Re: SUO: RE: A proposed SUO content outline
>
>On the basis of Pat Hayes' and Chris Partridge's comments, the classes
>'Occurrent' and 'Continuant' were replaced with the classes 'OccurrentType'
>and 'ContinuantType', which are classes of classes of occurrents and
>continuants, respectively. This change was motivated by the fact that the
>distinction between occurrent and continuant is more stable with respect to
>type descriptions than with respect to individual things themselves. Note
>that 'OccurrentType' and 'ContinuantType' are both immediate subclasses of
>'Entity' in the merged ontology.
Ian, I am left somewhat at a loss why you think any comments of mine
would have prompted this structure. In fact I really don't quite
follow what it is supposed to mean, I confess. What would be an
example of an occurrent type, for example (as opposed to an
occurrent)?
>
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Temporal Boundary
> > > >
> > > > Contains axioms and relations that apply to all individuals
> > > > that have a zero temporal extent.
> > >
> > > It sounds like "Temporal Boundary" corresponds to the class
> > > of 'Abstract',
> > > another direct subclass of 'Entity'. Some axioms regarding
> > > 'Abstract' can
> > > be found in the section "General Axioms" of the merged ontology.
> >
> > MW: No. These are things that exist in space time, so they cannot be
> > classes. They just have a zero extent in the time dimension,
> > they are at a
> > point in time.
>
>OK, so the items in this category would be indivisible slices of space-time
>worms?
I would prefer to say they were space-like boundary surfaces of
space-time worms. Having boundaries ( and pieces of boundaries) as
first-class entities is a very useful ontological trick, since they
often seem to have important properties , eg being permeable or not,
being adjacent to other boundaries, being the locations of transfers
of material or energy of various kinds, being under various kinds of
control or jurisdiction, and in purely topological terms, being the
basic spatial connecting structures for both homotopy (the basic
theory of pathways) and homology (theory of spatial connectivity).
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Class of Individual
> > > >
> > > > Contains axioms and relations that apply to all classes that
> > > > have only individuals as members, e.g. pump, car.
> > >
> > > One idea that strikes me is that we could make 'Class' a
> > > direct subclass of
> > > 'Set'. This would allow us to apply all of the set-theoretic
> > > definitions/axioms to classes, as well as sets. This isn't
> > > the way things
> > > are currently structured in the ontology (currently, 'Set'
> > > and 'Class' are
> > > disjoint siblings of the parent class 'SetOrClass'), but it may be a
> > > convenient way of reusing the set-theoretic apparatus in the
> > > context of
> > > intensional classes.
> >
> > MW: yes but some classes, e.g. the proper classes are not sets.
>
>I'm not sure I follow you here. What do you mean by "proper classes"?
I suspect Matthew means this in the mathematical sense, where 'proper
classes' are classes that are too 'big' to be counted as sets, eg the
class of all sets.
Pat Hayes
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