Re: Evidence

samwald@gmx.at wrote:
> 
> * In the view of BFO-friendly ontologies, there exists no thing that IS evidence. Instead, evidence is a ROLE that can be plaid by things in a certain context.

Mathias, if you look carefully at BFO, you'll see that roles are 
entities.  This means that evidences, as roles, are entities.

If an x is a piece of evidence, it plays, as you say, the role of 
evidence;  this means, in BFO's view, that there is an instance of 
evidence role that inheres in x.  In other words, if x plays the role of 
evidence, this implies the existence of two entities -- x and its 
evidence role.

If you do not like this view, do not complain to me;  I merely make you 
aware of this.

You could reject this view and say that there are no role-instances; 
but then BFO would imply a number of non-instantiable universals, while 
one of the principles underlying BFO is the Aristotelian view that 
universals exist exclusively within their instances -- such universals 
would not exist at all, there would be no roles, nothing to be played. 
Alternatively, you could say that there is no separate role-instance 
entity, and it is x that instantiates the evidence-universal, but this 
would clearly contradict your original statement.

cc: to Barry, for corrections if needed.

vQ

Received on Tuesday, 12 June 2007 19:39:30 UTC