Re: Aristotelian Definitions as Applied to BFO Objects

[Barry Smith]

Anthony
You have hit an interesting nail on the head.
'PieceOfFurniture' is not, to my mind, a well-formed (=BFO-conformant)
type-identifier, any more than 'Pet' is a well-formed identifier for
types of animals. This is precisely because of the interference of
functions/people doing function-based classification.
What is well-formed is

'FurnitureRole'

We can then define the defined class-identifier

PieceOfFurniture =def. An object which has a FurnitureRole

In this way your old chair, when you throw it on the bonfire, ceases
to be a piece of furniture even before it is all burned up
BS

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 3:52 PM, ANTHONY PETOSA <ape...@optonline.net> wrote:
> Sir,
>
> I find myself struggling when creating Arisotelian definitions for
> universals best categorized as BFO Object.
>
> I understand an Aristotelian definition to be of the form:
>
> A is a B, which Cs
>
> , where "C" expresses the differentia revealing how "A" specializes the more
> general "B".
>
> When applied to material things, I approach "C" as being the physical traits
> that differentiate "A" from "B" and not other criteria, such as how "A" is
> used differently from "B" or how "A" behaves differently than "B". Consider
> the following example.
>
> Wikipedia defines "furniture" as follows
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furniture):
>
> "Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support
> various human activities such as seating and sleeping. Furniture is also
> used to hold objects at a convenient height for work (as horizontal surfaces
> above the ground), or to store things."
>
> The free Oxford English online dictionary
> (http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/furniture?q=furniture)
> defines it as follows:
>
> "large movable equipment, such as tables and chairs, used to make a house,
> office, or other space suitable for living or working"
>
> How would you frame the definition of "furniture" as an Aristotelian
> definition? Clearly, if furniture is indeed a mass noun, then from a BFO
> view I assume we first need to define FurniturePiece, a count noun.
>
> "FurniturePiece is a BFO Object which physical structure is artifactually
> designed for living or working space functionality."
>
> The problem here is that this definition infers a "usage" component.
> However, it still defines FurniturePiece as a physical structure. Since
> FurniturePiece in this notional definition directly specializes BFO Object,
> I think one is hardpressed to express the physical differentia from BFO
> Object, which itself is an abstraction of all physical "things".
>
> Also, I removed the word "human", since this constrains the definition too
> much, as in the case where one wishes to express a relation between a doll
> and dollhouse furniture pieces.
>
> I assume DollhouseFurniturePiece is an attributive class that should be
> avoided.
>
> Once we "extend" from "FurniturePiece", it becomes easier to express the
> differentia in terms of physical traits. For example,
>
> "Table is a FurniturePiece which is composed of a flat top with one or more
> supporting appendages."
>
> I do not claim this to be a precise defintion, but it illustrates how
> FurniturePiece is defined in terms of its physical trait differences
> relative to FurniturePiece. It specializes the FurniturePiece "physical
> structure" (granted, a highly broad phrase itself) using the "flat top with
> one or more supporting appendages" constraint.
>
> Using table as an example, more often than not, I have seen definitions
> similar to the following:
>
> "A table is furniture which is used to support household and work items."
>
> I do not consider this to be an Aristotelian definition, since the phrase
> following "which" does not sufficiently differentiate "table" from
> "furniture". Chair, a type of FurniturePiece, could play the role of table
> as an ad-hoc way to support household and work items. So, applying this use
> purpose to furniture in general engenders abmiguity within a domain. More
> specifically, at least in my view, this definition does not offer the
> physical traits that makes "table" distinct from "furniture".
>
> 1. What is your view on creating Aristotelian definitions for physical
> things?
>
> 2. How would you apply Aristotelian definitions to non-physical things? For
> example, would you distingish some Role from its "parent" Role by expressing
> its artifactually designed or biologically designed differentia? With BFO
> Process, would you differentiate some Process from its "parent" Process by
> expressing its s-dependence upon some Independent Continuant within some
> specific time frame? I include the time frame constraint, because different
> "process parts" can occur at different points in time with each process part
> being parasitic upon the same Independent Continuant(s). I believe this is
> consistent with the BFO documentation, where it states that one can create
> arbitrary temporal fiat boundaries in a given process (e.g., the four
> quarters of a football game, the performance of the four movements of a
> symphony).
>
> Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Anthony Petosa
> ape...@optonline.net

[ANTHONY PETOSA]

Sir,

> 'FurnitureRole'
Yes, I missed the obvious. Of course "furniture" is a role (smacks self
on the head during this "I could have had a V8" moment).

If one defines FurnitureRole as a BFO Role, as in

"FurnitureRole = Def. FurnitureRole is a BFO Role whereby its bearer
serves to enable objects to be stored or held at a convenient height in
some work space or in some living space."

, then I believe this meets the BFO Role criteria (BFO 2.0 draft
documentation, Section 3.7.5, p.62). Namely,

b is a role means:

b is a realizable entity
(e.g., FurnitureRole is a BFO Role, which is a BFO RealizableEntity)

& b exists because there is some single bearer c that is in some special
physical, social, or institutional set of circumstances in which this
bearer does not have to be
(e.g., A Table, a BFO Object, is the bearer of FurnitureRole at some BFO
OneDimensionalTemporalRegion when it serves some object storage or
object holding utility in a work space or living space context.)
(e.g., A Table, a BFO Object, is the bearer of TargetRole at some BFO
OneDimensinoalTemporalRegion when it serves some targeting utility in a
shooting range context.)

& b is not such that, if it ceases to exist, then the physical make-up
of the bearer c is thereby changed.
(e.g., At some other BFO OneDimensionalTemporalRegion when Table no
longer plays the role either of FurnitureRole or of TargetRole, the
Table does not cease to exist.)


Admittedly, I fell into the trap of clouding my proposed
"FurniturePiece" definition by relying on the Oxford English Dictionary
and Wikipedia definitions for furniture, which clearly do not reflect
ontological realism. Entrusting these imprecise natural language
definitions leads to fallacies like "FurniturePiece", and I suppose such
definitions can drive how one models terms for use within information
systems. I reference your 2003 paper entitled "Ontology" (Blackwell
Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information, Oxford: Blackwell,
2003, 155–166), which explains the rationale behind Gruber's definition
of ontology.

"...as Gruber conceives it, if we rely simply on the account he himself
gives in passages such as the following:

A conceptualization is an abstract, simplified view of the world that we
wish to represent for some purpose. Every knowledge base,
knowledge-based system, or knowledge-level agent is committed to some
conceptualization, explicitly or implicitly. (Gruber 1995)

The idea is as follows. As we engage with the world from day to day we
participate in rituals and we tell stories. We use information systems,
databases, specialized languages, and scientific instruments. We buy
insurance, negotiate traffic, invest in bond derivatives, make
supplications to the gods of our ancestors. Each of these ways of
behaving involves, we can say, a certain conceptualization. What this
means is that it involves a system of concepts in terms of which the
corresponding universe of discourse is divided up into objects,
processes and relations in different sorts of ways. Thus in a religious
ritual setting we might use concepts such as salvation and purification;
in a scientific setting we might use concepts such as virus and nitrous
oxide; in a story-telling setting we might use concepts such as:
leprechaun and dragon. Such conceptualizations are often tacit; that is,
they are often not thematized in any systematic way. But tools can be
developed to specify and to clarify the concepts involved and to
establish their logical structure, and thus to render explicit the
underlying taxonomy. We get very close to the use of the term ‘ontology’
in Gruber’s sense if we define an ontology as the result of such
clarification – as,
precisely, the specification of a conceptualization in the intuitive
sense described in the above...

What is most important, now, is that all of the mentioned surrogate
created worlds are treated by the ontological engineer as being on an
equal footing. In a typical case the universe of discourse will be
specified by the client or customer, and for the purposes of the
ontological engineer the customer is always right (it is the customer in
each case who defines his own specific world of surrogate objects). It
is for this reason that the ontological engineer aims not for truth, but
rather, merely, for adequacy to whatever is the pertinent application
domain as defined by the client. The main focus is on reusability of
application domain knowledge in such a way as to accelerate the
development of similar software systems in each new application context.
The goal is not truth to some independently existing domain of reality,
which is after all often hard to achieve, but merely (at best) truth
relative to some conceptualisation.

Given this background we can understand why the project of a common
ontology which would be accepted by many different information
communities in many different domains has thus far failed. Not all
conceptualizations are equal."


Regards,

Anthony Petosa

Furniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support
>> various human activities such as seating and sleeping. Furniture is
>> also
>> used to hold objects at a convenient height for work (as horizontal
>> surfaces
>> above the ground), or to store things."
>>

>> "large movable equipment, such as tables and chairs, used to make a
>> house,
>> office, or other space suitable for living or working"

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