", "way of doing
something", "procedure", and "how to set about doing
something". Then you have to go to related concepts of
cause and effect and the many books written about them.
A dictionary is an important tool in doing such an analysis,
but even the OED is only a starting point. After we look up
all those words and read citations stretching back a few
centuries, we have a good collection of examples and material
to work with. But a great deal more work is necessary, such
as the kind of questioning and analysis carried out by Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle, and their students over the past couple of
millennia. And when we want to formalize such notions, we have
to look at modern science, philosophy of science, linguistics,
and the past 40 years of implementing related ideas in the
fields of artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.
That is the kind of analysis that I was trying to do in my
paper on processes and causality. It is already about 30 pages
long, but there is much more that should be added to it. For
more discussion about dictionaries and the work that has to be
done beyond what is contained in them, see my paper "Concepts
in the Lexicon":
http://www.bestweb.net/~sowa/ontology/lexicon.htm
John Sowa