Causal relations and qualities of processes
gprimero
philosophy of the behavioral sciences (e.g. psychology and ethology).
I've known BFO very recently (I was previously interested in Mario
Bunge's formal ontology), and I want to understand it better.
I don't know how BFO would deal with some basic behavioral issues
related to "causal relations" and "qualities of processes". For
example, in Pavlovian conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (e.g.
food) elicits an unconditioned response (e.g. salivation). A process
of pairing the unconditioned stimulus (food) with a neutral stimulus
(e.g. sound) establishes a new relation of elicitation (the sound
begins to elicit salivation, and becomes a conditioned stimulus). The
features of the conditioned response (e.g. magnitude, latency,
duration, rate, resistence to extinction) depends on the
characteristics of the conditioned stimulus (e.g. intensity, duration)
and the characteristics of the pairing process (e.g. temporal
contiguity, statistical patterns of the correlations). These issues
are usually conceived as "causal relations between processes" (e.g.
elicitation, conditioning), and "characteristics of processes" (e.g.
intensity of the stimulus, temporal contiguity of the pairing
process). How would they be analysed with BFO (given that BFO doesn't
talk of "causal relations" and "qualities of processes")? Could you
help me to understand these issues?
Regards,
Gerardo.
gprimero
Barry Smith
> Hello, I'm Gerardo Primero, from Argentina, and I'm interested in the
> philosophy of the behavioral sciences (e.g. psychology and ethology).
> I've known BFO very recently (I was previously interested in Mario
> Bunge's formal ontology), and I want to understand it better.
> I don't know how BFO would deal with some basic behavioral issues
> related to "causal relations" and "qualities of processes". For
> example, in Pavlovian conditioning, an unconditioned stimulus (e.g.
> food) elicits an unconditioned response (e.g. salivation). A process
> of pairing the unconditioned stimulus (food) with a neutral stimulus
> (e.g. sound) establishes a new relation of elicitation (the sound
> begins to elicit salivation, and becomes a conditioned stimulus).
These matters are dealt with in Buffalo under the heading of
(reciprocal) dispositions; the food has the disposition to elicit a
response, the dog has the disposition to respond
The dog's disposition is transferred to the sound through conditioning
The
> features of the conditioned response (e.g. magnitude, latency,
> duration, rate, resistence to extinction) depends on the
> characteristics of the conditioned stimulus (e.g. intensity, duration)
> and the characteristics of the pairing process (e.g. temporal
> contiguity, statistical patterns of the correlations).
I believe that all of these dimensions can be associated with the
dispositions account
These issues
> are usually conceived as "causal relations between processes" (e.g.
> elicitation, conditioning), and "characteristics of processes" (e.g.
> intensity of the stimulus, temporal contiguity of the pairing
> process).
These issues are dealt with in BFO 2.0 in the theory of process
profiles. (See the last sections of the BFO 2.0 draft document; a
revised version is attached)
BS
How would they be analysed with BFO (given that BFO doesn't
> talk of "causal relations" and "qualities of processes")? Could you
> help me to understand these issues?
>
> Regards,
> Gerardo.
>
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gprimero
> These matters are dealt with in Buffalo under the heading of
> (reciprocal) dispositions; the food has the disposition to elicit a
> response, the dog has the disposition to respond
occurrent have a disposition (e.g. the disposition of eliciting
salivation) in BFO?
Colin Batchelor
> Thanks for your answer. I guess a sound is an occurrent. Can an
> occurrent have a disposition (e.g. the disposition of eliciting
> salivation) in BFO?
underlying material change in the dog (an instance of the universal
'dog') because of the conditioning process. But there is a new
instance of the sound process each time. Any change to the universal
sound of, say, a bell ringing must be a Cambridge change.
I suspect that BFO doesn't hold with Cambridge changes, and the BFO
2.0 draft doesn't mention them, but I could well be wrong.
Best wishes,
Colin.
gprimero
On Jan 17, 7:36 am, Colin Batchelor <batchel...@rsc.org> wrote:
> On Jan 16, 10:53 pm, gprimero <gerardop...@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
> These are acquired dispositions. It is clear that there is some
> underlying material change in the dog (an instance of the universal
> 'dog') because of the conditioning process.
dispositions of other sounds. How does BFO handle those cases? Perhaps
it considers that it's molecules (continuants) that participate in
sound (ocurrent) the bearers of the dispositions. It sounds weird to
me, though.
Colin Batchelor
On Jan 17, 3:17 pm, gprimero <gerardop...@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
> Perhaps
> it considers that it's molecules (continuants) that participate in
> sound (ocurrent) the bearers of the dispositions. It sounds weird to
> me, though.
Colin.
Ludger Jansen
disposition.
In this special case, we do not need to go down to molecules: It's the
dog who has a certain disposition. In this case, the acquired
disposition to produce saliva when hearing a certain sound.
The sound does not acquire any disposition -- there cannot possibly be
any acquired physical change through the conditioning process within the
sound because the sound has to be produced newly again and again. At the
end of the conditioning process, it is not the same token sound, but a
distinct token of the same type only.
If you need a disposition for triggering the dog's disposition, it
should thus not be ascribed to the sound. It should be ascribed to
whatever produces the sound, i.e. the bell or a tape recorder playing a
tape with the ring etc: The bell can have dispositions. But not that it
is not the bell that changes because of the conditioning process but
only the dog!
As sounds cannot have dispositions, a fortiori they cannot have innate
dispositions. Again, it's the organism that has a certain disposition to
react to a certain sound -- with the only difference that this
disposition is "innate" (whatever that means: present at birth,
genetically caused, to be developed in the normal course ...)
Best
LJ
--
PD Dr. Ludger Jansen
Institut f�r Philosophie
Universit�t Rostock
18051 Rostock
Chris Mungall
The BFO2 doc talks of relational dispositions - the key to unlock the lock and the lock to be unlocked by the key
IMHO it would be cleaner if the dog-sound case mirrored this, but this is unlikely given BFO's dogma, so another workaround is required.
> Institut für Philosophie
> Universität Rostock
> 18051 Rostock
Ludger Jansen
Am 17.01.2012 18:41, schrieb Chris Mungall:
> The BFO2 doc talks of relational dispositions - the key to unlock the lock and the lock to be unlocked by the key
>
> IMHO it would be cleaner if the dog-sound case mirrored this, but this is unlikely given BFO's dogma, so another workaround is required.
>
> On Jan 17, 2012, at 9:00 AM, Ludger Jansen wrote:
>
>> The important point is indeed that an event cannot be the bearer of a disposition.
>> In this special case, we do not need to go down to molecules: It's the dog who has a certain disposition. In this case, the acquired disposition to produce saliva when hearing a certain sound.
>>
>> The sound does not acquire any disposition -- there cannot possibly be any acquired physical change through the conditioning process within the sound because the sound has to be produced newly again and again. At the end of the conditioning process, it is not the same token sound, but a distinct token of the same type only.
>>
>> If you need a disposition for triggering the dog's disposition, it should thus not be ascribed to the sound. It should be ascribed to whatever produces the sound, i.e. the bell or a tape recorder playing a tape with the ring etc: The bell can have dispositions. But not that it is not the bell that changes because of the conditioning process but only the dog!
>>
>> As sounds cannot have dispositions, a fortiori they cannot have innate dispositions. Again, it's the organism that has a certain disposition to react to a certain sound -- with the only difference that this disposition is "innate" (whatever that means: present at birth, genetically caused, to be developed in the normal course ...)
>>
>> Best
>> LJ
>>
>>
>> Am 17.01.2012 16:17, schrieb gprimero:
>>> On Jan 17, 7:36 am, Colin Batchelor<batchel...@rsc.org> wrote:
>>>> On Jan 16, 10:53 pm, gprimero<gerardop...@yahoo.com.ar> wrote:
>>>> These are acquired dispositions. It is clear that there is some
>>>> underlying material change in the dog (an instance of the universal
>>>> 'dog') because of the conditioning process.
>>> Yes, this example is acquired, but there're examples of innate
>>> dispositions of other sounds. How does BFO handle those cases? Perhaps
>>> it considers that it's molecules (continuants) that participate in
>>> sound (ocurrent) the bearers of the dispositions. It sounds weird to
>>> me, though.
>>>
>> --
>>
>> PD Dr. Ludger Jansen
>> Institut f�r Philosophie
>> Universit�t Rostock
>> 18051 Rostock
>>
>> --
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>>
--
PD Dr. Ludger Jansen
Larry Hunter
It is with great trepidation that I raise this, but it points to the problems in BFO dealing with energy. I can still *see* you scream in space, even though there are no continuants to bear the disposition to participate in light beams.
It would be nice if BFO were compatible with at least Newtonian physics. To be so, it must live with the fact that energy has both some continuant-like aspects (e.g. conservation laws) and some occurrent-like aspects (the inherence of change in what it means to be energy).
Larry
gprimero
light beams.
participate in light beams?
(Ludger Jansen) The important point is indeed that an event cannot be
I think that scientists often talk about types of events as bearers of
dispositions. For example, "causal relations" usually have types and
instances of events as their relata.
(Ludger Jansen) Seeing it as a dog-bell case should fix it, shouldn't
it?
(Gerardo) We can condition a more ordinary sound, and lots of
different sources will have the same disposition, so we'll have a set
of very heterogeneous continuants whose only common feature is that
they can eventually produce a similar sound (e.g. a boy that whistles,
a recording tape, a window that sounds like a whistle when there's
wind...). To my ears, this sounds more weird than talking about
dispositions of events, but perhaps it's just a matter of habits.
Regards,
Gerardo.
Larry Hunter
(Gerardo) Shouldn't we consider that photons are the continuants that
participate in light beams?
Alan Ruttenberg
<ludger...@uni-rostock.de> wrote:
> Seeing it as a dog-bell case should fix it, shouldn't it?
>
>
> Am 17.01.2012 18:41, schrieb Chris Mungall:
>
>> The BFO2 doc talks of relational dispositions - the key to unlock the lock
>> and the lock to be unlocked by the key
>>
>> IMHO it would be cleaner if the dog-sound case mirrored this, but this is
>> unlikely given BFO's dogma, so another workaround is required.
>>
I don't understand how much of the conversation before (or immediate
after) this exchange addressed the question that Gerardo asked.
Recapitulating (and introducing a bit of opera, it seems) the
discussion goes
GP: I'm interested in stimulus and response. The thing that varies
from stimulus to stimulus, and to which different responses are
associated are things like magnitude, latency, rate.
BS: 1) Offers reciprocal dispositions, demonstrates with continuant
pair (the case that works)
2) says [The dog's disposition is transferred to the sound through
conditioning], which I don't understand.
3) Points to process profiles, which would be the process analog of
quality. (how the sound could have rate, latency)
My interpretation: We can do reciprocal dispositions between
continuants, and we we can talk about quality-like aspects of
processes. I don't see the answer to what the sound is doing, in this
story.
CB: Cambridge! Space! Scream! (CB brings out the opera in me)
GP: Ok, I see the reciprocal dispositions inhering in continuants, but
in my case one of the pair is a process. Can processes bear
dispositions? (i.e. the obvious substitution - substitute the next
"stimulus" into the equation and see whether it works)
[Interlude of noise saying no it doesn't. Not much light on why not.
LJ expresses the facts of the party line, but I don't see how the
discussion of change in sound bell, or instances versus class supports
those facts. A possible workaround is offered - have the disposition
inhere in one of the material proximate causes of the sound (bell) -
but we still don't know why we can't just use the sound]
CM: (returning to BS's first explanation, and GP's follow on) Says we
have an asymmetry (due to dogma) between the case of
continuant+relationalDisposition+continuant versus
occurrent+relationalDisposition-continuant.
LJ: Reiterates workaround.
LH: Energy! (yes, but doesn't address the point. You are forgiven
because there is more distraction than focus in this conversation. As
far as trepidation goes... well you can probably surmise my view on
that from this message ;-)
GP: Rightly challenges the workaround: "We can condition a more
ordinary sound, and lots of different sources will have the same
disposition, so we'll have a set of very heterogeneous continuants
whose only common feature is that they can eventually produce a
similar sound (e.g. a boy that whistles, a recording tape, a window
that sounds like a whistle when there's wind...). To my ears, this
sounds more weird than talking about dispositions of events"
i.e. The type with more causal power (a type of sound), i.e. precisely
the sort of thing we look for in a universal, is outlawed from being
explanatory, and instead we are forced to talk about this crazy set of
continuants that could or did make the sound.
----
Geraldo, welcome to the forum! I think you've raised a good issue and
articulated it well despite the noise. In my view (and I think in
Chris's, albeit for slightly different reasons) your point is well
taken. It is the same issue that occurs in a number of places. For
instance, in the information artifact ontology we have information
entities (generically dependent continuants) e.g. the contents of a
document, and we have their material bearers, e.g. the paper that ink
colored shapes are on. But what of spoken word. I speak a sentence,
and for a time as it travels from me to you, there is this sound thing
that apparently has the ability to induce a copy of the word to be
made in my head. Yet the sound can not carry the word (at least not in
the same way that the paper airplane tossed my way can).
Regards,
Alan
Colin Batchelor
> The BFO2 doc talks of relational dispositions - the key to unlock the lock and the lock to be unlocked by the key
>
> IMHO it would be cleaner if the dog-sound case mirrored this, but this is unlikely given BFO's dogma, so another workaround is required.
chemical levels but it doesn't follow that the best thing is to talk
entirely in terms of mutual dispositions.
There are lock-key cases where the details of both sides matter. But
in the vase case, the floor can be made of more or less anything and
still smash the vase. And the ultimate one-sided disposition is
radioactivity, of course.
Somebody (Somebody Martin?) I think argues that all dispositions are
mutual. We shouldn't go that far. We should bear mutuality in mind,
but not shoehorn it in.
Best wishes,
Colin.
Alan Ruttenberg
> On Jan 17, 5:41 pm, Chris Mungall <cjmung...@lbl.gov> wrote:
>
>> The BFO2 doc talks of relational dispositions - the key to unlock the lock and the lock to be unlocked by the key
>>
>> IMHO it would be cleaner if the dog-sound case mirrored this, but this is unlikely given BFO's dogma, so another workaround is required.
>
> There are lots of mutual dispositions down at the physical and the
> chemical levels but it doesn't follow that the best thing is to talk
> entirely in terms of mutual dispositions.
Agreed. Although it is certainly the case that you want an ontology
that doesn't prevent you from going in to these details when you need
to, and let you make the connections to the simpler truth.
> There are lock-key cases where the details of both sides matter. But
> in the vase case, the floor can be made of more or less anything and
> still smash the vase.
More or less anything that we commonly use for floors. But there are
exceptions (rubber playground flooring, for example) and the question
is: how not to have the exceptions invalidate what look like
reasonable expressions of regularity.
> And the ultimate one-sided disposition is radioactivity, of course.
So nice, that :)
> Somebody (Somebody Martin?) I think argues that all dispositions are
> mutual. We shouldn't go that far. We should bear mutuality in mind,
> but not shoehorn it in.
Ok. But in Geraldo's case, how to avoid it?
-Alan
Colin Batchelor
On Jan 18, 3:53 pm, Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > There are lock-key cases where the details of both sides matter. But
> > in the vase case, the floor can be made of more or less anything and
> > still smash the vase.
>
> More or less anything that we commonly use for floors. But there are
> exceptions (rubber playground flooring, for example) and the question
> is: how not to have the exceptions invalidate what look like
> reasonable expressions of regularity.
yet: dispositions to do something can *always* be blocked, in the vase
case by someone unrolling rubber flooring under a falling vase, by a
sudden gust of wind, by a curator catching the vase. That's what
makes them dispositions.
> Ok. But in Geraldo's case, how to avoid it?
(a) doi:10.1186/2041-1480-2-S4-S4
(b) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sounds/
? Sounds turn out to be a bit more puzzling than one might expect.
But. I think the story is that when a dog hears a bell, a dog hears a
bell.
The dog can be mistaken about this; being mistaken about things isn't
what separates us from the beasts. The whole point about dogs having
ears is so that they can hear what material objects are doing. Dogs
are the way they are because of selection, which has to be part of the
story.
In this case the disposition to salivate depends specifically on the
dog but non-specifically (not quite generically in the BFO sense) on
the possible sources of the sound (bells, recordings, beatboxers, some
demon manipulating the medium so that all the molecules waggle in the
right way). There is no material change in any of the sources on
conditioning, but there is in the dog. The conditioning moves the dog
around in quality space, so to speak.
The dispositions that bells have to make dogs salivate, floors to
smash vases of a certain fragility, lighted candles to confuse moths,
peanuts to cause anaphylactic shock in a sensitized eater all seem
peculiar.
Best wishes,
Colin.
Alan Ruttenberg
>
>
> On Jan 18, 3:53 pm, Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> > There are lock-key cases where the details of both sides matter. But
>> > in the vase case, the floor can be made of more or less anything and
>> > still smash the vase.
>>
>> More or less anything that we commonly use for floors. But there are
>> exceptions (rubber playground flooring, for example) and the question
>> is: how not to have the exceptions invalidate what look like
>> reasonable expressions of regularity.
>
> For readers who may not be persuaded about the dispositional story
> yet: dispositions to do something can *always* be blocked, in the vase
> case by someone unrolling rubber flooring under a falling vase, by a
> sudden gust of wind, by a curator catching the vase. That's what
> makes them dispositions.
>
>> Ok. But in Geraldo's case, how to avoid it?
>
> Have we all read:
> (a) doi:10.1186/2041-1480-2-S4-S4
> (b) http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sounds/
>
> ? Sounds turn out to be a bit more puzzling than one might expect.
Thanks for these pointers. Good idea and I will read and comment again after.
>
> But. I think the story is that when a dog hears a bell, a dog hears a
> bell.
>
> The dog can be mistaken about this; being mistaken about things isn't
> what separates us from the beasts. The whole point about dogs having
> ears is so that they can hear what material objects are doing. Dogs
> are the way they are because of selection, which has to be part of the
> story.
Agree on the latter. But mustn't the dog, in order to be mistaken,
have had experience (or instinct arising in evolution) with the thing
it is mistaken for? For this argument to be plausible wouldn't the dog
either have had to evolve in the presence of bells or know of bells?
> In this case the disposition to salivate depends specifically on the
> dog but non-specifically (not quite generically in the BFO sense) on
> the possible sources of the sound (bells, recordings, beatboxers, some
> demon manipulating the medium so that all the molecules waggle in the
> right way).
I support the general sentiment expressed above, and certainly for
natural sounds there is a compelling reason to think so. However in
the case of this kind of conditioning there is also the point of view
of the perceptual mechanism and computational machinery that is
minimally needed to make the connection between sound and action
(feeding) and while this view shouldn't be thought of as the only
perspective, a theory of sound and conditioning ought to be obligated
to take account of what is know in that realm have propose something
that is reasonably plausible with respect to that.
Here we have a case of dogs being conditioned by the sounds of bells
and I would ask: is the sound of a bell (or beatbox, or recording)
something that is natural for the dog - was it something that was
around to influence the evolution of the dog, or even present at any
time of this dog's life. I think the answer is plausibly "no". Given
such an answer we need to ask in what way the dog heard the bell?
Hearing the wind, an animal cry, a river or rain - yes? Now we could
ask whether the kind of conditioning depends on the sound resembling
one of these (for the dog "natural") sounds, but I think that answer
is no. Yet nonetheless certain kind of sounds can be remembered and
later associated with events of importance. This suggests that the
sound itself has causal power, independent of producer.
We even know some of the biology around the perceptual phenomena -
that there is neural activity generated by sound by way of small hairs
that get pushed around by the alternating pressure changes of air that
is the sound wave, and that while the sensitivity of these hairs can
be tuned by higher level expectations, they need not be. An, as far as
I know unanswered, question is what the cognitive intermediates are
between that sensation and whatever it is that registers in the brain
that the sound of some *specific thing* has been made. Various kinds
of research suggest that there may be several intermediates, and a
priori any one of them short of the perception that the sound is of
something could one that is the one that interacts with the memory and
conditioning systems.
To make a long story short, whether the dog hears the bell, or whether
the dog senses changes in air pressure, or whether some intermediate
cognitive perceptual entity in between is a proximate trigger of
salivation response is a matter of biology. Given that we don't know
the answer, and that the hypothesis that it is the bell that is
responsible (has the disposition to elicit salivation) is in some
sense the strongest one (perception of thing making sound likely at
the end of a long series of cognitive processes), means to me that we
simply are not doing the scientific ontology well. Here is where I
start to appreciate Chris's comment about dogma. When the ontological
perspective we take forces us into positions for which we don't know
the answer, it seems we should be nervous and instead seek to
represent what we know.
When I see a situation such as this, my first reaction is to start
thinking of how to modify BFO to make room for a different account of
the situation (and this is what I've been doing and discussing
privately for month and months). BFO get a lot of things right (IMO)
but needs to expand to accommodate cases where the existing
representational facilities seem forced in the face of fact.
> There is no material change in any of the sources on conditioning
Why is this point relevant? Has anyone suggested otherwise in the conversation?
> , but there is in the dog. The conditioning moves the dog around in quality space, so to speak.
On this I don't think anyone disagrees, other than minor nit that the
dog is not the right kind of occupant of quality space - which is
occupied with qualities.
> The dispositions that bells have to make dogs salivate, floors to
> smash vases of a certain fragility, lighted candles to confuse moths,
> peanuts to cause anaphylactic shock in a sensitized eater all seem
> peculiar.
In what way peculiar?
Will comment later once I've read the cites. Thanks again for those.
-Alan
gprimero
participate in light beams?
gravitational fields, the graviton is a more conjectural proposal, so
the analogy is somewhat controversial. But in the case of
electromagnetic fields, the standard view of physics is that the
photon is the basic constituent of all forms of electromagnetic
radiation, and that photons, depending on several conditions, behave
as particles or waves (continuant-like versus occurrent-like aspects
of quantum entities). This standard view seems consistent with saying
that "photons are the continuants that participate in light beams". Is
there any sound argument to challenge the standard view?
Regards,
Gerardo.
gprimero
by (1) a sounding object (e.g. a flute), (2) a medium (e.g. air,
water), (3) an animal's tympanic membranes, (4) an animal's brain.
Each of these continuants has a disposition of undergoing certain
process given the occurrence of certain trigger, and each process
(which is the realization of the disposition) is the triggering
process of (1) the disposition of other continuant and (2) the
realization of the disposition. For example, the vibration of air is
triggered by the vibration of the flute, and is the trigger of a
disposition of the tympanic membrane (its "vibrability"), and of a
process that realizes such disposition (the vibration of the tympanic
membrane). I guess each step so far could be described as reciprocal
dispositions. But scientists usually need to describe causal relations
between the types of process profiles, and not between the types of
continuants that participate in those processes. How can BFO
accurately represent this kind of causal relation if, by default, it's
forbidden to adscribe dispositions to process types?
(Colin Batchelor) But. I think the story is that when a dog hears a
mistaken about things isn't what separates us from the beasts.
of analysis in this phenomenon? Suppose we condition a dog's response
to the presence of a 4000 Hz tone. We can even variate the sources of
the sound and retain its frequency. In this example, we would say that
we conditioned the dog to "a 4000 Hz tone sound" and not to "a bell's
sound" (i.e., to a quality-like aspect of the process, and not to a
type of source). There's an empirical way to explore which is the most
accurate unit of analysis: we can run test sessions in which the
frequency of the tone is varied, and the rate or probability of
behavior is plotted as a function of the frequency (we could do the
same with variations of source). This function (called a
"generalization gradient") can take different forms (including flat
lines). In this example, the function will be an inverted U-shaped
function with the peak at 4000 Hz. For example, the rate of response
at 2800 Hz and 5200 Hz might be 50% of that maintained by 4000 Hz. See
that the "generalization gradient" is dependent on the frequency of
the sound waves (a quality-like aspect of this process), and not on
the type of source of the sound waves. Again, how can BFO accurately
represent this kind of functional dependence if, by default, it's
forbidden to adscribe dispositions to process types?
Regards,
Gerardo.
gprimero
by (1) a sounding object (e.g. a flute), (2) a medium (e.g. air,
water), (3) an animal's tympanic membranes, (4) an animal's brain.
Each of these continuants has a disposition of undergoing certain
process given the occurrence of certain trigger, and each process
(which is the realization of the disposition) is the triggering
process of (1) the disposition of other continuant and (2) the
realization of the disposition. For example, the vibration of air is
triggered by the vibration of the flute, and is the trigger of a
disposition of the tympanic membrane (its "vibrability"), and of a
process that realizes such disposition (the vibration of the tympanic
membrane). I guess each step so far could be described as reciprocal
dispositions. But scientists usually need to describe causal relations
between the types of process profiles, and not between the types of
this kind of causal relations if, by default, it's forbidden to
mistaken about things isn't what separates us from the beasts.
of analysis in this phenomenon? Suppose we condition a dog's response
to the presence of a 4000 Hz tone. We can even variate the sources of
the sound and retain its frequency. In this example, we would say that
we conditioned the dog to "a 4000 Hz tone sound" and not to "a bell's
sound" (i.e., to a quality-like aspect of the process, and not to a
type of source). There's an empirical way to explore which is the most
accurate unit of analysis: we can run test sessions in which the
frequency of the tone is varied, and the rate or probability of
behavior is plotted as a function of the frequency (we could do the
same with variations of source). This function (called a
"generalization gradient") can take different forms (including flat
lines). In this example, the function will be an inverted U-shaped
function with the peak at 4000 Hz. For example, the rate of response
at 2800 Hz and 5200 Hz might be 50% of that maintained by 4000 Hz. See
that the "generalization gradient" is dependent on the frequency of
the sound waves (a quality-like aspect of this process), and not on
Colin Batchelor
> (Gerardo) But how do you know that "hears a bell" is an accurate unit
> of analysis in this phenomenon? Suppose we condition a dog's response
> adscribe dispositions to process types?
The story seems to be a lot simpler than everyone is saying.
A standard disposition pattern is:
stimulus--disposition--manifestation
where the stimulus is a process and the manifestation is another
process. The reason why I don't think of processes having
dispositions is that in this pattern they are stimuli.
In Roehl and Jansen's terms, salivation has_trigger_R sound-at-4000-
Hz.
And that pattern gives the causal relation. Only stimuli S with the
right process profiles trigger manifestations M via the dog's
disposition. Dispositions of processes are superfluous.
The converse process here, I reckon, is that the medium's vibrations
are damped by the dog.
Best wishes,
Colin.
Rob Rovetto
From: gprimero <gerar...@yahoo.com.ar>
To: BFO Discuss <bfo-d...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 22, 2012 4:35 AM
Subject: [bfo-discuss] Re: Causal relations and qualities of processes
(Gerardo) Shouldn't we consider that photons are the continuants that
participate in light beams?
(Larry Hunter) No. Energy does not have to inhere in matter. Think
about gravitational (or electromagnetic) fields.
1. As a particle it is, perhaps, a continuant.
2. As a wave, it is perhaps process (because it would be counterintuitive to consider a wave to have any the stationary aspect continuants have. waves move and are conceived in that dynamic fashion). As a process, we'd have to appeal to an independent continuant that, say, emitted the wave.
3. Photons don't seem to be dependent continuants: the shape of an object cannot mind-externally exist independent of the object, but this relationship doesn't seem to apply to photons because they independently exist. What is it that they would be existentially dependent on? (who are the physicists on the listserve, by the way?)
As a continuant, what would be s-dependent on it?
In short, if matter is energy (of a different form) then it doesn't seem that we can say energy does not inhere in matter.The relationship of matter to energy seems to be different than inherence.
(Rovetto) As for gravitational fields and BFO descriptions of their relationship to matter/energy... It MAY be more accurate to say gravitational fields inhere in matter because if you remove some material object you remove the gravitational field associated with that object. That particular amount of matter curves the space-time by a particular degree such that when the former is removed (vanishes from existence, say) or transformed so does its effect on space-time. Gravity has been described as the physical manifestation of the curvature of space-time. Note that if this description of gravity is correct, then gravity is not a force (as has been said time and again) but a property of space-time that changes as the matter and energy distribution changes. That is, matter/energy is in a dynamic relationship with space-time. The former alters (the curvature of) the latter and where there are transformations in the former there will be corresponding effects in the latter. My initial intuition is that the relationship between matter/energy and space-time is that of BFO:reciprocal s-dependence or, more generally, some relation that expresses (a) the mutual dependence and interconnectedness of these entities and (b) the dynamicity at play in reality. Also note that in that description of gravity we have the physical manifestation being grounded in something that is not physically apparent: the falling of objects, the orbits of satellites, the pooling of water are the physical manifestation of something that is both inaccessible to our physical senses (sight, sound, ...) and immaterial. Perhaps we have an immaterial basis for material phenomena. Pardon me if this is off-topic.
(Gerardo) I don't understand your argument. In the case of
gravitational fields, the graviton is a more conjectural proposal, so
the analogy is somewhat controversial. But in the case of
electromagnetic fields, the standard view of physics is that the
photon is the basic constituent of all forms of electromagnetic
radiation, and that photons, depending on several conditions, behave
as particles or waves (continuant-like versus occurrent-like aspects
of quantum entities). This standard view seems consistent with saying
that "photons are the continuants that participate in light beams". Is
there any sound argument to challenge the standard view?
Regards,
Gerardo.
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