New Ontology

[Nick Nicholas <opoudjis@optushome.com.au>]

There's going to be a new ontology, and I'll formalise it when I'm in 
the States. This will accomodate everybody, preserve the lojbanmass, 
wash the windows, and do everything else.

Any x in the real world is one of the following ontological types:

1. Atoms: things that are not meaningfully composed of parts in any 
way. e.g. hopefulness. (A prof here said "Nick has less hopefulness 
about an academic career than before" --- but I don't think my 
diminished hope is a part of my preceding blind optimism; they are 
simply different values of {ni pacna}. The {ka pacna} is atomic, as 
is the {du'u pacna}.)

2. Non-atoms: things that may meaningfully be said to be composed of 
parts. These subdivide into:

2A. Wholes (what I formerly called atoms): Things where, for any 
sectioning of the entity into parts, either no part is broda (perfect 
whole), or at most one part is broda (chipped whole).

2B. Stuff: Entities of which no part is a whole.

2C. Groups: Entities of which at least one part is a whole.

These distinctions are reflected on the inner quantifier (or 
tu'o-enforced absence thereof.)

These ontological types may be conceptualised in three ways, and this 
is reflected on the outer quantifier (and, 'redundantly', lo/loi). 
These are the Counting Types.

i. Individuals: instances singled out of a cardinality of things. 
(That an Individual of Stuff should be physically separate is 
probably a pragmatic default (spisa), because it is idiosyncratic 
when applied to numbers --- which are stuff, in that they do 
meaningfully have parts in a non-Platonic conceptualisation.)

ii. Collectives/Masses: instances described not by overt 
counting/quantification, but by describing the size of a portion and 
the number of bits from which the portion is formed. This is the 
lojbanmass, and includes my former Collective and Substance (what And 
calls Bit of Substance). This is what "an amount of" refers to in the 
gismu list.

iii. Uh... Atoms. Let's use a synonym: singletons. Or singularities. 
Where you're treating the entity as an atom, even though it might be 
a stuff or anything else. Like water. Atoms (like the number 2 as a 
platonic ideal, or propositions --- or kinds) are also quantified (if 
quantified at all) as singletons.

Any 3D object is a mass of stuff (collective of bits of substance of 
stuff), because 3D space is subdividable always. However, it can be 
conceptualised as a singleton as well, making it And's Substance.

So, in my view of the universe, anything such that it is stuff 
(water) is either "all of" or "some of".

In the not quite so extensionalist and closer to English view, water 
is water, and the fractional quantifier doesn't work, when you think 
of water as a singleton. Which you needn't.

The lojbanmass as we have known it (implicitly fractionally 
quantified) is incompatible with the singularity. Kludges to make 
this compatible with lojbanmasses may include tu'o loi tu'o broda, 
ropa loi tu'o broda, pa lo ropa broda, or in the worst case a new 
gadrow (but I don't want it to come to that.)

The Kind is a different order of thing from the counting type; but 
when quantified, it is a singleton by default. The kind/subkind 
relation is presumably not a part-whole relation (as in, Mr Fido is 
not in any intelligible sense pisu'o Mr Dog,even if there were 
finitely many subkinds of any kind.)

The collective/mass remains as is, and continues to refer to both 
stuff and groups, distinguishing between them by finite vs 
transfinite cardinality of bits.

This ok?


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* Dr Nick Nicholas, French & Italian Studies nickn@unimelb.edu.au *
University of Melbourne, Australia http://www.opoudjis.net
* "Eschewing obfuscatory verbosity of locutional rendering, the *
circumscriptional appelations are excised." --- W. Mann & S. Thompson,
* _Rhetorical Structure Theory: A Theory of Text Organisation_, 1987. *
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