re:Re: SUO: Continuants and Occurrents in 4D
On Fri, 9 Mar 2001 14:21:27 EDT John Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net> wrote:
### Dear John Pat, see below--
>Pat,
>
>I think that we largely agree. Following are some further
>clarifications of the details:
[...]
>>Well now I dont really agree with that, as you know. Seems to me that
>>I do make identifications all the time. Every time I go home I
>>re-identify my house, and so on, not to mention my cat-process. It
>>would be hard to manage if one didnt do this rather a lot, with
>>rather a lot of success: I imagine that being in such a condition
>>would result in prompt institutionalisation, at the very least.
>
>Perhaps I should have used a different term. By "well defined",
>I meant having a clear formal definition which can give a
>unique answer in every case. There is abundant evidence of
>the fallibility of "eye-witness" identifications and all the
>problematical cases that anyone who does KR has to deal with.
>And although I have no trouble recognizing my own home, I
>often have trouble recognizing my own car in a parking lot.
>
>>>Re continuants more fundamental than processes: That claim
>>>is incompatible with modern physics, chemistry, and biology.
>>>I can imagine that some people might believe it, but I don't
>>>believe that anyone can make a serious case for it.
>>
>>I think one could make such a case, even in science. But I really
>>don't think we - the SUO - should be trying win this debate one way
>>or the other; rather, we need to recognise how to transcribe between
>>such differences. >
>
>
>I would agree. And in fact, I think that the distinction
>between the terms "continuant" and "occurrent" can be quite
>nicely defined in Whitehead's terms: A continuant is something
>that we can recognize at multiple encounters. An occurrent is
>something that does not have enough distinctive characteristics
>that we can be sure whether another encounter is with "the same"
>or "a similar" entity.
>
### a most enlightening definition I must say. But in it, and in
fact in all of the above, who are these "we" and "I" who do the
recognizing and identifying... I tried to observe before that all
of semantics constitutes an agreement among cognitive agents (e.g.
two persons who agree they are pointing at the same occurrent; or
one agent who agrees with himself that he is looking at an instance
of the same continuant after a while, etc etc. Is this too trivial
to mention, or am I too obtuse, in hypothesizing that we include
these cognitive agents, AND perhaps the procedure by which they
arrive at their agreements, AND the contexts that must restrict or
qualify these agreements, as first-class citizens in any ontological
design process? Or has somebody been there & done that? I'd like a
reference so I may catch up in that case
>In another argument with Nicola, I maintained that we recognize
>identity by multiple predicates of similarity, any one of which
>could be mistaken, but taken altogether give us an assurance
>beyond a reasonable doubt. But Nicola became very upset,
>because I was questioning his religion.
[...]
### I am in the process of reading Nicola's and Chris Welty's latest
paper on this (Identity and Subsumption) obtained from the Padova
LADSEB-CNR site and incidentally so far I can't find much there
to support many recent statements by others about Nicola's claimed
position on this identity issue there, in fact they rather seem to
recant, reformulate and make more precise a lot of stuff from their
earlier work on this subject, if I read it correctly. [Nicola! are
you listening?]
### In John's statement above, the key hidden elements in my opinion again are these implied silent agents who are "given assurance", allegedly "are mistaken" and have or not "reasonable doubt". Without the implied agreement by them in spite of these mistakes, doubts, ... the identification process and its result would be, in a quite formal sense, meaningless
--Robert Meersman