Re: CG: Re: SUO: CYC event vs. SUMO Process -- really different?
Len,
It's the mathematician, physicist, logician, and
philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead.
>Just for those of us (me) who aren't as well read
>in this domain, which Whitehead is being referred
>to here?
For my summary of some of the issues about Whitehead
and others, including Peirce and Wittgenstein, see the
paper on Signs, Processes, and Language Games:
http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/signproc.htm
>This may be way off, but in a different domain, real
>time 3D modeling, as expressed in languages such
>as X3D/VRML, time is a distinct object that controls
>event propagation via ROUTE objects, and objects while grouped,
>also expose in/out interfaces which can only accept
>and emit named event types. For a tornado to
>emerge and be considered such, one must isolate
>the first occurrence of the type of event which
>gives the group of objects observable tornado
>characteristics. One might assert that this
>event or combinations once routed via the first
>discrete value of the time sensor, creates a
>state that once attained, the group cannot
>become anything either than a tornado. It
>is that state that confers tornado identity
>(as opposed to the kind of identity one
>gets using ID types). I note that these are
>simulation system conventions, not reality,
>but I am three quarters convinced that all
>ontologies are simulation systems as well.
Any science, whether ontology or nuclear physics, can be
used as the formalism implemented in a computer simulation.
So I would agree that the ontology you use would influence
how you simulate reality in exactly the same way that the
version of physics would.
>Identity is a murky topic in computer science.
>XML is bedeviled by it now that well-formedness
>is the critical criteria for XML goodness instead
>of DTD or schema-based validation. Current wisdom
>is that IDness has to be defined as a type from the
>infoset. That escapes the time argument in much
>the same way simulation does: it creates a property
>type but defers for later discussion what event
>confers or assigns it. The argument about identity
>being an assigned property (I think it is) vs an
>inherent property (the dominant view if one takes
>URIness seriously) goes on.
Identity is a very murky topic in ontology as well.
John