Do material entity and immaterial entity form a covering set for independent continuant?

28 views
Skip to first unread message

dl...@mitre.org

unread,
Aug 17, 2021, 5:06:42 PM8/17/21
to BFO Discuss
material entity is basically defined as always having some portion of  matter as a continuant part and immaterial entity never has matter as a continuant part, these would seem to form a covering set for independent continuant. Although defined as disjoint, the pair is not axiomatized as a covering set.
 Is this a missing axiom or have I missed a case?

Ludger Jansen

unread,
Aug 18, 2021, 6:13:04 AM8/18/21
to bfo-d...@googlegroups.com

Between always some F and never some F there is sometimes an F, as well as sometimes no F ...
L

Am 17.08.2021 um 23:06 schrieb dl...@mitre.org:
material entity is basically defined as always having some portion of  matter as a continuant part and immaterial entity never has matter as a continuant part, these would seem to form a covering set for independent continuant. Although defined as disjoint, the pair is not axiomatized as a covering set.
 Is this a missing axiom or have I missed a case?
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BFO Discuss" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to bfo-discuss...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/bfo-discuss/b2c4bd25-2ad4-4aef-8702-4f182cf50288n%40googlegroups.com.
-- 
PD Dr. Ludger Jansen
Institut für Philosophie
Universität Rostock
D-18051 Rostock

Alan Ruttenberg

unread,
Aug 18, 2021, 7:18:58 PM8/18/21
to bfo-d...@googlegroups.com
At some point it was decided by Barry that we would not include covering axioms. That isn't an invitation to willy-nilly add other siblings but is an admission that we may not have thought of everything and so we're not going to lock ourselves in just yet. It would be my expectation that IF there's a compelling reason to add another sibling, it would be discussed here and added to BFO if appropriate.

In the case you mention, it turns out that the covering axiom is a theorem (just checked). Generally we don't add formulas we know to be theorems since they follow anyways. Periodically we try to prove every formula from all the rest and mark the provable ones as theorems.

The OWL is a different story. Turns out there's not enough in the OWL yet (it is documented to be incomplete) to prove ('independent continuant' and not 'material entity' and not 'immaterial entity') is unsatisfiable. Hadn't thought of it before but this suggests there may be theorems that can be proven in the FOL but not OWL (even a very complete version). Might be worth looking at that in a subsequent version.

Bottom line, though, is that you should feel free to add a covering axiom for independent continuant to the OWL you are working with.


Alan


On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 5:06 PM dl...@mitre.org <dl...@mitre.org> wrote:
material entity is basically defined as always having some portion of  matter as a continuant part and immaterial entity never has matter as a continuant part, these would seem to form a covering set for independent continuant. Although defined as disjoint, the pair is not axiomatized as a covering set.
 Is this a missing axiom or have I missed a case?

--

Bill Hogan

unread,
Aug 19, 2021, 7:13:43 AM8/19/21
to bfo-d...@googlegroups.com
Alan,

Thanks!  Although I'm not the OP, your answer tracks exactly with my understanding.  The FOL vs. OWL discussion is very interesting and great information.

Bill

Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages