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This is also what I am trying to find out. I simply don't understand where the definition of "Collection" in SUMO comes from a philosophical standpoint.A "group of physical objects" like a "collection of physical object" is by definition created by the act of grouping, by the act of collecting, according to a certain character possessed by its members which we call as a noun by 'group' or 'collection'. Think of them as verbs. The act of combining things is different from the things being combined. The problem is that we often call them with the same name:
I know little about Peirce and found this a helpful clarification of what he's trying to say. However, my original question was an attempt to determine whether you and Peirce are denoting something different with 'collection' than that which the SUMO creator(s) is trying to denote with '&%Collection'.
If by "having a position in space-time" it is meant "to have existence" ("CP 1.329: Existence is presence in some experiential universe -- whether the universe of material things now existing, or that of laws, or that of phenomena, or that of feelings -- and this presence implies that each existing thing is in dynamical reaction with every other in that universe.") then maybe there is a link between the two approaches, although all existence is not limited to things that have a position in space and time exactly now. A collection exists, because its members exist or have existed, had the members never existed, there would be no collection.Just to be clear, is it your position that Peirce is defining the same thing as that being defined in the SUMO, i.e., things that "have a position in space-time", or do Peirce and the SUMO just happen to be using the same words?
That a collection is a species of abstraction becomes evident as soon as one defines the term collection. A collection is a substance whose existence consists in the existence of certain other things called its members.
An abstraction being a substance whose existence consists in something being true of something else, when this truth is a mere truth of existence the abstraction becomes a collection. "Lectures on Pragmatism, Lecture II"
CP 1.433. "[...] There are different kinds of existence. There is the existence of physical actions, there is the existence of psychical volitions, there is the existence of all time, there is the existence of the present, there is the existence of material things, there is the existence of the creations of one of Shakespeare's plays, and, for aught we know, there may be another creation with a space and time of its own in which things may exist. Each kind of existence consists in having a place among the total collection of such a universe. It consists in being a second to any object in such universe taken as first. It is not time and space which produce this character. It is rather this character which for its realization calls for something like time and space."
Julius Caesar has existed, this is a truth. Now the existence of the collection of Julius Caesar consists in the truth that Caesar has existed. Since it will always be true that Caesar has existed, the collection of Julius Caesar will always exist.
But even with this earthy defintion of &%Collection, I share Pierre's concerns here. Given that a &%Collection can survive membership changes, it seems rather arbitrary to declare that a &%Collection can't survive a time period in which it has no members.Julius Caesar died long ago, but the collection whose sole member is Julius Caesar survived him.
Consider an example given in the definition, a football team. If all the members of a football team die in a bus crash and the team is replenished the next day in an emergency draft, would we declare that the team had to start with a new 0-0 record and that the members couldn't pursue old club records? Or would we see this simply as a radical personnel change that the organization survived? If we maintain that &%Organization is a subclass of &%Collection, then it is not clear that no &%Collection can survive a loss of all of its members.
But if you're using the term 'collection' in the same way that the SUMO is using it then this collection has a spatial location after Caesar died. I'm puzzled by this claim.
JM
-- Jean-Marc Orliaguet ( jmo@medialab.chalmers.se ) - http://www.medialab.chalmers.se/people/jmo/ - Tel: +46 31 772 8581