By Simon Grant, 2009-10-03 to 2010-01-09
This is intended to develop and change over time, and will be all the better if it is able to take into account your comments, views and criticism. Please send these!
When imagining, constructing or agreeing conceptual models, it can often be unclear what type of things the concepts refer to. This brief position paper describes what is intended to be a useful set of distinctions between different types of thing in the world – not only the embodied world, but also the worlds of thought and of communication.
This is neither intended to be a philosophically complete or detailed classification, nor intended to represent everyone's point of view. Indeed, it seems to bear very little resemblance to any of many other expressions labelled "top ontology" or "upper ontology". Rather, it is designed:
I invite people to use it freely, and to see if it is helpful in clarifying conceptual models.
| 1. Material reality consists of the things of the present and past material world.
Material reality is only known through patterns,
and the instantiation of patterns in reality is the subject of expressions. The embodied world |
1.1 Objects are locatable and endure through time. | 1.1.1 Animate beings (or sentient beings, or viable systems) have preferences, and some may communicate with some expression. | 1.1.1.1 Agents, e.g. a particular person or company, may be responsible. Only agents can make assertions. |
| 1.1.1.2 Animate non-agents e.g. a bacterium; a tree; a city. | |||
| 1.1.2 Inanimate things are other particular objects, e.g. a star; a chair; a banknote. | |||
| 1.2 Events, activities, etc. exist at or within particular times, e.g. a meeting; a holiday; a performance; a battle; a collision. | |||
2. Patterns, including
The world of perception and thought |
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3. Expressions may refer to
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3.1 Assertions communicate reusable meaning. | 3.1.1 Claims relate patterns to material reality, and may be true or false, easy or hard to verify. | 3.1.1.1 Facts are those claims that are held to be true by the agent asserting them. |
| 3.1.1.2 Disputed claims are those not acknowledged as true or false by the agent asserting them as disputed. | |||
| 3.1.1.3 False claims in the view of the agent asserting them as false. | |||
| 3.1.2 Predictions have similar form to claims, but relate patterns not to material reality as such but to the future instantiation of patterns related to material reality. | |||
| 3.1.3 Theories or implications relate patterns to patterns, but have no immediate claim on material reality. Theory and prediction may be closely related. Definitions, as a subset of this, relate purely linguistic patterns to any other patterns. | |||
| 3.2 Value expressions express a value aspect to particular patterns, related to agents, animate beings or systems. | 3.2.1 A propensity attribution claims that an animate being or system tends to prefer, choose, or create a certain pattern rather than other ones, in various contexts where a particular choice is available. This could be seen as a complex assertion. | ||
| 3.2.2 With a preference expression an agent asserts about itself that it wants, likes, or prefers, certain valued patterns. It has functional aspects. | |||
| 3.2.3 A value prescription expresses that some animate being or system "should" behave according so some pattern (whether or not it does so currently), or "needs" a pattern as a circumstance, with the (possibly implicit) implication of a consequential pattern. | |||
| 3.3 Functional utterances perform non-assertive communicative functions. "Speech acts", "illocutionary acts", "performative utterances" are some of the various attempts to label these. Being functional, their use depends on their immediate context, and so tend to be recorded, if at all, just as utterances. Perhaps animals communicate in a similar way. | |||
Depending on the level taken, this can distinguish between 3 top-level categories (the basic minimum) and 14 lower-level categories.
I might try to put this in a diagram sometime.
If is makes sense to talk about the actual, rather than just possible, location of a particular or specific thing in space and time, then it is taken as part of material reality – part of the embodied world.
Some things relate well to the disciplines of physics or engineering – say a brick or an atom; some things to the discipline of politics – say a nation; but this should not distract us from recognising that whichever kinds of things we are talking about exist in time and space. Yes, a national border could correspond to a particular wall or fence, but that does not mean that one of those is more part of material reality than the other. It is commonplace that the same "thing" can be described in different words, and be indicated with different terms, depending on the kind of communication about it. Thus, everything particular, everything material, every specific thing that exists or existed in space and time, is taken as part of material reality.
A very important thing to recognise about material reality is that it is only knowable (by people) through the patterns that it instantiates. There is no "absolute" or pattern-free knowledge of material reality. Perhaps this issue underlies both the historical philosophical debate between "realists" and "idealists", and the way in which ideas about material reality can be "deconstructed".
Physical things are those things in material reality that have definite spatial extent, but indefinite (or at least, less definite) temporal extent. All kinds of real-world objects fit into this, whether they are part of the natural, artificial or social worlds. A boundary case would be short-lived sub-atomic particles, which exist for such short times that it is unclear whether they are best considered as particles or "resonances". But all ordinary physical things have a history, and that history can be traced through events in which the physical thing was a participant. Waves are just as much physical things as particles are, even though the wave moves through different atoms. The bobbing up and down of a buoy in a wave, though, is an event.
While the concept of a country is a pattern, particular countries are physical things, though best defined in terms of social concepts, and not in terms of, say, their constituent atoms. Thus, to be part of material reality, it is not necessary to use the language of a particular discipline to name something. It is important to clarify this, to escape from reductionist philosophical approaches, which are largely alien to common sense.
From this standpoint, many examples can be drawn from the world of learning:
Agents are physical things, but because they are defined socially, it is particularly clear that they are not identified in terms of their constituent physical matter, which may change. People are commonly assumed to be agents, and companies and legal entities have also long been recognised as agents in a legal sense – it makes sense to talk of companies, as well as people, as creating things, owning things, disposing of things, etc., and more importantly here, as uttering expressions.
In the world of education, agents are particularly significant, as education is something that only happens to agents, and is managed (at some level) by other agents.
These may have preferences, in the sense of seeking out some stimuli and avoiding others, or thriving in some environments and languishing in others. They communicate in some ways: however it is always worth carefully considering other options than saying that non-agents make statements. Bees manage to communicate where other bees should go, but the meaning involved is not reusable.
In contrast to physical things, events have a relatively definite temporal extent. Anything that happens is an event. What is involved in that happening are physical things.
Events, like physical things, are not restricted to belonging to any particular intellectual discipline or discourse. The collision between two atoms is an event, as is my sleep last night, or the second world war. Events do not have to be precisely and unambiguously defined, but they have to be more than just patterns or concepts.
There are boundary cases here too, of course. When we refer to "The 14th Century", or even "the Middle Ages", there is no specific and coherent event that this term represents. What we are left with is, probably, more like the set of patterns that we associate with that epoch.
The world of learning again offers many examples, in each case, of particular events that have happened, not things planned, or their patterns:
Patterns belong to the world of perception and thought. They typically do not involve restrictions on time and space as such. (Inasmuch as an expression refers to time or space, it could be a combination of an expression and a pattern.) The future can only be planned, and is not yet part of material reality, so everything that is planned is a pattern. When something is scheduled, that is a prediction – an expression that this pattern will be instantiated at a specific time in the future. But it is normally of the nature of plans that they are not inextricably tied to particular times. They may be tied to other patterns as circumstances, and perhaps those circumstantial patterns may not occur only once (or not at all). Carpe diem!
In the planned world of organised education, patterns abound. To list but a few:
There are very many ways in which patterns are used by, as well as instantiated in, living things. But characteristically human thinking is that which expresses or uses patterns of patterns.
However, patterns are only communicated by being expressed in expressions. The key distinction between a pattern and a related expression is whether clearly distinct expressions can express the same pattern. This may be illustrated...
A "rule" as in the "Rule of St Benedict" could be taken as a complex pattern of organisation and behaviour, which is instantiated (or not) in particular monastic communities, which are parts of the material world. But equally, the Rule of St Benedict is the expression, in words, of a kind of constitution and rules for monastic communities. It expresses the connection between patterns. Particularly when we deal with patterns of patterns, there may be this systematic ambiguity between the pattern of patterns as a pattern, and the expression of the pattern of patterns that communicates it.
If we focus on the "letter of the law", we are treating such a thing as an expression. If we focus, instead, on the "spirit of the law", we are trying to talk about the higher-order pattern, independently of any particular expression of it.
Adding to this confusion, which seems genuine and unresolvable, any pattern can be expressed or asserted, as well as perceived, and patterns can only be communicated through expressions. "This pattern is true" is a pattern for many possible assertions. (But my writing that sentence constitutes an assertion of that pattern.)
Expressions are the things of the world of communication. Not all communication is about truth or falsehood; about facts or claims about the world. But for many purposes of information systems, including learning technology, assertions have a special place, because they convey information, reduce uncertainly, reduce information entropy, if you like.
Considering poetry however, for instance, that is not mainly about assertions. and there is a long strand of academic work, stretching before and after J L Austin, through John R Searle and others, trying to explore and explain how people "do things with words".
Whereas poetry, literature, etc. may have enduring value, perhaps in virtue of the patterns of patterns that they express, performative or illocutionary language tends to be tied to the time and place of expression – the context of utterance. It is less likely to be reusable in a meaningful way, and so less likely to be the subject matter of records. That is why no further analysis is given here of expressions that are not assertions.
Expressions can only be expressed in virtue of the patterns they use. The patterns of expression that we think of and use most in intellectual discussion are linguistic ones, but there are also non-verbal patterns of expression that may not be considered linguistic.
Furthermore, we assume that expressions are only communicated through physical reality (discounting the possibility of being "psychic", a "mind-reader", etc.) The physical reality that embodies an expression must instantiate the patterns that are characteristic of the expression.
What are here called assertions, are essentially expressions that communicate some kind of meaning, which is potentially able to be reused in different contexts. We here distinguish three clearly distinct kinds of assertions: claims, predictions, and theories; and one complex type that is important: value assertions.
Claims relate actual embodied material reality to patterns. "The cat sat on the mat" is a perfectly good claim, if it is expressed about a particular cat, a particular mat and a particular time. That kind of claim would probably be seen as a "fact" – something that is either undisputed or easily verifiable. More tenuous claims could be heard, typically, in a court of law. The verification of claims may not be so straightforward, or their veracity is not generally accepted. But there is no clear distinction between a "fact" and just a claim.
Predictions are similar in form to claims, but rather than relating present or past things to patterns, predictions express something that will, in the future, be able to be verified – something that will become a fact, or possibly an untrue claim.
If it is asserted that a pattern that exists over a period of time has started, it is equivalent to claiming that the former parts of the pattern are instantiated in material reality, and the latter parts are predicted to be instantiated.
Theories – or implications – do not directly relate to the material world. Indeed, it is sometimes hard to see any way in which, for example, mathematical theorems relate to the material world at all. But theories are very common indeed. Any expression that can be expressed in the form "if ... then ..." is probably an implication.
Rules are a bit like theories, as they often have a sense of implication about them: if you do this, here are the consequences (and they might not be nice...) As parents, we all try to provide both good patterns for our children, and effective rules to provide the needed boundaries.
What I call theories here are very close to the patterns themselves. The only distinction seems to be that theories are the assertion of particular patterns. Remove the expression and authorship from a theory, and what is left is just a pattern, as it has no direct claim on material reality. Thus, in discussion, it may not be clear whether to treat something as a pattern or as a theory – indeed, it may not be important.
This is perhaps the least easy category to discern, though one of great significance. These assertions seem to have aspects of claims, predictions, theories, and functional utterances, while not necessarily being clearly distinguishable into these separate parts. Three sub-types are apparent.
Here I intend to put in links to relevant presentations, and refer to my book where these ideas were first brought out, in the context of helping to classify information relevant to e-portfolios.
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