- From: Francis McCabe <fgm@fla.fujitsu.com>
- Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 15:56:35 -0700
- To: Paul Denning <pauld@mitre.org>
- Cc: www-ws-arch@w3.org
As it happens I don't much like this definition!
It is very un-compelling to note that acceleration supervenes on
velocity.
I prefer the definition from Ron McClamrock in Existential Cognition.
He talks about 'carving the joints' of nature, and gives two key
properties for deciding where the joints lay:
Context Dependence:
The full interpretation of a feature cannot be determined by examining
the feature itself, but must be found by examining its context.
This is my paraphrasing of his text. He asserts that this is the
essence of semantics.
For example, the full meaning of the add instruction in a computer can
only be found if you know what it is being used for.
Multiple realizations:
A feature in a system may have alternate but functionally equivalent
realizations without affecting materially the predictive power of the
explanation.
For example, in a car, you can replace the gas engine with a diesel
one, or an electric one, without materially changing the nature of the
car: it is still a vehicle for going from place to place.
One system supervenes over another when there is the possibility of
multiple realizations of the `higher' system over the 'lower'; and when
the features of the 'lower' system can take on differing roles
depending on their context in the higher system.
Frank
On Thursday, August 7, 2003, at 03:12 PM, Paul Denning wrote:
>
> http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/supervenience.html
>
> I believe Frank used this term when describing that the SOM
> "supervenes" upon the ROM [1].
>
> Also see Chapter 3 of [2].
>
> I'm not sure we need to add "supervenes" to the section on
> Relationships.
>
> [1]
> http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/ws/arch/wsa/wd-wsa-arch-
> review2.html#concepts
> [2] http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/chalmers93toward.html
>
> Paul
>
>
Received on Thursday, 7 August 2003 18:56:46 UTC