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RE: SUO: RE: CYC event vs. SUMO Process -- really different?




Dear John and Pat,

John was mentioning Ted Sider's papers on four dimensionalism on his
home page. I notice that Ted focusses on the rationale for preferring
four dimensionalism over alternative foundational ontologies.

His paper "Four Dimensionalism" seems to correspond quite closely to
about 25% of his book.

It is also interesting to see what the consequences are of accepting
a particular foundation when you follow it through.

My own paper:
"A spatio-temporal model of activity and state"
http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/Documents/Spatio-temporal-Paradigm.pdf

follows through on the implications of accepting four dimensionalism,
and of course the explanation of activity is directly relevant to
the immediate discussion on activity/event/process.

Since this is a coherent account based on stated foundations that are
well argued by Sider, I propose that this is accepted as the basis for
activity/process/event.

If there are challenges to this, I suggest that you need to:

a) raise issues against the proposal I have made identifying statements
it makes that are ill founded.
and/or
b) provide an alternative proposal that is similarly explicit about its
foundations.


Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom

Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net]
> Sent: 15 June 2003 15:42
> To: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE
> Cc: Patrick Cassidy; standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: Re: SUO: RE: CYC event vs. SUMO Process -- really different?
> 
> 
> Matthew, Pat, et al.,
> 
> For anyone who would like to read more about
> Theodore Sider's work on four-dimensionalism
> and related topics, see his web site:
> 
>     http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/~sider/cv.html
> 
> He has posted PDF files of his published articles
> on this and many related topics in ontology.
> 
> John Sowa
> 
>