How to Do Things With Documents Barry Smith Department of Philosophy National Center for Ontological Research University at Buffalo

How to Do Things With Documents

Barry Smith

Department of Philosophy National Center for Ontological Research

University at Buffalo

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith

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• picture of a Florida beach condo

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Some processes in the social realm

• In 2007, a bank in Florida lends you $1 million

• You buy a beach condo for $1 million

• In 2008, the value of your condo collapses

• You owe the bank $1 million but your house is worth only $500,000

• You walk away from the loan and give the keys back to the bank

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Some objects in the social realm• The bank• The condo• The price you paid in 2007• The price you could get in 2008• Your mortgage• Your mortgage contract• Your signature on the mortgage contract• Your breaching of the mortgage contract• The value of the mortgage in 2007

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Some ontological questions

• What is a debt?

• What is a mortgage?

• What is a mortgage contract?

• What is a signature?

Why do Plato and Kant have no answers to such questions?

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Not your grandmother’s ontology

• Catherine wheel effect (compare how psychology became a science independent of philosophy in the 1890s)

• so today: ontology is beginning to free itself from the philosophical mother-ship to become a discipline in its own right

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Google hits Jan. 2004

• ontology + Heidegger 58K• ontology + Aristotle 77K• ontology + philosophy 327K• ontology + software 468K• ontology + database 594K• ontology + information systems 702K

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Google hits Oct. 2009

• ontology + Heidegger 1.62M• ontology + Aristotle 1.65M• ontology + philosophy 4.86M• ontology + software 6.91M• ontology + database 8.66M• ontology + information systems 9.37M

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Comparison 2004/2009

ontology + Heidegger 58K 1.62M

ontology + Aristotle 77K 1.65M

ontology + philosophy 327K 4.86M

ontology + software 468K 6.91M

ontology + database 594K 8.66M

ontology +information systems 702K 9.37M

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Smith and Zaibert (and Ferraris)

• Barry Smith and Leonardo Zaibert, “The Metaphysics of Real Estate”, Topoi, 20: 2 (2001)

• Barry Smith, Maurizio Ferraris and Leonardo Zaibert, “La costituzione ontologica”, Il sole 24 Ore, 27 June 2004.

• Leo Zaibert and Barry Smith, “The Varieties of Normativity: An Essay on Social Ontology”, in Savas L. Tsohatzidis (ed.), Intentional Acts and Institutional Facts: Essays on John Searle’s Social Ontology, Springer, 2007

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15founded 2002

Agenda

• What holds society together– The Searle thesis (speech acts)

– The de Soto thesis (how documents created civilization)

• How to do things with documents in an African village

• The ontology of toxic assets

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Systems of mutually correlated claims and obligations

are essential to the workings of societies both large and small

compare how traffic laws are essential to the workings of roads

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John Searle

The Searle Thesis

Through the performance of speech acts (acts of promising, marrying, accusing, baptising) we change the world by bringing into being claims, obligations, rights, relations of authority, debts, permissions, names, and a variety of other sorts of entities making up the ontology of the social world.

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In the local case, when you make a promise

• Your obligation is tied to psychological factors: memories, expectations, your desire to preserve your good name

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The de Soto Thesis

Documents and document systems are mechanisms for creating the institutional orders of modern societies

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West

and Fails Everywhere Else,New York: Basic Books, 2000

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Hernando de SotoInstitute for Liberty and Democracy, Lima, Peru

Bill Clinton: “The most promising anti-poverty initiative in the world”

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The de Soto thesis:documents and document systems are mechanisms for creating the institutional orders of modern societies

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else,

New York: Basic Books, 200023

Common beliefs about the African village

• no individual property rights• regime of ‘community property’• land cannot be bought and sold, because it is

sacred …• no legal and economic institutions• law is confined to what is legislated (= big-city

top-down, colonial law)

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What really exists in the African village ?

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extralegal cell phone renting and supply of pre-paid call time

Massai cell phone User

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The realm of extra-legal (spontaneously created) law

• In Tanzania, villages are relatively isolated from the influences of big-city law

• but this does not mean that they are free of legal-commercial activities and of associated institutions

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adjudication

Elders engaged in dispute resolution in Kisongo (Tanzania) dealing with conflicts about family matters, parcel boundaries and other property issues. Evidence is brought from witnesses and community members.

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Documentation of the resolution of a dispute over land in the Arusha area and of the property rights thereby established.A council of notable elders is selected as judges and they follow established rules for the hearing, for presenting and processing evidence before the community. 30

property right

• The difference between a piece of land and property is that property can be set out in a written document with determinate meaning. This document creates and establishes the right, which ties owner to physical asset in an enduring way.

• The system of such documents creates a new abstract order

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registrationThe Mwenyekiti (or democratically elected village chairman)keeps records of births deaths, contracts ..., provides written and unwritten proof of customary rights of occupancy, participates in real estate transactions as witness

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registration

• registration makes documents permanently accessible, providing in one single source records of the information required to know who owns what

• without this information, the combination and mobilization of assets is risky, and it is impossible to apply legal provisions against fraud and theft.

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registration

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registration

• Paper documents serve as filaments that bind different elements of social and institutional reality in a way which leads to the creation of new types of value.

• A network of social relations is created by the network of cross-referenced and cross-attached documents. In this way, the registry of documents forms a mirror of the network of legal and property relationships.

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Statutes of Mungano Women, an extralegal enterprise that makes and commercializes straw products in Masasi.Note the organizational chart.

association

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association• poor people in Tanzania are increasingly associating to

form business organizations in addition to family, clan, and tribal groupings. Such association brings together founders, employees, suppliers, creditors and clients in a single frame that allows division of labor and specialization.

• the business organization is a new moral entity, which belongs to an abstract realm and can so outlast the individuals which go to form it.

• brings the ability to draw on a broader base of employees by bringing in workers from outside the family or clan

• (defined) positional roles in an organization

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association• A business organization is a legal person: it is a

collective put together in a standardized way on the basis of the determinate meanings captured by its statutes (as contrasted with the biological collective whole which is the family).

• The offices of the corporation are positional roles for human beings, who need to be recognized by other human beings within the organization as occupants of those roles and as enjoying the corresponding authority and responsibility.

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division of labor

Trading Name Showroom Office

Timber SupplierFabric Supplier

Formally registered business

ExtralegalDoor factory

ExtralegalWood workingMachine shop

Lumber supplies

Extralegal beds and cabinets manufacturing

The Jaguar enterprise, located in Dar es Salaam; dedicated to the production of wooden goods and furniture.

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division of labor• business organization brings the possibility of

breaking up production into more efficient specialized functions and thereby increasing productivity

• the specialization of each worker yields a gradual increase in the quality of the work and in the quality of the worker

• allows accountability based on measures and standards, and new kinds of incentives, such as promotion to a higher grade of work

• creates a separation in time, between personal life and work life

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management

Members of the enterprise Amani Mazingira Group, which provides trash collection services in a area of Dodoma. The business is owned by women (13 partners), who have divided labor among themselves by designating a Chairwoman, Treasurer, Secretary, and Counselor and who employ men to carry out tasks requiring physical strength, such as pushing tricycles.

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transparencyMwenyekit making documents available in his office

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transparency• writing down agreements on paper and entering

them into records provides a crucial seed of the rule of law and of economic development

• agreements written on paper and recorded move into an enduring realm where they can be located and accessed by all.

• Their content becomes obvious to sight, and so they acquire the capacity to enjoy the certainty that comes with scrutiny and careful reflection.

• Statements and agreements come to be associated with evidence; they are opened up to tests of validity which can be carried out by nameless others.

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accounting

balance sheet of the extralegal enterprise Igembe Sabo

These balance sheets constitute an incipient double entry book keeping system that converts local practices into written information about the enterprise and its assets

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Anchoring to reality

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Anchoring• a photograph alone is not sufficient to establish your

identity: it must appear in the right place in the right sort of document that has been marked in the right sort of way by signatures, counter-signatures, stamps, ID numbers

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fingerprint

official stamp

photograph

bar code

cow brand-mark

car license plate

allow cross-referencing to documents

Anchoring

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identification

Document in which a Mwenyekiti from the Kibaha area certifies the identity of an individual from his village. Both photograph and signature are authenticated with an official stamp.

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identification

Marks used to identify ownership of the cattle at an auction market in Dodoma.The cattle identification by branding serves as the basis for a formal pledge system.

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identification

• in the village everyone knows who you are; in a larger market, to determine identity is harder.

• the absence of a national registry system has given rise to the widespread practice of the Mwenyekiti becoming attestors of the identities and addresses of villagers, issuing identity documents with photographs, fingerprints, stamps, seals, and addresses.

• Tanzanians in the extralegal economy are devising the mechanisms to facilitate networking among people who do not belong to the same community.

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An extralegal standardized sales contract for a one-acre parcel in the outskirts of Arusha, including the involvement of witnesses in the preparation of the document and the use of fingerprints to ensure the authenticity of the document.

standardization

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collateralA rehani, a type of guarantee that uses land as extra-legal collateral for a money loan. The debtor transfers to the creditor a parcel of land with the condition that it shall be returned when the loan has been paid.

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collateral

Even Tanzanians living in the poorest areas of the country provide loans secured with real estate collateral and seek greater security in their transactions by incorporating and fixing them into documents.

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In the expanded market

• debts may be bought and sold – and are in this way able to float free of their initiating partners and to enjoy an existence of their own.

• this is possible only because debts are transformed by being written down in the form of a document

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the mystery of capital

when you have legal title to your house you can

• use your house as an address for receiving public utility services such as mail and electricity

• buy insurance on your house

• use your house as collateral on a loan – your house allows you to live in it and at the same time use its value to build a factory

But what happens when it all breaks down?

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• picture of a Florida beach condo

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The story of what happens



• In 2008, the value of your condo collapses: you owe the bank $1 million but your condo is worth only $500,000


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What sorts of entities are involved in this story?

• The bank (?)• The condo, the keys• The price you paid in 2007• The price you could get in 2008• Your mortgage contract (?)• Your signature on the mortgage contract (?)• Your mortgage (pre-default)• Your commitment to repay the mortgage• The same mortgage (post-default)

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Basic Formal Ontology

Continuant Occurrent

process, eventIndependentContinuant

thing

DependentContinuant

quality, role,…

.... ..... .......97

The occurrent story



• In 2008, the value of your condo collapses: you owe the bank $1 million but your condo is worth only $500,000


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the dependent and independent continuants involved in this story

• The bank• The condo, the keys• The price you paid in 2007• The price you could get in 2008• Your mortgage contract• Your signature on the mortgage contract• Your mortgage (pre-default)• Your commitment to repay the mortgage• The same mortgage (post-default)

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The aftermath

• Your mortgage was bundled with 100s of other mortgages to form a collateralized debt obligation (CDO)

• which was sold to investors

• Some CDOs were bundled to form CDO2s, CDO3s, ... CDOns.

• In 2008 this whole family of investment vehicles collapsed in value

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Basic Formal Ontology

Continuant Occurrent

process, eventIndependentContinuant

thing

DependentContinuant

quality, role,…

.... ..... .......101

ContinuantOccurrent

IndependentContinuant

Specifically DependentContinuant

Quality

Realization

Role

What is a CDO?

On the one hand it is something like a mathematical structure.

Yet its existence is tied to time and change.

Plato would have regarded such a combination of properties as something impossible.

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The ontology of the CDO

• CDOs seem to fall outside the standard philosophical dichotomies of – physical vs. mental– concrete vs. abstract– ens rationis vs. ens realis

• They are in some sense normative entities (‘obligations’), that can be bought and sold, aggregated and stored, spliced and diced, engineered and re-engineered

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With the invention of documented claims and obligations

• a new dimension of socio-economic reality comes into existence:

bank accounts, stocks, shares, bonds, mortgages, credit cards

• form enduring social networks – document systems – of entirely new types

• debts become information entities analogous to computer software artifacts

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Hernando de Soto

• first recognized the pivotal role of documents in the ontology of socio-economic reality.

• documents enable – new types of distributed ownership through stocks,

shares, pensions – new types of legal accountability– new types of business organization

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Scope of document act theory

• the social and institutional (deontic, quasi-legal) powers of documents

• the sorts of things we can do with documents

• the social interactions in which documents play an essential role

• the enduring institutional systems to which documents belong

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Basic distinctions

– document as stand-alone entity vs. document with all its different types of proximate and remote attachments

– document template vs. filled-in document

– document vs. the piece of paper upon which it is written/printed

– authentic documents vs. copies, forgeries

– allographic vs. autographic entities

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What happens when you sign your passport?

• you initiate the validity of the passport

• you attest to the truth of the assertions it contains (autographic)

• you provide a sample pattern for comparison (allographic)

Three document acts for the price of one

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Passport acts

• I use my passport to prove my identity

• You use my passport to check my identity

• He renews my passport

• They confiscate my passport to initiate my renunciation of my citizenship

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Documents belong to the domain of administrative entities

entities such as organizations, rules, prices, debts, standardized transactions ..., which we ourselves create

But what does ‘create’ mean ?

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The creative power of documents

title deeds create property

stock and share certificates create capital

examination documents create PhDs

marriage licenses create bonds of matrimony

bankruptcy certificates create bankrupts

statutes of incorporation create business organizations

charters create universities, cities, guilds

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The creative power of documentsinsurance certificates treatiespatents licensessummonsesmembership cardsdivorce decreesedicts of parliament

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Identity documents

• create identity (and thereby create the possibility of identity theft)

• what is the ontology of identity?

• what is the epistemology of identity (of the technologies of identification)?

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The creative power of documentsdocuments create authorities(physicians’ license creates physician)

authorities create documents(physicians creates sick notes)

documents issued by an authority within the framework of a valid legal institution

vs. documents issued by an authority extralegally on its own behalf (cf. US Declaration of Independence)

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The ontology of toxic assets

• In 2007, I bundle your mortgage with 100s of other mortgages and sell the result – a ‘collateralized debt obligation’ (CDO) – to investors.

• This first CDO is supported directly by mortgages

• It is bundled with 100s of other CDOs to create a CDO2, backed not by mortgages, but by other CDOs

• ... and so on, with CDO3, ... CDOn, ad indefinitum

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More ontological questions• What is a CDO?• A pattern of blips on computers? Can you buy and sell a pattern of blips?• Is it made of molecules? Can it stand in physical

relations of cause and effect?

No; It is more like a mathematical structure.

Yet its existence is tied to time and change.

Already Plato would have regarded such a combination of properties as something impossible.

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The ontology of the CDO

• CDOs seem to fall outside the standard philosophical dichotomies of – physical vs. mental– concrete vs. abstract– entia rationis vs. entia realis.

• They are in some sense normative entities (‘obligations’), that can be bought and sold, aggregated and stored, spliced and diced, engineered and re-engineered

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The ontology of (credit card) numbers

• These numbers are not mathematical (not informational) entities – they are ‘thick’ (historical) numbers, special sorts of cultural artefacts– they are information objects with provenance:

abstract keys fitting into a globally distributed lock

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ContinuantOccurrent



Quality Role

ContinuantOccurrent



Quality Role

GenericallyDependentContinuant

Information Artifact Ontology

http://code.google.com/p/information-artifact-ontology/

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– not a mathematical object

– not a contingent object with physical properties, taking part in causal relations

– but a historical object, with a very special provenance, relations analogous to those of ownership, existing only within a nexus of working financial institutions of specific kinds

What is a credit card number?

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Information vs. Information Artifact

‘information’ – mass noun (Shannon and Weaver)

‘information artifact’ – count noun (Information Artifact Ontology)

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Information Artifacts in Science

protocoldatabasetheoryontology gene listpublicationresult...

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Information Entity (labeling)

serial numberbatch numbergrant numberperson numbernameaddressemail addressURL...

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Generically Dependent Continuants

GenericallyDependentContinuant

Information Entity

Sequence

if one bearer ceases to exist, then the entity can survive, because there are other bearers (copyability)

the pdf file on my laptop

the DNA (sequence) in this chromosome

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are realized through being concretized in specifically dependent continuants(the plan in your head, the protocol being realized by your research team)

Generically dependent continuants

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