RE: SUO: The Story So Far
Aldo,
Whitehead's process ontology together with Peirce's semiotics
provides a formal foundation for everything that can be stated
in ordinary languge. That makes it a universal foundation
for which everything else is a special case.
>Obviously you can conceptualize anything either in 3-d or 4-d.
>The point is that not everyone is sure that 4-d is the simplest
>way to define the intended meaning of many ordinary domains.
In mathematics in general and logic in particular, it is
usually much easier to specialize a general case than it is
to generalize a collection of independently developed special
cases. Newtonian mechanics is a simple special case of
Einstein's relativity. But without the theory of relativity,
there is no way to reconcile two "ordinary" ontologies for
dealing with auto mechanics and radio.
>I think that the modular solution to SUO is the best, at least in the
>form of a main module and some related alternatives (even less preferable,
>or with recommendations about what domains could benefit from those
>alternatives).
I agree that we need a modular approach. But the universe
itself is an existence theorem, which proves that it is
possible for all the modules to coexist in harmony. That
is one of the basic axioms for modal logic since the time
of Aristotle: existence implies possibility.
>Moreover, I am a little surprised to hear that SUO should be
>primarily concerned with an ontology of nuclear physics.
No one has ever said that. All we have claimed is that the
SUO must be able to deal with anything and everything in science
and ordinary life. For our everyday life, we use many special
cases, all of which are approximations. They all fit together
in harmony as approximations to the general case.
> Beyond the
>incompatibility between mundane and
>scientific description of the world and the possible issue of
>educating T.C.Mits,
There is no incompatibility. Every commonsense theory is
an approximation that can be derived directly from the more
general theories with the accepted degree of granularity
and tolerances in measurement.
>I understood that SUO is largely devoted to an ontology of common sense
>intended -for example - as 'everyday sharable invariant intuitions of
>an average western culture human in the beginning of the 21st
>century' (that, BTW, include some scientifically valid beliefs ..).
That is one very important goal. Another very important goal
is to support engineering, manufacturing, banking, and all of
modern technology. That requires consistency with modern
science. But there is no incompatibility. If you take a
general approach, every special case fits within the common
framework.
>Also: are you sure you want to defend the interest of both T.C.Mits
>and Vulcanian Mr.Spock in the same ontology?
Of course. There is no incompatibility.
>I'm feeling I need some clarification. What do we mean by
>'different'? at least:
>
>1) spatio-temporally disjoint:
> 1a) two spatio-temporally disjoint entities belonging to the same class
> 1b) two spatio-temporally disjoint entities belonging to different classes
>2) two temporal parts of a continuant in a 4D ontology
>3) two entities that belong to two disjoint classes
>4) definitionally distinct:
> 4a) two entities belonging to two classes that share no defining element
> 4b) two entities belonging to two classes that share some but not
>all defining elements
> 4b') two entities belonging to two classes that have related definitions.
I don't know the purpose behind your questions. The purpose
is very important to help us decide which approximation to use.
Please state your request in terms of ordinary sentences in
ordinary language, and I'll show how to translate them to logic
using the kind of ontology we are proposing. Take sentences
from a children's book, a textbook of nuclear physics, or
anything. They can all be handled within a common framework.
>In Nicola's view I suppose that clay and vase (or statue) are
>4b'-different, but they have some spatio-temporal overlap. Being
>4b'-different is a matter of interpretation, say the way we
>conceptualize some arrangement of the external world that is relevant
>to our perception, culture, and interest. In this sense, as Jon
>Awbrey put it, clay and vase are 'interpretive categories'; if you
>want, we can go on formulating other linguistic chunks that actualize
>more conceptualizations about the same world arrangement
>(discontinuity, force field, temporal slice, or whatever you want to
>call it): the hand of the artisan (metonymy by which we could
>recognize a particular craft work), a flower pot (for a decorator), a
>thirst-quenching mirage (for a lone walker lost in the Gobi desert),
>goods to be preserved, etc.
Yes. All of that can be handled very nicely within a common
framework that is specialized as needed for different
approximations.
>I am sure enough that T.C.Mits would say that a state of a mass of
>clay, a vase, a craft work style, a flower pot, a thirst-quenching
>mirage, and selling goods are all different stuff.
I just did a Google search for "vase" and "lump of clay"
occurring in the same web page. The were a total of 188
hits, of which the first one had the following sentence:
Draw the lump of clay into a taller cylinder and then shape
the desired profile into the sides and rim. Will it be a
bowl? - a vase? - a flowerpot?
The person who was using the words in their ordinary English
senses equates "it", which refers to the lump of clay, with
"a bowl", "a vase", or "a flowerpot". That is the ordinary
English of a person who is using clay to make things.
Later on in the Google search, we find a web page for Achille V:
Consider the vase on the table and the lump of clay from out
of which it is made. Is this one single entity before us or
two? Could that very same vase be made out of another lump
of clay, or have another shape? And what differentiates a
material object such as a vase from entities of different
sort, such as the actions of the potter or her intentions?
This is not ordinary language. This is the highly technical
language of a philosopher who is deliberately using words in
a way that conforms with some particular metaphysical system.
That is not English. It is a special dialect called
"philosopher-speak". The potter in the first passage finds it
natural to equate the vase and the lump of clay. It is only
someone in the grip of a metaphysical theory who uses language
in such a "weird" way.
Summary: I am trying to support the ordinary language of
the scientists and T. C. Mits. I am not trying to support
the metaphysics of every philosopher throughout history, most
of whom make up their theories without ever looking at how
language is actually used by real people to talk about real
situations in ways that concern their daily lives.
>IMO, identity criteria are a way of formalizing a conceptualization:
>if you can define (some of) the dimensions by which humans (well, a
>lot of humans) interpret and conceptualize external and internal
>worlds, you can also get a more efficient communication, retrieval,
>and so on.
I agree. And when it comes to vases and clay, I think that
the identity conditions used by the potters are much more
efficient and natural than the identity conditions recommended
by Nicola and Achille.
John Sowa