Azamat
A few quick
responses.
You noted that
>we are supposed to preach a
formal ontological analysis in lieu of using vague logical >speculations and
epistemological arguments.
We should
make our modeling efforts as simple possible but no simpler. The questions remains how simple can it
be and still be general and useful?
Are we speculating about unimportant distinctions or might it be useful
to inquiry into whether by avoiding these distinctions we risk developing
ontological models that are brittle.
Here are a few reasons while I think these are useful and why an overly
“realist” approach to a boundary idea is just too simple to handle some real
issue.
A place to
start might be if Peirce's spot puzzle– “ Which colour is the line
of demarcation between a black spot and a white background? (1893, p. 98)
Is this metaphysical
speculation or of ontological interest?
I think it exposes some assumptions and pragmatically tests our
conceptualization.
We might ask
if the distinctions in an ontology cover what happens when I “cut” different
types of objects - a rock, flower, a drop of water? The results of cutting water
are quite different and commonsense knowledge for a human – because of our
distinctions or water from rocks… Simplifying a bit one
may think of natural language exposes our mental model for such objects thru some conventional distinctions of boundary concepts - such as the contrast between mass nouns
boundaries (such as 'water') and count nouns (such as 'cat'). Cutting mass nouns such as water or sand leads to
different results than count nouns.
For me the
question becomes, are there useful ideas about continuity/discontinuity, open
vs. closed “objects”, objects in contact, etc. These distinctions may reflect knowledge
that is practically needed.
There’s a
really useful exposition of some of the challenges in defining boundaries
in “The Formal Ontology of
Boundaries” By Barry Smith and
Achille Varzi.
http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1997.spring/smithvarzi976.html
Doug’s earlier message captured some
of their perspective for articulating boundaries. One is the class of things close
to nature - Bona Fide (“objects (such as cats,
rocks and roses) towards which human cognition is directed are parts of
reality”.).
The
other type of boundary is more cultural items determined by Fiat. For the moment I’m willing to put off
many of the issues that arise with boundaries by fiat. But does that get us to simple, absolute
boundaries? I think that fiat boundaries are
just more complex mental models.
You point out
a general sense of a boundary as a limiting thing that sounds good for
Bona
Fide/natural objects.
> Generalizing most adequate
definitions, 'the boundary' comes up as a limitary thing, the >nature and
meaning of which is bounded up with another essential member of ontological
>lexicon, 'limit'. Then the matter becomes if not crystal
clear but more understandable. The Father of Formal Ontology teaches us that
'limit is the form, whatever it may be, of a spatial >magnitude or of a
thing that has magnitude', 'the last point of each thing' or 'the end of each
>thing'. What may be formulated as the follows: 'boundary is a sort of entity
(an object, state, >magnitude, action, process, etc.) beyond which something
else ceases to be, exist, extend, >act,
or operate'.
I think that there are
non-obvious aspects of limits as reflected in the long evolution of formalism in Math and Physics to model
this successfully. But can we
really get away from some fiat decisions and interpretations of limits? I would argue that there are underlying
mental models of continuity and closed-ness that may be used in judging
limits. Here’s something from
Aristotle's that illustrates a place that our ideas on limits leaves us with
alternative interpretations.
“At the instant when
an object stops moving, is it in motion, or is it at rest? (Physics, VI,
234a ff).”
Is it just
metaphysical or something to model? I think it is a place where our simple
models based on experience break down, but physical science has come up with
non-obvious formalisms to explain what happens here. I agree with Smith and Varzi that these types of puzzles “serve together to call into
question the (naive) realist attitude towards boundaries,” That is to say we have boundary concepts even when such boundaries are not
genuinely present in the physical world (which is to say
mind-independent).
A final
connection I wanted to add is that
vagueness and interpretation creeps into our common sense definitions of
boundary. We actually have the term when we run into problems with our boundary
concepts – we say “borderline case”
for such experiences. For more on this see the
entry for “Vagueness” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
by Roy
Sorensen which
contrasts vagueness with ambiguity and generality.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/
I
have time to note that Sorensen builds on
Perice’s original discussion of “absolute borderline cases” which I think is
relevant . He uses Peirce's entry for ‘vague’ in the 1902
Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology
to
introduce vagueness:
A
proposition is vague when there are possible states of things concerning which
it is intrinsically uncertain
whether, had they been contemplated by the speaker, he would have regarded them
as excluded or allowed by the proposition. By intrinsically uncertain we mean
not uncertain in consequence of any ignorance of the interpreter, but because
the speaker's habits of language were indeterminate. (Peirce 1902,
748)
In
the case of relative borderline cases, the question is clear but our
means for answering these with common sense models and notions are incomplete.
Sorensen
argues that in the
case of absolute borderline cases, there is incompleteness “in the
question itself.” This makes the
noti
-----Original Message-----
From:
owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org on behalf of azamat
abdoullaev
Sent: Thu 7/21/2005 5:20 PM
To:
standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG
Cc:
Subject: Re: CG:
Re: Re: Whole and Parts (and boundaries)
Dear Disputants,
As participants of the SUO community, we are
supposed to preach a formal ontological analysis in lieu of using vague
logical speculations and epistemological arguments. Since it is plain that to
get to the bottom of a thing, namely, whether it is or not, what it is,
why it is, and how it exists, the thing ought to be subject to strict
ontological anatomy supported with scientific data and mathematical findings.
This is also true of the matter discussed and
questioned, 'boundary', 'bound', or 'bounds', which some contemporary
ontologists proposed as a top-level category along with states, substances,
and individuals, defining boundaries as individuals which are not substances
(R. Chrisholm).
Generalizing most adequate definitions, 'the
boundary' comes up as a limitary thing, the nature and meaning of which is
bounded up with another essential member of ontological lexicon,
'limit'. Then the matter becomes if not crystal clear but more
understandable. The Father of Formal Ontology teaches us that 'limit is the
form, whatever it may be, of a spatial magnitude or of a thing that has
magnitude', 'the last point of each thing' or 'the end of each thing'. What
may be formulated as the follows: 'boundary is a sort of entity (an object,
state, magnitude, action, process, etc.) beyond which something else ceases to
be, exist, extend, act, or operate'.
It seems everything in this world of finite
individuals is limited or bounded either as being the boundary of or
contained within the limits and bounds of something else, except the
universe itself encompassing all sorts of bounds; for we can't
imagine some containing body whereby it may be bounded, confined, or
bordered.
As a consequence of such nature and
meaning, the where or when of a thing marks the boundary of its existence. For
instance, 'the now' is not only the link but also a limit and boundary line of
time, infinite or finite, since it serves as the beginning of the future
and the end of the past. Also, place as a part of space and its relative
position is the boundary of the body which it contains or confines.
There is a variety of special senses of the
underlying notion of 'boundary' such as barrier, border, bound,
circumference, confines, end, edge, demarcation, enclosure, frontier,
landmark, line, limitation, margin, outline, term, termination, fringe,
periphery, perimeter, verge, brink, threshold.
In physics, we speak of boundary layers or
strata as helopause as well as different surface phenomena; in
mathematics, of the boundary conditions of differential equations or of the
line (or plane, surface, volume) determining the limit (extent) of
magnitude; in biology, of the boundary species or the boundary states between
life and death; in psychology, of the boundary conditions
of consciousness; in geography, of the shoreline between water and land,
land boundary of a nation, state boundary, political borders, the
landmarks dividing the territories, three-mile limit, country, district, city,
or property line.
Thus the central sense of boundary apears to be a
limit which is some entity (an object, magnitude as a point, line, surface, or
volume, a process, or a relation) that keeps within bounds something else
placing a limit on its extent, time, place, action, etc.
Hope my commentary shed some light on this rather
complex matter.
As for the matter of part and whole relationship,
its nature, meaning and possible types, please refer to the site indicated
below.
Regards,
Azamat Abdoullaev
EIS Encyclopedic Intelligent Systems
LTD
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 12:57
AM
Subject: RE: CG: Re: Re: Whole and
Parts (and boundaries)
Doug
I think that on the
problem of long border crossing we have at more than the two “major
ontological categories” you propose, or at least that some of the concepts
might have to be extended. I agree that the 2 that you propose are a
useful starting point:
- an arbitrary physical border
between tracts of land that are respectively
claimed by two human
social sovereignties.
- the social border between
those social sovereignties.
If I have these modeled I should
be able to answer quite a few questions about long borders.
But I can think of exceptions to
this way of defining long border in the first sense. Two
sovereignties may claim territory that intersect and thus we have a
“disputed border” in which there may be little or no physical border BETWEEN
the tracts. So perhaps I have a different category or a
sub-type.
I don’t know if you followed
Sowa’s earlier link to an article on “knowledge soup” In
his discussion he offered some examples of problems with
tight, neat definitions of concepts. Applying some of his
problem types to the border issue I came up with the following
examples.
Overgeneralizations: (example is Birds fly,
but what about penguins?) Borders separate territories,
but what if it is a disputed border?
Abnormal conditions: You
cross borders, but what if there is
a fight at the border?
What if there is a terrorist alert? Your passport has
expired? There is an earthquake?
Incomplete definitions: Is the
concept of “no man’s land” included? Does it cover
boundaries between things like the atmosphere and “outer space”
Conflicting defaults: You can see the
Demasiado Corazon soap opera in Mexico, but not on US stations.
Except you can get it via a satellite
broadcast. Just as you can a TBS show in
Mexico.
The point might be that when we
try to build our formal models we are not typically including all this
knowledge that humans know as adaptive agents working pragmatically based on
interacting with the world.
Even in infancy we seem to distinguish 2 types of object
categorization. One is perceptual categorization, which is part of
perceptual processing based on perceptual similarity of one object to
another. As we develop we create perceptual schemas of what objects look
like.
Older infants
develop a conceptual categorization, that seems to be based on what objects
do. One way of thinking of this more abstract type is as
a restructuring of perceptual information into conceptual form.
One basis for this is the experience of paths that
objects take and the interactions among objects along these paths.
Experience creates a simple mental model of a notion of kinds, such as
animals, vehicles, furniture, plants etc.. Underlying this kind of
categorization seems to be functional roles played in
events, rather than the physical appearance of the objects. Speculating we
might propose that evolution has selected us to be able to build schemas
involving such broad categories to operate effectively in the
world.
Unanticipated applications come up all the time and we have to accommodate
to the new demands. We can speculate about pragmatic
based processes to do this. If some concept becomes the
“expectation” part of a sufficiently reliable schema, then this concept is
compared with the concepts at the basic level of abstractedness and a
process tries to determine the common parts between the concepts. If the
difference is less than a certain amount, then a new abstract concept might
be added. Sowa has a more structured discussion of
a pragmatic cycle.
While human cognition and
knowledge can do this, our formal cognition and knowledge bases still have
difficulty with this. For one thing we haven’t fleshed
out architectures for the pragmatic cycle.
Gary Berg-Cross
-----Original Message-----
From: Douglas
McDavid [mailto:mcdavid@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tue 7/19/2005 7:31 PM
To: Gary Berg-Cross
Cc: John A. Bateman; Murray
Altheim; owner-standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG; sowa@BESTWEB.NET;
standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG
Subject: RE: CG: Re: Re: Whole
and Parts (and boundaries)
With respect to the problem of long border crossings, it
seems to me that
we have at least two major ontological categories in
play here. One is the
arbitrary physical border between tracts of
land that are respectively
claimed by two human social
sovereignties. The other is the social border
between those
social sovereignties. The former is a fictional plane
(height and
length, but no depth) separating the territory of two
geopolitical
jurisdictions. This aspect of the boundary is physically
crossed
in a second or less, once one is in a socially negotiated position
to
do so. The other boundary is a power nexus which must be
negotiated
prior to making the final, physical movement through the
arbitrary
geophysical demarkation plane.
Yes?
Doug
McDavid
Business Transformation Architect
IBM Academy of
Technology - http://www-306.ibm.com/ibm/academy/index.html
mcdavid@us.ibm.com
408-927-1565
(IBM tie-line:
457)
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| "Gary
Berg-Cross"
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<gary.berg-cross@em-i.com>
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by:
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owner-standard-upper-ontolo|
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gy@IEEE.ORG
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| 07/14/2005
01:44 PM
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>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
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|
To: "John A. Bateman"
<bateman@UNI-BREMEN.DE>, "Murray Altheim"
<m.altheim@open.ac.uk>
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cc: <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>,
<standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG>
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| Subject: RE: CG:
Re: Re: Whole and Parts (and
boundaries)
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>---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
I
generally agree with John Bateman's contextual discussion on goal
and
functions affecting what boundary means (“ontological
characterizations.”
As John described it). The experimental work
on robot-human interactions
in spatial settings provides real data as I
suggested in my earlier message
drawing on epigenetic
robotics.
I think that his statement
>"It took us three hours
to cross the border."…..Sounds pretty thick to me.
suggests how
linguistic data gives very useful indications. It’s thru our
own
mental models which we use in turn for
> modelling decisions
relevant for building
>ontologies, but only when listened
to.
There is a degree of commonality to our own experience based
mental models
as designers of ontological models from insights offered
by linguistic data
we have to be aware that our lifelong developed
mental models will differ.
That’s one reason that letting robots
develop their own models rather than
building them in offers some check
on unconscious bias. Of course we have
realize that our general
design principles for developing cognition may
also be flawed and have
to be reformulated.
Gary
Berg-Cross
-----Original
Message-----
From:
owner-standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org on behalf of John
A.
Bateman
Sent: Thu 7/14/2005 7:57
AM
To: Murray
Altheim
Cc: sowa@BESTWEB.NET;
standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG
Subject: Re: CG: Re: Re: Whole and Parts (and
boundaries)
> I have no
real data about people talking about
boundaries,
> but I have some info
about people talking about walls --
>
i.e., whether a wall is part of a room or a
boundary
> between rooms or whether
part of the wall is part of the
>
room or part of the wall is part of the
boundary.
>
> If you ask them, people have
an incredible number of
> different
thoughts ranging from confusion, to
irritation,
> to lengthy and
irrelevant discourses on the topic --
and
> essentially all of those
responses are useless for any
>
serious kind of application.
These
kinds of issues are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL
for
any one to make any statements about
'how people
do things'. As John S. says,
if you haven't collected
(or have access
to) the data where people are actually
going about tasks trying to solve problems
involving
the concepts, then it is
better to say nothing.
In my own
group, putting people in situations where
they
have to talk about and solve
spatial problems is
the fundamental
methodology without which we say
nothing
about 'how people' do stuff
(http://www.sfbtr8.uni-bremen.de/i1).
On the basis
of these experiments
(usually robot-human
interactions in
spatial settings),
we propose
ontological characterisations.
Absolutely obvious, is that characterisations
depend
on goal and functions. So even
the word 'boundary'
is not yet
sufficiently defined to say much that
is
sensible, but as soon as it is used in
context,
that complexity usually
vanishes.
Example:
> For example, when lay
people (as opposed to geographers
>>or politicians) talk about the boundary between
two
>>countries, they generally
don't think about the thickness
>>of the boundary.
Absolute
nonsense. Data:
"It took us three
hours to cross the border."
Sounds
pretty thick to me.
As soon as one
then attempts to 'explain away' the
usage (e.g., "well, they were not strictly talking
about
the border but about the road up
to the crossing point,
which is actually
a line of no thickness"), I think
the
point has been missed. Either you use
the
linguistic data or not. If not,
fine, then we
can go with boundaries
defined mereotopologically,
fiat or
otherwise). If linguistic data
('how
people think about...'),
then it should
be done properly. That's my
only point
here I think. I believe the
linguistic
data do give very useful indications
of
modelling decisions relevant for
building
ontologies, but only when
listened to.
John
B.
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