SUO: Contenuous Au Courants
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Pat Hayes wrote:
>
> 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.
Pat, Robert, ...
Sorry to "but in", but Robert did issue the imperative to "But in it" --
I would need your personal definitions of "epistemic" and "semantic"
to have much hope of coming to any kind of an understanding here,
whether "consensus" or "dissensus", and whether we count ourselves
to constitute "cognitive" agents or just "behavioral" agents, but
let me wade in anyway, swimmingly or not.
I think that I would say, if I dare to try and think it through
in my own words -- well, not of necessity neologisms or anything,
but I am guessing that you probably know what I mean, or, well,
at least, that you will probably behave insofar as if you did --
that a typically pragmatic POV specifically does not say that:
| Meaning is ultimately concerned with
| what 'we' (or maybe 'they') can know,
| and how they come to know it.
What appears to be true from this practical point of view
could be expressed, I think, just a little more like this:
| Meaning is mediately concerned with
| what 'we' (or maybe 'they') can know,
| and how they come to know it.
So I think that you were in deed very close,
as close as mediately and ultimately can be.
And per your request, I will spare you for now
the many places where so-&-so said it to be so.
> I think this is deeply and profoundly ass-backwards,
> since until we have some reasonably clear account ...
Excuse the "but in", again, but in this sentence,
I just wonder, do you even hear yourself saying:
"until 'we' have some reasonably clear account ..."
(emphasis mine)?
> 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.
Okay, I concur here, in spite of the circumstance
that my concurrence might be taken to weaken your
argument -- but never mind that -- still, I think
that "we" should try to remember what the role of
these admittedly hypostatic agents is meant to be.
They are agents of experience, interpretation, or
observation, however you, in the role of their --
dare I say -- "agent", their "director", their --
dare I say -- "representation", wish to cast them,
and thus to cast them clean out of the play is to
toss out the empirical baby with the hypostatical
bath-water. So there just has to be somother way.
> > (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.
Yes, I accept this "theory-ladelled" character of experience:
so you do have an "(implicit) grammar of experience" ((I)GOE)
that informs your every experience even as you are having it,
but do you really have to have already utterly formalized it,
in effect, to render your IGOE an EGOE, in order just to have
an experience? I think not!
> 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.
You can form a deductive image of inquiry, method, science, whatever,
but will that image be complete, effective, faithful, and unwarped?
It is useful, up to a point, to make 2-dim images of solid realities,
but do we really want to confound them?
> 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*?
Can you start any other place?
> 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.
And he should know.
Jon Awbrey
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