SUO: Re: *Date 20 Jan 2002

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http://www.rrraul.org/fogs.html.

Ha!

Jay
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Awbrey" <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: "Stand Up Ontology" <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Cc: "Arisbe" <arisbe@stderr.org>; "Gdsemiocom" <gdsemiocom@univ-perp.fr>
Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 05:54
Subject: SUO: *Date 20 Jan 2002

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> Unicorns & Vampires & Intensions, Oh My!
>
> What is the point of all this unicorn talk?
>
> Well, I guess it's a metaphor for something, most likely,
> for the way that we frequently entertain the existence of
> this or that abstract, hypothetical, imagined, or virtual
> object, and the way that we go on saying and even "proving",
> that is to say, a bit more exactly, "deducing", many things
> about this "supposed object" (SO), until such time as we can
> figure out by logic or by a suitable test against some reality
> or another that what we are saying either does or does not make
> sense in regard to that reality, or maybe any conceivable reality.
>
> Last time I introduced the notion of a "fixed ontological genre" (FOG),
> which I took to mean any fixed set of axioms, definitions, predicates,
> and rules or schemes for inference. I had intended this abbreviation
> for another application, but I am presently and pleasantly surprised
> to find that it has its uses here, in this quandary about intensions.
>
> http://suo.ieee.org/email/msg07725.html
> http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg03666.html
>
> The thing that you really ought to realize is that all FOG's are alike,
> right up to the point when we apply a "principle of precipitation" (POP)
> to them. What is a POP? Well, if you look around, you will notice that
> different communities of inquiry and interpretation typically apply all
> sorts of different POP's to all sorts of different FOG's. Just by way
> of a sample, there are principles of experimental test, principles of
> historical accuracy, principles of logical consistency, principles of
> textual evidence, and many more. But the gist of what I am saying
> is this: It does not really matter all that much whether we are
> talking about unicorns and vampires, or Hamlets and Hobbits, or
> lions, tigers, and bears, or Monsters and Friendly Giants, or
> quarks and quasars, or singular dwarf stars. Until we say
> which which reality check we intend to pay, all of those
> FOG's are the same, for all that.
>
> There is no such thing as 'the' unique intension of a unicorn or a
vampire.
> These are a fictional beings and imaginary creatures, that is to say, they
> are beings and creatures only in fictions, denoted by the signs in various
> narrative stories, and existing only on the suppositions of sundry works
> of imagination. As the stories vary, so does each intension, quality,
> property of the hypothetical character in question, and therefore the
> combination of their determinations, the so-called "comprehension"
> of the beast, is not fixed, but varies from story to story with
> the whims of their authors.
>
> I don't care much about unicorns in parallel worlds.
> I do care about numbers and functions and relations
> and all sorts of other imaginary beings that exist
> within the frame of many a hypothetical discussion
> that actually takes place and goes on in this world.
>
> So I normally regard these stereotypical discussions
> of cliche fictions to be invoking allegorical figures
> and other styles of literary metaphors as an indirect
> way of talking about these other more pressing species
> of imaginary creatures, like mathematical objects and
> the hypothetical models that we use on a regular basis
> in every inquiry that needs to abduce its explanations.
>
> And when I do worry about unicorns and dragons and
> hobbits and Hamlets and so on, it is always within
> the frame of a discourse, a dream, or a text where,
> for as long as it lasts, I am talking and thinking
> just as if these creatures exist, and so I have no
> extraordinary problem with hitching an existential
> quantifier to them, that is, predicating existence
> of these creatures, in relation to, in relation of,
> the narrative in question, within that context and
> in that frame of mind.
>
> That is, there is no additional burden, not beyond
> the original suspension of disbelief that it takes
> to open up a hypothetical space in the first place,
> nor beyond the usual sorts of worries that I would
> have about the existence of anything else, carried
> within that context, by a predication of existence.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
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