o causes o'

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Hello,

Currently in RO there's a causes relation between a continuant and an
occurrent.

But often one in addition would like to say that occurrent A causes
occurrent B; the jogging of my elbow causes the spilling of my drink, the
binding of a transcription factor to a DNA molecule causes the
transcription of a gene, the singing of the soprano causes the vase to
shatter and so forth.

von Wachter (doi:10.1002/cfg.258) talks in these terms:

  A caused B if and only if A was the basis of a tendency
  towards B and the tendency was realized.

without actually saying what A and B are.  Now in BFO we talk about
dispositions, which I take to subsume tendencies (though Ludger Jansen
seems to argue otherwise: "Tendencies and other Realizables in Medical
Information Sciences", in: The Monist 90/4 (2007) 534-555), 'surefire'
dispositions, vices and virtues.

Now the talk in BFO is of realizable entities being realized in some
context C.  But what does this mean?  I read it as something like this:

  IC c has_disposition d realized_as process o'
  and triggered_by process o

which is to say that because realizable entities are only realized at
particular times, as opposed to qualities which are present (though may be
determinable and hence have different determinate values over time) at all
times, something time-dependent, a process, maybe, let's say, a change in
determinable quality q (I will flesh this out in another issue for the
tracker) must be part of the context C.  Taking the inverse of
triggered_by, triggers:

  o causes o' = o triggers . realized_as o'

and there is some possibly-anonymous disposition d in that chain.

But what about quantification?  realized_as is an all-only relationship, by
the dispositionality of d.  Likewise triggered_by.  But what about triggers?

We cannot say:

  all singing triggers some (d and inheres_in vase), all d realized_as only
smashing

but maybe we can say:

  all singing-in-context-C triggers some (d and inheres_in vase v), all d
realized_as in v only smashing

and I think, if my inferencing is correct (all-only . all-some = all.only),
that gives us:

  all singing-in-context-C causes in v only smashing

This seems wrong.  Are there other possibilities for quantification I am
missing?

Best wishes,
Colin.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by batchelorc@rsc.org on 7 Jan 2010 at 11:42

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If you want to subsume tendencies under dispositions, then I propose that
you call traditional dispositional properties (being elastic, soluble,
etc.) 'passive dispositions' and call tendencies 'active dispositions'.
Think of an elastic rubber band. When stretched out it has an ACTUAL
tendency to contract (counteracted by your hands), but when just lying on
a table, it has only the dispostional property of getting a tendency to
contract if stretched.

Best,
Ingvar J

Original comment by ingvar.j...@philos.umu.se on 8 Jan 2010 at 10:00

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Hello Ingvar,

I suppose, then, the triggering process can be thought of as activating the
disposition into realization.

Something further occurs to me, which is that the triggering process for an 
active
disposition is a specialization of the triggering process for the corresponding
passive disposition.

Arp and Smith (2008) have all dispositions being surefire dispositions.   I'm 
not
sure that we can ever be that precise in science; there will always be some
vagueness, not to mention finkishness.  Is this because probabilistic 
dispositions
are a bit fishy for ontology purposes?

Colin.

Original comment by batchelorc@rsc.org on 8 Jan 2010 at 12:08

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Colin,

Tendencies need no triggering; it is their nature to realize themselves as soon 
as 
there are no counter-tendencies. Tendencies can be characterized by two points: 
(1) 
a tendency is an entity whose realization can be counteracted by other 
tendencies; 
(2) a tendency is a potentiality that can exist without being realized. This 
chracterization contains some small improvements on the entry "Tendency" that I 
once 
wrote for Burkhardt and Smith's, "Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology" (1991).

Ingvar 

Original comment by ingvar.j...@philos.umu.se on 8 Jan 2010 at 4:26

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Hello,

I suppose this would be caught by the current BFO definition of disposition, 
"under
conditions C".  But what "conditions C" are is left unclear in BFO.

Colin.

Original comment by batchelorc@rsc.org on 9 Jan 2010 at 10:15

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Review in light of BFO2 Reference

Original comment by alanruttenberg@gmail.com on 7 May 2012 at 4:56

• Added labels: Type-BFO2-Reference
• Removed labels: Type-Defect

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Original comment by alanruttenberg@gmail.com on 8 May 2012 at 4:15

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Original comment by alanruttenberg@gmail.com on 8 May 2012 at 4:37

• Changed state: Review-old-issue

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This is not a blocker, in my view, for a BFO2 release.

I don't have any actual use cases at the moment, so do mark as deferred or 
shelve it or whatever.

Original comment by batchelorc@rsc.org on 9 May 2013 at 3:27