Qualities in Possible Worlds
Stefano Borgo and Claudio Masolo
International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2006)
Baltimore, Maryland (USA), November 9-11, 2006
Abstract
The paper analyzes how and under which assumptions it is possible to compare (in a relationist setting and with respect to some qualities) entities living in different worlds. After the introduction of the perspective of the two alternative philosophical positions of relationism and substantivalism, we adopt the first to motivate the construction of quality classes by means of an abstraction process on entities living in a single world. Alternatives on the issue of structuring the quality classes are explained by comparison with the situation in the familiar case of the construction of time from events. Then, we consider the analogous situation assuming the existence of several possible worlds. We begin with the application of a unique abstraction process across all the possible worlds and show its problematic consequences. Then, we focus on the alternatives that arise when the abstraction process is applied within each single world independently, i.e., assuming similarity judgments make sense only when referring to entities living in the same world. This situation leads to unrelated quality systems and we need to face the problem of quality comparison across worlds. We analyze under which assumptions this comparison is possible and discuss its limits by considering the structural information that one can infer from the part shared in (two or more) overlapping worlds. Exploiting the use of such information and comparing this situation with the construction of time in branching worlds, it becomes possible to relate and (in a sense to be explained) to `tune' the quality systems in different worlds. Motivations for this work come from epistemological considerations. Consider a possible world as a context or an information system. The framework we develop helps to understand whether the quality systems of the two contexts (information systems) can be related and, if so, it provides a basic methodology to formally link them.