RE: SUO: 2000-7-26 example - nature of organisation
Dear John,
Yes but ... see below.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: 31 August 2001 17:07
> To: West, Matthew R SITI-GREA-UK
> Cc: 'mail@ChrisPartridge.net'; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org;
> phayes@ai.uwf.edu; guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
> Subject: Re: SUO: 2000-7-26 example - nature of organisation
>
>
> Chris and Matthew,
>
> The following summary of Peter Simons' work highlights
> what I believe is a crucial insight about mereology: it is
> insufficient in itself to serve as a foundation for ontology.
>
> MW> My reading of Peter Simons book "Parts" is that there are two
> > > types of mereological object.
> > >
> > > 1. Pure mereological sums, where the whole is precisely
> > > the sum of the parts. These are important theoretically,
> > > but in practice are generally uninteresting.
> > >
> > > 2. Mereological sums where the whole is something more
> > > than the sum of the parts. In this case there is at
> > > least one structuring relation that collects the
> > > parts together.
> > >
> > > The range of structuring relations varies enormously, and
> > > results in objects whose parts are more and less tightly bound to
> > > each other.
>
> The moral that I derived from reading Simons' book is that the
> title is misleading. It suggests that the notion of "part" and
> mereology as a theory of parts are sufficient to serve as a
> foundation for ontology.
MW: I think this is to put claims into Peter's mouth that I don't
think he made himself. I think Peter considers that he was dealing
with an important ELEMENT of ontology that had been somewhat
neglected.
> But the critical point of the book
> comes in the later chapters, where he says that something more
> is needed. That little bit more is what's really important.
>
> As Matthew's summary indicates, pure mereology, like pure
> parthood, is not very interesting in itself. What are really
> fundamental to all the most important applications of mereology
> are the structural relations that relate the parts.
>
> That is the point I have been making again and again: if you really
> want to get to the heart of ontology, writing axioms for parts is
> a red herring.
MW: Well no, but it is only part of what you need.
> What you should really be studying are the kinds
> of structural relations that link the parts.
>
> Conclusion: Mereology is useful as an alternative to set theory
> for combining physical entities. But the really important subject
> is the theory of the combining relations -- and there are many such
> relations and kinds of relations. Parthood is only a side effect.
MW: Yes, but this is not how we ordinarily come to things.
>
> John Sowa
>