RE: SUO: Organization
Pat,
Thanks for helping to clarify things. See my comments below.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Cassidy [mailto:pcassidy@bellatlantic.net]
> Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 4:20 PM
> To: Ian Niles
> Cc: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: Re: SUO: Organization
>
>
> Ian --
> Your proposed changes seem to answer some of the
> questions raise, but there is one clarification of the
> meaning of "Agent" that I think is needed. I think
> there is an important distinction that needs to be
> made between physical entities that *can* show
> agency, the *predicate* of agency, and the designation
> of a specific agent as the agent of a specific action.
>
> The CYC #$Agent starts with the statement that an
> #$Agent is something that *can* show independent action;
> but the Docs then exclude plants.
>
> In SUMO there is a class "Agent" and a predicate
> "agent" which relates the role to the class. The
> question is how to interpret the class "Agent".
> The documentations says, like the CYC:
> "An agent is something or someone that can
> act on its own and produce changes in the world"
>
> And the axiom indicates that there has to be some
> action that an agent is agent of:
>
> (<=>
> (instance-of ?X Agent)
> (exists (?Y)
> (agent ?Y ?X)))
>
> This still leaves open the interpretation
> (which I prefer) that an Agent does not have
> to be an agent *at every point in time*,
> merely to *have been* in the role of agent at some
> time, with a potential to be so again. I think
> that is consistent with the axiom above.
I agree. I think things would become needlessly complex if we had to
relativize the notion of agency to a particular time frame, and the only
alternative to this, as I see it, is to make agency equivalent to capability
of agency.
>
> If this interpretation is what is intended, then
> every life form should be an agent, and every
> group of living things should also be an agent,
> because they are capable of agency -- though they
> may not exhibit obvious agency at every point
> in time. At the very least, they are agents of
> the metabolism of nutrients, and of biochemical
> processes; in fact, for every living thing
> there is probably some biochemical process at
> every point in time of which it is an agent.
I agree with everything you say here, and I was not proposing that we remove
the 'subclass' link between 'Organism' and 'Agent' in the SUMO.
>
> Thus, I think, every Group should still be an Agent,
> though the GroupAgentFn could still be useful to
> generate Agents from other collections, which
> might not necessarily be Agents. (this assumes
> that non-living things can be Agents. We discussed
> before such a general type of Agent.)
I'm inclined to agree with you. I tried to think of an example of a 'Group'
which would not be capable of agency, but I can't imagine one. Even a
random group of animals at the local pound might act with agency, e.g. if
all of them lunged at a keeper who had been mistreating them.
I'll add back in the 'subclass' link between 'Agent' and 'Group', unless
someone can think of a good reason not to do this. I'll also think about
how to refine the proposed 'GroupAgentFn' so that it does exactly what we
want it to do, viz. generating an agent in cases where an agent seems to be
lacking.
Thanks again for your comments.
>
> On the question of the relations of an Organization
> to its members, I am trying to put together a short
> comment relevant to that, in response to Chris
> Partridge's note.
>
> Pat Cassidy
>
> ===============================
>
>
> Ian Niles wrote:
> >
> > Hi All,
> >
> > I wanted to summarize the various criteria that people have
> proposed for any
> > adequate formalization of the concept of organization and
> then sketch a
> > formalization that satisfies these criteria.
> >
> > Here, then, are the various criteria that an
> organization satisfies.
> >
> > 1. An organization has agency, e.g. it exhibits
> intentionality, and
> > it has rights, responsibilities, and obligations.
> >
> > 2. An organization may have members, but it is not
> required to have
> > members. There are many examples of organizations, e.g.
> corporations and
> > churches, that have assets are liable for certain claims
> etc, even though
> > they have no members.
> >
> > 3. An organization has temporal extent. It comes
> into being at a
> > certain point in time, and it goes out of existence
> at another
> > point.
> >
> > 4. An organization can have various sorts of
> members. Owners are
> > members of organizations, and employees, directors,
> and other
> > stakeholders may also be members of organizations
> (although perhaps in
> > different senses). An organization may also have other
> organizations as
> > members.
> >
> > All of these criteria have been extracted from Pat
> Cassidy's and Chris
> > Partridge's emails on the subject. The current SUMO
> formalization of
> > 'Organization' as a subclass of 'Collection' satisfies
> points 1 and 3,
> > because 'Organization' is a subclass of 'Group' and 'Group'
> is a subclass of
> > 'Agent' (point 1) and because 'Organization' is indirectly
> a subclass of
> > 'Physical' (point 3). However, since 'Organization' is a
> subclass of
> > 'Collection', it is required to have members, so point 2 is
> not satisfied
> > completely. Furthermore, there is no provision for the
> different sorts of
> > members that may make up an 'Organization', so point 4 is
> also apparently
> > not satisfied.
> >
> > 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'.
> >
> > (instance GroupAgentFn UnaryFunction)
> > (domain GroupAgentFn 1 Group)
> > (range GroupAgentFn Agent)
> > (documentation GroupAgentFn "Assigns an instance of 'Agent'
> to an instance
> > of 'Group'. In some cases, the 'Agent' assigned will be
> identical to the
> > group, e.g. a flock of geese flying northward. In some
> cases, the 'Agent'
> > will be different from the 'Group', e.g. the
> 'GroupOfPeople' making up an
> > 'Organization' is distinct from the legal entity that is
> the 'Agent'. Note
> > that this is a partial function. There are many cases of
> 'Groups' which do
> > not exhibit agency.")
> >
> > I think this proposal addresses points 1, 2, and 3 above,
> and I think it has
> > the advantage of making the overall structure of the
> ontology cleaner and
> > clearer. It is important to note, however, that this
> proposal does nothing
> > in the way of answering point 4. We are still stuck with
> the problem of
> > defining various sorts of relations between organizations
> and the different
> > classes of members that make them up. However, this
> problem seems to me to
> > be separable from the problem of figuring out what an
> "organization" is. In
> > fact, as I see it, we can take it as the problem of
> defining subrelations of
> > 'member', since 'member' encompasses all of the relations
> that we would ever
> > want to define between an organization and a person who
> belongs to the
> > organization. The only exception to this, as I see it, is the
> > 'subOrganizations' relation. In this case, the relation
> could be redefined
> > so that it is no longer a subrelation of 'subCollection'.
> >
> > I hope this proposal makes sense. Let me know if and where
> you disagree
> > with it.
> >
> > -Ian
> >
> >
>
> --
> =============================================
> Patrick Cassidy
>
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>
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