Fukuyama on the absent left:

[...] It has been several decades since anyone on the left has been
able to articulate, first, a coherent analysis of what happens to the
structure of advanced societies as they undergo economic change and,
second, a realistic agenda that has any hope of protecting a
middle-class society.

The main trends in left-wing thought in the last two generations have
been, frankly, disastrous as either conceptual frameworks or tools for
mobilization. Marxism died many years ago, and the few old believers
still around are ready for nursing homes. The academic left replaced
it with postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, critical theory,
and a host of other fragmented intellectual trends that are more
cultural than economic in focus. Postmodernism begins with a denial of
the possibility of any master narrative of history or society,
undercutting its own authority as a voice for the majority of citizens
who feel betrayed by their elites. Multiculturalism validates the
victimhood of virtually every out-group. It is impossible to generate
a mass progressive movement on the basis of such a motley coalition:
most of the working- and lower-middle-class citizens victimized by the
system are culturally conservative and would be embarrassed to be seen
in the presence of allies like this.

Whatever the theoretical justifications underlying the left’s agenda,
its biggest problem is a lack of credibility. Over the past two
generations, the mainstream left has followed a social democratic
program that centers on the state provision of a variety of services,
such as pensions, health care, and education. That model is now
exhausted: welfare states have become big, bureaucratic, and
inflexible; they are often captured by the very organizations that
administer them, through public-sector unions; and, most important,
they are fiscally unsustainable given the aging of populations
virtually everywhere in the developed world. Thus, when existing
social democratic parties come to power, they no longer aspire to be
more than custodians of a welfare state that was created decades ago;
none has a new, exciting agenda around which to rally the masses.

AN IDEOLOGY OF THE FUTURE

Imagine, for a moment, an obscure scribbler today in a garret
somewhere trying to outline an ideology of the future that could
provide a realistic path toward a world with healthy middle-class
societies and robust democracies. What would that ideology look like?

[...] the agenda it put forward to protect middle-class life could not
simply rely on the existing mechanisms of the welfare state. The
ideology would need to somehow redesign the public sector, freeing it
from its dependence on existing stakeholders and using new,
technology-empowered approaches to delivering services. It would have
to argue forthrightly for more redistribution and present a realistic
route to ending interest groups’ domination of politics. [...]

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136782/francis-fukuyama/the-future-of-history

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John Stuart Mill, 1879: Socialism http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38138

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“Libertarianism presents itself as a simple, clear, and principled view. It appears to provide a moral basis, in the value of individual liberty, for a specific political program of limited government and low taxes. The moral significance of liberty seems obvious even to those who believe it is not the only thing that matters. But the claim of the libertarian political program to be founded on this value is illusory. Three lines of thought lead to conclusions that might be seen as libertarian. But none of these shows that respect for the value of individual liberty should lead one to support the political program of low taxes and limited government that libertarians are supposed to favor. [...]” http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.5/ndf_t_m_scanlon_libertarianism_liberty.php

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“The Non-Libertarian FAQ (aka Why I Hate Your Freedom)”: http://www.raikoth.net/libertarian.html

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The Rise and Fall of Neoconservatism: http://www.cato-unbound.org/march-2011-the-rise-and-fall-of-neoconservatism-2/

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Taxes & Voting: “[...] Thoreau [...] argues that people should be allowed to decide to not pay their taxes if they decide to withdraw from the political system. He does, however, make a point of saying that people should pay for what they use, such as paying the highway tax if one uses the highway. [...]” http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=2695

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“[...] get rid of the power. Political power is, in fact, the source of the wealth concentrations that fund the industry lobbyists and the campaign contributions. The wealth of big business and the plutocracy is funneled to them by subsidies, protections, oligopoly markups on state-cartelized markets, scarcity rents from artificial property rights, etc., none of which would exist without the state.

Getting rid of the power seemingly involves a Catch-22: How can you dismantle the state policies underlying the political means to wealth, when you’re outspent and outgunned in the policy-making process by those who profit from it? How do you change the system to prevent their making money off it, in a system rigged in favor of the big money?

The answer: Get rid of the money. At first glance this seems to be a circular argument, since — to repeat — we can’t challenge their control of the political means to wealth.

No, we get rid of the money in politics by undermining — at the economic level — the means by which the plutocracy makes its money. For example, we destroy the proprietary content industries’ ability to make money — not by contesting their power in the political arenas where legislation like the DMCA is passed — but by combating their ability to enforce the copyright laws they make money from. We’ll probably never secure the repeal of DMCA in Congress. But we can destroy the record and movie industries’ profit economically, with weapons like torrent download, strong encryption, and proxies — and laugh ourselves silly at the blustering of clowns like Lieberman and Biden. [...]

We solve the problem of money in politics, not by contesting money’s control of the political process — but by economically destroying the political profiteers’ power to make money, and rendering their political power useless.” http://c4ss.org/content/6416

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David D’Amato

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Download: From Dictatorship to Democracy – A Conceptual Framework for Liberation http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations98ce.html Cf. Egypt’s revolution vindicates Gene Sharp’s theory of nonviolent activism https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=egypts-revolution-vindicates-gene-s-2011-02-11

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The Trouble With “Balance” Metaphors “[...] Perhaps the most obvious problem with balancing metaphors is that they suggest a relationship that is always, by necessity, zero sum: If one side rises, the other must fall in exact proportion. Also implicit in balancing talk is the idea that equilibrium is the ideal, and anything that upsets that balance is a change for the worse. That’s probably true if you’re walking a tightrope, but it clearly doesn’t hold in other cases. [...]

the familiar trope of “balancing privacy and security” is a source of constant frustration to privacy advocates, because while there are clearly sometimes tradeoffs between the two, it often seems that the zero-sum rhetoric of “balancing” leads people to view them as always in conflict. This is, I suspect, the source of much of the psychological appeal of “security theater”: If we implicitly think of privacy and security as balanced on a scale, a loss of privacy is ipso facto a gain in security. It sounds silly when stated explicitly, but the power of frames is precisely that they shape our thinking without being stated explicitly.

There’s a deeper problem, though: Embedded in the idea of the scales is a picture of a process for arriving at sound decisions—which if the metaphor is sufficiently pervasive we may come to think of as the only method for making sound decisions. [...]

Obviously, we need to use shorthand terms like “privacy” and “security” to keep discussion manageable, but is it really especially illuminating to treat every proposed security measure as though its consequences can be reduced to quantity subtracted from an undifferentiated lump of privacy stuff, and a quantity added to a blob called security? The task of analysis is always aided when we can render heterogeneous interests more easily comparable by reducing them to some uniform measure, of course, but balance metaphors imply that we’ve already achieved this. This may be why so many legal opinions employing “balancing tests” feel so thin, and so many arguments about where to “strike the right balance” between competing values founder. The metaphor assumes a lot of analytic background work that hasn’t actually been done—and conceals the fact that it still needs to be.” http://www.juliansanchez.com/2011/02/04/the-trouble-with-balance-metaphors/

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Privacy of legal persons: “Does FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] give corporations the same personal privacy rights as natural born people?” http://epic.org/amicus/fccvatt/

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Posts:

0. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/pont

1. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

2. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

3. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

4. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-re-re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

5. http://theunitedpersons.org/blog/re-re-re-re-dear-bfo-community-let-me-introduce-you-pont-personal-ontology-1-0-alpha

Original:

https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15?hl=en

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On 6 December 2010 04:15, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>> 2. Alan, in a way it have obtained: I raised this issue as a routine
>> http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment
>
> I don’t consider thought experiments to be evidence. They are good
> argument. In this case there are a number of substantive issues that
> we are far from understanding, so I don’t think the thought experiment
> is enough.
>

ok

>> You say that AIs running on the internet would be generically
>> dependent continuants (not MaterialEntities) and all generically
>> dependent continuants have material bases, which are presumably
>> MaterialEntities, specifically, spatially dispersed sets of Objects.
>
> Yes.

ok

>> You say that I’m an independent continuant while I’m flesh and blood,
>> “uploading” would change me (still me) into a dependent continuant
>> with a material basis (presumably a set of Objects), and “downloading”
>> again would presumably change me back into an independent continuant.
>
> I don’t believe I said that.
> Rather: I don’t really know what constitutes the identity of a person.
> If it came to be known that this identity could be preserved when
> uploading, then we would know that it was a kind of generically
> dependent continuant. When in your body, the body would be the
> material entity that bears the concretization of that GDC.
> BFO doesn’t have such an entity (your sense of person/AI) so nothing
> would need to be changed in BFO should we learn this is possible.
> However if other ontologies had made a commitment that contradicted
> this they would need to be changed.

makes sense and consistent in itself: you say that BFO is independent (and you are agnostic, at least as long as possible) on a lot of issues. The concept of agency/personship is one of them.

>> But do I have the right to fork
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) BFO at all?
>
> You do, but it would be considered bad practice to change any of the
> intended meanings of BFO terms, or to distribute it in any way that it
> might be confused by someone to be the real BFO.
>
> Better to create another ontology and import and use BFO terms where
> appropriate.
>
>> I feel so that the default copyright for ontologies is
>> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ but I’d appreciate if you
>> would publish the copyright (e.g.
>> http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/ ) of BFO.
>
> It is so said in the OWL file
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

Copyright: thank you, I didn’t notice it.
Disambiguation: I understand your concern. I’ll do it bona fide.

>> On 29 November 2010 19:56, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>>>>[I think it would not be useful to regard
>>>> her [the AI] as something that has a material basis.
>>>
>>> It isn’t a matter of useful. It’s a matter of true.
>>
>> I’m sorry I was negligent.
>>
>> 1. Clarification: I think it would not be useful to regard an eventual
>> AI or the uploaded me as a dependent continuant with an independent
>> continuant material basis which is a scattered set of material
>> Objects. I think it would be useful to regard an AI and myself to be
>> independent continuants, invariant to eventual changes in our material
>> bases.
>
> That’s fine. Buy you are not using the terms as BFO intends them.
> Better to define new additional terms that define things the way think
> they should be. FWIW, I think it is possible that you don’t understand
> what it means to be a material basis in BFO.

ad1. see below

>> 2. Truth: I think what I say (modified by the Clarification above) is
>> (ontologically) true = invariant to (ontological) transformations (cf.
>> the end of my previous letter).
>
> Yes, but the truth I was referring to was deeper. There isn’t
> anything, according to BFO, that doesn’t depend on something material.

ad2. see below

>> 3. Usefulness: I think usefulness (and elegance etc.) is not
>> superfluous in ontological research either. Pragmatic approach to
>> ontology presupposes usefulness (and at least non-falseness). I think
>> there are useful ontologies just like there are useful theorems:
>> “[...]
>> – useful theorem: theorem that leads to many new ones [...]”
>
> It depends on what your definition of ontology is. BFO is trying to be
> an ontology in the sense of being a catalog of types of things that
> exist. It is proposed that building ontologies in this sense is
> already damned useful for it’s targeted purposes.

I think I understand what material basis means in BFO (but that thought of mine may be a part of the problem:) Let’s check it and see.

You say that “exists = (matter itself and/or) have material basis”.
‘Exists = (matter itself and/or) have material basis’ := ‘X=Mb’

Case I.

If you think X=Mb is an axiom of BFO 1.1, it’s ok. Then you can say that

• either you can slide “information” into the pigeon holes of the BFO 1.1 (e.g. an AI on the internet or the uploaded me or an imaginary magenta unicorn pegasus are generally dependent continuants with material basis),
• or “information” (which does not have material basis) is nonexistent (it would contradict to the axiom).

This is the scenario

• where you say that “BFO is trying to be an ontology in the sense of being a catalog of types of things that exist”, and you reject that meaning of “information” which may or may not have material basis (obviously along with other similar “things”, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether ) presumably as “speculative metaphysics” (à la Kant, Heidegger), and
• where every continuant with a speculative mind (like me:), be it independent or dependent, using the fact that in BFO 1.1 owl:Thing =/= bfo:Entity, have the legitimate opportunity to reveal other categories under owl:Thing but outside the category bfo:Entity, e.g. a category Nonentity, or a category dolce-lite:Quale.
• This approach is too “postmodern” to be an ontology in one (the “continental”) meaning (“[Philosophy] the branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being” [= owl:Thing, including a rigorous and exhaustive organization of it that is hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations]),
• but it’s ok in the (“analytic”) other (“[Logic] the set of entities presupposed by a theory” / “[computer science] a rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations”) http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ontology

Case II.

But if

• you think that X=Mb is a deep (basic) truth (of ontology in philosophical meaning) mapped into an axiom of BFO, i.e. BFO is a basic ontology in the philosophical meaning above, and
• tertium non datur,

then I think X=Mb is simply false.

(I don’t know whether BFO has this – type II – ambition at all:

• on one hand, it is so close to it that it would be a sin:) to miss the opportunity,
• on the other, in BFO 1.1, owl:Thing =/= bfo:Entity as if BFO would not be confident enough to be type II and would ensure place for the diversity of ontologies.)

Why false? Suppose for a while that I completely accept the solution of BFO 1.1 for AI-s running on the internet (i.e, they are generically dependent continuants, not MaterialEntities, and all generically dependent continuants have material bases, which are MaterialEntities, specifically, spatially dispersed sets of Objects).
However, this would not solve

• my original problem (that universe in itself could possibly essentially be made of information with matter as special case of it, cf. http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/computeruniverse.html http://blog.wolfram.com/2007/09/11/my-hobby-hunting-for-our-universe/ ) and
• similar problems (e.g., do you think that the not-yet-observed not-even-verified superstrings are axiomatically non-existent as if they were not real? or rather they have material bases cf. https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347 ?? or matter is defined by Mb:=X???),

and so would not mean that X=Mb.

If you say that matter is the nesessary building block for owl:Thing, you make the mistake in logic I made at first (“I may like information to be the “infrastucture” of matter but you are right: for an ontology this would be a superfluous presumption and a logical fallacy of this kind: http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/mary/Default.aspx “).

So in Case II we do the right thing if we abandon our demand for the preeminence of information and of matter and in general of any specific owl:Thing.

What the universe (more exactly: owl:Thing) is made of at the “fundamental level” is an open empirical (rather than a speculative / a thought experiment kind of) question yet (cf. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/lhc-spots-no-black-holes-eliminates-some-versions-of-string-theory.ars ): I don’t think so that BFO in Case II should decide on it in advance. BFO in Case II should be explicitely independent on all “speculative mathaphysical” answers.

Solution

In Case I: There is no problem to solve.

Your axioms/categories are yours, mine are mine: there is no further need to argue (you don’t argue fiercely e.g. on Dewey numbers:) and no need to change anything on BFO 1.1. The only (absolutely legitimate!) task left is to keep BFO away form revolution and let it evolve into other disciplines.

In Case II: Back to the future!

Fortunately, even if I am right in what I am saying above, BFO itself(!) has a solution for the problem of Case II: your internal solution in Case II is BFO 1.0 ( http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/1.0 ) The structure of the previous version of BFO is “agnostic”: independent on what owl:Thing is supposed to made of.

Of course, BFO 1.1 is an improvement on 1.0: Disposotion, Function and Role are bundled into a category in 1.0, and bundling Object, FiatObjectPart and ObjectAggregate into a new category in 1.1 is a parallel idea. BFO may retain the new structure in the next version of BFO as well.

The problem is, as the forensic investigations show:), that this stuctural change was accompanied by the silent introduction of X=Mb by calling the new category ‘MaterialEntity’. This is why BFO 1.1 is not just a harmless improvement of 1.0. From the point of view of Case II, 1.1 is 1.0 constrained by the false X=Mb.

I think (the Platonic idea of) BFO is deeper than 1.1, and 1.0 is closer to it.

Suggestions

I’m a just a user of BFO, not even a heavy one, one among many thousands. You should put my suggestions in their right place.

For me it is very important to clarify: how would look like the BFO I would be happy to work with, without the need to fork it?

1. It would be modular: a core and auxiliary axioms (or alternative auxiliary axiom systems). BFO is independent on a lot of issues. The concept of agency/personship is one of them. For me, agency/personship is ontologically important, but you are right: this doesn’t imply that the core of BFO should contain personship. However, it implies that BFO should not preclude the ontological concept of personship.
BFO should be modular: its core

• should remain indenpendent on theories in ontology (like the ontological construction of the concept of agency and personship) and
• should become independent on open empirical questions (like the fundamental constitution of owl:Things).

2. It would have a Type II core.
The core of BFO seems to me the right place for the philosophical/continental meaning of ontology (Case II above). This is why
2.1. I would consider removing the the root category bfo:Entity from BFO. In philosophical meaning of ontology bfo:Entity is not different to owl:Thing, it would be an inappropriate postmodern modesty:) not to erease it.
2.2. I would change the label of the BFO 1.1 category ‘MaterialEntity’ into another label without reference to matter and to any other specific hypothetical constitution of owl:Thing.
(2.3. I would revisit the examples and the wording of the definitions of BFO 1.1 based on the arguments above.)

3. It would have different Type I auxiliary axioms.
3.A. With the BFO core + X=Mb as an auxiliary axiom, we could essentially reconstruct BFO 1.1.
3.B. With the BFO core + an auxiliary axiom alternative to X=Mb, I would be able to describe what I think to be ontologically important.

Results

In this https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15 conversation BFO 1.0 has revealed itself as more profound than BFO 1.1. Minor changes in BFO 1.0 could result in a future BFO core independent on material or any other specific hypothetical constitution of owl:Thing. BFO core + auxiliary axiom X=Mb would reconstruct BFO 1.1. BFO core + alternative auxiliary axioms would ensure conceptual space for alternative ontologies without the need to change or fork the BFO core, and without any interference with the reconstructed BFO 1.1.

[Original: https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15?hl=en ]

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Against Overlordship http://www.cato-unbound.org/2010/12/06/daniel-b-klein/against-overlordship/

http://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/december-2010-property-rights-in-social-democracy/

http://www.cato.org/property-rights

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Dear list-members, Alan, Barry and Janna,

based on the conversation I have set Entity back as a root category in
POnt https://github.com/mazsa/Personal-Ontology/raw/master/pont.owl :
thank you for your help.

On 29 November 2010 19:56, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
> 2010/11/29 Mázsa Péter :
>> Suppose a (likewise hypothetical) Artificial Intelligence [AI]
>> running on the internet is a person. Do you think that she has a
>> material basis / is an independently continuant material object
>> (bearing a role of person)?
>
> The BFO approach would be to deal with that eventuality when and if it obtains.

On 29 November 2010 20:01, Barry Smith wrote:
>> 1. You are a person. Are you sure you think that a material basis is
>> absolutely necessary for you? If you had the opportunity do you think
>> you would “upload” yourself (= convert yourself into information
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading ) before you die? [...]
>
> when this is shown to be possible, we will re-address the issue;

1. Thank you, this is a pragmatic answer, I can live with it.

2. Alan, in a way it have obtained: I raised this issue as a routine
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment

On 29 November 2010 19:56, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
> 2010/11/29 Mázsa Péter :
>>>> What is absolutely necessary for POnt is that there should be a place
>>>> for Independent Continuants who are not necessarily Material Entities
>>>> (or Boundaries or Sites).
>>>
>>> Why do you need them to be independent? In what way would dependent
>>> continuant not be correct? Are there some things that do not have a
>>> material basis?
>>
>> I think you think this AI is an independent continuant, but I can’t imagine how you think she is
>> a material object.
>
> I didn’t say the AI was a material entity. I said it was a generically
> dependent continuant.
>
>> If you had the opportunity do you think
>> you would “upload” yourself (= convert yourself into information
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading ) before you die? [...]
>
> If possible, I would. Whether possible is an open question.
> After I uploaded I would have a different material basis (some digital
> form of memory)
> In BFO we call such entities generically dependent continuants.

You say that AIs running on the internet would be generically
dependent continuants (not MaterialEntities) and all generically
dependent continuants have material bases, which are presumably
MaterialEntities, specifically, spatially dispersed sets of Objects.

You say that I’m an independent continuant while I’m flesh and blood,
“uploading” would change me (still me) into a dependent continuant
with a material basis (presumably a set of Objects), and “downloading”
again would presumably change me back into an independent continuant.

Similarly, if dependent continuant AIs running on the internet would
“download” themselves exclusively into robots partitioned in space,
they would presumably become independent continuants.

OK, I understand. Whether possible is an open question, but eventually
and occasionally I / AI might switch my / her ontological status in
BFO, without ceasing to be myself / herself, so this me / her is
jumping across ontological categories.

>> I think filing them into the existing categories of
>> BFO would be like working with celestial spheres: still usable but
>> ugly.]
>
> Sorry to have offended.
))
perhaps I was not PC: celestial spheres are perfect companies for us
to work with them, e.g. to predict planetary movements and
configurations; they are just … under-attractive:) to my taste

On 29 November 2010 20:01, Barry Smith wrote:
>> I think filing them into the existing categories of
>> BFO would be like working with celestial spheres: still usable but
>> ugly.]
>>
> there are so many problems facing use of BFO in support of established
> science, we cannot waste time on merely hypothetical issues; for this you
> may wish to use DOLCE
>
>> I think that what we think of as persons are “things” that do not
>> necessarily and intuitively have a material basis. Are you convinced
>> by the thought experiments above?
>>
> This is not the issue; the issue is how to ensure BFO is successful in
> performing the jobs it needs to perform today
> BS

OK, this is the (acceptable) pragmatic line. Of course I cannot insist
on the modification of the preferences of the BFO-community based on
my unproven thoughts.

But do I have the right to fork
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fork_(software_development) BFO at all? I
feel so that the default copyright for ontologies is
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ but I’d appreciate if you
would publish the copyright (e.g.
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/ ) of BFO.

On 29 November 2010 19:56, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>>[I think it would not be useful to regard
>> her [the AI] as something that has a material basis.
>
> It isn’t a matter of useful. It’s a matter of true.

I’m sorry I was negligent.

1. Clarification: I think it would not be useful to regard an eventual
AI or the uploaded me as a dependent continuant with an independent
continuant material basis which is a scattered set of material
Objects. I think it would be useful to regard an AI and myself to be
independent continuants, invariant to eventual changes in our material
bases.

2. Truth: I think what I say (modified by the Clarification above) is
(ontologically) true = invariant to (ontological) transformations (cf.
the end of my previous letter).

3. Usefulness: I think usefulness (and elegance etc.) is not
superfluous in ontological research either. Pragmatic approach to
ontology presupposes usefulness (and at least non-falseness). I think
there are useful ontologies just like there are useful theorems:
“[...] – elegant theorem: theorem whose statement is short and somewhat unique

• interesting theorem [...]: theorem that cannot readily be deduced

from earlier ones, but is well connected

• boring theorem: theorem for which there are many others very much like it
• useful theorem: theorem that leads to many new ones
• powerful theorem: theorem that substantially reduces the lengths of

proofs needed for many others

• surprising theorem: theorem that appears in an otherwise sparse part

of the network

• deep theorem: theorem that connects components of the network that

otherwise far away

• important theorem: theorem that allows a broad new area of the

network to be reached”

https://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1176

P.

On 29 November 2010 19:56, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
> 2010/11/29 Mázsa Péter :
>> On 24 November 2010 17:42, Alan Ruttenberg wrote:
>>> 2010/11/24 Mázsa Péter :
>>>> What is absolutely necessary for POnt is that there should be a place
>>>> for Independent Continuants who are not necessarily Material Entities
>>>> (or Boundaries or Sites).
>>>
>>> Why do you need them to be independent? In what way would dependent
>>> continuant not be correct? Are there some things that do not have a
>>> material basis?
>>
>> 1. You are a person. Are you sure you think that a material basis is
>> absolutely necessary for you?
>
> Yes.
>
>> If you had the opportunity do you think
>> you would “upload” yourself (= convert yourself into information
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading ) before you die? [I think
>> I would. And I would use e.g. Git
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software) for version control, i.e.
>> branching and merging of my bodiless minds & minds "downloaded" into
>> other bodies criss-crossing the Earth & the Universe and being happy
>> not to be dead:]
>
> If possible, I would. Whether possible is an open question.
> After I uploaded I would have a different material basis (some digital
> form of memory)
> In BFO we call such entities generically dependent continuants.
>
>> 2. Suppose a (likewise hypothetical) Artificial Intelligence [AI]
>> running on the internet is a person. Do you think that she has a
>> material basis / is an independently continuant material object
>> (bearing a role of person)?
>
> The BFO approach would be to deal with that eventuality when and if it obtains.
> In any case, I think, in your formulation, yes, it would have at least
> one material basis
>
>>[I think it would not be useful to regard
>> her as something that has a material basis.
>
> It isn't a matter of useful. It's a matter of true.
>
>> I think you think this AI is an independent continuant, but I can't imagine how you think she is
>> a material object.
>
> I didn't say the AI was a material entity. I said it was a generically
> dependent continuant.
>
>> I think filing them into the existing categories of
>> BFO would be like working with celestial spheres: still usable but
>> ugly.]
>
> Sorry to have offended.
>
>> I think that what we think of as persons are “things” that do not
>> necessarily and intuitively have a material basis. Are you convinced
>> by the thought experiments above?
>
> No.
>
> -Alan

On 29 November 2010 20:01, Barry Smith wrote:
>
>
> 2010/11/29 Mázsa Péter >>
>> On 24 November 2010 17:42, Alan Ruttenberg
>> wrote:
>> > 2010/11/24 Mázsa Péter :
>> >> What is absolutely necessary for POnt is that there should be a place
>> >> for Independent Continuants who are not necessarily Material Entities
>> >> (or Boundaries or Sites).
>> >
>> > Why do you need them to be independent? In what way would dependent
>> > continuant not be correct? Are there some things that do not have a
>> > material basis?
>>
>> 1. You are a person. Are you sure you think that a material basis is
>> absolutely necessary for you? If you had the opportunity do you think
>> you would “upload” yourself (= convert yourself into information
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading ) before you die? [I think
>> I would. And I would use e.g. Git
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software) for version control, i.e.
>> branching and merging of my bodiless minds & minds "downloaded" into
>> other bodies criss-crossing the Earth & the Universe and being happy
>> not to be dead:]
>
> when this is shown to be possible, we will re-address the issue;  
>>
>> 2. Suppose a (likewise hypothetical) Artificial Intelligence [AI]
>> running on the internet is a person. Do you think that she has a
>> material basis / is an independently continuant material object
>> (bearing a role of person)? [I think it would not be useful to regard
>> her as something that has a material basis. I think you think this AI
>> is an independent continuant, but I can't imagine how you think she is
>> a material object. I think filing them into the existing categories of
>> BFO would be like working with celestial spheres: still usable but
>> ugly.]
>>
> there are so many problems facing use of BFO in support of established
> science, we cannot waste time on merely hypothetical issues; for this you
> may wish to use DOLCE
>  
>>
>> I think that what we think of as persons are “things” that do not
>> necessarily and intuitively have a material basis. Are you convinced
>> by the thought experiments above?
>>
> This is not the issue; the issue is how to ensure BFO is successful in
> performing the jobs it needs to perform today
> BS

[Original: https://groups.google.com/group/bfo-discuss/browse_thread/thread/433bfa9718cae15?hl=en ]

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