re:Re: SUO: Continuants and Occurrents in 4D
John Sowa:
> >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.
Robert Meersman:
>### 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
Im afraid I disagree, and moreover think that this view is profoundly
misleading (please don't quote Peircian chapter and verse in
response.) Here's why, in brief: it confuses *semantic* issues with
*epistemic* issues; it assumes that meaning is ultimately concerned
with what 'we' (or maybe 'they') can know, and how they come to know
it. I think this is deeply and profoundly ass-backwards, since until
we have some reasonably clear account of what it is that we (or they)
are knowing, it is both premature and rather hopeless to try to think
about how it is that it (whatever it is) can be known. Meaning is not
reducible to agency; rather, agency presumes meaning.
> (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?
That is not too trivial by any means, but I think it is a very bad
methodology. How will the project get started? You need to 'include'
a theory of agency, etc., into the ontology. Now, how does one
include anything in an ontology? One writes axioms about it (or them)
with the intention of representing in those axioms enough information
about the things in question that relevant questions can be answered
by drawing conclusions from those axioms. So the proposal amounts to
begin by writing an axiomatic theory of cognitive agents, procedures
by which they arrive at agreements, and contexts in which they
perform. Now, how will you get started on writing those axioms? This
is where we came in, of ocurse, but doesnt that seem like a rather
bad place to *start*? Cogntive agents are rather complicated things
compared to, say, processes arising in the oil industry, or clay
being fired in kilns. And you still need to know if these cognitive
agents and their doings are going to be described as continuants or
4-d histories or whatever.
Pat Hayes
PS. John's suggested definition (above) of continuant/occurrent is
faulty on at least three counts. First, it doesn't actually capture
the meaning, since one can easily recognize an occurrent when it is
seen a second time, eg if you ever go to use the rest room during a
football match, you will have no trouble recognising that you are at
the same match when you get back. Second, even if it was adequate,
it isn't a definition of continuant, but a way to transcribe the
occurrent notion into a 4-d ontological framework without
acknowledging the continuant identity criteria, which we already know
is easy; and third, it uses scare-quotes, which is just a way of not
actually giving a real definition, but saying something that looks
like a definition, but isn't really: as Russell said (in a different
context), it has all the advantages of theft over honest toil.
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