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The Ontology of Measurement. Barry Smith ONTOLOGIST.cOm. For individuation or delimitation of individuals, I think we can do better than the fig tree with the adventicious roots hanging down. How about a "sea of mountains"? That is what I usually use.
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The Ontology of Measurement Barry Smith ONTOLOGIST.cOm
For individuation or delimitation of individuals, I think we can do better than the fig tree with the adventicious roots hanging down. How about a "sea of mountains"? That is what I usually use. Second, as I hope you realize, the animals in cages are a veal farm, not a zoo. The labels, if they are labels at all, would label individual inmates, not kinds. Incorrect details undermine your credibility and distract people like me from your main points. If you want to talk about kinds of animals in a zoo, with labels, why not use a picture of kinds of animals in a zoo, with labels! Lastly, some animal rights people are offended by veal pens, you might be doing that deliberately too I suppose. Minor point, the "road sign" is obviously (to me) not a "road" sign for driving, it is almost certainly a trail sign for hiking.
The world knows no redness, greenness, blueness, …These types do not reflect joints in reality
The world knows no mild hypertension, moderate hypertension, severe hypertension, … These do not reflect joints in reality
The world knows no Poland, Belgium, Utah, Bavaria, …These do not reflect joints in reality
The world knows no nation-state, parish, census tract, township, legal jurisdiction …These types do not reflect joints in reality
what we think we know what the world knows what we know
The world is largely a system of continua, both on the level of instances and on the level of types But what we know (at least as expressed in language) is always in a sense digital rather than analogue
All of the mentioned entities arises because of our parcellings, griddings, apportionments, segmentations, ...= partitions
Partitions A partition is the result of drawing a (typically complex) fiat boundary over a certain domain Partition
GrGr A simple partition on the level of individuals
Perspectival realism Perspectivalism Different partitions which are skew to each other may be equally veridical representations of the same reality
We can apply partitions to other partitions Cerebral Cortex
Advanced Database Methodology for the Collation of Connectivity Data on the Macaque Brain Klaas E. Stephan, et al., Phil. Trans. Royal Society London B, 2001 Mereotopology of Neuronal Partitions
link: Granular partitions http://ontologist.com
An ontology is a partition, or a complex partitions, on the level of types
Partitions can be created both at the level of instances (Poland vs. Germany) and at the level of types (nation-state vs. colony) Types and instances
focusing primarily on types (dog, nation, leaf, cell, lung, lake …) whose instances have their own complete bona fide boundaries An ontology is a partition at the level of types
= objects which exist independently of our partitions (objects with bona fide boundaries) bona fide objects
bona fide partition of individuals bona fide partition of types
= of our referring, perceiving, classifying, counting, measuring, mapping activity GRIDDING ACTIVITY Fiat partitions are artefacts of our cognition
Better: Numbers belong to the realm of partitions Frege: “Numbers belong to the realm of concepts”
how many numbers? Without partitions
fiat objects = objects created by partitions Partitions can sometimes create objects
this tail this torso fiat partition at the level of individuals
domestic cow breed: Brahman domestic cow breed: HOLSTEIN species: Bos TAURus
(all scientific language is built around mappings of this sort between instances and types) A label in the zoo is a mapping between an animal instance and an animal type
a map is a mapping between points in reality and the types represented in a legend California Land Cover x