SUO: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
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LIS. Discussion Note 9
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CA = Chris Angus
JA = Jon Awbrey
MW = Matthew West
Focusing on:
LIS: | possible_individual
|
| A <possible_individual> is a <thing> that exists in space and time.
|
| This includes:
|
| - things where any of the space time dimensions are
| vanishingly small,
|
| - those that are either all space for any time,
| or all time and any space,
|
| - the entirety of all space time,
|
| - things that actually exist, or have existed,
|
| - things that are fictional or conjectured and
| possibly exist in the past, present or future,
|
| - temporal parts (states) of other individuals,
|
| - things that have a specific position, but zero extent in
| one or more dimensions, such as points, lines, and surfaces.
|
| In this context existence is based upon being imaginable within
| some consistent logic, including actual, hypothetical, planned,
| expected, or required individuals.
|
| EXAMPLE. The pump with serial number ABC123,
| Battersea Power Station, Sir Joseph Whitworth,
| Shakespeare, and the starship "Enterprise" can be
| represented by instances of <possible_individual>.
|
| EXPRESS specification:
|
| ENTITY possible_individual
|
| SUBTYPE OF (thing);
|
| END_ENTITY;
|
| http://www.tc184-sc4.org/wg3ndocs/wg3n1328/lifecycle_integration_schema/lexical/possible_individual.html
JA: But I have no information that allows me to apply
the criterion of "existing in space and time".
MW: I quite agree. I would love to know how to do this.
CA: I think that this brings out an important issue in what we are
attempting to do. Although our (formal) axioms may be expressible
in FOL and can thus bring a substantial degree of rigour, there are
times (as far as I can see) where we have to resort to relations and
properties that relate to some metaphysical consideration and that
cannot simply be derived by applying FOL to other relations and
properties. Part of the problem is finding a suitably small,
fundamental set of such things, suitably describing them and
agreeing them. Am I missing something?
Chris, (Matthew, Pierre, et al.),
If by "metaphysical considerations" you mean, at least in part,
what is commonly known as "the real world", then that is part
of what I am asking about here. Many people in applied math,
statistics, and engineering, the sorts of people who wrote
the first papers on AI, way back when, still use the word
"predicate" to refer to a function of the type q : X -> B,
where X is (in very direct and literal contact with) some
"realworld" domain, and B is a 2-element set of indicator
values that serve to indicate the results of evaluating
the predicate q on the elements of the domain X.
Functions like this are meant to be computed, and there is a very real
quantity of work that is associated with computing the value q(x) for
each x in X. Sometimes the work is performed by an element that we
call a "sensor" and that we regard as delivering an indication as
to whether the "quality" that is associated with the predicate
q : X -> B is present in a given x of X or not, and sometimes
the work is done by computations further up the line of some
cascading network of functional compositions.
So what is the connection between this usage of "predicate",
whose functional arrow is oriented on an axis from the real
world to the mind, and the autonomically syntactic usage of
the predicate idea that we have of late sedimentalized into
the habit of regarding as the one and only?
We just had a big discussion of the analytic/synthetic distinction --
globally the threshold is apparently a bit shifty, but locally the
line is usually clear enough to draw -- and there is a very similar
distinction to draw in this context, that I may illustrate like this:
Think back to the days when you used to engage in the old school routine
that was known as "trigonometric identities", say, cos^2 x + sin^2 x = 1.
Normally a function like cos x takes a certain amount of work to compute,
and squaring it to get cos^2 x takes another quantity of work to compute,
and so on, but one would be wasting all that work and more if one was to
compute the value of cos^2 x + sin^2 x in just such a stepfoolish manner
as that, instead of using the relevant identity to answer "1" right away.
That's the practical ergonomic difference between synthetic and analytic,
and it's the essence of information that it lets us make intelligent use
of the analytic redundancies that are stored up in such purely syntactic
formulas as cos^2 x + sin^2 x = 1.
But imagine if people were to grow so enamored of these
admittedly quite admirable labor-saving laws that they
earnestly chose to believe or to pretend that they did
not need anything else for the applications of trig
to the real world. That, parabolically speaking,
is precisely the condition of many logic-wise,
reality-foolish folk today.
Jon Awbrey
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