RE: SUO: RE: A proposed SUO content outline
> > >
> > >I agree that the merged ontology makes liberal use of the
> > ordinary notion of
> > >a physical object,
> >
> > The very fact that you find this 'ordinary notion' so central and
> > clear is in itself some of the "light" I referred to below. Is the
> > coffee in a half-full mug an ordinary physical object (OPO, to put
> > one of Awbrey's mannerisms to work for a moment)? Is the thread in a
> > piece of fabric an OPO? Is the paint on my car an OPO? Is a bead of
> > sweat on my brow an OPO? It is virtually impossible to walk through
> > the world during daylight without seeing several hundred things every
> > hour which would be problematic to classify firmly as either OPOs or
> > non-OPOs.
>
>Actually, to my mind, a piece of thread seems to be a pretty clear case of
>an ordinary physical object (albeit a rather small one).
Yes, but what I asked about wasnt a piece of thread, but the thread
in a piece of fabric. Take my shirt, for example , as the piece. It
is clearly an OPO. Focus in on the left sleeve. Is that an OPO?
Maybe. It is two shades of blue. Focus in on one of the dark blue
stripes (is the stripe an OPO?), and look at one of the threads. Is
that thread an OPO? Personally, I really don't know at this point
how many OPOs there are; but more to the point, its not a question
that is of the slightest importance, since OPO isnt a useful category.
>As for paint and
>sweat, I think they point out a need for subclassifying ordinary physical
>objects into something like the stuff/object distinction that Cyc uses.
Cyc uses a much more varied ontology than that. Cyc distinguishes a
car, the stuff the car is made of, the type of the stuff, the paint
on the car, the kind of paint on the car, the way the paint covers
the car, the surface of the paint on the car, the material type of
which an arbitrary sphere with radius R centered at any point inside
the car is filled with, and a whole lot more. (BTW, the stuff/object
distinction is used by almost any complex physical ontology, not just
Cyc.)
>This doesn't really address your more general claim, though, that there are
>far fewer ordinary physical objects in the world that we might be inclined
>to think. I agree that there are many things in this world that aren't
>ordinary physical objects and also that this notion is somewhat fuzzy, but I
>do see an awful lot of paradigmatic objects as I look around my office. I
>see a chair, a desk, a computer terminal, a keyboard, a cup, a bookshelf, a
>whiteboard, a phone, a plant, a diskette, a computer print-out, a watch, a
>mousepad, etc.
OK, what about the leg of the chair, the top surface of the desk
(what is a surface made of?), the shape of the image on the terminal
screen, the temperature of the keyboard, the contents of the cup,
etc.,? What color is the inside of the bookshelf? Etc.. I once tried
to write down all the things I could see on my desk in my office, and
gave up after about a hundred.
>
>I think you have a point here, but I think you could make it much more
>effectively if you provided some examples. Could you cite two axioms having
>roughly the same meaning but framed, respectively, in Endurantist and 4D
>terms. I'm not doubting that you can do this; it would just help me (and
>maybe some others as well) to understand what's at stake here.
OK, I'll try to do this this weekend.
>
> > >An "Aristotelian endurantist", can I put that on my resume?
> > Honestly, I
> > >don't know why you think I believe all of these
> > philosophical claims, and
> > >they certainly have not been incorporated into the merged ontology.
> >
> > Oh, they indeed have. The mereotopological axioms for example do not
> > admit surfaces into the domain of quantification.
>
>Well, this is really more a product of sloppiness on my part in merging the
>various ontologies, rather than a philosophical claim that informs the
>merged ontology. I think we can resolve this matter simply by adding a
>clause excluding surfaces to the antecedent of each mereotopological rule.
But my point was that the axioms only make sense if they are
excluded; which is in itself making a philosophical 'claim' about
surfaces.
> >
> > It is paradoxical, yes, as you will find out if you try to write any
> > reasonably dense collection of axioms about almost anything.
> >
> > >The more philosophical assumptions we
> > >build into the ontology, the more philosophers are going to
> > be alienated by
> > >the ontology, and the more engineers are going to shake
> > their heads in
> > >stupefaction.
> >
> > It's the engineers who know most acutely why the conceptual
> > vocabulary is central. Why do you think that the people you are
> > arguing with here are working for Shell, developing business
> > ontologies, and in my case worrying about physical reasoning? You are
> > arguing with the practical guys here, trying to make us swallow a
> > wierd cocktail distilled from Peirce, Whitehead, Lesniewski and God
> > knows who else, and you have the brass balls to tell us that
> > engineers might be too confused by hyperspace??
>
>When did I ever claim that engineers might be too confused by hyperspace?
In the context of a 4-d vs, endurantist debate with Matthew, you
opposed the 4-d ontology as being too concerned with philosophical
niceties, and went on to say that this kind of thing would lead to
"stupefaction" among engineers.
>In any case, let me see if I can cut through the hyperbole here and
>reconstruct your argument.
I wasnt making an argument, I was indulging in rhetoric.
Pat
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