RE: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
John,
Thanks very much for your reply. I agree with your comments.
Phil Jackson
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: Sunday, August 26, 2001 2:44 PM
> To: Philip Jackson
> Cc: West, Matthew R SITI-GREA-UK; Adam Pease; Yang Yun;
> standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org; phayes@ai.uwf.edu
> Subject: Re: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
>
>
> Phil,
>
> I agree that anyone who proposes a new feature has a responsibility
> to explain the importance of that feature and why it should be
> adopted. Right now, I'm busy with several papers that I'm trying
> to finish, including two that are based on my ICCS talk and my
> IJCAI talk. The first goes into more detail about Peirce and
> Whitehead, and the second goes into more detail about the lattice
> of all theories and its implications.
>
> I also agree that Ian and his colleagues (and manager) have been
> open to considering a lot of valuable contributions, and they have
> quite properly asked for justification before throwing them into
> the general pot.
>
> But if SUMO is to become a general SUO project instead of just
> a working paper, then I also believe that Adam has to take the
> position of a neutral moderator rather than a staunch defender
> of the status quo.
>
> Some comments:
>
> I have no quarrel with the following comment by Adam, since I
> recognize the need to provide more detail about how and why
> Peirce's triads would contribute to a general ontology.
>
> > [AP:]
> > > I'm not interested in Peirce per se, but only to the extent
> > > that he or any
> > > other source has elucidated clear distinctions that help us
> > > create formal
> > > logical models of the world.
>
> The following is a good question, which I am currently working on
> in the paper that elaborates my talk at ICCS:
>
> > [PJ:]
> > Perhaps the issue is not so much the openness of SUMO to inclusion of
> > Peircean concepts per se, but rather the extent to which the concepts of
> > Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness can be effectively modeled
> in SUMO, or
> > in any other framework. These particular concepts may be very
> difficult to
> > define and model. While it could be a worthy objective to model
> them, the
> > necessity and possibility of doing so seems to be at issue...
>
> The following quotation is very good, but it only emphasizes one
> aspect (although it is an important aspect) of his work. He wrote
> thousands of pages about these topics, and it is hard to summarize
> them in any short discussion (or single quotation).
>
> > To illustrate the difficulty, I've given a quote from CSP
> below. While this
> > quote seems quite reasonable in itself, I am not sure that it fully
> > encompasses the meanings of these terms...Would you say that it does, or
> > would you say it only describes one particular kind of
> Firstness, Secondness
> > and Thirdness?
>
> I would say that it describes the basic characteristics of the
> three categories (first is possibility, seond is actuality, and
> third is generality). But then you have to demonstrate how those
> three aspects are iterated and reiterated throughout the whole
> ontology. Since I am the proposer, I realize that I have a
> responsibility to demonstrate that point. I'm not complaining
> about anyone asking me for further "proof of concept". All that
> I'm asking for is a willingness to consider the point.
>
> John Sowa
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------
> "But when I feel the sheriff's hand on my shoulder, I shall begin to
> have a sense of actuality. Actuality is something brute. There is
> no reason in it.... We have a two-sided consciousness of effort and
> resistance, which seems to me to come tolerably near to a pure sense
> of actuality. On the whole, I think we have here a mode of being of
> one thing which consists in how a second object is. I call that
> Secondness.
>
> Besides this, there are two modes of being that I call Firstness
> and Thirdness. Firstness is the mode of being which consists in its
> subject's being positively such as it is regardless of aught else.
> That can only be a possibility. For as long as things do not act
> upon one another there is no sense or meaning in saying that they
> have any being, unless it be that they are such in themselves that
> they may perhaps come into relation with others. The mode of being
> a redness, before anything in the universe was yet red, was
> nevertheless a ositive qualitative possibility. And redness in itself,
> even if it be embodied, is something positive and sui generis. That I
> call Firstness....
>
> Now for Thirdness. Five minutes of our waking life will hardly pass
> without our making some kind of prediction; and in the majority of
> cases these predictions are fulfilled in the event. Yet a prediction
> is essentially of a general nature, and cannot ever be completely
> fulfilled....
>
> A rule to which future events have a tendency to conform is ipso facto
> an important thing, an important element in the happening of those
> events. This mode of being which consists, mind my word if you please,
> the mode of being which consists in the fact that future facts of
> Secondness will take on a determinate general character, I call a
> Thirdness." (CSP, CP 1:24-26)