SUO: RE: RE: RE: 2000-7-26 example - nature of organisation
Chris,
See my responses below.
Thanks,
Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Partridge [mailto:chris_partridge@csi.com]
> Sent: Friday, August 24, 2001 1:43 AM
> To: iniles@teknowledge.com
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: RE: RE: 2000-7-26 example - nature of organisation
>
>
> Ian,
>
> See my comments CP>.
> More problems than answers to the key issues, I am afraid.
>
> Regards
> Chris
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: iniles@teknowledge.com [mailto:iniles@teknowledge.com]
> Sent: 23 August 2001 18:54
> To: 'mail@ChrisPartridge.net'
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: RE: RE: 2000-7-26 example
>
> Chris,
>
> Thanks for your message. See my replies below.
>
> -Ian
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Partridge [mailto:chris_partridge@csi.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2001 1:00 AM
> > To: Ian Niles
> > Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> > Subject: RE: RE: RE: 2000-7-26 example
> >
> >
> > Ian,
> >
> > I thought that you merged in either the TOVE or Enterprise
> > Ontologies into
> > SUMO. Can you remind me which one?
>
> I did include elements from the Enterprise Ontology. I
> didn't use TOVE,
> because when someone on the list mentioned it a few months
> back, I couldn't
> find a reference online. I now see that there is a manual
> available at
> http://www.eil.utoronto.ca/tove/ontoTOC.html, and I'll have a
> look at this
> as time permits. Can you suggest anything else I should look
> at regarding
> TOVE?
>
> CP> I am using [Fox et al 1996] Fox, M.S., Barbuceanu, M.,
> and Gruninger,
> M., (1996), "An Organisation Ontology for Enterprise
> Modelling: Preliminary
> Concepts for Linking Structure and Behaviour", Computers in
> Industry, Vol.
> 29, pp. 123-134. This also appeared in: Proceedings of the
> Fourth Workshop
> on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative
> Enterprises (WET
> ICE '95) as my basis. I can send you a copy - or you can find
> it easily on
> the web. In our analysis of enterprise ontologies we found
> that EO and TOVE
> were very different. However when we looked at data models
> there was much
> greater consistency.
If you'd be willing to send me a copy, that would be great. I did a search
on google, but I found only citations of the article and not the article
itself.
>
> >Also how did you merge in
> > their notion of
> > position? They have concepts for position that are disjoint
> > from (allowing
> > for some interpretation) the notion of agent - which seems to
> > be at odds
> > with the current structure. I have found (as it looks like TOVE and
> > Enterprise did) that you need to be careful here. For
> > example, one problem
> > with the way it seems that SUMO has taken is that positions
> > (rather than
> > grades) need to have some kind of identity. A good example is
> > the English
> > Monarch which has a life and responsibilities apart from the
> > people who
> > occupy the position - and this is clearly stated in the Law
> > (she/he is a
> > Corporation Sole).
>
> The example of Monarch is a good one, and I agree that, in
> general, we do
> need to distinguish positions from the people who
> (temporarily) occupy them.
> Accordingly, I propose that we replace the class
> 'PersonBySocialRole' (which
> is a subclass of 'CognitiveAgent') with the class
> 'SocialRole', which will
> be defined as a subclass of 'Attribute'. We can then make
> positions like
> 'Monarch' instances of 'SocialRole' (or perhaps, more specifically, of
> subclasses of 'SocialRole', like 'OccupationalRole' or
> 'GovernmentalRole').
> This will allow us to relate people to the roles they occupy
> (via the binary
> relation 'attribute'), but it will also permit us to
> distiguish people and
> roles. What do you think?
>
> CP>I think the issue is quite delicate. I see you are moving towards
> regarding the class 'PersonBySocialRole' as a type - which seems to me
> right. But note that the notion of position is flexible,
> there is normally
> only one managing director but as required there may be two
> joint managing
> directors. So more than one person can occupy the position.
> I do not see why you think these non-role 'roles' are
> attributes. Things
> like Managing Director and Monarch are physical entities that
> have spatial
> and temporal extents and are capable of having rights and
> responsibilities.
I'm not sure that roles have spatial/temporal extent. Although the people
who occupy roles have such an extent, it seems to me just as natural to
regard roles as abstract qualities which are temporarily embodied by people.
As for rights and responsibilities, I agree with you that these are entailed
by positions, but I don't see that regarding roles as attributes blocks this
connection. As for multiple people occupying the same role, this can be
handled by relating more than one person to the same positional attribute,
e.g., as follows:
(attribute John ManagingDirectorOfAcme)
(attribute Tom ManagingDirectorOfAcme)
We are here just regarding the 'Attribute' 'ManagingDirectorOfAcme' as one
that can be multiply instantiated in a given time frame.
> It seems to make sense to see them as socially constructed
> (see Searle, John
> R. 1995 The Construction of Social Reality, New York: Free
> Press or Smith,
> B., "Agglomerations", in Freksa, C. ed., Spatial Information Theory.
> International Conference COSIT '99 Lecture Notes in Computer Science,
> Springer Verlag, 1999). But how does this make them
> 'attributes'? Human
> beings have a relation 'playing the role' with these entities
> - so I can see
> how you use 'occupy' as a relation - and this seems to me a
> good start. But
> this is just a specialization of the 'member of' relation
> that humans have
> with organizations - e.g. Ian is a member of Teknowlege
> (maybe an employee
> member rather than an owner member).
I guess I would be inclined to distinguish two relations here. The
predicate member, I agree, relates a person to an organization, but, as
illustrated above, my tendency would be to use 'attribute' or a
specialization of 'attribute' to relate people to the roles they occupy.
> It seems to that this is an example of an area where we do
> not understand
> very well what we are talking about - though we are more than
> capable of
> using the notions (maybe there is some causal relation here
> :)). Anyway I
> hope I have given you some idea of the issues. At the moment
> I do not feel
> confident about the details of the answers - which is what you want.
That's OK. This is still interesting and useful discussion, I think.
> I think it is important to note that as one of our goals is
> (according to
> the PAR). "INTER-OPERABILITY : The standard will provide a basis for
> achieving Inter-Operability among various software and database
> applications." The SUO needs to have a reasonable ontology of
> organizations
> for any kind of inter-operability between commercial systems.
I strongly agree.
>
> >
> > Also this raises the question of whether you flag
> > roling-sub-classes and
> > distinguish them from typing-sub-class - something Nicola
> (Guarino) is
> > strong on. If you do, maybe you point me to where you do
> this. Is it a
> > meta-property of the sub-class relation?
>
> I think we can generalize the approach described in my
> previous response to
> get the typing/roling distinction. What do you think?
> CP> I think this works in this case because you explicitly
> say you are not
> talking about roles. But it seems to me that in the wider
> SUMO you are using
> the sub-class relation in a way that allows fluents (roles) -
> if so then it
> is very important to be able to distinguish when you are using is as
> sub-role and when as sub-type. Note - this is only a problem in a 3D
> ontology - roles (in this sense) are excluded from a 4D ontology.
> >
> > Chris
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
> > [mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On
> > Behalf Of Ian
> > Niles
> > Sent: 22 August 2001 20:04
> > To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> > Subject: SUO: RE: RE: 2000-7-26 example
> >
> >
> >
> > Chris,
> >
> > In the current version of the SUMO, your concept of
> > "executive-position" would be a subclass of
> > 'PersonBySocialRole', which, in
> > turn, is a subclass of 'CognitiveAgent'. Note that 'CognitiveAgent'
> > subsumes, but is not identical with, the concept of 'Human'
> > in the SUMO.
> >
> > -Ian
> >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Chris Partridge [mailto:chris_partridge@csi.com]
> > > Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2001 8:30 AM
> > > To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> > > Cc: Yang Yun
> > > Subject: SUO: RE: 2000-7-26 example
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Hi yy,
> > >
> > > I think there is some confusion here that touches on an area
> > > of my current
> > > research.
> > >
> > > I think executive is a sub-type of person (in the legal
> > sense) as are
> > > Executive Committee, First Minister, the deputy First
> > Minister and the
> > > Northern Ireland Ministers. In the case of Executive
> > > Committee we have a
> > > committee-person and the others a position-person. None of
> > > these are of
> > > course human beings, as is clear from an elementary knowledge
> > > of the law (or
> > > the TOVE or EO Ontologies).
> > >
> > > Of course persons (in the legal sense) can be and often are
> > formed by
> > > (consist of) other persons. However this must be defined
> > > quite carefully if
> > > it is not to lead to odd results.
> > >
> > > I presume that SUMO does not identify executive-positions
> > > with human beings,
> > > as either the TOVE or EO Ontologies were merged into it.
> > >
> > >
> > > Regards
> > > Chris
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
> > > [mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On
> > > Behalf Of Yang
> > > Yun
> > > Sent: 22 August 2001 17:02
> > > To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> > > Subject: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > >>Perhaps as an example, in identifying the meaning of
> > "executive" in
> > > >>the following sentence, it will probably not be useful
> to identify
> > > >>merely events, properties, attributes, classes, actions and
> > > >>similar. Instead, one needs at least domain specific knowledge
> > > >>about possible concepts (and their linguistic
> realizations) in the
> > > >>field of "politics".
> > >
> > > >>"On his arrival in Belfast, there was no sign of an end
> > to the deep
> > > >>divisions between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists on the
> > > >>formation of a new executive for Northern Ireland and on the
> > > >>decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons."
> > >
> > > >>Nevertheless, I understand the objective of the SUO
> project is to
> > > >>define higher levels first which will give anchors for
> > lower level,
> > > >>domain specific ontologies. This is a reasonable objective,
> > > >>although it may be more effective to start from the lower levels
> > > >>and combine, merge them at an appropriate time
> > > >>into a more abstract higher level ontology.
> > > >>
> > > >>
> > > >> Paul Buitelaar
> > > >> DFKI Language Technology
> > > >> Saarbrücken, Germany
> > > >>
> > > >> http://www.dfki.de/~paulb/
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > This example shows the need to consider domain-specific uses
> > > of words eg use of executive in UK politics. The meaning is
> > > defined by statute to be :
> > > http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/80047--d.htm#20
> > > or "cabinet" in the US.
> > >
> > >
> > > Adam Pease below argues the example shows that a standard ontology
> > > could help disambiguate 2 common senses of executive ie manager
> > > (person) and administration (governing body). Since a person
> > > cannot form another person, the meaning must be administration.
> > >
> > > Maybe not, because Section 20 says the executive is comprised
> > > of people (first minister, deputy, and others).Why should a
> > > reasoner know that a person cannot form these people either?
> > >
> > > yy
> > >
> > > -------included message---------------
> > > From: apease
> > > To: Paul Buitelaar ; SUO
> > > Subject: Re: [Fwd: Call for vote on SUO Scope and Purpose]
> > > Date: Saturday, July 22, 2000 2:38 AM
> > >
> > >
> > > Paul,
> > > I may have misunderstood your example, but it seems to me an
> > > excellent
> > > example in fact of how an upper ontology could assist in
> > > disambiguating
> > > natural language.
> > > If we formulate your example sentence loosely as
> > >
> > > (instance-of Formulate-Token1 CreationAction)
> > > (performedBy Formulate-Token1 SinnFein)
> > > (performedBy Formulate-Token1 UlsterUnionists)
> > > (objectActedOn Formulate-Token1 Executive-Lexeme2)
> > >
> > > and we need to decide which is correct
> > >
> > > (instance-of Executive-CompanyManager Executive-Lexeme2)
> > > or
> > > (instance-of Executive-GoverningBody Executive-Lexeme2)
> > >
> > > and we further assume that these terms have been defined
> > with respect
> > > to an
> > > SUO, if the SUO has very general rules that state people
> > can't create
> > > other
> > > adult humans, then the NLU system could pick the correct
> definition
> > > for the
> > > instance.
> > > While the meanings of Executive-GoverningBody,
> SinnFein etc would
> > > have
> > > to be created in a domain specific ontology, the value of
> the SUO in
> > > this
> > > example seems clear to me.
> > >
> > > Adam
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
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