Re: SUO: What people mean
Matthew, Pat, I strongly suggest the following view of (married Matthew
Lydia):
The word "married" can be used in NL to refer to two different, but closely
related concepts. The first is the event of two people exchanging solemn
vows in officially sanctioned circumstances. The second is the state that
follows (I hope for many happy years) until some other event changes it. I
suggest any real world state is in fact the result of an event, whether or
not that event is explicitly known. On the other hand people often want to
know about state and do not necessarily care about the event.
I believe that IT and particularly data base people (and maybe even
knowledge engineers and logicians) have come to think of representing state
directly as the norm. In fact, if one follows a strategy of representing
events directly and not state, it is normally easy to write logic rules to
deduce state (where the reverse is in practice often difficult or
impossible). Furthermore, if you look at time-honoured ways of keeping
important records, they typically most closely represent an event. E.g.:
a) Marriage certificate certifies the event of two people getting married
and is no guarantee of the state.
b) Birth certificate is similar
c) Contract is the event of agreement
d) Accounting transaction is an event
e) Minutes of a meeting (e.g. x was elected/appointed to Y)
I have been applying this idea successfully for years, but have only
recently come to see it as a potentially universal strategy as a result of
some of the recent SUO discussion.
Yours, Martin.
IBM Global Services PHONE: +44-1707-363090 (Int 7-453090)
Rosanne House (RH2A) FAX: +44-1707-338732
Welwyn Garden City Internet: martin_king@uk.ibm.com
GB - AL8 6UB IBMMAIL: GBIBM3WS
"West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK" <Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com> on 10/02/2001
12:01:27
Please respond to "West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK"
<Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com>
To: "Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)" <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
cc:
Subject: SUO: What people mean
Dear Pat,
In a recent message you said (and I paraphrase):
In logic when you say (married Matthew Lydia) it means married for all
time.
The bad news is that although this may be formally correct, when people
write this (as they do) what they usually mean is (married Matthew Lydia)
NOW (or at least at time of writing). This is what I call the snapshot
approach to change management (really the "do nothing" scenario).
Regards
Matthew
============================================
Matthew West
Operations & Asset Management
Shell Services International
H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929
Mobile: +44 7796 336538
E-mail: Matthew.R.West@is.shell.com
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