Re: [Obi-plan-branch] [Obi-role-branch] [Obi-relations] role clean up-> protocolapplication, natural process

[Matthew P. <mat...@nc...>]

On Friday 25 January 2008, Smith, Barry wrote:
> At 08:37 AM 1/25/2008, Matthew Pocock wrote:

> I am assuming that the protocoll will have a good ontology in-built
> (the ontology people use when they speak English and say things like:
> feed the mice at regular intervals with ...)
>
> So let's twist the wheel one bit further.
> You are a lazy, but lucky, experimenter.
> You need to feed the mice twice a day, but you have learned that the
> mice are good at opening bags of rice with their teeth, and that it
> takes them about 12 hours to get them open.
> You leave two bags of rice there every morning.
> All the mice get fed, exactly according to the protocoll. (You are lucky.)
> Will you still say: 'from a experimental standpoint ... the
> requirements of the protocol were realized'

I would say that the requirements where met, not that the protocol was=20
realised. In this case, it is, as you say, a lucky accident that the=20
requirements are met. This is distinguishable from when some agent follows=
=20
the relevant plan and either does or does not meet the requirements. It is=
=20
always possible to follow a plan to the best of your abilities and fail to=
=20
get the desired result. It happens often to me during baking.

> >Or to say essentially the same thing differently, in the one case there
> > was a plan to feed the mice according to experimental requirements in t=
he
> > agent that facilitated the action. In the other there was not. In the
> > first case, the mouse-feeding activity is a realization of the plan, in
> > the second case it is not. In both cases, the physical activity of
> > mouse-feeding is exactly the kind required by the experiment. We should
> > not conflate these two features.
>
> Physical events and activities are entities of two different kinds.
> The protocoll relates to the latter.

No, you've lost me - I didn't mention events, I only mentioned activities.

>
> >If you conflate the intent (that an agent realized a plan through an
> >activity)
> >with the activity, you naturally get permiscuous multiple inheritance on
> > the activity side.
>
> I hope that I am not doing that.

Your explanation of the parrot example sounded a lot like you where.

> >Any given physical activity could be the outcome of no plan
> >being followed, or any one of a large number of plans, possibly but not
> >necesarily with the plans falling into some sort of hierachy.
> >
> >Plan: make a cup of tea
> >Activity 1: poor boiling water into cup ; add teabag ; stew ; remove
> > teabag ; add milk ; add 2 sugars
> >Activity 2: poor milk into cup ; add sugar ; add tea brewed in teapot
> >Agent 1: me
> >Agent 2: tea-making robot, non-sentient
> >
> >So, there are two physical activities that result in a cup of tea. Either
> > me or my tea robot can participate in these activities. If I make the
> > tea, I am realizing the plan to make tea. If the robot does, it is not
> > (by analogy to the earlier parrot). Hence, we have 4 combinations here,
> > which by the BS logic would give rise to 4 universals of activity, and
> > clearly have 2 super-types of these, one co-ordinated by realization, t=
he
> > other by base-activity.
>
> The robot needs to be programmed and switched on by you, with the
> same intention (to make tea).

This sounds like the old creationist chestnut of intelligent design. Let's=
=20
assume the robot was a happy accident of a whirlwind in a junkyard and that=
=20
it turns itself on and off on a whim to make tea.

> If you, a careful and non-lazy experimenter, wake up one morning and
> find that the mouse has nearly pulled open one of your bags of rice,
> you may decide (intentionally) to use that half open bag of rice. You
> convert mouse activity into human intentional activity according to
> the protocoll.

You are no longer following the protocol, but instead doing different thing=
s=20
that fulfill the post-condition (desired outcome) of the protocol.

> >I take from this example that wether a physical activity is the
> >realization of
> >a plan or not, is not a good basis for categorising it, much as
> > categorising baloons by if they are red or not is also not a good basis
> > for categorising them.
>
> If OBI were interested exclusively in physical activities we might
> need a different base of classification.
> But OBI is interested in two kinds of activities, the intentional
> (performed by experimenters; conceivably also by subjects), and the
> non-intentional, e.g. cells dying.

=46rom the point of view of the cell, there is no physical difference betwe=
en a=20
cell dying because its neighbour told it to or a cell dieing because an=20
experimenter added a chemical to its media that mimmics that signal.=20
Similarly, there is no difference to a cat between me cutting it open to se=
e=20
what is inside and cutting it open kill it, given I make the same cut - the=
=20
cat will be transiently suprised and then terminally upset either way.

If you want to draw a distinction, it is that the intention is different. A=
t=20
the moment, in OBI, the intention is captured in the plan. I fail to=20
understand why you want this to leak through to taint the activity.

> >Wether something is a realization of a plan, is IMHO very clearly and
> >naturally a defined class. For deciding what the consequences are in the
> > real world, this information is eclipsed by what actually happened.
>
> A scientific investigation is not only a matter of consequences, but
> also a matter of how those consequences were reached (deliberately,
> carefully, on the basis of the application of these and those
> protocolls, honestly, etc.)

Sure, but we are not discussing investigations, but activities. Investigati=
ons=20
have all sorts of things - motiviations, ideas, hypotheses, models,=20
expectations and so on in addition to the activities, which provide ample=20
room for the intentionality to be attached.

Perhaps the sticking point is that we have no activity of realizing a plan =
as=20
a resulting activity, as distinct from the resulting activity, and therefor=
e=20
when thinking about this and discussing it are we conflating this enactment=
=20
partly into the plan and partly into the target activity? It seems that the=
=20
agency involved (and therefore any intentionality) is naturally associated=
=20
with this enactment rather than either the plan or the resulting activity.=
=20

> BS

Matthew