Re: [ontolog-forum] what is a proposition?

["David C. Hay" <dch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

To the ontology community,

I actually studied philosophy as an undergraduate, but that was many
years ago.  When I arrived in New York City as a youth, I had to
come terms with the fact that I had no job, no experience, no money, and
a degree in philosophy.  So, though a too convoluted set of
occurrences than I can go into here, I wound up working in the
information technology industry.  Imagine my surprise twenty years
later when I found myself working in what I can only characterize as
?applied philosophy?­the modeling of business using entity/relationship
diagrams.  

 From the beginning I realized that this was fundamentally a semantic
exercise, even though most of my colleagues viewed it simply as a way to
do database design.  The latter, unfortunately, have given the
approach a bad name, and for a while I was afraid I might have to go out
and get a real job.  (Which would be unfortunate, since I don?t
actually know how to do anything.) 

But suddenly semantics is a hot topic in business and my approach is
becoming cool again!  It turns out that the business community has
discovered that it is useful to help them come to grips with the way they
use language.

What I find interesting is that the data modeling/data management/data
base design community is so completely cut off from you folks in the
academic world who, I believe, have  some significant things to
contribute.  I am very sensitive to my lack of academic credential,
but I have made some interesting inroads in trying to bridge the
gap.

My latest book, for example, is I believe the only IT book on the market
that features Aristotle on the cover.  It is Data Model Patterns:
A Metadata Map.  It is my attempt to try to draw a complete
metamodel of the IT industry.  I organized the model around my
version of John Zachman?s ?Framework for Enterprise Architecture, both in
terms of perspectives and in terms of the ?who what where...?
dimensions.  

In the ?Business Owners? / ?Data? cell, I made use of recent work being
submitted to the Object Management Group on the ?Semantics of Business
Vocabulary and Business Rules?.  From that work among other things I
built the meta-data model of PROPOSITION.  

(Today I am having trouble linking to anything, so I cannot give you the
exact URL, but go to OMG.org and look up that title.  Theirs is much
more rigorous and complete than mine, which also makes it also somewhat
impenetrable to us mere mortals. I would like to think that my book is a
bit more readable.  The relevant section in my book is on pages
48-54.)

The OMG definition is simply that a PROPOSITION is the linking of two or
more CONCEPTS.  As you people have pointed out, a PROPOSITION is
fundamentally an abstraction, which may be described by one or
more STATEMENTS, each of which must be via exactly one
PHRASE.  Each PHRASE, in turn, must be in exactly one
LANGUAGE.

Note that there is no assumption of the truth or falsity of a
PROPOSITION.  Rather, one kind of PROPOSITION is a FACT, which is
asserted to be true.  (Ok, determining who?s doing the assertion is
left as an exercise for the reader.) 

I don?t have the symbolic logic rigor of your academic world, and alas, I
have not absorbed all of the authors you cited, but the effort required
to produce this model was significant, and the language of e/r modeling
allowed me to be very precise in my assertions. I would like to think
y?all will find it to be of value.

Dave Hay
Essential Strategies, Inc.
Houston, Texas
http:www.essentialstrategies.com



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