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The Ontology of Measurement

The Ontology of Measurement. Barry Smith ONTOLOGIST.cOm. The world knows colour. The world knows no redness, greenness, blueness, … These types do not reflect joints in reality.

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The Ontology of Measurement

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  1. The Ontology of Measurement Barry Smith ONTOLOGIST.cOm

  2. The world knows colour

  3. The world knows no redness, greenness, blueness, …These types do not reflect joints in reality

  4. The world knows no mild hypertension, moderate hypertension, severe hypertension, … These do not reflect joints in reality

  5. The world knows no Poland, Belgium, Utah, Bavaria, …These do not reflect joints in reality

  6. The world knows no nation-state, parish, census tract, township, legal jurisdiction …These types do not reflect joints in reality

  7. what we think we know what the world knows what we know

  8. 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

  9. All of the mentioned entities arises because of our parcellings, griddings, apportionments, segmentations, ...= partitions

  10. Partitions A partition is the result of drawing a (typically complex) fiat boundary over a certain domain Partition

  11. GrGr A simple partition on the level of individuals

  12. GrGr

  13. GrGr

  14. partitions can be extended

  15. partitions can be split and merged

  16. partitions can be split and merged

  17. partitions can be split and merged

  18. A partition can be more or less refined

  19. one partition can be skew to another

  20. Perspectival realism Perspectivalism Different partitions which are skew to each other may be equally veridical representations of the same reality

  21. We can apply partitions to other partitions Cerebral Cortex

  22. 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

  23. link: Granular partitions http://ontologist.com

  24. An ontology is a partition, or a complex partitions, on the level of types

  25. 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

  26. 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

  27. = objects which exist independently of our partitions (objects with bona fide boundaries) bona fide objects

  28. bona fide partition of individuals bona fide partition of types

  29. a bona fide type classification

  30. But there are also fiat partitions

  31. = of our referring, perceiving, classifying, counting, measuring, mapping activity GRIDDING ACTIVITY Fiat partitions are artefacts of our cognition

  32. Artist’s Grid

  33. e.g. they are artefacts for counting 1 2 3 4

  34. Better: Numbers belong to the realm of partitions Frege: “Numbers belong to the realm of concepts”

  35. how many numbers? Without partitions

  36. fiat objects = objects created by partitions Partitions can sometimes create objects

  37. fiat partition at the level of types

  38. this tail this torso fiat partition at the level of individuals

  39. Kansas

  40. Ontology of Maps

  41. types represented in an ontology

  42. domestic cow breed: Brahman domestic cow breed: HOLSTEIN species: Bos TAURus

  43. (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

  44. California Land Cover

  45. a map is a mapping between points in reality and the types represented in a legend California Land Cover x

  46. A Map

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