SUO: Re: Lifecycle Integration Schema
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LIS. Discussion Note 93
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JA = Jon Awbrey
MW = Mathew West
MW: No I don't see a problem, because what ever
your number 4 is, it is not the "ordinary"
number 4 that the rest of us know and love.
How can you say that?
I mean, how can you say that with any justification?
What would be the grounds that you have chosen for
justifying such statements, all aside from whether
anybody else would take them as grounds of reason?
Let us compare my number 4, "the" number 4, I say,
with your unicorn, the one you call "the" unicorn.
We have, so far, the following questions:
1. What again is your justification for classifying your
unicorn under the LIS taxon of <possible_individual>?
MW: I might also ask about its spatial extent, and if
it still exists for you to point at it. Of course
if it is in some other world, you can have a set of
laws that mean that numbers do not behave as they do
in our world, and it might be quite alright for some
number to be an individual -- but I find that hard
even with a liberal education in science fiction.
2. I asked you first. So, with respect to your unicorn:
JA: I might also ask about its spatial extent, and if
it still exists for you to point at it. Of course
if it is in some other world, you can have a set of
laws that mean that unicorns do not behave as they do
in our world, and it might be quite alright for some
unicorn to be an individual -- but I find that hard
even with a liberal education in science fiction.
Jon Awbrey
JA: Let's look a little more closely at the things that you say
under the heading of the LIS concept <possible_individual>.
LIS: | Possible_Individual
|
| A <possible_individual> is a <thing> that exists in space and time.
JA: Unless you have a better criterion for <what exists in space and time>
that you had for <possible_individual> in the first place, then this
attempt at a definition goes absolutely nowhere.
JA: If you were invoking a notion of real physical spacetime, for instance,
as discoverable in the field of physics, as I think that John Sowa is
trying to suggest with his concept <Physical>, then the passage across
the copula "is" of the definition from the LHS "to be defined" to the
RHS "doing the defining" might at least have some chance of adding
an informative constraint. But when you start to talk of unicorns,
all hint of constraint goes out the window, or out the pod bay door.
LIS: | This includes:
|
| - things where any of the space-time dimensions
| are vanishingly small,
|
| - those that are either all space for any time,
| or all time and any space,
|
| - the entirety of all space time,
|
| - things that actually exist, or have existed,
|
| - things that are fictional or conjectured and
| possibly exist in the past, present, or future,
JA: Suppose it is conjectured that the number 4 was born into
4-dimensional spacetime existence exactly 4004 nanoseconds
after the origin of the physical universe in the incept of
the Big Bang. Just for the sake of temporal concreteness,
I do so conjecture it now. If you are going to accept all
of the stories about starships and unicorns as criteria for
the LIS concept <possible_indovidual> then I cannot see any
reason why you should exclude my conjecture from that crew.
JA: Do you really not see any problem here?
LIS: | - temporal parts (states) of other individuals,
|
| - things that have a specific position, but zero extent in one
| or more dimensions, such as points, lines, and surfaces.
|
| In this context existence is based upon being imaginable within
| some consistent logic, including actual, hypothetical, planned,
| expected, or required individuals.
|
| EXAMPLE. The pump with serial number ABC123,
| Battersea Power Station, Sir Joseph Whitworth,
| Shakespeare, and the starship "Enterprise"
| can be represented by instances of
| <possible_individual>.
|
| EXPRESS specification:
|
| ENTITY possible_individual
|
| SUBTYPE OF (thing);
|
| YTITNE
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