SUO: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
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LIS. Discussion Note 91
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Matthew,
Let's look a little more closely at the things that you say
under the heading of the LIS concept <possible_individual>.
Possible_Individual
| A <possible_individual> is a <thing> that exists in space and time.
Unless you have a better criterion for <what exists in space and time>
that you had for <possible_individual> in the first place, then this
attempt at a definition goes absolutely nowhere.
If you were invoking a notion of real physical spacetime, for instance,
as discoverable in the field of physics, as I think that John Sowa is
trying to suggest with his concept <Physical>, then the passage across
the copula "is" of the definition from the LHS "to be defined" to the
RHS "doing the defining" might at least have some chance of adding
an informative constraint. But when you start to talk of unicorns,
all hint of constraint goes out the window, or out the pod bay door.
| 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,
Suppose it is conjectured that the number 4 was born into
4-dimensional spacetime existence exactly 4004 nanoseconds
after the origin of the physical universe in the incept of
the Big Bang. Just for the sake of temporal concreteness,
I do so conjecture it now. If you are going to accept all
of the stories about starships and unicorns as criteria for
the LIS concept <possible_indovidual> then I cannot see any
reason why you should exclude my conjecture from that crew.
Do you really not see any problem here?
Jon Awbrey
| - 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
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