Re: [ontology-summit] System Components

[Giancarlo Guizzardi <gguizzardi@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Now, regarding Ontology fo Systems:

One work which has not yet been mentioned here is the work of the philosopher Mario Bunge. Bunge wrote two books on Ontology, namely, Ontology I: The furniture of the world and Ontology II: A World of Systems. In the first one, he discusses basic issues such as Substance, Properties, Change, Laws, Mereological issues, State spaces, etc…In the second book, he applies much of the foundation layed out in the first book to work on an ontology of systems (physical, biological, social, …).

 

I certainly do not agree with all Bunge´s stuff (e.g., his mereological theory is certainly insufficient). However, it is an ontological work and one which is formally characterized. Moreover, Bunge´s work has been the foundation for Yair Wand and Ron Weber´s work named BWW, which was a pioneering work in ontological analysis and design of conceptual modeling grammars and methods. Moreover, Wand and Weber actually have used Bunge´s work to analyze system decomposition among other things.

 

By the way, I also disagree with aspects of BWW when it comes to using it as a foundation for conceptual modeling (and have written many papers addressing this). However, Bunge is adopted in my areas (including sociology) and BWW is very much adopted in schools of Information Systems (including Enterprise Modeling) – especially in North America and Australia. For this reason, I think they are definitely worth considering in this context.

 

Some useful references are:

 

http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~gibson/Teaching/CSC7302/ReadingMaterial/WandWeber90.pdf

 

http://purao.ist.psu.edu/532/Readings/WandWeber1990.pdf

 

http://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Basic-Philosophy-Ontology-Furniture/dp/9027707804

 

http://www.amazon.com/Treatise-Basic-Philosophy-Ontology-Systems/dp/9027709440

 

Best,

Giancarlo

 

PS: Yair is a co-chair of the IAOA SIG on Ontologies and Conceptual Modeling and I think it would be great to have him participating in future panels on the topic

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Giancarlo Guizzardi <gguizzardi@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi all,

Unfortunately, I could not reply sooner to this and could not read all the messages that the discussion

generated yet. So, I apologise if I missing something or repeating something here...

@Chris Partridge

 

I don´t get what you mean by stating that qua entities do not have identity. In the view of qua entities defended in the papers I mentioned earlier they do have a numerical identity separate from their bearers. They are existentially dependent and identificationally dependent as well but they do have a determinate separate identity.

 

@Anatoly:

 

>> But you should separate role of individual (role of Mr.Smith -- it can be whole

>> temporal part of individual that perform activities that associated with that role) and >> functional component of organization that will be filled with this role of individual >> when Mr.Smith is actually in his role.

 

Yes. Let´s take the prime minister of Italy

There is certainly the Role – Prime Minister of Italy characterized by a number of commitments and claims and defined in a certain normative description (the Italian Constitution). For me, this Role is a type (a universal if you like which is repeatable and which can be predicated into a number of individuals). Of course, this Role can itself change and have its own type-properties (second order properties). For instance, maximum number of years that one can instantiate (play) that role is a property of the type (not of the individuals instantiating that role) and which can change. These second order properties are of course not special of roles. Take for instance the maximal life span as a property of the Species Lion – again, a property of the type, not of individual lions…Of course, all this is not new…

 

Asides from the type, there is the person (in this case) instantiating that role, e.g., Berlusconi, which is an individual and, in my view, there is a complex of instantiated properties (tropes, moments, modes) which Berlusconi acquires by virtue of instantiating that role. The latter is what I call a qua entity (Berlusconi-qua-prime-minister-of-Italy). Alternatively, one can view Berlusconi-qua-prime-minister-of-Italy as an aspectual slice of Berlusconi. Of course now that (fortunately IMO) Berlusconi isn´t prime minister of Italy anymore, we have another individual instantiating that role (Mario Monti) and we can have another qua entity there as well.

 

Now, there seems to be yet another entity, the perspectile “Prime Minister of Italy” which is the concrete individual which is composed of all the qua entities of people which played that role. Perhaps the reason for doing that would be to avoid dealing with second order properties and still be able to attribute properties to the “Prime Minister of Italy”. I am not sure…(perhaps Nicola or Emmanuele can reply to this here).

 

Best,

Giancarlo  

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Chris Partridge <partridgec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Ali,

 

Not sure we are talking the same language.

Comments inline.

On 2 February 2012 16:19, Ali SH <asaegyn+out@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Dear Chris,

It is unclear to me what the issue is. 

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 4:58 AM, Chris Partridge <partridgec@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

 Pat,

It seems to me as if you are just playing with names here. If you want to
call it a pump *role*, that is fine. But that what you are describing seems
not to have the qualities that many people expect to be essential to roles.
These (like qua entities) do not have an individual identity and they do not
do things, they are not agents. Whereas, for example, spatio-temporal
entities come bundled with identity. What have I missed?

So the Hamlet example would better be  Jonathon Pryce's 1992 Hamlet. Or even
better if we use Chairman (President, Bishop or Monarch) , the difference
between Chairman and the Chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Are not roles social constructs? So their identity criteria are whatever one decides to associate with the role. So the definition for a generic Chairman would differ from Chairman of XYZ. 

CP> As I understand it roles/qua individuals have *no* identity criteria - not quite the same thing. 

Also, not clear to me why you cannot kick your roles - as, again, they are
spatio-temporal entities? When Ronnie Reagan was shot, people said they shot
the President of the US, didn't they? They did not say thank goodness they
only shot Mr Reagan - they could not shoot the President as he is a role.

As for the appeal to a natural language formulation "The president was shot" - is that not broadly similar to saying "Paul is angry." 

CP> Not to me. 

Both represent natural language shortcuts which efficiently communicate intention, but the latter certainly doesn't imply that Paul is literally an instance of angry.

 

CP> Do not see how this follows.

CP> BTW it does mean that Paul is in a state of being angry and that state is an instance of being angry.

 

Similarly, simply because we can say that the "president was shot" doesn't mean the role was shot, rather it seems to suggest that the spatio-temporal entity that was fulfilling the role at that particular point in time was shot. It seems a common human trait to associate the entity fulfilling a role with the role itself, though I don't see benefit in reading too deeply in this linguistic association.

CP> See Pat's suggestion that the role is also a spatio-temporal entity. 

 

Regards,
Chris

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontology-
> summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Pat Hayes

> Sent: 02 February 2012 02:32
> To: Matthew West
> Cc: Ontology Summit 2012 discussion
> Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] System Components
>

> Very good question, Matthew. Let me try out an idea on you. Your P101 is
> actually a role played by a pump, rather than a pump itself. Think of it
as
> being like Hamlet, as played by Lawrence Olivier (P101 as played by
S3556).
> You can change actors, and Hamlet is still Hamlet - same role - and while
> Olivier is playing the role, he *is* Hamlet, at least in a sense. But this
second
> "is" cannot be identity, since you can kick the actor, but you can't kick
a role.
>
> Both a pump and a pump-role are spatiotemporal entities, but they have
> different identity conditions. The identity of a pump, like any other
physical
> object, is determined by the disposition of pieces of material stuff
(metal,
> plastic, rubber), but the identity of  the role is determined by its
interfaces to
> the rest of the system (being connected to this pipe in this place and
> operated by this controller, etc..)
>
> You can identify a pump-phase (temporal slice) with a pump-role-phase, but
> you must not identify the actual individuals, so its safer to actually
have a
> relation of 'functioning as' of the like to attach a role-playing thing to
its role.
> Or, you can treat the role as a time-dependent property of the physical
thing,
> but you will probably need a CL-style ability to have properties of
properties
> if you go that (elegant) route.
>
> Make sense?
>
> Pat
>
>
>
> On Jan 29, 2012, at 3:48 AM, Matthew West wrote:
>
> > Dear Colleagues,
> >
> > Last Thursday I complained that most ontologies do not give adequate
> > treatment to what I call system components, and if ontology is going
> > to gain traction within the systems world, it needs to get a better
> > understanding of this central idea in systems engineering.
> >
> > I illustrated the issue by telling the (simplified) life story of a
> > system
> > component: the pump, P101, at the bottom of a distillation column.
> > Here is its story.
> >
> > The designer creates a drawing of the distillation column including at
> > the bottom of the column a pump to pump away the column bottoms. He
> > labels it P101, decides that one pump will be sufficient, and gives
> > the specification for the pump in terms of Net Positive Suction Head,
> > differential head, flow rate, materials of construction, and many other
> things.
> >
> > The construction engineer picks up the drawing and specification and
> > notices he has to install a pump as P101. Fortunately, he has a pump
> > in stock from a previous project, that has been in stores unused for 5
> > years which exactly meets the specification. On it is stamped Serial No
> S3556.
> >
> > The designer and the Operator comes to see the pump be installed, and
> > once the connections are made, he gives the pump a friendly kick and
> > says to the construction engineer "It's good to see P101 realized at
> > last". The construction engineer says in return "Yes, and it's good to
> > get S3556 off my hands at last." He turns to the operator and says
> > "Why don't we change your drawings to show S3556 instead of P101?" The
> > operator says "No, don't do that, it's a replaceable part, and one day
> > another pump will be put there, and I don't want to have to change all
> > the drawings and other documentation that refers to P101 each time it
> > is replaced, as far as I am concerned it's the same pump whatever is
> installed there."
> >
> > Some time later the pump breaks down and needs to be taken back to the
> > workshop. The maintenance engineer says to the operator "Hi, can I
> > take
> > S3556 installed as P101 back to the workshop?" The operator replies
> > "Sure, but what am I supposed to do without my P101? If it does not
> > exist I cannot operate my distillation column." The maintenance
> > engineer responds, "I understand. We have another pump S4567, that
> > meets the same specification as P101. We'll replace S3556 with it and
> > you will only be without P101 for a few hours. I don't understand how
> > you can continue to call it P101 though when all the parts have
> > changed at once." The operator replies "I don't care about that. What
> > I care about is what is connected in my system to pump the liquid from
> > the bottom of the column. As long as it does that, it is P101 to me."
> >
> > Later the distillation column is demolished. The operator says, "A sad
> > end, I was very fond of P101, but it is no more." The demolition
> > engineer says, "Yes indeed. Fortunately, we can take S4567 and use it on
> another plant."
> >
> > It's probably worth summarising the key characteristics of a system
> > component:
> > - It comes into existence the first time it is installed.
> > - It is identical to the equipment items installed, whilst they are
> > installed (but not before or after).
> > - It can survive complete replacement of all its parts at once.
> > - It can survive periods of non-existence.
> > - It ceases to exist when the system it is a component of ceases to
exist.
> >
> > This is clearly rather different from the life of ordinary physical
objects.
> > However, relatively few ontologies recognise that such things exist.
> > Many try to fob system components off as being classes, or abstract
> > individuals, though these clearly do not have the required
characteristics.
> >
> > Ontologists need to step up to the mark here and provide proper
> > recognition for system components.
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Matthew West
> > Information  Junction
> > Tel: +44 1489 880185
> > Mobile: +44 750 3385279
> > Skype: dr.matthew.west
> > matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
> > http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
> >
> > This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in
> > England and Wales No. 6632177.
> > Registered office: 2 Brookside, Meadow Way, Letchworth Garden City,
> > Hertfordshire, SG6 3JE.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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