RE: SUO: RE: Re: More KIF-ified Ontology Content
> >
> > . Until you asked this question, I hadn't ever
> > considered intransitive verbs. I suspect they still can be
> > expressed with either a direct or indirect object, or both.
> > Eg. I thought a thought. If I ran, it will have had some
> > attributes, such as manner, speed, and location. I'll
> > think on this further, but fir now, I'll keep with the
> > proposition that actions are:
> > * relations; and
> > * 4-D.
>
>MW: My philosophical problem with this is that relations are classifications
>of tuples, and tuples are essentially some special sets, so you have
>activities as sets which are 4D, where as sets are timeless.
>
>GH> I'm afraid I don't know the necessary theory to appreciate why
>relations are classifications of tuples.
The SUO will consist of axioms in a logical notation. The basic
semantic rules for interpreting such logics specify that a relation
symbol denotes the extension of the relation, ie a set of n-tuples
(for an n-ary relation) of individuals (or whatever the relation is
a relation on: in the proposed new SUO-KIF, we will allow relations
on relations also.)
This is a very basic assumption about the semantics of relations. In
a modal logic, a relation symbol denotes something more complex, in
that it has an extension in every possible world (ie can be thought
of as a function from possible worlds to relational extensions), but
it is still essentially extensional in nature.
>Activities ARE 4D objects, we sometimes REPRESENT them as relations. This
>distinction is very important. One of my reasons for not using relations to
>represent activities, is because of this confusion.
>
>GH> This makes me again wonder whether what you are calling relations
>aren't, in fact, types of relations rather than instances of them?
Maybe it would be useful if you were to tell us what YOU mean by
'relation'? I havnt been able to follow several of your messages on
this topic. For example, I don't know any sense in which a relation
could be said to be 4-dimensional (or indeed n-dimensional for any n).
Pat Hayes
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