SUO: RE: Organization
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your message. See my response below.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Angus [mailto:chris.angus@btinternet.com]
> Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 2:16 PM
> To: Ian Niles; Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: Organization
>
>
> Ian
>
> You state:
>
> "My new proposal is to cleanly separate the notions of agency
> and group.
> Rather than make 'Organization' a subclass of 'Group', I
> think we should
> make it a direct subclass of 'Agent', where it will be
> understood as a
> class of legal entities with certain rights, responsibilities,
> intentionality, etc. We should also, I think, remove the
> subclass link
> between 'Group' and 'Agent', because there are groups of
> animals and humans
> that do not exhibit agency of any sort, e.g. a group of cows
> grazing. We
> can then use a new function, defined as follows, to relate
> 'Groups' to
> 'Agents'."
>
> and then go on to say:
>
> "In some cases, the 'Agent' assigned will be identical to the
> group, e.g. a
> flock of geese flying northward.".
>
> How do you reconcile "where it will be understood as a class of legal
> entities" with "a flock of geese" in the general case (i.e. wild geese
> rather than my friend Paul's flock of geese)?
Well, a flock of geese would never be a "legal agent", at least I can't
imagine any case where a flock of geese would have formally assigned rights,
responsibilities, etc. However, a flock of geese could exhibit the sort of
intentionality that is ascribed to a more general class of 'Agent', e.g.
when the flock is flying northward after migrating south for the winter. On
the other hand, a flock of geese that are all individually going about their
own business, e.g. pecking at feed, preening themselves, etc., would not be
associated with an 'Agent' via the 'GroupAgentFn'. In this case, the flock
would be a 'Group' and nothing more. I hope this addresses your concern.
Let me know if it doesn't.
>
> Regards
> Chris Angus
>
>