Proposition + term

[VeejayG]

Apologies if the issues raised below overlap some of the issues discussed on this board. I am new to IAO, and I have not read this forum in its entirety, hence it is very possible that I missed discussions germane to the discussion I intend to start. I also did not manage to read all the IAO documentation.

1. The short version of my question is: Are there any IAO entities that cannot be (onto/logically) reduced to a (a) concept/mental representation/term or (b) proposition? Note that by "proposition" I do not necessarily mean a simple proposition, hence compound propositions also count as propositions. (Compound/composite propositions are propositions obtainable from simpler propositions via the so-called "propositional connectives.") If yes, I would appreciate some examples. And for those uncomfortable with the word "reduce" and its derivatives, a different formulation of the above question would be: "Is there any IAO entity that is not a (a) concept/term/mental representation or (b) a proposition?"

Assuming the answer is "no," I suggest making some of the IAO current top-level classes (such as "document," "objective specification," "plan specification," "figure," "narrative object" etc.) subclasses of a "proposition" class, while the rest subclasses of (another) newly minted "concept" (or "term," or even "mental representation") class. All the hierarchy currently present in IAO would consequently amount to categorizing propositions and concepts by content/topic/reference.

A quick note about "proposition." It is not hard to anticipate the following question: how could "figure" (say) be a "proposition"? Let me note, for now, that philosophers and logicians usually make a difference between "proposition" and "sentence." For more about this, feel free to read:

2. The long(er) version: After inspecting the latest IAO release, and reading some of its documentation (such as this and this), I could not help but notice how the issues IAO developers grapple with are strikingly similar with the type of issues that philosophers and logicians have dealt with throughout the whole history of Philosophy, and particularly during the 20th century--century also dubbed "the linguistic turn," or "the semantic turn." As such, a great deal of the turmoil that IAO developers currently undergo replicates, to a great extent, the turmoil that led to the emergence of what is now dubbed Mathematical Logic (and esp. Model Theory). It thus occurred to me that it would be a good idea to borrow some of the foundational ideas from Model Theory instead of basically re-invent the wheel under a slightly different (and decidedly hazier) guise. I am confident that the upside would more than make up for any of the downsides such a (relatively minor) modification might bring.

The two major Mathematical Logic notions of relevance in this respect are those of (a) proposition (aka "closed formula"), and (b) term. They are the notions that are regarded as carriers of semantic content ("refer," are "about," "denote" etc.) in contemporary Philosophy of Logic: terms refer to entities ("cat" refers to cats), and (true) propositions "refer" to states of affairs ("A cat is on a mat" refers to a state of the universe (or "situation" for those uncomfortable with talk of "states") in which a cat is on a mat). Related to sentences (and expressible through them), "propositions" are whatever sentences such as "The snow is white" and "Schnee ist weiss" express.

Making the switch from "Informational Entity" to proposition + term has many advantages, mostly stemming from the fact that, unlike "Informational Entity" (ICE?), these notions have been extensively studied for the past 100-200 years in a very formal and rigorous manner: unlike ICEs, these two have very rigorous individuation and identity criteria. Unlike ICEs, it is very clear (and there are very precise standards regarding) what it means to be part of a proposition. As far as I can tell from my brief encounter with IAO, it is far from clear to me what one might mean by parthood in the ICE world. This nebulousness, as well as the nebulousness of the very notion of ICE, will be considerably reduced should the old Mathematical Logic framework of proposition + term be adopted.

Finally, while I have done my best above to compress a couple of centuries (millenia?) of logico-philosophical research and mayhem into two paragraphs, it goes without saying that the story is not that simple. The recommendations, however, are simple: drop talk of ICE, and replace with talk of propositions and terms. Things will become a lot clearer--or so I claim.

[jamesaoverton]

Hi @VeejayG, thanks for the comment.

Many IAO developers have backgrounds in logic and philosophy, so we are certainly aware of the history of those fields and how "proposition" is used in those fields.

IAO builds on the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). BFO does not address the ontology of abstracta such as numbers, sets, and propositions. Instead, BFO includes a theory of generically dependent continuants (GDCs) and specifically dependent continuants (SDCs). Most IAO terms fall under GDC. For more on that theory, see the BFO2-Reference.pdf and publications on the BFO homepage.

[VeejayG]

Thank you @jamesaoverton. Nevertheless, I would appreciate if you attempted to answer (the short version of) my query yourself, or found someone with logic and philosophy background that might attempt to venture an answer. I am confident that finding the exact relation IAO entities stand with respect to entities such as "proposition" and "term" would bring much clarity to IAO, clarity that is very much needed as far as I can tell.

Otherwise, thank you for pointing me to the BFO reference manual, though I do happen to have some familiarity with it. Sadly, it does not answer my query.

Many thanks, again, for your reply.

[jamesaoverton]

"Is there any IAO entity that is not a (a) concept/term/mental representation or (b) a proposition?"

Yes. BFO is a realist ontology that does not include "proposition". IAO extends BFO into the domain of information. So the universals that are referred to in IAO are not concepts, not terms (in the nominalist sense), not mental representations, and not propositions. Therefore all IAO entities fail to reduce to the categories you propose.

To build a connection to "proposition", you would probably want to say that a particular GDC X has a particular proposition Y as its propositional content. You could then form a class Z of all GDCs with propositional content Y. I speculate that BFO could accept a primitive "same content" relation that would generate classes of GDCs such as Z, and thereby get many of the benefits of propositions without accepting their existence.

If you have further "big" questions, you will probably get a more thorough response on the IAO or BFO mailing lists. The items on this tracker are usually about smaller questions.

[VeejayG]

Thank you @jamesaoverton. The difference between what you call "the domain of information" and the realm of (the usual entities that make the subject of) Logic (i.e. "proposition" and "term"/"concept") is something that interests me in the utmost. My hope is that by coming clear regrading what tells this two realms apart we might manage to bring some clarity to the former. As I see it, the former is far from crisply outlined. Interestingly, I also see that "information content entity" comprises "document"--though, curiously, not "proposition."

Now, as I was asking in my initial post, can you give me a few examples of informational entities that are not propositions or terms/concepts?

Otherwise, I was not aware that there is an IAO mailing list. I will certainly make sure to direct my further queries to that list.

[jamesaoverton]

None of the things in IAO are propositions, none are terms, and none are concepts. So pick any example from IAO that you like.

GDC is the "closest" thing to a proposition, but it is very different. A GDC is a pattern that can be copied. It exists in time and depends on a (causal) copying relationship. A proposition is some sort of abstract entity outside of time.

A particular IAO document W is not a proposition. It is a GDC that can be concretized by SDCs, on paper or a computer, for example. Perhaps W has propositional content, but IAO does not address that.

I've done my best to answer your question.

[VeejayG]

Thank you. What is very important for me at this point is not as much identifying (i.e. conflating) the two realms (information on the one hand, and proposition+concept on the other), but being able to transfer some of the knowledge that has been developed with regards to one (namely the realm of proposition+concept) to the other (namely the realm of information (whatever that may be)). As such, I am amending my initial quest to a weaker one: identify parallels, rather than push for the essential conflation of the realms. This will spare me the chore of having to prove identity of essence between the two, especially since as far as I am concerned, the newly discovered realm of informational entities is as blurry as it can be. My claim is, then, that the two realms are identical up to an isomorphism. As such, my opinion is that there is a great deal of theory that can be automatically transferred from Mathematical Logic to the realm of Informational Entities, especially with regards to parthood and compositionality of information. As I was mentioning before, one of the main issues I have been grappling with is the annoying vagueness/looseness of the notion of information being partOf another information. At this point, as far as I can tell, there are no clear-cut criteria that can be invoked in order to adjudicate claims such as "this piece of information is partOf this other piece of information," at least nowhere near as clear as they are when it comes to material entities or processes. Anybody can reasonably claim that any piece of information is part of any other piece of information: the only argument against would be a scoff or a shrug off.

Anyway, thank you for your replies. Rest assured that I do not expect you to reply to this latest post of mine. As you say, you've done your due diligence, and I, for one, feel that my query has been given the requisite attention.

VG