Identity vs, Spa-Tem Location (was: nice free talk)

Patrick Cassidy

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Mar 23, 2019, 4:38:54 PM3/23/19

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Breakout for identity issue:

In at least one ontology one can refer to a “quantity of a substance” as a “PhysicalObject” (mass, location, composition). In the (very common) case where one has a quantity of some mixture of substances (a 14-K gold ring, e.g.) there is a quantity of “gold” and a quantity of “copper”. There is no reason I can think of not to be able to refer to the gold in that ring as an object separate from the copper – that is logically coherent. As long as the ring exists, those two quantities of substance will have the same spatio-temporal location.

Now it is true that the atoms of those two component substances had origins in different spatio-temporal locations. So the atoms composing the ring did not always have the same spatio-temporal location. But I would like to (why not?) refer to those two objects (piece of copper, piece of gold) **While they were in the ring**. In that case those two pieces of stuff, in that time interval, had exactly the same spatio-temporal location.

Doe the notion of “identity” as implying “identical spatio-temporal location” require that we do the impossible, of tracing an object back to the origin of the universe? How does one preserve that notion of identity and deal with the problem of co-location, within some meaningful and accessible time interval?

And how about the ship of Theseus? I presume that diachronic identity is not what is at issue here (a different issue), but since everything made of mass changes with time, the notion of “identity” becomes very tricky unless we mean “diachronic identity” by default, with “identity at a specific time” as a different notion, and perhaps some special notion for special cases (other than mathematical, hard to think of one).

I think that every day I don’t become a better person is a lost day. Do I die every day, to be resurrected the next?

Pat

From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ontolo...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of David Whitten
Sent: Saturday, March 23, 2019 9:53 AM
To: ontolog-forum
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] nice free talk

I"m enjoying this discussion.

If I say that I have a 4-D spatial temporal entity.

To me, this means that I can take a "double location" pair (spacial location, temporal location)

and see if that pair coincides with the entity.

If I give this a pair a name, does this make that "double location" into a possible property value

of that named property for the entity?

Since I don't have infinite capacity in storage for my equality comparison operation to use,

nor do I have infinite capacity to describe the entity, I would assume that for any particular application,

or for any particular granularity, I would limit the number of such "double location" pairs used by a comparison

in some way.

Perhaps that might even be a good way of defining "granularity" as I struggle with finding a good definition.

As referenced by Mike Bennett, Leibniz's Law stipulates that if two things have exactly the same

characteristics / properties then they are the same thing.

Do you think Leibniz was thinking about a definition of property similar to what I mentioned here?

As to identity versus identification, I'm not clear enough of the distinction you are making to be

able to have a strong opinion.

Dave Whitten

713-870-3834

On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 5:08 AM 'Alex Titov' via ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> This is one of the things that 4D can simplify: If two things have the same spatio-temporal extent, they are the same thing.

Let’s say that I agree and share that postulate. But there may be plenty of other observers, who don’t agree…

The issue I don’t know how to solve in that situation - how one knows that two (or more) patio-temporal extents are the same? That has to be observed/measured somehow. Suppose I can make such observations/measurements. What happens if another observer gets another results? In addition, my observation is spatio-temporal related as well and observations from one point and time moment may be different from another.

That makes me thinking that 4D is not enough. Somehow the observers provide influence on observations and are to be included into the model. But I don’t feel that I have enough knowledge, skills, experience to work on this.

Kind regards,
Alex Titov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alextitov
On 23 Mar 2019, 08:50 +0000, Matthew West <dr.matt...@gmail.com>, wrote:
Dear Mike,
This is one of the things that 4D can simplify: If two things have the same spatio-temporal extent, they are the same thing. The main challenge is that requires maintaining some history of where something is/has been to maintain the confidence that what you are looking at is a state of the whole concerned.
Regards
Matthew

From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Mike Bennett
Sent: 22 March 2019 20:58
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] nice free talk

We were talking about some of these issues on the fringes of the Object Management Group meetings this week, around the concept of a 'Digital Twin' and the issues of identifiers for things.
As I recall, Leibniz's Law stipulates that if two things have exactly the same characteristics / properties then they are the same thing. I have always been suspicious of this. It seems to me that there is something to identity qua identity, regardless of the characteristics one might use to detect it. The 'soul' of the thing, as it were. But I don't know any good theories or references that unpack that idea.
Mike
PS I'm glad you were able to have such a valuable discussion in the absence of my having been able to organize something on the day. It sounds like we should do that more often.
On 3/22/2019 4:20 PM, Matthew West wrote:
Dear Alex,
From a cursory glance based on what I have read, that is a good summary. Good spot.
Regards
Matthew

From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Alex Shkotin
Sent: 22 March 2019 17:35
To: ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] nice free talk

Dear Matthew,

thank you very much for interesting reference:-) Maybe I begin with https://www.academia.edu/7162073/Review_of_The_Varieties_of_Reference_by_Gareth_Evans
And let me say that a way of reference defers from science to science and from technology to technology. It's just important to know this kind of attributes in an ontology as well as in DB.
For example, for rock samples, we have coordinates of excavation at first, but also where are they now and also reference to the expedition details.

Thank you!

Alex

пт, 22 мар. 2019 г. в 19:43, Matthew West <dr.matt...@gmail.com>:
Dear Alex,
As it happens I am currently reading “Varieties of Reference” by Gareth Evans. What that suggests is that there is more than one way of referring to things. So far, I’m getting the kind of description you are saying and proper names where a particular name has been introduced as referring to a particular thing.
The book seems to be quite good, so I recommend it if you want to discuss/understand the related issues.
Regards
Matthew West

From: 'Alex Titov' via ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: 22 March 2019 11:43
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] nice free talk

In my personal opinion, an identification is a subset of classification relations, so that we have a restriction on the class - its cardinality is to be equal to one. Some consequences - there may not be an ‘absolute’ identification - only ‘relative’ - in some external context - and what can be treated as a thing identification in one context - might not be identification in the other context (where a singular cardinality property is violated)…

Kind regards,
Alex
On 22 Mar 2019, 11:31 +0000, Alex Shkotin <alex.s...@gmail.com>, wrote:
Exactly Metthew,

and for me, identity and identification are more about fingerprint, i.e. very special data structures.

Alex

пт, 22 мар. 2019 г. в 13:48, Matthew West <dr.matt...@gmail.com>:
Dear Alex and Dave,
You need to be very careful about using structure for identity. ISO 10303 (STEP) developed a set of data structures (integrated resources) and then interpreted them in different ways for different purposes. Some people thought this would enable them to integrate the data, but of course the interpretation was as important as the structure, and you could not, at least not on the basis of the common structures.
Regards
Matthew West

From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Alex Shkotin
Sent: 22 March 2019 09:34
To: ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] nice free talk

Thank you, Dave.

I am ready to clarify any misunderstanding and the best way for me is by email as I need to translate carefully Eng2Ru, Ru2Eng:-)

About your question: if two structures are equal we may use one of them to model another. In ontologic the identity is important. Consider we look at the object directly and at the same time through the mirror. When we merge two ontologies equality of structures is just precondition for identity. For me, "equal" is a logical and math term, and "identity" - ontological. But maybe you just need examples of "if there were other ways"?

Alex

чт, 21 мар. 2019 г. в 23:16, David Whitten <whi...@worldvista.org>:
I really appreciate your insight as well Alex.
As I said on the call, I feel I gain every time I read one of your e-mails.
I may not always understand it, but I have some ideas for more research.

For those who were not there,
I was talking about Dr. Wirth and his work on the Pascal programming language.
When I studied it, there were some discussions about how do you compare
two variables which may or may not be equal. Do we define the equality
of a value based on the NAME of the datatype for each, or the STRUCTURE
of the datatype for each.

So if we have a variable P of type PCOUNTER and another variable K of type KCOUNTER
and we say names matter for equality
and we see code IF (P == K)
then we can stop and say they are not equal
since we just see that PCOUNTER is a different name than KCOUNTER,

But if say structure matters,
and there is a definition that has PCOUNTER as INTEGER
and there is a definition that has KCOUNTER as INTEGER
then we can't just stop and say they are not equal
because we need to look at the variables P and K and see if they both
represent the same INTEGER value.

We didn't even get into where PCOUNTER is a subtype of KCOUNTER,
though Pascal as I recall had the ability to define a type as a range of values
like FROM 1 TO 100 (though I don't recall the syntax of how to define those types)

In ontologies, we have two ways of describing Categories/Classes

First, define by list where we have a list of the instances of the Categories/Classes
or a list of the subCategories/subClasses.

Second, define by rule where we have some statement we can use in a logical way
to test and determine if a particular potential instance is actually an instance of that
Category/Class.

I was asking if there were other ways where we used the Name of the Category/Class
and or the structure of instances of the Category/Class to determine if they are equal.

Does this make sense?
Dave Whitten
713-870-3834

On Thu, Mar 21, 2019 at 10:46 AM Alex Shkotin <alex.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi All,

we have got it occasionally, but maybe it's a good idea to have free talk for ex. one per month.
It's a pity we do not have a record.

Thank you, David, for your attention! You mentioned Wirth+Pascal and my response was that we may look at any type (record...) in a language like Pascal as a hierarchical schema from DB point of view. And we may look at the DB schema as RDFS one and transform it into DL isomorphically. But usually, this is not a good idea, as we need to transform it logically.

There were other interesting topics touched: category theory, "ages", CL, program verification...

I lowered my hand because I have forgotten what I'd like to say: axioms, definitions, and finite models for any kind of science and technology.

And the last but not least, when we have the math model of part of Reality, some attributes have very special meaning - these are input parameters for material algorithms to find out this particular mostly unique object. Without this kind of reference to reality, we have just statistics.

Alex
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Matthew West

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Mar 28, 2019, 6:32:50 AM3/28/19

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Dear Pat,

This is where 4D comes to the rescue. Under 4D an object is its spatio-temporal extent, and if you find two objects with the same spatio-temporal extent, then they are the same thing. Essentially that means that if (and only if) they occupy the same space over the whole of their life, they are the same thing.

This allows things to be coincident at a point in time, but still different over their life. Thus Donald Trump and the President of the United States and currently coincident, but these are two different objects because they are not coincident over the whole of their lives.

Regards

Matthew

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Phil Murray

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Mar 30, 2019, 10:50:05 AM3/30/19

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Dr. West --

I subscribe to the Ontolog Forum precisely because I have so much to learn from the KR experts who participate, but I am bothered by such abstract arguments. In this case, the 4-D model for objects seems at odds with how humans actually experience and understand the things, beings, and processes around them, regardless of changes in state and changes in characteristics over the course of their existence.

Although I appreciate the wry humor of the Trump example, even as President he is still -- always and essentially -- Donald Trump. Isn't it just better to describe him at the moment as "Donald Trump [as President of the United States]" if that qualification is relevant?

And why, given such emphasis on changes in state or role in a 4-D model (or the overlap/coincidence between "Individual 1" and "President of the United States" for a specified range of time), should we stop thi! nking of him as Donald J. Trump when he dies? The physical pieces are still there, just slowly dissolving into compounds and elements. (I was also going to ask, "Would it just be the absence of a soul?" but I realized that may not apply.) Sorry for the politics. I could not resist.

In any case, most people simply do not perceive or understand the world around them as 4-D objects, and this 3-D understanding of the world is reflected in their communications. We do understand that even rocks ultimately disintegrate or melt ... although most people 3000 years ago may not have.

My understanding of 4-D models for representation of the things we experience is limited, but if we are looking for useful ways to support machine interpretation of natural language, shouldn't we always favor a model based on our current shared understanding of the world, which is reflected in how we talk and write about the world? If not, is String Theory even better than ! 4-D?

-----------------------------------------------------------
Phil Murray
TamingComplexity.org

From: "Matthew West" <dr.matt...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Mar 28, 2019 6:32 am
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Identity vs, Spa-Tem Location (was: nice free talk)

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John F Sowa

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Mar 30, 2019, 3:10:40 PM3/30/19

to ontolo...@googlegroups.com, Barry Smith, Peirce-L

Pat C, Matthew, Phil M, and Jon A,

Basic issue: How do we determine whether two things that we
experience on different occasions (or that we describe in
different ways) are "the same"?

For example, suppose we describe something as a vase, and somebody
else describes it as a lump of clay. Are they referring to the
"same thing"?

Or suppose we meet John Doe on one occasion and his "identical" twin
Jimmy Doe at a later date. Even if Jimmy tells us that he's not
"the same" as John, we can't observe the earlier stages. His words
are our basis for talking, reasoning, or acting about the difference.
Even if we get more records or testimony from independent sources,
they are just words or photos. We can't observe the continuity.

And Pat raises an even more complex example:

PC

> one can refer to a “quantity of a substance” as a “PhysicalObject”
> (mass, location, composition). In the (very common) case where one
> has a quantity of some mixture of substances (a 14-K gold ring, e.g.)
> there is a quantity of “gold” and a quantity of “copper”. There is
> no reason I can think of not to be able to refer to the gold in
> that ring as an object separate from the copper – that is logically
> coherent. As long as the ring exists, those two quantities of
> substance will have the same spatio-temporal location.

You can only answer this question with a question: Why do you ask?

As a somewhat simpler case, suppose you go to IKEA and buy a box of
parts for a table. Those parts were spatially very close from the
moment they were packed in Sweden, shipped to the store, brought
to your garage, and taken out of the box. For a while, they were
separated by a short distance, mixed with yourself and some tools,
and finally assembled as a table. What are the identity conditions
for that "thing"?

MW

> if you find two objects with the same spatio-temporal extent, then
> they are the same thing. Essentially that means that if (and only if)
> they occupy the same space over the whole of their life, they are the
> same thing.

But what do you mean by "the whole of their life"? Are the parts in
the box a different "thing" or are they part of the life of the table?

PM

> the 4-D model for objects seems at odds with how humans actually
> experience and understand the things, beings, and processes around
> them, regardless of changes in state and changes in characteristics
> over the course of their existence.

Yes. Although I have a strong sympathy for the 4D view, it isn't
sufficient by itself. Intentions are critical to explain our ways of
talking, thinking, and acting. You might say that the table wasn't
"born" as a table until the parts were assembled in your garage. But
then you might discover that getting the table from the garage to your
basement, up a flight of stairs to the kitchen, and then to the dining
room was a challenge.

At that point, you wouldn't disassemble the whole table. You could
just remove the four legs, ask a friend to help, carry the table top
to the dining room, go back for the legs, and attach them where you
want the table.

While the legs were in the garage and the top was being moved,
the parts were separated by a greater distance than they had been
since they were packed in the box in Sweden. How can we describe
the various stages of the table (or the vase or the gold ring) in
a systematic way that is faithful to the way we talk and the way
we translate our talk to some version of logic?

PC
> Does the notion of “identity” as implying “identical spatio-temporal

> location” require that we do the impossible, of tracing an object
> back to the origin of the universe? How does one preserve that
> notion of identity and deal with the problem of co-location, within
> some meaningful and accessible time interval?

The 4D definition requires a "God's eye" view of the universe. You
could say, along with Heraclitus and my namesake John the Evangelist,
"In the beginning was the Logos, all things (panta) that came to be
(gignomai) came to be through (dia) or according to (kata) that Logos."

St. John added "the Logos is God". Spinoza was more faithful to
Heraclitus by identifying God and Nature (i.e., pantheism). But that
answer got him in trouble at the local synagogue.

But whether you prefer theism, pantheism, or atheism, you can talk
about a system of laws (Logos) as explanations of how all things
(including people) behave and interact.

The laws are a compact statements. They include the precisely
formulated laws of science and engineering and the more complex
intentions of people and other living things.

Most laws of science are simpler when stated in a 4D coordinate
system. But ordinary language is usually simpler with a system
of 3D plus time. But any observations (data) stated in one
language or notation can be translated to and from any other.

Richard Coyne, as cited by Jon Awbrey
> Architecture is a practical and pragmatic discipline, and a study of
> Peirce emphasises architecture as a practice, and a practice grounded
> in the materiality of the world.
>
> Unlike other thinkers headlined in the Routledge book series Thinkers
> for Architecture (my book is number 15 in the series), there is no
> “Peircean architecture” as such, and no particular movement, style or
> body of work that demonstrates allegiance to him. But in so far as
> any practitioner, educator or critic claims to be pragmatic, they owe
> a debt, however indirectly, to Peirce’s thinking...
>
> Peirce speaks to mathematicians, logicians, those systems theorists
> who seek orderly methods for solving the world’s problems, and those
> of the Design Methods Movement who seek orderly, mathematical and
> logical procedures for designing buildings.
>
> Peirce’s influence extends to digital practitioners and programmers
> in architecture, and more recently those interested in big data, and
> responsive architecture that copies biological processes and forms
> (biomimesis).

That is Coyne's own summary of his book. For more, see
https://richardcoyne.com/2019/03/30/architectures-pragmatic-turn/

For a brief (12 page) intro to Peirce's theory of signs and its
application to ontology, see http://jfsowa.com/pubs/signs.pdf

My answer to the original question: Any statement in any language
or logic is always intended for some purpose in some context. That
is just as true for the most abstract theories of philosophy and
science as it is for ordinary life.

The only way to answer a question about the Ship of Theseus or Pat's
golden ring is to respond with another question: Why do you ask?

The way the US army answered the question about rifles is the only
general principle that can end the chain: Assert some officially
specified identity conditions: Two rifles are "the same" if and
only if they have the same serial number on their stock.

This is one of many reasons why I keep saying that Part I of the
proposed ISO standard is worthless as a guideline for specifying
or evaluating ontologies.

Any ontology that is not designed for some purpose or intention
has no purpose.

John

Matthew West

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Mar 31, 2019, 4:13:01 AM3/31/19

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Dear Phil,

I’m going to start at the end of you email, because that is where the key difference lies between us.

“My understanding of 4-D models for representation of the things we experience is limited, but if we are looking for useful ways to support machine interpretation of natural language, shouldn't we always favor a model based on our current shared understanding of the world, which is reflected in how we talk and write about the world? If not, is String Theory even better than ! 4-D?”

I have absolutely no interest in supporting the machine interpretation of natural language. I’m an engineer, and what I am after is the most accurate model I can find that reflects how the world actually is, rather than how we talk about it. Engineers don’t even use words as the major way that they communicate. Most communication is by drawings and tables of specifications, or measurements of properties.

I quite accept that if you do want to support machine interpretation of natural language you might be interested in 3D ontologies. However, I would expect that what you really ought to be doing is translating what is said into something that accurately reflects how the world is, in which case I would still claim 4D is a better choice.

See further comments below.

Dr. West --

I subscribe to the Ontolog Forum precisely because I have so much to learn from the KR experts who participate, but I am bothered by such abstract arguments. In this case, the 4-D model for objects seems at odds with how humans actually experience and understand the things, beings, and processes around them, regardless of changes in state and changes in characteristics over the course of their existence.

Although I appreciate the wry humor of the Trump example, even as President he is still -- always and essentially -- Donald Trump. Isn't it just better to describe him at the moment as "Donald Trump [as President of the United States]" if that qualification is relevant?

[MW>] The question is “What kind of thing is President of the United States?” In 4D I am quite happy saying there is a state of Donald Trump that is also a state of President of the United States, but the key thing I want to say is that does not mean that Donald Trump and President of the United States are the same thing.

What is your position? Do you claim that President of the United States is identical to Donald Trump or are there actually two objects here? If you claim there are two different objects here, how is it that they can be coincident?

And why, given such emphasis on changes in state or role in a 4-D model (or the overlap/coincidence between "Individual 1" and "President of the United States" for a specified range of time), should we stop thi! nking of him as Donald J. Trump when he dies?

[MW>] You should not of course. There is a spatio-temporal extent that is the whole life of Donald Trump. That is what ends when he dies. The state of him when he is president is a temporal part of that whole life. Similarly, President of the United States has temporal parts that are temporal parts of Barrack Obama and many others. As a result we can say that Donald Trump and President of the United States are different particulars because they are not coincident throughout their lives.

The physical pieces are still there, just slowly dissolving into compounds and elements. (I was also going to ask, "Would it just be the absence of a soul?" but I realized that may not apply.) Sorry for the politics. I could not resist.

In any case, most people simply do not perceive or understand the world around them as 4-D objects, and this 3-D understanding of the world is reflected in their communications. We do understand that even rocks ultimately disintegrate or melt ... although most people 3000 years ago may not have.

[MW>] Most people have not understood the world around them. However, I don’t think that is a good argument for having an ontology that reflects that lack of understanding when you are looking for an accurate ontology of how the world is.

My understanding of 4-D models for representation of the things we experience is limited, but if we are looking for useful ways to support machine interpretation of natural language, shouldn't we always favor a model based on our current shared understanding of the world, which is reflected in how we talk and write about the world? If not, is String Theory even better than ! 4-D?

[MW>] I addressed this above.

Regards

Matthew
-----------------------------------------------------------
Phil Murray
TamingComplexity.org

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ontolog-forum/1225007818.6681.1553957397981.JavaMail.vpopmail%40atl4oxapp04pod4.

Matthew West

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Mar 31, 2019, 4:43:38 AM3/31/19

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Dear John,

You've made a jump here.

Basic issue: How do we determine whether two things that we experience on different occasions (or that we describe in different ways) are "the same"?

For example, suppose we describe something as a vase, and somebody else describes it as a lump of clay. Are they referring to the "same thing"?

Or suppose we meet John Doe on one occasion and his "identical" twin Jimmy Doe at a later date. Even if Jimmy tells us that he's not "the same" as John, we can't observe the earlier stages. His words are our basis for talking, reasoning, or acting about the difference.
Even if we get more records or testimony from independent sources, they are just words or photos. We can't observe the continuity.

[MW>] The first question is what does it take for things to be different? And How does this vary between different sorts of things? Before we know that we do not even know what evidence might be useful to determine whether we are looking at the same thing or not.

And Pat raises an even more complex example:

PC
> one can refer to a “quantity of a substance” as a “PhysicalObject”
> (mass, location, composition). In the (very common) case where one
> has a quantity of some mixture of substances (a 14-K gold ring, e.g.)
> there is a quantity of “gold” and a quantity of “copper”. There is no
> reason I can think of not to be able to refer to the gold in that ring
> as an object separate from the copper – that is logically coherent.
> As long as the ring exists, those two quantities of substance will
> have the same spatio-temporal location.

You can only answer this question with a question: Why do you ask?

As a somewhat simpler case, suppose you go to IKEA and buy a box of parts for a table. Those parts were spatially very close from the moment they were packed in Sweden, shipped to the store, brought to your garage, and taken out of the box. For a while, they were separated by a short distance, mixed with yourself and some tools, and finally assembled as a table. What are the identity conditions for that "thing"?

[MW>] : The question is perhaps how many objects are there here? I can see at least two:
1. The collection of table parts, irrespective of whether it is assembled or not.
2. The assembled table.

We tend to think loosely about the difference between these and are likely to refer to both as a table, so when we take the table legs off, we don't think that the table has ceased to exist (and the collection of parts hasn't) but equally we would not think of eating off it in this state.
I'm not suggesting it is easy to see what is going on here. However, we need to understand how we operate identity and what it applies to, and 4D gives you good tools to do this. The question is not one of defining how you see things either, but rather like dictionary compilers identifying how people use words, understand how people treat objects.

> if you find two objects with the same spatio-temporal extent, then
> they are the same thing. Essentially that means that if (and only if)
> they occupy the same space over the whole of their life, they are the
> same thing.

But what do you mean by "the whole of their life"? Are the parts in the box a different "thing" or are they part of the life of the table?

[MW>] See above. There are at least two objects here, a collection of table parts, and an assembled table. The assembled table is a state of the table parts.

PM
> the 4-D model for objects seems at odds with how humans actually
> experience and understand the things, beings, and processes around
> them, regardless of changes in state and changes in characteristics
> over the course of their existence.

Yes. Although I have a strong sympathy for the 4D view, it isn't sufficient by itself. Intentions are critical to explain our ways of talking, thinking, and acting. You might say that the table wasn't "born" as a table until the parts were assembled in your garage. But then you might discover that getting the table from the garage to your basement, up a flight of stairs to the kitchen, and then to the dining room was a challenge.

[MW>] I agree intentionality is another key component an ontology needs to account for.

At that point, you wouldn't disassemble the whole table. You could just remove the four legs, ask a friend to help, carry the table top to the dining room, go back for the legs, and attach them where you want the table.

While the legs were in the garage and the top was being moved, the parts were separated by a greater distance than they had been since they were packed in the box in Sweden. How can we describe the various stages of the table (or the vase or the gold ring) in a systematic way that is faithful to the way we talk and the way we translate our talk to some version of logic?

[MW>] I think I have done that. The collection of parts does not rely on proximity particularly for its identity. However, the assembled table does require a particular arrangement of parts (though you might not care which corner a leg is on).

The way the US army answered the question about rifles is the only general principle that can end the chain: Assert some officially specified identity conditions: Two rifles are "the same" if and only if they have the same serial number on their stock.

[MW>] Yes. This is an option when intentionality comes into play.
Regards
Matthew

John F Sowa

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Mar 31, 2019, 10:51:33 AM3/31/19

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Dear Matthew and Jon A,

MW

> Before we know that we do not even know what evidence might be useful
> to determine whether we are looking at the same thing or not.

Yes. We need a huge amount of intentional thought, language, and
action to distinguish relevant data from unintended distractions.

> [JFS] The way the US army answered the question about rifles is

> the only general principle that can end the chain: Assert some
> officially specified identity conditions: Two rifles are "the same"
> if and only if they have the same serial number on their stock.
>
> [MW] Yes. This is an option when intentionality comes into play.

But intentionality is fundamental to every thought, action, and
statement by anybody about anything at any time.

MW
> I agree intentionality is another key component an ontology needs
> to account for.

My only revision is to replace "another key" with "inescapable".
Any action that is unintentional is an error, an accident, a misstep,
an unconscious lapse, or an irrelevant twitch.

JA
> Some problems can't be solved in the paradigms where they first
> appear, which is why we keep recurring to them without quite
> freeing ourselves from the loops in which they ensnare us.

Yes. Physics is the most precise of the hard sciences. But that
precision can require billions of dollars of intentional effort
to distinguish the "objective" phenomena from the unintended side
effects: the Higgs boson, life on Mars, gravitational waves...

JA
> one of the most critical passages in all of Peirce's explorations:
>
> C.S. Peirce • Doctrine Of Individuals
> http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/C.S._Peirce_%E2%80%A2_Doctrine_Of_Individuals

Yes. I recommend that page of quotations by Peirce.

John

Matthew West

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Mar 31, 2019, 11:07:54 AM3/31/19

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Dear John,

> [JFS] The way the US army answered the question about rifles is the
> only general principle that can end the chain: Assert some officially
> specified identity conditions: Two rifles are "the same"
> if and only if they have the same serial number on their stock.
>
> [MW] Yes. This is an option when intentionality comes into play.

But intentionality is fundamental to every thought, action, and statement by anybody about anything at any time.

[MW>] Yes, but not to everything that exists. The universe was getting on very nicely before we turned up.

MW
> I agree intentionality is another key component an ontology needs to
> account for.

My only revision is to replace "another key" with "inescapable".

[MW>] I agree, but it is a layer on underlying things.

Any action that is unintentional is an error, an accident, a misstep, an unconscious lapse, or an irrelevant twitch.

[MW>] Only human actions. A glacier sliding down a mountainside is not intentional.
Regards
Matthew

John F Sowa

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Mar 31, 2019, 3:33:45 PM3/31/19

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Dear Matthew and Bruce,

MW
> [JFS] But intentionality is fundamental to every thought, action,

> and statement by anybody about anything at any time.
>
> [MW] Yes, but not to everything that exists. The universe was
> getting on very nicely before we turned up.

Four points:

1. Intentionality is fundamental to life. The biologist Lynn Margulis
observed that a bacterium swimming upstream in a glucose gradient
marks the beginning of intentionality.

2. Humans and their language, thought, action, artifacts, and life
are essential for all of us and everything we do -- including
the design, implementation, and use of ontologies.

3. Any ontology about inanimate substances and things (for example
oil wells, refineries, products, and sales) must address the way
humans design, build, use, and interact with those things.

4. Even the lowest-level analyses, such as a periodic table of
elements or atomic particles, is done for some purpose, and
the choice of facts to state about them is determined by and
oriented toward applications for some purpose.

MW
> [JFS] Any action that is unintentional is an error, an accident,

> a misstep, an unconscious lapse, or an irrelevant twitch.
>
> [MW] Only human actions. A glacier sliding down a mountainside is
> not intentional.

The verb 'act' implies an animate agent of any species. All of them
have intentions. Every action is an event. But an event without an
animate agent (e.g., a sliding glacier) is not an action.

Bruce
> [A common view of meaning] seems to emerge from Wittgenstein’s
> argument that word meaning is defined by “its use in the language”.

The verb 'use' implies an agent who has some intention for some
purpose. It's consistent with Humpty Dumpty's intentions in his
choice of a word for his own purpose. We might say that Humpty's
intentions violate Grice's conditions for effective communication.
But Humpty might be an old grouch who doesn't want to communicate.

Basic criterion: Every intention implies a goal. That is true
of a fox searching for rabbits, a cow searching for edible plants,
a bee searching for flowers, or even a tree sending out roots in
search of water. But a sliding glacier has no goal. It isn't
searching for anything.

John

Matthew West

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Apr 1, 2019, 10:54:18 AM4/1/19

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Dear John,

Dear Matthew and Bruce,

MW
> [JFS] But intentionality is fundamental to every thought, action, and
> statement by anybody about anything at any time.
>
> [MW] Yes, but not to everything that exists. The universe was getting
> on very nicely before we turned up.

Four points:

1. Intentionality is fundamental to life. The biologist Lynn Margulis
observed that a bacterium swimming upstream in a glucose gradient
marks the beginning of intentionality.

[MW>] I agree, but not everything is living, and the inanimate is what the animate is made from.

2. Humans and their language, thought, action, artifacts, and life
are essential for all of us and everything we do -- including
the design, implementation, and use of ontologies.

[MW>] Of course.

3. Any ontology about inanimate substances and things (for example
oil wells, refineries, products, and sales) must address the way
humans design, build, use, and interact with those things.

[MW>] First it needs to address their nature. How we use them is a layer on top of that.

4. Even the lowest-level analyses, such as a periodic table of
elements or atomic particles, is done for some purpose, and
the choice of facts to state about them is determined by and
oriented toward applications for some purpose.

[MW>] Of course the periodic table is an intentional construct, but a carbon atom is not.

MW
> [JFS] Any action that is unintentional is an error, an accident, a
> misstep, an unconscious lapse, or an irrelevant twitch.
>
> [MW] Only human actions. A glacier sliding down a mountainside is not
> intentional.

The verb 'act' implies an animate agent of any species. All of them have intentions. Every action is an event. But an event without an animate agent (e.g., a sliding glacier) is not an action.

[MW>] You are playing with words. I would consider anything that brings about change an act. Obviously those done by humans are intentional, but there are plenty of things happening that are pure physics (like the formation of planets).

Regards
Matthew

Steve Newcomb

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Apr 1, 2019, 11:11:36 AM4/1/19

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On 4/1/19 10:54 AM, Matthew West wrote:
> I would consider anything that brings about change an act.

An act of whom/what? "Act" implies "actor", so such a broad definition
of "act" implies a theistic position, no?

Matthew West

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Apr 1, 2019, 11:28:48 AM4/1/19

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Dear Steve,
It is all about how you define terms, in the case of planet formation, the actor is gravity. So the theistic element is the question of how come gravity?
Regards
Matthew

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Sent: 01 April 2019 16:12
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com

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John F Sowa

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Apr 1, 2019, 5:53:09 PM4/1/19

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Dear Matthew, Steve N, Pat C, Ferenc, and Bruce,

We all agree that inanimate matter does not have intentionality.
That means it's possible for a theory of "pure" science, say
chemistry or astronomy, to be stated without any reference to
the intentions of the scientists (AKA people) who discovered it.

But engineering is an applied science that depends on people --
engineers, managers, accountants, suppliers, vendors, and most
importantly, customers who are willing to pay for the results.

And even the purest of pure science is a collaboration of
many people over decades or centuries. There are immense
numbers of choices, debates, evaluations, standards, and most
importantly, funding organizations to pay for it all.

If there weren't any need for agreements among people, there
would be no need for standards.

> [MW] You are playing with words. I would consider anything that
> brings about change an act.

Linguists and lexicographers aren't "playing" when they define words.

> [SN] "Act" implies "actor", so such a broad definition of "act"

> implies a theistic position, no?

The first part of that comment is true. The second part shows how
syntax can lead to conspiracy theories about angels and devils.

For example, Heraclitus and John the Evangelist both wrote
"All things (pantes) that came to be came to be kata/dia the Logos."
They used the the same noun (Logos, for the laws that govern all
things) and the same verb (gignomai, come to be). But 'gignomai'
is a deponent verb, which is neutral about how things came to be.

The big difference came in the tiny little prepositions. Heraclitus
wrote 'kata' (according to the Logos), but John wrote 'dia' (through
the Logos). Heraclitus did not imply Zeus or any other god as the
creator. But John implied and said that the Logos is Theos.

Pat
> In an ontology, a term (read ‘word’) means exactly what the logic
> says it means no more, no less.
But mapping logic to and from language is critical. Even if the
logic is precise, the people who enter the data and use the results
will never study the logic. They'll make their decisions on the
basis of what they read in their native language.

When the Greek was translated to Latin, the critical sentence became
"Omnia per ipsum facta sunt" -- "All things through It/Him were made."
The Latin 'facere' and the English 'make' imply an animate agent.
A simple choice of word or syntax can make a huge difference.

Pat
> terms mostly refer to things in the real world and then the meaning
> is intimately linked to things in the real world. But *how* it is
> linked depends on the arrangement of billions of billions of neural
> connections in the brain of the person using the term.

You don't need a theory of neurons to understand language and logic.
Careful attention to the details is necessary and sufficient. The
intentions of the participants are critical. The most important
question in any investigation is "Cui bono?" -- "Who benefits?"

Ferenc
> So this debate about identity is a joke.

No. People have been able to understand each other well enough
to build all of civilization. But the details are important.

Bruce
> What is the meaning of “impenetrability” [as Humpty uses it]???

Humpty D.
> [Words have] a temper, some of them -- particularly verbs, they're
> the proudest -- adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs
> -- however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability!
> That's what I say.

To understand Humpty, just think of him as a politician speaking
to a crowd. The most successful know how to manage impenetrability
-- they sound great while hiding what they really mean. Sincerity
is essential. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

John

Ferenc Kovacs

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Apr 2, 2019, 3:18:27 PM4/2/19

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John,

Whenever I read about idntity and its definition I need to recall this picture of a grain of sand below to remind me of the basics of having a verbal language employing comparisons (see earlier remarks). https://www.boredpanda.com/magnified-sand-grains-microscope-photography-dr-gary-greenberg/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=organic

I wonder how can one claim for example that any two of one type of subatomic particles are the same or identical - in a strict, literal sense?

Or would not it be more obvious to accept tautology in languages is based on our practice to equate concrete and abstract meanings of words and use them as deemed necessary for the situation? For instance, take the word documentation - semmeingly abstract, but concrete in referencing to a particular bunch of papers.

And this applies to logic, the law of identity too, whenever you write a=a, although it is difficult to realize. The hitch is in the operation of the observer, who breaks the frozen moment of time (taken as one) and moving to the next moment to locate a' (still taken as one) while in fact comparing and counting.

Now you see it, now you do not . A bitter joke.

Best regards, Ferenc.

Ferenc Kovacs

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John F Sowa

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Apr 2, 2019, 4:17:01 PM4/2/19

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On 4/2/2019 3:18 PM, 'Ferenc Kovacs' via ontolog-forum wrote:
> I wonder how can one claim for example that any two of one type
> of subatomic particles are the same or identical - in a strict,
> literal sense?

There are several issues:

1. Purely theoretical: According to the known versions of quantum
mechanics, there are two kinds of statistics that apply to
particles at that level: Two fermions (which include electrons
and protons) cannot occupy the same quantum state. That means
it's possible, in principle, to distinguish them by determining
which state they're in.

2. But multiple bosons, such as photons and helium-4 nuclei, can
occupy the same quantum state. That makes them indistinguishable
even in principle. This weird behavior at the atomic level
creates weird behavior at the macro level, such as the super-fluid
properties of liquid helium.

3. But the ability to distinguish things in principle doesn't make it
easy to distinguish them in practice. However, you can never say
never. If something is possible, scientists can usually find some
way to make it happen, but they rarely get the funding to do so
unless there is a strong economic incentive to try.

> the basics of having a verbal language employing comparisons...

A major strength of natural languages is their flexibility. That
often leads to vagueness, but it also enables an open-ended variety
of word senses for any possible application.

That's why the languages of our stone-age ancestors can be adapted
to the most advanced uses in science and 21st-century cultures.
In fact, the change can occur in one generation when a family from
an Amazon tribe moves to a modern town. The parents have a hard time
in adjusting, but the children quickly become bilingual. They adapt
the language of their parents to the new artifacts and customs.

For a discussion of these issues, see http://jfsowa.com/pubs/fuzzy.pdf

And by the way, this example also illustrates the importance of
intentionality for science. The number of topics that scientists
might study is infinite (most likely uncountably infinite). But only
a finite number of facts and theories can be discovered and expressed.
The choice of what to study depends on goals (intentions).

John

Ferenc Kovacs

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Apr 3, 2019, 1:59:16 AM4/3/19

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Thank you John. We do not seem to produce texts that converge, nevertheless.But this is the rule rather than the exception in similar dialogues.

Still talking about identity I would like to stress that humans have the innate capacity to imitate, copy, mime, repeat, etc. what they exprince, see, hear, do, etc. This is how we learn, innovate, create, etc.including words, languages, artefacts, etc.Part of such copying exrcise is cheating, deception, falsification, etc.History of sciences is full of them.Besides it is also the purpose of scientific research and endavour to copy, replicate, duplicate, reproduce, etc.Humans attribute that practice to the living world as well, so there is a constant process of dealing with the differences, between the original and a copy for that matter. One of the major aims of the human hullabaloo is about the end of one's own life so the aim is to cheat death itself by employing human knowledge in medicine, conviction, religion, faith, etc. of ideas that dominate a community organized around doing business.

Your only hope in leaving this impass to change a widespread paradigm is hoping for an accident. Accidents are at least as important in the formation of views as intentionality.

In the formua a=a you take the first "a" as concrete, tangible object with space-time coordinates. Fine. Then you equate it with second "a" by disregarding ITS space-time coordinates i.e. you have an abstract "a" combined with the "original" "a" that had to be determined and identified. So it is the wordking of the brain with grid cells that enable us to project what we experience into verbal and visual representations with a switch that we manipulate either to see something as being concrete or being abstracxt (by eliminating the details of the grid).

I suspect that the concepts of space and time are innate in the mind, or the body of organism itself which explains why animals can orient, sense the passing of the tim, etc. and rely on such faculties that are not part of a language or any other kind of representations that people share to copy/reprooduce the world (and assumingly not the inner workings of their mind)

Ferenc Kovacs

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Ferenc Kovacs

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Apr 3, 2019, 2:30:46 AM4/3/19

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Or to put it more bluntly: This is "a". "a" is present, so it exists. "a" is subject, exists is predicate. In algebraic symbols: "a"="a" Read: "a" is represented by "a" to keep its identity. This formula is considered to be circular, which is a necessity as it closes the question: what is "a". The answer is: it is a re-presentation of "a". Any other value after = is voluntary and subject to conformity.

In explaining ourselves and the world you can not escape the alternation between concrete and abstract levels of identification. This is the differenec between enumeration and classification (cardinals and ordinals)

Ferenc Kovacs

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John F Sowa

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Apr 3, 2019, 9:42:01 AM4/3/19

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On 4/3/2019 2:30 AM, 'Ferenc Kovacs' via ontolog-forum wrote:
> Or to put it more bluntly: This is "a". "a" is present, so it exists.
> "a" is subject, exists is predicate. In algebraic symbols: "a"="a"

That's a syntactic feature of English: Every singular common noun
must have an "indexical" word in front of it that determines what
it "points to" in the universe of discourse (UoD).

Example: "I saw a cat and a dog yesterday. The dog was chasing
the cat, but the cat turned around and scratched the dog's nose."

Equations:

"a cat" in the first sentence" = "the cat in the second sentence."

"a dog" in the first sentence" = "the dog in the second sentence."

Indexical words are like an "index finger" that points to something:

1. The words 'a' or 'some' correspond to an existential quantifier
that says "There exists some indefinite thing in the UoD of the
type specified by the following noun."

2. The word 'the' says "There already exists some definite thing
in the UoD of the type specified by the noun."

3. The words 'this' and 'that' can replace a pointing finger.
If you and your friend are looking at the same event, you can
refer to things by saying "This dog was chasing that cat."

John

Ferenc Kovacs

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Apr 3, 2019, 10:07:46 AM4/3/19

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To communicate ideas you do not need a syntactically correct form in any language. As speech develops children communicate by pointing, by producing a sound and later a word and a sentence word. The point is the association suggested between an object and a symbol. Associations make up a whole fabric of symbols that need to be aware of while having a discourse on the same subject matter or topic. In this context of talking about identity "a" is anything exsting, an object, a name or a noun, because of deixis, we do not need further specification of it, but existence in space time (being abstract terms on their own) as illustrated in your reading the letter "a". In that way it is a concrete object defined in its location and the encounter with the reader.

The next "a" however is understood tobe identical or equal to the first one, yet they differ in terms of space time coordinates - and despite the fact that they look identical.

This identity in form makes it possible for us to replace one for the other, creating equality in use and disregarding the fact that they do not come from the same location and time.

This is a shift from concrete to abstract that goes unnoticed. And since it is only two elements combined, the shift goes in both directions. It is the issue of the direction of fit.

Because of the confusion so created, we need examples and/or instances to clarify where we stand.

Ferenc Kovacs

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Phil Murray

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Apr 5, 2019, 12:29:56 PM4/5/19

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Matthew --

Apologies for the delay in responding. I'll try to keep this brief.

PCM> My understanding of 4-D models for representation of the things we experience is limited, but if we are looking for useful ways to support machine interpretation of natural language, shouldn't we always favor a model based on our current shared understanding of the world, which is reflected in how we talk and write about the world?

MW> I have absolutely no interest in supporting the machine interpretation of natural language. I’m an engineer, and what I am after is the most accurate model I can find that reflects how the world actually is, rather than how we talk about it.

PCM> Understood. But I have been trying to work out whether there are fundamental, significant, and necessary differences between (1) ontologies designed for machine interpretation of language (like Cyc?) and (2) ontologies (or other! tools of KR) designed for engineering and other complex, but practical (and more narrowly defined) requirements? Is improving data quality in databases (as described in your paper, "Ontology Meets Business - Applying Ontology to the Development of Business Information Systems") fundamentally at odds with applications of machine interpretation of natural language?
[snip]

MW> Engineers don’t even use words as the major way that they communicate. Most communication is by drawings and tables of specifications, or measurements of properties.

PCM> Of course, and that applies to many professions and communities, not just engineers. But designers of databases do describe in words the most important aspects of those databases in ways that provide understanding to broader audiences within and outside their communities -- not just to engineers. Or, at least, we wish they always would.

[snip]

MW> Most people have no! t understood the world around them. However, I don’t think that is a good argument for having an ontology that reflects that lack of understanding when you are looking for an accurate ontology of how the world is.

PCM> True, but precise descriptions of things are simply not relevant, manageable, or useful for most of us most of the time. And such precise descriptions would be impenetrable to most people, even if stated in a well-designed controlled natural language, IMO. But the broader public will tend to evolve to more rigorous and grounded descriptions of the world ... even if the understandings of average people never correlate perfectly with the understandings of experts in particular fields. Or, at least, we pray they will evolve.

In fact, the sheer volume of information accessible to us means that even the average person will need -- more than ever -- well-modeled reference points to make informed judgements about reality. Blogs, comment sections, Twitter, etc., are pulling meaning apart and encouraging broad-! stroke, emotion-based characterizations of the world that create divisions of understanding, not better understanding. Solving that problem is my area of interest.

[snip]

MW> There is a spatio-temporal extent that is the whole life of Donald Trump. That is what ends when he dies. The state of him when he is president is a temporal part of that whole life. Similarly, President of the United States has temporal parts that are temporal parts of Barrack Obama and many others. As a result we can say that Donald Trump and President of the United States are different particulars because they are not coincident throughout their lives.

PCM> I see the notion of a human individual (a known instance of a type of object) as being a very different kind of thing than a possible quality (one of an infinite number of possible qualities or properties, which themselves may evolve) -- not as two things sharing a role for a specified time. For me, this&nbs! p; is an important difference. I suspect you have thought through such differences quite thoroughly, so I'll try to find more about that in your writings.

Thanks for taking the time to comment!

Phil
----------------------------------------

TamingComplexity.org

From: "Matthew West" <dr.matt...@gmail.com>

Date: Sun, Mar 31, 2019 4:13 am

To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: [ontolog-forum] Identity vs, Spa-Tem Location (was: nice free talk)