Issue 11 in bfo: o causes o'
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New issue 11 by batchel...@rsc.org: o causes o'
http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=11
Hello,
Currently in RO there's a causes relation between a continuant and an
occurrent.
But often one in addition would like to say that occurrent A causes
occurrent B; the jogging of my elbow causes the spilling of my drink, the
binding of a transcription factor to a DNA molecule causes the
transcription of a gene, the singing of the soprano causes the vase to
shatter and so forth.
von Wachter (doi:10.1002/cfg.258) talks in these terms:
A caused B if and only if A was the basis of a tendency
towards B and the tendency was realized.
without actually saying what A and B are. Now in BFO we talk about
dispositions, which I take to subsume tendencies (though Ludger Jansen
seems to argue otherwise: "Tendencies and other Realizables in Medical
Information Sciences", in: The Monist 90/4 (2007) 534-555), 'surefire'
dispositions, vices and virtues.
Now the talk in BFO is of realizable entities being realized in some
context C. But what does this mean? I read it as something like this:
IC c has_disposition d realized_as process o'
and triggered_by process o
which is to say that because realizable entities are only realized at
particular times, as opposed to qualities which are present (though may be
determinable and hence have different determinate values over time) at all
times, something time-dependent, a process, maybe, let's say, a change in
determinable quality q (I will flesh this out in another issue for the
tracker) must be part of the context C. Taking the inverse of
triggered_by, triggers:
o causes o' = o triggers . realized_as o'
and there is some possibly-anonymous disposition d in that chain.
But what about quantification? realized_as is an all-only relationship, by
the dispositionality of d. Likewise triggered_by. But what about triggers?
We cannot say:
all singing triggers some (d and inheres_in vase), all d realized_as only
smashing
but maybe we can say:
all singing-in-context-C triggers some (d and inheres_in vase v), all d
realized_as in v only smashing
and I think, if my inferencing is correct (all-only . all-some = all.only),
that gives us:
all singing-in-context-C causes in v only smashing
This seems wrong. Are there other possibilities for quantification I am
missing?
Best wishes,
Colin.
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b...@googlecode.com
Comment #1 on issue 11 by ingvar.j...@philos.umu.se: o causes o'
http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=11
If you want to subsume tendencies under dispositions, then I propose that
you call traditional dispositional properties (being elastic, soluble,
etc.) 'passive dispositions' and call tendencies 'active dispositions'.
Think of an elastic rubber band. When stretched out it has an ACTUAL
tendency to contract (counteracted by your hands), but when just lying on
a table, it has only the dispostional property of getting a tendency to
contract if stretched.
Best,
Ingvar J
b...@googlecode.com
Comment #2 on issue 11 by batchel...@rsc.org: o causes o'
http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=11
Hello Ingvar,
I suppose, then, the triggering process can be thought of as activating the
disposition into realization.
Something further occurs to me, which is that the triggering process for an
active
disposition is a specialization of the triggering process for the
corresponding
passive disposition.
Arp and Smith (2008) have all dispositions being surefire dispositions.
I'm not
sure that we can ever be that precise in science; there will always be some
vagueness, not to mention finkishness. Is this because probabilistic
dispositions
are a bit fishy for ontology purposes?
Colin.
b...@googlecode.com
Comment #3 on issue 11 by ingvar.j...@philos.umu.se: o causes o'
http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=11
Colin,
Tendencies need no triggering; it is their nature to realize themselves as
soon as
there are no counter-tendencies. Tendencies can be characterized by two
points: (1)
a tendency is an entity whose realization can be counteracted by other
tendencies;
(2) a tendency is a potentiality that can exist without being realized. This
chracterization contains some small improvements on the entry "Tendency"
that I once
wrote for Burkhardt and Smith's, "Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology"
(1991).
Ingvar
b...@googlecode.com
Comment #4 on issue 11 by batchel...@rsc.org: o causes o'
http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=11
Hello,
I suppose this would be caught by the current BFO definition of
disposition, "under
conditions C". But what "conditions C" are is left unclear in BFO.
Colin.