zhengj2007
commented
9 years ago From ingvar.j...@philos.umu.se on January 08, 2010 02:00:09
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
From batchelorc@rsc.org on January 07, 2010 18:42:31
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: http://code.google.com/p/bfo/issues/detail?id=11