Dear Matthew,
Point taken.
In my view "part-of" is (or should be) always transitive. My "example" was in fact an exercise (for my own sake) in whether or not one could come up with an interpretation of "part-of" in Natural Language that would not be so. I agree that the best I could come up with was a tad stretched and relied on a "loose" interpretation of "part-of".
Be that as it may, I am also interested in how meaning may be carried by (slightly) incorrect/incoherent expressions in NL since people do exchange meanings with such "loose" expressions and manage to make (pragmatic) inference using them. If we hope ever to enable computer-based systems to emulate or tolerate such loose communication, then non-transitive relations that ought to be transitive in a strict meaning of their terms may arise.
Regards,
-hak
On 5/20/2013 12:29 PM, Matthew West wrote:
Dear Hassan,
It makes no difference. Just because people use certain words does not mean that they carry the same meaning. A team being “part-of” a club is very loose talk. It really means that a club runs and organizes a team. With the relationship between a club and a sports federation the relationship is really that the club is a member of the federation. These are quite different relationships both from each other and from what a mereological sum “part-of” is. You first have to distinguish the meanings before you can start asking questions about whether the relationships are transitive or not.
Part-of in the context of a mereological sum is always transitive. If you do not mean part-of in the sense of a mereological sum, your mileage may vary, and you are likely to end up with confusion if you pretend it is the same part-of as mereological sum and fail to make a clear distinction.
Regards
Matthew West
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From: Hassan Aït-Kaci [mailto:hassanaitkaci@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 19 May 2013 11:41
To: Matthew West
Cc: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] What is the role of an upper level ontology?
On 5/19/2013 12:26 PM, Matthew West wrote:
Dear Hassan,
This is conflating two things:
a) Membership of a club to a sports federation, and of a player to a sports club
b) Whole-part.
I would argue that it is the membership relation that is not transitive, but that it is quite reasonable to create a mereological sum of the players of the clubs that are members of a sports club and of a sports federation, and that this is transitive.
I was referring to: (1) team is-part-of club and (2) club is-part-of federation - although (3) not every such clubs' team is-part-of federation. I was not referring to player is-member-of team - this is only incidental is the definition of a club being part of a federation if it has an all-professional team. Such a team would be part of a federation, but not the other non-pro teams on such a club. One could come up with another condition for a club to be part of a federation - say if it has at least one team that qualifies a being part of the federation (whatever the condition may be).
Regards
Matthew West
Information Junction
Tel: +44 1489 880185
Mobile: +44 750 3385279
Skype: dr.matthew.west
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This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England and Wales No. 6632177.
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Could you provide example of a nontransitive part relation
A sport team is part of a sport club. A club is part of a sport federation if it has at least one team all of whose members are professional players. So a sport team may be part of a club, but not part of a federation.