Situoids

Let us now consider Situoids and Situations. Our intention is, that situoids and situations are entities, that do exist in the real world. They are entities, that stand in relation to other entities, they have qualities and properties. Situations and situoids are made up of states of affairs. Infons can be asserted to obtain in situations and situoids. Situations and situoids are parts of the world, in the sense that they are temporal, spatial or granular fragments of the world. If we limit our view of the world to a spatially or temporally finite region, we will eventually end up with a situoid or situation.

Barwise and others argued, that a situation is some part of the world that can be comprehended as a whole. So they are not just a part of the world, but a special, closed part of it. Just what those closure conditions are is not mentioned. There are some ideas mentioned in interlingua. One should consider a situation (or situoid, in our vocabulary) as confined to a finite space and time. Since we believe it impossible to comprehend entities, that are separated in time or space, as a whole, we will restrict situoids and situations to connected space and time locations. Now one is tempted to think of situations as finite in a sense, that there is only a finite number of objects or states of affairs in a situation. This is not the case. There is still the possibility for an infinite number of objects that are contained in situations and situoids.

After all we noted about our understanding of situations and situoids until now, the reader familiar with modal logics is reminded of possible worlds. Possible worlds, too, can be comprehended as a whole, they can be infinite, and they may even be bounded in time and space, although they are usually not. There is a major difference between worlds and situations and situoids. In a world, all states of affairs are settled. Worlds are complete, total. In a situation or situoid there may be open issues, infons that are unsettled. It is possible, that neither an infon nor its complement obtains in a situation, while in a world one of them has to obtain. This is the main difference between worlds and situations (or situoids): Totality versus partiality. We may even permit spatially and temporally unbounded situations. Then the question arises, whether the world as a whole is a situation, fulfilling one extra condition, namely completeness. Or if, at least, every proper part of the world is a situation. We will attempt to answer this question later in this work.

The main issue of concern to us will be the concept of being a comprehensive, whole part or reality. The last paragraph does not help us at all in answering the question how, in what sense, we can comprehend a situation or a situoid as a whole. Their partiality suggests the contrary. Let us examine some of the structure of situations and situoids closer before we come back to this question.