SUO: Continuants and Occurrents in 4D
Pat,
Your quotation from Bertie R. is apt. I want to enjoy the
fruits of "theft over honest toil." In particular, I would
like to define Nicola's ontology in terms of a process-based
ontology a la Whithead. In that way, I can "steal" any
solution that Nicola proposes and map it into the terminology
I prefer.
That would resolve the issues about "fragmenting" the SUO
ontology into multiple incompatible modules. A Whiteheadian
4D process-based ontology could serve as a foundation, which
would accommodate other kinds of ontologies as approximations
intended for special purposes.
>> >.... 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.
>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.
To answer your three points:
1. What you are actually recognizing are the "continuants"
such as particular players. From that information and from
knowledge about the typical length of a game, you can infer
that you have returned to a continuation of the same
process.
2. That is exactly what I wanted to do: map the other
terminologies into my preferred form. I can also create
a special predicate named "NicolaIdentity", which would
satisfy Nicola's axioms. That wouldn't be my preferred
version of identity, but it would simulate Nicola's.
3. Yes, I was using scare quotes to show that I was creating
an isomorphic model of the original (deprecated) system
in terms of my preferred system. But the point is
that if you establish an isomorphism, you get full
interoperability, which is really the ultimate goal
of all our knowledge-sharing efforts.
John