EE25484266A64A47AE06CFC47C64232B4CAE46@helium.teknowledge.com"
type="cite">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