RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Chris, thanks for this. Comments below. 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
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so
complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com> on 2001-09-12 14:51:43
Please respond to Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com>
To: Martin King/UK/IBM@IBMGB
cc: "standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org" <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Martin,
Of course I agree that we can make any of our 'models' more accurate. I was
after a different point relating to inter-operability of commercial
systems.
MK> I note you use the word accurate where I used level of detail. My
choice is very deliberate, because I think I have a useful (though not
perfect) measure of detail (e.g a model that uses "jurisdiction", and
"registration" in its formal statements about "legal entity" is more
detailed than one that is comparable except that it omits the first two,
because I can count more concepts). Do you mean something different by
accurate, and if so how do you measure it?
Perhaps it is easier to explain with an example. If you compare the EO and
TOVE they have very different ways of dealing with organisation - making
inter-operability more complicated. My point was that one can make the
analysis more accurate (not exact) so that the differences between these
disappear.
MK> I welcome testing our views against examples. I think you are trying
to say that if the authors of TOVE and EO had both been more accurate, they
would have come up with the same, or at least compatible, models. As I am
not sure what you mean by accurate, I cannot comment directly on that. I
can comment that I don't think models are more likely to be compatible just
because they are more detailed, I feel different styles of modelling are
likely to create differences to whatever level of detail they are applied.
I would be interested to understand any evidence to the contrary you may
have.
It seems to me that this is the kind of thing engineering
tolerances are about - making the plans sufficiently accurate for the task
in hand.
MK> And progress in engineering tracks closely with the progress of
measurement.
Regards
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin King [SMTP:martin_king@uk.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 9:08 AM
To: Chris Partridge
Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Chris, thanks for your comments. A lot of what you say seems to me to
perfectly valid if you are interested in going to that level of detail.
There is one statement you make that I believe is open to
mis-interpretation in the context of developing an SUO "Firstly, I agree
that in a partial modelling the EO solution is fine.". I think it is
important to accept that ALL MODELLING IS PARTIAL.
For me it is self-evident that all modelling is partial, that whatever
level of detail you model there will always remain ambiguities, and it then
becomes a purely pragamatic decision to what level of detail is
appropriate. In the particular case, the EO allows the user to declare the
existence of a Legal Entity without requiring to know about the
jurisdiction. For me this supports a useful level of semantic
interoperability provided those wishing to interoperate are happy to work
at this level. Alternatively, the SUO could require the relationship with
a recognised jurisdiction to be made explicit. This would enable
interoperability at a greater level of detail, but as you recognise, this
begs the question of how you define a jurisdiction. To me the choice is
between two partial models, and is a pragmatic one.
Yours, Martin
PS Apropos your coments about conflicting English and Scots views of
Partnership, it happens that the Enterprise project was led by a part of
the University of Edinburgh based in that city, though the authors included
an American then resident in Edinburgh, an English resident born in South
Africa of English ancestry, an English resident I think of Scots ancestry,
and a Greek then resident in England. Its a marvel we managed to reach the
consensus we did! M.
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
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so
complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com>@majordomo.ieee.org on 2001-09-09
13:31:54
Please respond to Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com>
Sent by: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
To: Martin King/UK/IBM@IBMGB
cc: "standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org" <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Martin,
Sorry for the long delay in replying - I have been out the office.
I have copied your key replies to the front - I think this makes the
discussion easier (please say if you find it makes it more difficult)
These are I think the two key passages:
MK>>>To try to clarify:
Option 1: The ENTITY uniquely identified by "IBM United Kingdom Limited"
is both a LEGAL ENTITY and an OU.
Option 2: There is one ENTITY of type OU and uniquely identified (within
is type) by "IBM United Kingdom Limited", and another ENTITY of type LEGAL
ENTITY and uniquely identified (within is type) by "IBM United Kingdom
Limited". I believe I would also need to specify some relationship between
these two ENTITIES, but have not determined what or how. [later identified
LEGAL OWNERSHIP]
Option 3A: There is one ENTITY of type OU and uniquely identified (within
is type) by "IBM United Kingdom Limited", and there is some relationship
between it and some jurisdiction.
Option 3B: There is one ENTITY of type LEGAL ENTITY and uniquely identified
(within is type) by "IBM United Kingdom Limited" and some relationship
between it and some OU. (this starts to look unconvincing).
Do you consider only one structure valid?
MK>>>I believe the EO permits the recognition of the existance of something
as a LEGAL ENTITY, while neither requiring it to be recognized as an OU,
nor requiring explicit specification of the relationship of it to the
jurisdiction which recognizes it. All modelling can only be a partial
representation of reality; arguably, not recognising the relationship to a
particular jursidiction may not be an acceptable omission in practice. I
would argue it will in practice be very useful to be able to recognize a
LEGAL ENTITY without having to also recognize a corresponding OU. Fixing
either of these omissions would I believe require additions to the EO
rather than changing what is there.
Firstly, I agree that in a partial modelling the EO solution is fine.
Secondly, on your options:
1 - seems fine as an interpretation of EO. But I am still unhappy with the
notion of LEGAL ENTITY, see below. One would need to define LEGAL ENTITY -
I presume that it would have to be something like a fluent - recognised by
legal jurisdiction X.
2 - I do not see how the detail of this works. There needs to be a cleared
definition of what an OU and LE are. E.g. who has the responsibility the OU
or the LEGAL ENTITY in what situations, etc.
3A - this seems a better way of dealing with LEGAL ENTITY. Also
(importantly) ties with legal history where there were OU's formed in the
dim and distant past that were absorbed into the legal system and
recognised as LEGAL ENTITIES (legal persons).
3B - like you I cannot see how this would work.
What you need for semantic interoperability, is a framework that is
consistent across the domains where you are typically inter-operating your
systems/data. For this you need a standard (or reference) interpretation of
things like organisation. I think the ambiguity in EO can be resolved by
careful analysis of the terms.
In particular, I find it difficult to find a consistent way of thinking of
legal entity (considered as legal person) without treating it as a fluent
relationship between a OU (in EO terms) and a legal jurisdiction (itself a
difficult term to define) (your option 3A, I think). The test cases that
would need to be covered include companies that are recognised by one
jurisdiction but not another. Companies that are recognised and then
un-recognised (what is the right word?) by a jurisdiction some time after
they are formed - and maybe a number of times - and so on. I am aware of
needing to track this in some of the systems I have worked on.
It seems to me that the EO is built within (ironically) the context of a
Scottish jurisdiction (Scotland and not England apparently recognises
partnerships as legal persons). This is fine for lots of applications - but
does (I think) have a cost in terms of inter-operability. Do you agree?
What I think we need to do is generalise out of this context.
I agree with the point
"I believe the EO permits the recognition of the existance of something
as a LEGAL ENTITY, while neither requiring it to be recognized as an OU,
nor requiring explicit specification of the relationship of it to the
jurisdiction which recognizes it."
But, I have a view that says if we want to incorporate this into something
wider (like the SUO) we will need to try and understand what a LEGAL ENTITY
and an OU are (within whatever ontological paradigm we want to work
within), so that we can have consistency across a wider domain. And I have
(and am) finding that this involves quite heavy duty analysis - no free
lunch.
BTW this ties in with something you may have said (Mike Uschold definitely
did) about working from the middle out (up). One of the things a SUO type
effort needs to do is take the middle level stuff - which we are reasonably
familiar with - from a number of domains and try and harmonise across it -
something we are less familiar with.
Going back to the original point we were discussing, it seems to me that on
these 'big' issues careful analysis will eliminate ambiguities. It would be
interesting if you could provide an example where this is not the case. BTW
I am not saying that we could not get away with some of the other options
in a less demanding situation - just that analysis, in this case, would
lead to a single option.
Regards,
Chris
_________________________________________________
Chris, apologies for not spotting it before, but to supplement the comments
in my reply just sent, LEGAL OWNERSHIP is the term in the EO applicable to
the relationship between a LEGAL ENTITY and an OU. 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
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so
complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
-----Original Message-----
From: Martin King [SMTP:martin_king@uk.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 9:49 AM
To: mail@ChrisPartridge.net
Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Chris, see comments MK>>> below. 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
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so
complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com> on 2001-08-31 14:41:15
Please respond to mail@ChrisPartridge.net
To: Martin King/UK/IBM@IBMGB
cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Martin,
Comment below - marked CP>>.
Regards,
Chris
<snip header>
-----Original Message-----
From: martin_king@uk.ibm.com [mailto:martin_king@uk.ibm.com]
To: Chris Partridge
Chris, comments below. Martin
<snip header>
Chris Partridge <chris_partridge@csi.com>@majordomo.ieee.org on 2001-08-31
12:48:49
To: Martin King/UK/IBM@IBMGB
cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: RE: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Martin,
If you are saying, as I think you are, that:
* Position = Organisation Unit with usually one person, and
* Organisation = Organisation Unit with usually more than one person.
Look at through they can be both subsumed under Organisation-Unit, then I
wholeheartedly agree.
I note that the standard legal ontology (in British law books at least)
has:
Corporation as a super-type of
* Corporation Sole, and
* Corporation Aggregate,
So legal intuition, at least, supports this.
I am interested in some of your other comments:
"e.g. IBM United Kingdom Limited, can both be applied to a legal person
recognized by the laws of England and Wales, and an OU with a part-of
relationship to some other IBM OU, and with several other IBM OU's having a
part-of relationship to it."
This seems to imply that you see subsidiaries as parts of their legal
parents - i.e. IBM UK is part of IBM Inc. - is this so? I was under the
impression that this was not legally the case. If so, how do you treat
partially owned subsidiaries? And also wholly owned non-subsidiaries? A
similar set of questions is being asked by bank regulators trying to draft
money laundering laws at the moment. You can find stuff on this on the net
(e.g. at the FSA site). However, they are careful to talk about control and
ownership rather than parthood.
MK> What I was trying to point to was quite different from any of the
relationships between legal entities you have raised. It is that from the
point of view of many IBM people much of the time, the legal entities are
of minimal significance, what influences our business lives is the internal
reporting structure which for me (for some, though not all purposes) goes
up though 1)various OU's which are not legal entities, 2) IBM United
Kingdom Limited, which happens to be a legal entity but is in this context
an OU, and 3) other higher ones which may or may not be legal entities,
(and where they are, the legal share ownership struture may or may not
correspond with the reporting line). Thus an IBM person will say [IBM] UK
is part of [IBM] EMEA
CP>>Yes, of course I agree with what you say. But I was interested in the
interpretation of the EO - and whether it regards the manages (=part?)
relation as holding between the legal persons IBM UK and IBM Inc - whose
meaning will need to be well understood by some people in IBM. It seems to
me that one can interpret EO as taking manages as meaning 'having control'
or 'legal part'. And I wondered which one was the intended interpretation.
MK>>> I read the NL of the EO as strongly emphasising MANAGES as a
relationship between one OU and another, However, I believe it leaves open
the possibility of the user defining a MANAGES relationship involving a
LEGAL ENTITY in either of the roles. I have not checked the KIF version to
see if this includes the same possibility The EO, whether KIF, NL or
preferably both, will always be open to some differences of interpretation.
I believe the interpretation of MANAGES we intended was far from synonymous
with "part (of)" and the NL EO text does not support such interpretation.
I would agree "having control" is close to the core of what the authors
intended MANAGES to mean, whether of OU's or LEGAL ENTITIES. Conversely, I
see examples where I would want to use a MANAGE relationship where "legal
part" would not be a good interpretation.
You also ask the question:
"Are the two things we apply the label to the same entity, or are they two
different entities with a relationship between them, or is one an entity
and
the other a relationship of that entity to another?"
The problem seems to me with the label. One can use "IBM UK" as a label for
the relationship between an organization and a legal jurisdiction - or the
thing that plays the role of organization in the relation? It can also be
used as a label for a variety of different relations. In the context of
business in Hongkong say, IBM UK may refer a different relationship - that
between the organization IBM UK and the Hongkong jurisdiction - and it may
be the case that the organization IBM UK is only registered as a legal
entity (exists as a legal entity) for a few years. Surely the issue is not
what label we use - but what underlying possible structures there are.
MK> I was suggesting that the one label is legitimately used (within the
UK, whatever may or may not happen in Hongkong) 1) to identify a legal
entity and 2) to identify an OU. It seems to me this may confuse people
unless we are clear what we mean by an OU and what we mean by a legal
entity, and how a legal entity may be related to an OU. In this sense, I
agree with you that the issue is the underlying structure
CP>> When you say "one label is legitimately used" ... 1) to identify a
legal entity" - what do you mean - the legal relationship or something
else.
If something else you need to define what this is as it is not at all clear
what people mean - and they are probably inconsistent.
MK>>>I fear I have confused you by using the word "legitimately". What I
was trying to say was that to define "IBM United Kingdom Limited" as the
value of the name of an occurence of the ENTITY LEGAL ENTITY, and to define
the same value as the name of an occurence of the ENTITY OU, would be
consistent with the semantics and intended interpretation of the EO, and
consistent with common perception of life in IBM in the UK in 2001. Hope
this makes sense. Of course, peoples perceptions are often unclear and
inconsistent, so the second part of the above statement will always be open
to discussion. The best I know how to do is to try to be introduce clarity
and consistency in a way that the majority can accept.
You say:
"In fact, I think each one of these options could probably be specified in
a
consistent and useful way for inclusion in the SUO, and the
choice between them is once again largely pragmatic."
In my experience there are restricted contexts where you might be able to
specify each of these cases. But when you consider the broad range in
sufficient detail, I cannot see how you get very different structures -
apart from playing with names.
MK> I suggested there were three options and the choice between them was a
pragmatic one. Are you suggesting that only one structure is valid? Is
so, which one?
CP>>I find the options you talk about unclear. You originally wrote:
MK::The challenge then is how to handle the case where a particular label
e.g. IBM United Kingdom Limited, can both be applied to a legal person
recognized by the laws of England and Wales, and an OU with a part-of
relationship to some other IBM OU, and with several other IBM OU's having a
part-of relationship to it. Are the two things we apply the label to the
same entity, or are they two different entities with a relationship between
them, or is one an entity and the other a relationship of that entity to
another?
MK>>>To try to clarify:
Option 1: The ENTITY uniquely identified by "IBM United Kingdom Limited"
is both a LEGAL ENTITY and an OU.
Option 2: There is one ENTITY of type OU and uniquely identified (within
is type) by "IBM United Kingdom Limited", and another ENTITY of type LEGAL
ENTITY and uniquely identified (within is type) by "IBM United Kingdom
Limited". I believe I would also need to specify some relationship between
these two ENTITIES, but have not determined what or how.
Option 3A: There is one ENTITY of type OU and uniquely identified (within
is type) by "IBM United Kingdom Limited", and there is some relationship
between it and some jurisdiction.
Option 3B: There is one ENTITY of type LEGAL ENTITY and uniquely identified
(within is type) by "IBM United Kingdom Limited" and some relationship
between it and some OU. (this starts to look unconvincing).
Do you consider only one structure valid?
CP>>Can we take this in stages - I am at a loss to understand what you mean
by "IBM United Kingdom Limited, can ... be applied to a legal person
recognized by the laws of England and Wales". Are you implying 1) that
being
a legal person (i.e. having a 'legally recognized by a jurisdiction'
relation) constructs a legal organizational 'entity'. As I have pointed out
before this seems unlikely if we consider the foreign registration cases.
Or
do you mean that 2) this is the organizational unit that plays the role of
organization in the legal person relation.
MK>>>I believe the EO permits the recognition of the existance of something
as a LEGAL ENTITY, while neither requiring it to be recognized as an OU,
nor requiring explicit specification of the relationship of it to the
jurisdiction which recognizes it. All modelling can only be a partial
representation of reality; arguably, not recognising the relationship to a
particular jursidiction may not be an acceptable omission in practice. I
would argue it will in practice be very useful to be able to recognize a
LEGAL ENTITY without having to also recognize a corresponding OU. Fixing
either of these omissions would I believe require additions to the EO
rather than changing what is there.
CP>> No more comments ...........................
Regards,
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
[mailto:owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of
Martin
King
Sent: 31 August 2001 12:03
To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
Subject: Re: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
As an author of the Enterprise Ontology, I respond to some of the points
below.
Ian finds regarding position as a kind of organization counterintuitive.
He is absolutely right on the basis of the baggage that the words
"position" and "organization" carry with them, organization is strongly
associated with people in the plural, and position with a single person.
Conversely, if we look at the definition of Organization Unit, and as we
did in developing the EO, the definition of Position, we find they have a
lot in common, and both have a lot in common with the description "have
rights and responsibilities, they deliberate, they are occasionally
rational, etc.". Furthermore, in the context of the EO we felt the
relationship of an OU being part of a larger OU was pervasive and
important, and that the relationship of a Position being part of an OU was
effectively the same type of relationship. Hence we felt the practical
advantages of generalizing OU to subsume position outweighed the
disadvantages. If it were felt useful, I believe we could add term 104 to
the EO "Position" defining it as a specialization of OU with the added rule
that it can be filled by only one person at one time (pace job sharing).
Having said all that, I believe this is a typical example of there being no
absolute right answer that will satisfy everyone, and where the only way
for the SUO to proceed usefully is make pragmatic decisions based on the
best consideration we can give it. It may help to recognize that every SUO
term will have some precise boundaries on what it does or does not mean
implicit from its SUO KIF definition and these precise boundaries are bound
to include or exclude some meanings that are associated with the natural
language words chosen. Put it another way, if we replaced all the English
terms in the EO with "EO001, EO002, ..... EO103", the semantics of the KIF
would be precisely the same, and EO042 including Position would be a lot
less likely to be counterintuitive. On the other hand, I suspect the EO
would become totally unreadable and useless.
On the point of legal person (alias legal entity) versus organization, I
believe there are very strong pragmatic reasons for keeping this
distinction clear, but similar to the point above, I do not believe we will
find an absolute right answer that will satisfy everyone. I believe the
SUO should have a concept of legal person, and as Chris comments, this has
to be defined in terms of recognition by a specific jurisdiction. The
challenge then is how to handle the case where a particular label e.g. IBM
United Kingdom Limited, can both be applied to a legal person recognized by
the laws of England and Wales, and an OU with a part-of relationship to
some other IBM OU, and with several other IBM OU's having a part-of
relationship to it. Are the two things we apply the label to the same
entity, or are they two different entities with a relationship between
them, or is one an entity and the other a relationship of that entity to
another? In fact, I think each one of these options could probably be
specified in a consistent and useful way for inclusion in the SUO, and the
choice between them is once again largely pragmatic.
Yours, Martin
PS apologies if this is a duplicate, but I saw no evidence that my first
attempt got through. MK
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
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so
complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is
far more difficult.
---------------------- Forwarded by Martin King/UK/IBM on 2001-08-31 07:52
---------------------------
Please respond to Ian Niles <iniles@teknowledge.com>
Sent by: owner-standard-upper-ontology@majordomo.ieee.org
To: "Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)" <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
cc:
Subject: SUO: RE: RE: Organization
Chris,
See my responses below.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Partridge [mailto:chris_partridge@csi.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2001 1:23 AM
> To: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Cc: Ian Niles
> Subject: RE: RE: Organization
>
>
> Ian,
>
> IN>I agree with everything you say here, and I think the
> current structure
> of
> the SUMO reflects your intuitions. In the SUMO, 'Agent' is
> the general
> class of agents (including the automated trader). Under 'Agent' is
> 'CognitiveAgent', which is the subclass of agents that have rights,
> responsibilities, and intentionality. This accords with your
> notion of
> "Person". Finally, below 'CognitiveAgent' is 'Human', since
> all humans are
> (or at least are assumed to be) loci of rights and
> responsibilities, but it
> is possible that we could discover other beings that should
> be accorded
> similar rights and responsibilities.
>
> CP> Are organizations CognitiveAgents - as in the legal
> notion of Person?
> This is key.
Currently, 'Organization' is under 'Agent' and not 'CognitiveAgent', but
moving it under 'CognitiveAgent' sounds reasonable to me - organizations
have rights and responsibilities, they deliberate, they are occasionally
rational, etc. If no one objects, I'll move 'Organization' under
'CognitiveAgent' in the SUMO.
>
> CP>> I presume, though you do not mention it, that you are making
> > Position a
> > sub-class of Organisation and things like Managing Director
> > sub-classes of
> > Position - as we discussed earlier. Where Position is typically a
> > sub-organisation of Organisation.
>
> IN>You're losing me here. I agreed (on the basis of your example of
> monarch)
> that positions need to be distinguished from the people who
> (temporarily)
> occupy them. We then disagreed about whether positions
> should be regarded
> as attributes (as I suggested) or as something with a
> position in space/time
> (as you and Matthew West suggested). I guess I don't see how
> positions
> could be regarded as organizations - on the face of it, it sounds very
> counterintuitive. Could you fill out your idea?
>
> CP>I suggest you take a quick look at any legal definition of
> person first.
> Then look at the Enterprise Ontology which says "5.2 The Structure of
> Organisations - ORGANISATIONAL UNIT (OU) ... Therefore the
> existence of a
> very small and simple unit, even corresponding with a single
> PERSON, or a
> very large and complex structure (e.g. a multi-national
> CORPORATION) can
> equally be represented as an OU." Finally spend some time
> considering the
> example of Corporation Sole - which is in SUMO terms definitely a
> CognitiveAgent.
OK, I understand that the Enterprise Ontology regards positions as
organizations, but I still don't understand *why* they regard them in this
way. It would be easier for us to make progress on this point, if you
would
try to reconstruct some of the reasoning behind this claim. It seems
counterintuitive to me, because I think of organizations as institutions
consisting of a plurality of people working towards a common aim (with
various policies and procedures to formalize and, so some would argue,
facilitate the achievement of the common aim). Of course, I could be wrong
about this - I've been wrong about many things. However, I would like to
understand *why* I'm wrong.
>
> CP>Also it might help you (and me) to list some of the
> reasons why you think
> "I don't see how positions could be regarded as
> organizations". Note that
> they are represented as such on organization charts.
The organization charts I'm familiar with represent the organization as a
tree of boxes (indicating positions) that are filled by people's names (the
current holders of the respective positions). I don't think anything in
these charts implies that positions *are* organizations.
>
> IN>I agree. The categories of legal entity and organization
> overlap, but
> there
> are many cases of organization which are not a legal entity.
> Again, I'm
> just not sure where we go from here, so I'd encourage any specific
> proposals.
>
> CP> I though I had made some specific proposals. But I will
> try again. Can I
> suggest that (and this is important) that you do not talk about legal
> entity. The law will recognize as an entity practically
> anything normal
> people do. The notion you want, I suspect, is legal person,
> which the law is
> more choosy about. Legal person is treated as a concept by
> individual legal
> jurisdictions - but is really a relation between the entity and the
> jurisdiction - hence companies apply to be recognized as
> legal persons - and
> this only comes into effect when it is agreed. Try also reading Barry
> Smith's paper on agglomerations on his website.
OK, do you think we can regard this concept of "legal person" as equivalent
to the SUMO notion of 'CognitiveAgent' or, as you see it, is there some
other sort of relation between these two concepts?
>
> CP> I suggest that you have the notion of Person (call it
> cognitive agent if
> you want) and both human beings (well some of them) and organizations
> (including positions) are sub-types. What is the problem
> here? It would help
> if you could identify it.
I've tried to indicate above why I find regarding position as a kind of
organization counterintuitive. I hope that you can show me where I'm wrong
or, failing that, suggest a line of reasoning that counterbalances this
consideration.
>
> No further comments.
>
> Regards,
> 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: 28 August 2001 20:07
> To: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: SUO: RE: Organization
>
>
>
> Chris,
>
> See my comments below.
>
> Thanks,
> Ian
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Chris Partridge [mailto:chris_partridge@csi.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 8:05 AM
> > To: Ian Niles
> > Cc: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> > Subject: RE: Organization
> >
> >
> > Ian,
> >
> > It certainly helps to summarise the position.
> >
> > A couple of points:
> >
> > I suspect that one needs to distinguish between agent and
> > person, though I
> > am not sure of the exact distinction. The telling example for
> > me is computer
> > trading. The computer definitely is an agent (CYC says - An agent is
> > something which can show independent action, whether
> > conscious or not.) but
> > it is not a person. We do not think it has rights or hold it
> > responsible for
> > its activities (such as unprofitable deals). Maybe
> > intentionality and the
> > ability to have rights and obligations are linked - I am not
> > sure. But if
> > they are then person could be identified with intentional
> > agent. At the
> > least we need both agent and person.
>
> I agree with everything you say here, and I think the current
> structure of
> the SUMO reflects your intuitions. In the SUMO, 'Agent' is
> the general
> class of agents (including the automated trader). Under 'Agent' is
> 'CognitiveAgent', which is the subclass of agents that have rights,
> responsibilities, and intentionality. This accords with your
> notion of
> "Person". Finally, below 'CognitiveAgent' is 'Human', since
> all humans are
> (or at least are assumed to be) loci of rights and
> responsibilities, but it
> is possible that we could discover other beings that should
> be accorded
> similar rights and responsibilities.
>
> >
> > You are absolutely right to note that CYC sub-organisation is
> > a different
> > kind of composition membership for organization than member
> > (something I am
> > actually researching now).
> >
> > I presume, though you do not mention it, that you are making
> > Position a
> > sub-class of Organisation and things like Managing Director
> > sub-classes of
> > Position - as we discussed earlier. Where Position is typically a
> > sub-organisation of Organisation.
>
> You're losing me here. I agreed (on the basis of your
> example of monarch)
> that positions need to be distinguished from the people who
> (temporarily)
> occupy them. We then disagreed about whether positions
> should be regarded
> as attributes (as I suggested) or as something with a
> position in space/time
> (as you and Matthew West suggested). I guess I don't see how
> positions
> could be regarded as organizations - on the face of it, it sounds very
> counterintuitive. Could you fill out your idea?
>
> >
> > I am less happy about the ad hoc-ness of using groups to link
> > organizations
> > to people. What happens when you have the 'same group of
> > people' belonging
> > to several different organizations? Is there one group or
> > several? If there
> > are several, is each group specifically dependent upon its
> > organization? If
> > there is one group how do you differentiate their types of
> > membership? It
> > seems to me much easier to just say persons can be members of
> > organisations.
>
> You raise a serious problem with my proposed 'AgentGroupFn'.
> It simply is
> not workable (at least as a function) if there are cases
> where the same
> group of people comprises more than one organization.
> However, I don't see
> how the stipulation that people can be members of
> organizations solves any
> problems. On the one hand, we want a notion of organization
> that is above
> and beyond the people who belong to it, because as you and
> Pat have pointed
> out there are cases of organizations of which no one is a
> member. On the
> other hand, if organizations are regarded as mereological
> collections, then,
> as I understand it, there is no room for organizations with
> no members.
> It's a tough problem, and I'd welcome any concrete
> suggestions about how to
> avoid this apparent impasse.
>
> >
> > The suggestion that:
> > "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."
> > will not work. As I seem to recall having explained in a
> > couple of other
> > emails - legal entity is a relation between organization and legal
> > jurisdiction not a concept. Furthermore, this excludes all
> > the kinds of
> > organization that HR departments wrk with, such as division,
> > department and
> > section - as these are not legal entities in most (maybe even all)
> > jurisdictions.
>
> I agree. The categories of legal entity and organization
> overlap, but there
> are many cases of organization which are not a legal entity.
> Again, I'm
> just not sure where we go from here, so I'd encourage any specific
> proposals.
>
> >
> > Regards,
> > 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: 27 August 2001 22:19
> > To: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> > Subject: SUO: Organization
> >
> >
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
>
>