RE: SUO: RE: Re^n: Collections - Aggregation or Set
>Pat,
>
>You wrote:
>No, they aren't, at least in the way these collection-words are
>usually used. They have associated sets (which can change with time
>in a 3d ontology, or which might contain history-episodes rather than
>complete histories, in a 4d ontology), but they cannot be identified
>with the sets of their members, because for example shoals have fish
>as members, not episodes of fish-histories
>
>This is a tricky point.
True.
>It is unclear whether when we talk about fishes (or
>whatever) we commit to a standard fish history.
Not sure what you mean by 'standard' here.
>It has been suggested that
>being a fish may be a 'spatial' characteristic that applies to many
>different types of life history; including standard birth-death as well as
>pack-episodes.
Ah, yes, one could take that line. I would describe that as being
some episode of a fish (in the sense I use, where a 4-d fish is
identical to its lifetime.)
>This is something that needs to be clarified in an ontology.
>It may be things like wheels are easier to consider. Consider my car's front
>right wheel (also, for the sake of argument, consider it as a physical
>object rather than a role) consider also wheel #10, currently 'installed' as
>my car's front right wheel. We naturally think of them both as wheels - so
>wheelness is a spatial property - which applies to different life histories.
Yes, that is one way to go. But do you think that something can be a
wheel (in your sense) without also being an episode of a
wheel-lifetime? If not, we agree on all but surface terminology. I
can see why one might want to argue for a deeper disagreement,
however, eg if we allowed 'shape-changers' which could be a wheel for
a while and then transform into, say, a spark plug. Maybe things like
the Chairman of Shell would be examples of things in this category?
Pat
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