Re: SUO: Individual
The "activities" part of the definition of an individual seems very odd to
me. Do you really not recognize an individual chair or an individual tree
or an individual pebble?
I am corcerned currently with problems in the "wholeness" sense.
Geographic 'things' such as a mountain, say a particular mountain such as
Mont Blanc or Mount Everest. Would you say that "Mont Blanc" is not an
individual because it lacks a sense of wholeness, no unambiguous boundary
to seperate it horizontally from "not-Mont-Blanc" right next door?
David Mark
Geographer, Buffalo
On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK wrote:
>
> Dear David,
>
> Let me at least explain how I use the word "individual".
>
> Let me say first what it is not (to me in a formal context).
>
> It is not a class, and it is not a relation (or relationship).
>
> It is something that has existence in space time, though this may be in some
> possible world.
>
> It is something that has a sense of wholeness about it (very difficult to
> define). It is not just people.
>
> It includes activities as well as static things.
>
> Some examples: me, my car, my planned holiday next year.
>
> If I compare it to instance, I use instance as a role relative to some
> class. But classes can be instances of other classes, so not all things that
> are instances are individuals.
>
> Regards
> Matthew
> ============================================
> Matthew West
> Operations & Asset Management
> Shell Services International
> H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
> Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929
> Mobile: +44 7796 336538
> E-mail: Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com
> http://www.shellservices.com/
> ============================================
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: David Whitten [mailto:whitten@lynx.eaze.net]
> > Sent: 29 November 2000 01:19
> > To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> > Subject: Re: Re: SUO: RE: Re: Factorization Issues
> >
> >
> >
> > Robert E. Kent suggested:
> > >
> > > Can not both of these be individuals distinguished by the
> > Whitehead =
> > > distinction (Continuant - Occurrent). Or to use John's
> > terminology, =
> > > objects and processes: "Matthew for his whole life" is an object, =
> > > whereas "Matthew for today" is a process?.
> > >
> > Someone said:
> > > And the following question gets to the fundamental point
> > > about so-called "individuals":
> > >
> > Matthew West asked:
> > > By individual, do you mean whole individual (e.g. me for
> > my whole
> > > life) or do you allow any interesting bit of space time
> > (e.g. me for
> > > today)?
> > >
> > John Sowa commented:
> > > I don't object to using the term "individual" when it seems
> > > to be useful, but it is something to be explained, not a
> > > suitable foundation for explaining anything else.
> >
> > I personally do not use the word Individual to refer to a
> > Human Person.
> > (the term : "Human Person" works quite well for that...)
> >
> > In fact, as I think of it, I'm not sure I make a distinction between
> > Individual and Instances. I might say an individual dog or an
> > individual coffee table. But I could just as easily say an
> > instance of
> > the class of "Dogs" or an instance of "Coffee Table".
> >
> > I'm not sure if I even limit the word Individual to refer to
> > something
> > that has a temporal extent. I might say a particular religion has
> > an individual doctrine, for example.
> >
>