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Re: [ontolog-forum] Requesting Opinions on the Benefits of Predicates as

To: Mark H Linehan <mhl@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:08:55 -0500
Message-id: <6018B6F5-8B33-4AAA-9132-53B21ED8CCEA@xxxxxxx>

On Jun 13, 2014, at 8:18 PM, Mark H Linehan <mhl@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:    (01)

> Yes, I agree with what John says.
> 
> SBVR (the OMG "Semantics of Business Vocabulary and Rules" standard) comes
> at semantics, ontologies, and rules from the perspective of business users
> and business usage. It is defined using "SBVR Structured English", which is
> a form of Controlled Natural Language.      (02)

Oh dear.    (03)

> An important (but under-defined from
> a logician's point-of-view) concept in SBVR is "state of affairs", which is
> the class of instances of propositions.    (04)

That does not appear to make sense, as stated.     (05)

In my understanding of "proposition", propositions are not the kind of thing 
that can have instances. Can you expand on what you mean by 'instance of a 
proposition'? How does this idea relate to the similarly named 'instance of a 
class'?    (06)

>  So one can define "employment" as
> the state of affairs that a company employs a person,    (07)

Let me use CLIF notation here for a second. Do you mean     (08)

(employs C P)  for a particular C and P    (09)

or    (010)

(exists (C P)(employs C P))    (011)

or     (012)

(lambda (C P)(employs C P)), ie simply the relation employs    (013)

or     (014)

(that (employs C P))  ie the proposition that C employs P, for a particular C 
and P    (015)

or    (016)

(that (exists (C P)(employs C P)))  ie the propositionthat something employs 
someone    (017)

or maybe     (018)

(lambda (C P)(that (employs C P))) ie the function from two things to the 
proposition that the first employs the second     (019)

or...    (020)

Alternatively, can you give some kind of precise account (preferably stated 
using mathematical ideas) of what kind of structure counts as a proposition, an 
instance of a proposition, etc..    (021)


> and then one can
> define attributes of the "employment" concept -- i.e. attributes of the
> class of instances of any proposition    (022)

Attributes of the CLASS? Really? (Classes don't have many attributes, as a 
rule.) Or do you mean attributes of the instances of the class? (But then - see 
above - what *are* the instances of this class??)    (023)

> that uses "company employs person".
> 
> When Ed, I, and others defined a "Date-Time Vocabulary" for SBVR, one of the
> key requirements was to relate time to concepts such as "employment".  We
> used "state of affairs" for that.      (024)

Really? As nothing you have said so far even mentions temporal ideas, I wouild 
love to know more about how you did that. Pointer?    (025)

Pat Hayes    (026)


> We also mapped the key aspects of the
> Date-Time Vocabulary to Common Logic and IKL, using the "that" operator to
> express the relationship between propositions such as "company x employs
> person y" and attributes such as start date.
> 
> Net: the IKL "that" operator is key to addressing a requirement that arises
> in modeling real business vocabularies and rules.
> 
> Mark
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F Sowa
> Sent: Friday, June 13, 2014 4:10 PM
> To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Requesting Opinions on the Benefits of
> Predicates as Nodes
> 
> Jack and Mark,
> 
> I've been backing up through this rather lengthy thread, and I finally got
> to your two comments near the beginning:
> 
> JP
>> If I might add, I will assert that predicates as first class citizens 
>> is perhaps the only difference between an RDF graph and a topic map.
> 
> MHL
>> Consider the triple {CompanyX employs Person1} using a predicate 
>> called "employs".  The triple implicitly describes what an English 
>> speaker would conceptualize as an "employment", with attributes such 
>> as "start date", "end date", a location, etc.
> 
> Yes.  This is an important issue, and it's obscured by an unfortunate
> tendency of some logicians to call verbs predicates.
> 
> Peirce observed that when you say "Mary gave a child a book" there are four
> entities involved:  Mary, the child, the book, and the act of giving.  He
> allowed any or all of the four entities to have its own existential
> quantifier (or "line of identity").
> 
> About 70 years later, Donald Davidson rediscovered the advantages of
> assigning quantified variables to verbs -- for the same reasons that Jack
> and Mark cite.
> 
> For conceptual graphs, anything you might want to refer to or link to is
> represented by a concept node.  Anything you don't intend to refer to is
> represented by a relation node.  But you always have an option of analyzing
> any relation as a graph with more nodes that can be referred to or linked
> to.
> 
> For the KR ontology (http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/ ), the default mapping
> is to assign a concept node to every verb.  That node has an implicit
> quantifier, which represents the action or the state.
> 
> The idea of using the letters SVO to refer to the three parts of an RDF
> triple is more confusing than helpful.  I don't recommend it.
> 
> John
> 
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