Re: SUO: Perspectives on Situations, Processes, etc.
Phil and Jon,
Since a universal ontology, by definition, will have to
accommodate every version of science, engineering, business,
and the arts, there will be inevitable conflicts in terminology
when we talk about them together. In my KR book, I had to face
many such issues as I tried to accomodate computer science,
philosophy, logic, AI, and physics. It is not an easy task.
Let me just say that I consider Phil's suggestions to be
important because we must accommodate situation semantics,
linguistics, and many other related topics. I believe that it
is possible to reconcile them to the kind of process philosophy
that Whitehead was developing and the kind of semeiotic that
Peirce was developing.
Probability and statistics are also important disciplines, but
they are part of mathematics. I consider the term "event"
as used in probability to refer to an abstract mathematical
construct, such as an element of a set. The fact that it
uses the same English word as some of the things that occur
in the world is intended to suggest one way of applying the
mathematical theory to the world.
But mathematics is extremely tolerant. Its symbols can be
applied in many different ways to many different kinds of
things in ways that the mathematicians who invented the symbols
never dreamed of. So if any compromises must be made, I would
suggest that the names of the mathematical symbols should be
modified with appropriate prefixes or suffixes to indicate that
they are not of the same nature as the subject to which they
are being applied.
John Sowa