RE: SUO: RE: Re: More KIF-ified Ontology Content
Pat,
I agree with you that what might be called the 'substance' manoeuvre is
practically unattractive in a 4-D ontology, leading to a loss in clarity.
But the fact that it exists suggests that 4-D-ism and
occurent/continuant-ism are not absolutely contradictory.
I did not explain my question "When would a process engineer working on oil
rigs - or a biologist classifying animals make use of this distinction."
clearly enough.
Take your example of the car and its life-history. In ordinary language we
may differentiate between the two. We may say, for example, the 'initial
manufacturing part of the car's life history' meaning the car while it is
being manufactured. However if I am an engineer and I want to specify, for
example, the order in which the engine parts are installed during
manufacture - I can do it perfectly well using a 4-D ontology - in fact,
probably better than with a 3-D ontology. In general, it seems to me that
engineers carrying out the kind of tasks that engineers do, do not need the
occurrent/continuant distinction. If there is an example of this - a task
carried out by an engineer (as engineer) that needs the distinction, I would
be interested. (No doubt some engineers will talk as if the distinction was
'real', but the point is - do they have to?)
This seems to ma a very important practical question. If the 3-D view is
superfluous for practical engineering type activities, then ontologies
developed for this purpose (for example, Matthew West's EPISTLE) can
usefully ignore it and take full advantage of the 4-D view.
It seems to me that language is sometimes finer grained than reality. A good
example is a glass that is half full versus half empty - this is a
distinction that language makes, but we do not normally attribute to
reality. I believe that the occurent/continuant distinction falls into this
camp, and is motivated by the way in which we perceive reality - so, if
anything, an epistemological rather than ontological distinction. However,
this will not persuade any hardened believers in the distinction.
Regards,
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: phayes@ai.uwf.edu [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu]
Sent: 04 January 2001 23:21
To: mail@ChrisPartridge.net
Cc: standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: Re: More KIF-ified Ontology Content
Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com> wrote:
>In the section - copied below - you suggest that the occurent/continuant
>distinction cannot be accommodated in the 4-D view. As you are certainly
>aware, if you start looking into this, things get even more murky.
>
>For example, it seems to me that this is because the 4-D view usually
>includes a kind of materialism (or extensionalism) - i.e. that the 4-D
>extension of object is the object (and so the 4-D extension is a principle
>of identity). One can (and I seem to recall some papers on this point) take
>the non-standard view that the 4-D extension is an attribute/property of
the
>object, then you can maintain the distinction - but lose the principle of
>identity. In this case, two things (of different types - following Locke)
>can occupy the same 4-D space-time.
Yes, this is one way to do it, and one has to give up on what might
be called 4-d mereological criteria of identity, I agree. But then
much of the perceived clarity and utility of the 4-d way of thinking
seems to be lost, since these 'objects' are no longer 4-dimensional
entities, and the ways they might be related to 4-d histories are
much more complicated than the ways that 3-d objects might be related
to their spatial extensions. For example, consider a 'thing'
consisting of the top of my head one day and the bottom of my feet
the next day and a smooth morphing between these, ie a kind of
slow-moving surface which takes 24 hours to scan me from head to
foot. It's a perfectly good 4-d history, and it's entirely inside my
history, but I sincerely hope there isnt ever a continuant with that
as its extension.
One reply is that there are two different 'worlds' here: one
concerned with spatiotemporal occupancy and relationships, the other
concerned with things and identity, and they should be kept separate
from each other (though closely related in many cases.) This might be
a good way to approach a unified ontological framework, but I havnt
thought of (or seen) any detailed suggestions along these lines.
>It does seem that language has this distinction - and so for modeling
>language it may be useful. What is less clear to me, is whether the
>distinction is practically useful when dealing with things outside
>ourselves. When would a process engineer working on oil rigs - or a
>biologist classifying animals make use of this distinction. In my analysis,
>I have not come across any examples of this. For me, this seems to indicate
>that for types of system that deal with oil rigs (and biological
>classifications), this might be a useful revision (ontological reduction).
>If you have some examples, I would be interested.
Well, one can easily give 'physical' examples of the
continuant/occurrent distinction: a car vs. its lifetime, the
location of a football match vs. the match itself. I think the key
point is the idea of there being a thing which endures through time
but doesnt occupy any amount of time, and that thing might be almost
any suitable thing, from an electron to a skyscraper. This ought to
apply to oil rigs, at least. Biological classifications I agree seem
to be largely non-temporal, so these issues can be largely ignored.
Pat
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