Issue 14849: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs (sbvr-rtf) Source: Rule ML Initiative (Mr. John Hall, john.hall(at)modelsystems.co.uk) Nature: Uncategorized Issue Severity: Summary: 'Actuality' is a specialization of 'state of affairs'. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: Revised Text: Actions taken: December 9, 2009: received issue Discussion: See summary Dependencies with other Issue Resolutions Un-numbered Issue: Fact Type and Verb Concept should not be not synonyms This issue and the un-numbered issue "SBVR Linguistic Model and Fact Model are different models" together supersede "Fact Type and Verb Concept should not be not synonyms" Resolution: Change the definition of fact type to: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all states of affairs End of Annotations:===== sposition: Open OMG Issue No: nnnnn Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Discussion: See summary Dependencies with other Issue Resolutions Un-numbered Issue: Fact Type and Verb Concept should not be not synonyms This issue and the un-numbered issue .SBVR Linguistic Model and Fact Model are different models. together supersede .Fact Type and Verb Concept should not be not synonyms. Resolution: Change the definition of fact type to: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all states of affairs Revised Text: TBD Disposition: Open From: Don Baisley To: "'SBVR RTF' (sbvr-rtf@omg.org)" Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) Thread-Topic: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) Thread-Index: AcqT+CxYI7RJMchFQna9nPRBTPD0Jw== Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:29:03 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Here is a rule and a shorthand for its semantic formulation: A person must plan to test a change if he schedules that the change be applied. Obligation . For all p : person . . For all c : change . . . Implication . . . . (consequent) exists s1 : state of affairs with restriction: s1 is objectification of .tests.(p, c) . . . . . .plans.(p, s1) . . . . (antecedent) exists s2 : state of affairs with restriction: s2 is objectification of .is applied.(c) . . . . . .schedules.(p, s2) While many existentially quantified variables used for objectifications range over .actuality. (as in one of Ed.s examples), some range over .state of affairs., as in the example above, which refers to some states of affairs without regard to whether they are, have been, or ever will be actual. The rule refers to one state of affairs to consider whether it is scheduled, and if so, the rule.s obligation is satisfied only if another state of affairs is planned. If a state of affairs can exist only if it occurs (is actual), then the formulation above will not work, since a state of affairs couldn.t be scheduled unless it occurred and couldn.t be planned unless it occurred. If we change SBVR so that every state of affairs that exists also necessarily occurs, then I will have a difficult time figuring out how to translate linguistic logical forms (which use objectification heavily) into semantic formulations. Pardon me if I seem defensive. A lot of work (which I hope to resume) has gone into automating the translation of logical forms from natural language processors into semantic formulations. Best regards, Don Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:23:42 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "'SBVR RTF' (sbvr-rtf@omg.org)" Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: o0E1NlLF010807 X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-MailScanner-Watermark: 1264037029.86776@fdSZ0h7AyF75ghVSmVcC7Q X-Spam-Status: No Don Baisley wrote: Here is a rule and a shorthand for its semantic formulation: A person must plan to test a change if he schedules that the change be applied. Obligation . For all p : person . . For all c : change . . . Implication . . . . (consequent) exists s1 : state of affairs with restriction: s1 is objectification of .tests.(p, c) . . . . . .plans.(p, s1) . . . . (antecedent) exists s2 : state of affairs with restriction: s2 is objectification of .is applied.(c) . . . . . .schedules.(p, s2) This is an interesting example. I will first argue that this is a bad business rule, for more than one reason. The rule Don means is probably: When a person schedules the implementation of a (design) change, he must have tested the changed design. I make this change in order to expose the time aspect that was hidden in Don's phrasing, but clearly critical to the intent of the rule. It doesn't change the fact that the rule involves a state of affairs that is not an actuality. The formulation of the revised rule reads: Obligation . For all p : person . . For all c : change . . . For all s1 : state of affairs with restriction: s1 is objectification of .is applied.(c) . . . . For all s2: state of affairs with restriction: s2 is objectification of 'schedules'(p, s1) . . . . . Implication . . . . . . (consequent) . . . . . . . (conjunction) . . . . . . . . (conjunction) . . . . . . . . . exists s3: state of affairs with restriction: s3 is objectification of .tests.(p, c) . . . . . . . . . exists t3: timepoint with restriction 'occurs at'(s3, t3) . . . . . . . . 'is before'(t3, t2) . . . . . . (antecedent) . . . . . . . exists t2: timepoint with restriction: 'occurs at'(s2, t2) That is, for any person p and any change c and any state s2 in which the application of c is scheduled, If there is a time t2 at which s2 occurs, then there must be a state s3 in which c is tested and the time at which s3 occurs must be before t2. Note that this rule does not require the existence of a state s1 or a state s2. It says, if there is an instance/actuality of state s2, then there must be an instance/actuality of state s3. Now the critical point: It is not clear to me that an instance of state s2 requires an instance of state s1. As I said earlier, Terry's notion of "objectification" produces an individual noun concept that may correspond to a thing (an actuality). I think s1 is that concept. Don's clause 9.2.7 "objectification formulation" works like a noun concept formulation; it uses the individual concept of the state (as represented by the formulation of the proposition) to refer to its extent -- the actuality, if any. 'Person schedules state of affairs' seems to work exactly that way. The person is using the individual concept of the state to refer to the thing that will be the actuality of that state at some future time. We can distinguish two things here: a thing that is a 'scheduled change' and a thing that is a 'change application'. The 'scheduled change' is the assignment of a (conceptual) 'change application' to a future time. The scheduled change can exist long before the change application exists. Put another way, the verb 'schedules' takes a direct object that is a concept of a state, not a state. The proposition formulation 'c is applied' represents the concept and denotes the instance (which is what SBVR says about designations); so our English usage is always ambiguous in this area. Don believes that the verb 'schedules' takes a direct object that is a state of affairs; and that is precisely the nature of our semantic disagreement. My view is that a state of affairs concept remains conceptual until denotes an actuality at a time at which it is instantiated in the business reality. Businesses manipulate conceptual things as often as they manipulate real things, and they are used to blurring the distinction. And that blurring is a consequence of the linguistic behavior we document: the term designates the concept and denotes its instances. It may be that we would need another construct in clause 9 to deal with verbs like "schedules", but it is not clear that we do. We have other troubles with speech act verbs and locutional force, and I am loth to mess with logical formulations that add semantics to propositions. For similar reasons, I don't think there is a problem using 'schedules' as a verb with an objectification as the operand. It is the semantics of 'schedules' and 'plans', not the semantics of objectification that is at stake. If you want to separate state of affairs from "actuality", SBVR has to consider "actuality" to be a relationship between states of affairs and time, and that is not what the current model does. While many existentially quantified variables used for objectifications range over .actuality. (as in one of Ed.s examples), some range over .state of affairs., as in the example above, which refers to some states of affairs without regard to whether they are, have been, or ever will be actual. Note that my reformulation of the above never uses 'exists' to quantify a state of affairs that isn't actual. It only uses 'for all' to quantify states of affairs that may not be actual. And that is why I reformulated the rule. That is an important difference. 'For all' is commonly used to quantify variables that may not be satisfied, i.e. concepts that may not currently have instances. The rule refers to one state of affairs to consider whether it is scheduled, and if so, the rule.s obligation is satisfied only if another state of affairs is planned. Yes, but that means there is a required relationship between actualities of the state that is the scheduling and actualities of the state that is the planning. It is not clear that there is a requirement for instantiation of the conceptual state that is scheduled, or the conceptual state that is planned. (That is about the sense of those verbs.) If a state of affairs can exist only if it occurs (is actual), then the formulation above will not work, since a state of affairs couldn.t be scheduled unless it occurred and couldn.t be planned unless it occurred. Exactly. But the conceptual state of affairs can be scheduled without requiring an instantiation. Put another way, the things you 'schedule' are instances of a concept type. That is what I originally thought 'state of affairs' should become. But that change probably does more violence to the standard, and to common usage (as Don points out in his references), than is necessary to resolve the issue. I fully agree that it is appropriate to separate the concept type from the type of the things that are actualities. I am just not sure we want to use 'state of affairs' to designate the concept type. And I didn't see any examples of use of 'state of affairs' that were clearly examples of the concept type. But Don's example using 'schedules' and 'plans' seems to create the need for the concept type. I think we both agree that the instances of a fact type are actualities (occurrences of states of affairs), not instances of a 'state of affairs concept type'. Scheduled occurrences are not instances of the fact type (yet). If we change SBVR so that every state of affairs that exists also necessarily occurs, then I will have a difficult time figuring out how to translate linguistic logical forms (which use objectification heavily) into semantic formulations. It seems to me that Don already has trouble in this area. The trick is to distinguish the few cases in which the verb manipulates the concept instead of the instances. The examples to which the team agreed -- the ones in the standard -- do not have this problem. Pardon me if I seem defensive. A lot of work (which I hope to resume) has gone into automating the translation of logical forms from natural language processors into semantic formulations. Well, Don, what can I say? A lot of work doesn't translate to getting every design element right. I think this is an occurrence of a violation of Einstein's razor: We must strive to make everything as simple as it is, but no simpler. But the underlying problem for me is that I can't reconcile 'state of affairs', 'actuality' and 'exists', as they are currently used in SBVR, and in consequence, I can't construct a consistent formal logic semantics for SBVR. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "'SBVR RTF' (sbvr-rtf@omg.org)" Subject: RE: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) Thread-Topic: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) Thread-Index: AcqT+CxYI7RJMchFQna9nPRBTPD0JwImiYfQ Date: Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:44:03 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: I would like to go back to the original issue 14849 because I think the matter is cleared up easily. The issue notes that SBVR defines that instances of fact types are all actualities (.actuality. specializes .state of affairs.). The issue then says: There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: states of affairs that are planned to become actualities states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. The issue shows the need for being able to refer to states of affairs that are not actual. Here is a simple example: Pam plans to fly. This statement can be true, even if Pam does not fly. There is an instance of .person plans state of affairs. which is an actuality and that actuality involves a state of affairs (Pam flies) in its .state of affairs. role. The .plans. actuality involves the .flies. state of affairs regardless of whether the .flies. state of affairs is actual or not. Just in case someone is tempted to take my .plans. example and chop it up into some kind of temporal soup, making it much more complicated than necessary simply because plans tend to be about the future, I submit a similar example that should remove the temporal temptation. There are many similar verb concepts in natural language that involve states of affairs. Pam wants to fly. Clearly, we can have an actuality that Pam wants to fly even if Pam does not fly. There is an instance of .person wants state of affairs. which is an actuality. That actuality involves a state of affairs (Pam flies) in its .state of affairs. role. The .wants. actuality involves the .flies. state of affairs regardless of whether the .flies. state of affairs is actual or not. The issue statement presumes that for the example above to work, the state of affairs that Pam flies needs to be an instance of the .person flies. fact type. But that is not correct. It is sufficient that the state of affairs that Pam flies corresponds to a proposition that is formulated using the .person flies. fact type. This gives a reference scheme for the state of affairs. In the same sense, the instances of .flyers. (defined as .people that fly.) would include Pam only if she actually flies, regardless of whether she wants to fly. A separate concept, .want-to-be flyers., would include Pam. Similarly, a separate fact type, .person wants to fly., would have the actuality that .Pam wants to fly. as an instance, but .wants. and .flies. are orthogonal concepts, so combining them into one fact type is unlikely in a business glossary, but would be likely when planning an information system that keeps track of people that want to fly. This issue should be resolved with no change to the SBVR document and with an explanation that an actuality can involve a state of affairs that is not an actuality. Past discussion of this issue has gone off the deep end. Here are some key points: 1. SBVR defines .thing. as .anything perceivable or conceivable.. Things don.t need to be actual in order to exist. States of affairs are such things . they can be conceivable without being actual. 2. The idea that a state of affairs cannot exist in a .world. where it is not actual is nonsense. The state of affairs clearly does exist in worlds where an actuality involves it in a role. 3. There seems to be arguments in the fields of philosophy and metaphysics about the abstractness of .state of affairs.: is it a concept? Is it a proposition? Is it something like a concept? There is not an agreement. SBVR does not need to enter into those arguments. 4. Some people have recently expressed that they don.t like .actuality. specializing .state of affairs., but there is no logical reason that the concept .state of affairs. cannot be segmented into those that are actual and those that are not. Reassigning the signifier .actuality. to some new concept that does not specialize .state of affairs. would be a radical departure from SBVR v1 and is out of scope for this issue. 5. SBVR.s use of .state of affairs. in semantic formulations aligns with mainstream linguistics. Let.s not screw that up. Regards, Don PS The rule I gave as an example in the email below seems to have been a good example for showing a capability that SBVR has now and that is jeopardized by a recent proposal. The rule might not be an ideal rule from a rule methodology standpoint, but it demonstrated a capability that must not be lost. The rule refers to states of affairs as things that exist, even though they have not occurred. A state of affairs can be like the day after tomorrow. It can exist even though it has not occurred. From: Don Baisley [mailto:Don.Baisley@microsoft.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2010 6:29 PM To: 'SBVR RTF' (sbvr-rtf@omg.org) Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) Here is a rule and a shorthand for its semantic formulation: A person must plan to test a change if he schedules that the change be applied. Obligation . For all p : person . . For all c : change . . . Implication . . . . (consequent) exists s1 : state of affairs with restriction: s1 is objectification of .tests.(p, c) . . . . . .plans.(p, s1) . . . . (antecedent) exists s2 : state of affairs with restriction: s2 is objectification of .is applied.(c) . . . . . .schedules.(p, s2) While many existentially quantified variables used for objectifications range over .actuality. (as in one of Ed.s examples), some range over .state of affairs., as in the example above, which refers to some states of affairs without regard to whether they are, have been, or ever will be actual. The rule refers to one state of affairs to consider whether it is scheduled, and if so, the rule.s obligation is satisfied only if another state of affairs is planned. If a state of affairs can exist only if it occurs (is actual), then the formulation above will not work, since a state of affairs couldn.t be scheduled unless it occurred and couldn.t be planned unless it occurred. If we change SBVR so that every state of affairs that exists also necessarily occurs, then I will have a difficult time figuring out how to translate linguistic logical forms (which use objectification heavily) into semantic formulations. Pardon me if I seem defensive. A lot of work (which I hope to resume) has gone into automating the translation of logical forms from natural language processors into semantic formulations. Best regards, Don From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Thread-Topic: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Thread-Index: AQHKkM9Ne3PFgI1SX0iZa8yTuJL4IJGNwKoAgAOM4YD//+CMsA== Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:49:10 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id o0C3hNP0010370 Ed wrote: > Once we start talking about relationships between states of affairs and time (particularly future time), > the "world" described the UoD is no longer instantaneous, and the intuitive meaning of "actuality" is > restricted to "now", while a thing that is a state of affairs must "exist" if it is to satisfy 'state of affairs > will occur tomorrow'. This is a case where 'actuality' and 'state of affairs' are clearly different. SBVR's concept of 'state of affairs' is consistent with quite a bit of material, including linguistics books I've used, and material on the Web. The idea of a state of affairs being "actual" is often indicated using the verb "obtains" or the verb "holds". A search on the Web for "state of affairs obtains" and/or "state of affairs that obtains" shows some interesting results, such as the one below. I don't propose this as authoritative. I just give it as one example among many that can be found. http://books.google.com/books?id=TiPuxIvjkIwC&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=%22state+of+affairs%22+obtains&source=bl&ots=zZmZm3Zwi3&sig=0DjTTB0X0MqUDsyh6amzi8QcSVg&hl=en&ei=G9RLS7DCMJHYsgPBpoygCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CB8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=%22state%20of%20affairs%22%20obtains&f=false (scroll back a little to "1. States of Affairs, Propositions, and Facts". This section talks about states of affairs as things that either obtain or do not obtain. Also, it gives three different definitions of "fact". The first matches SBVR's "actuality", and in the terms used in the article, it is a "state of affairs that obtains". The third is similar to SBVR's "fact". I am concerned that if we change 'state of affairs' to mean 'actuality', we will no longer have a way to formulate (using semantic formulations) some propositions, such as rule using adverbs like "infrequently" (note the meaning of an adverb is often a characteristic with a role that ranges over 'state of affairs'). If a state of affairs must be actual in order to refer to it, I fear that we will no longer be able to create a semantic formulation for a rule that requires a certain state of affairs to be actual within a certain time period that is not necessarily the present time. Books and papers I have read on mapping from linguistics to logic have relied on the idea that a state of affairs might or might not "obtain" (be actual). If we are going to abandon that approach in SBVR, we need to first prove that we have another approach that works for the variety of propositions that SBVR must support. Before SBVR's adoption, back in the days of the BRT, a lot of testing of mapping real business rules to semantic formulations went into verifying the completeness of SBVR's semantic formulations. I don't have time to do that testing again. So I assume that those who intend to change the meaning of "state of affairs" also plan to demonstrate that rules and other propositions involving adverbs, tense, future, cause/effect, before/after, "plans to", "is scheduled to" and the like can still be formulated. If the proposed change is going forward, there is a need for a test plan and test review. Best regards, Don Subject: RE: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 08:39:26 +0100 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Thread-Index: AQHKkM9Ne3PFgI1SX0iZa8yTuJL4IJGMyv7A From: "Markus Schacher" To: "Barkmeyer, Edward J." , X-OriginalArrivalTime: 09 Jan 2010 07:39:27.0714 (UTC) FILETIME=[DF5F5420:01CA90FE] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id o097XoQK001881 Ed, This resolution does not astonish me at all - it makes a lot of sense to me. However, I have one remaining (series of) question(s): if state of affairs is an instance of a fact type, what is a fact? Is it a synonym of a state of afairs or what is the relationship between state of affairs and facts? Is a fact an atomic state of affairs, i.e. a state of affairs that is an instance of a proposition that is based on a single fact type? Best regards, Markus -----Original Message----- From: Barkmeyer, Edward J. [mailto:edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov] Sent: Samstag, 9. Januar 2010 02:59 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Happy New Year to the SBVR team and other lurkers! By agreement of the December meeting, I have drafted a resolution to Issue 14849 (by John Hall). I attach the draft in Word and PDF. While I insisted at the meeting that state of affairs is an individual concept, you will see that the draft resolution puts that statement in perspective. Don Baisley was quite right that it is inappropriate to make 'state of affairs' a concept type. I expect that the proposed resolution will astonish many; in fact it surprised me. But I believe the proposed explanation does a lot to undo the confusion around this issue, and makes very minimal change to the specification. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Office: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Mobile: +1 240-672-5800 Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-KeepSent: 55BFF198:C81E498A-852576A6:0046C885; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.0.2 HF623 January 16, 2009 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2010 08:17:26 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP1|November 13, 2008) at 01/09/2010 08:17:30 Ed, I like the idea that "For every state of affairs that can be conceived, there is a corresponding individual concept that is the conceptualization of that state of affairs." However, why not say that "actuality" is the case where that individual concept has an instance in a particular possible world? Wouldn't that fit better into the way we've always understood the relationship between "state of affairs" and "actuality"? Editing issue: * I think that if you follow the editing instructions closely, you discover that the text will end up with two headings numbered 8.6.2. This is because the editing instructions insert a new 8.6.2 but fail to delete the old one. * Instruction 5b should say that it inserts THREE paragraphs. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:30:27 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: o0BJUWMf012023 X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-MailScanner-Watermark: 1263843032.82231@2kIf34mdw18V/vETEsxG0A X-Spam-Status: No Mark H Linehan wrote: I like the idea that "For every state of affairs that can be conceived, there is a corresponding individual concept that is the conceptualization of that state of affairs." However, why not say that "actuality" is the case where that individual concept has an instance in a particular possible world? Wouldn't that fit better into the way we've always understood the relationship between "state of affairs" and "actuality"? The (general) term 'state of affairs' denotes the things that are instances of those individual concepts in the world in question. The (general) term 'actuality' denotes the same ones. The point of the proposed issue resolution is that the category of 'thing' that is called 'state of affairs' and the category of 'thing' that is called 'actuality' are the same category. Any 'thing' that satisfies either of them satisfies the other. The terms are synonyms. Are you saying that 'actuality' is the term that should be preferred for a particular instance, the image of a particular proposition, as opposed to the general concept? (In clause 9.2.7, there is an example of a variable ranging over 'actuality', as the general concept, and another example of a variable ranging over a fact-type, and thus taking on values which are 'actualities' per 8.1.1. I didn't see any reason to change these occurrences.) As I hinted in the proposed resolution, however, the fact types that relate states of affairs to date/time concepts may call into question the meaning of 'actuality'. In most business situations, the decision being taken views the current instantaneous state of the world (as perceived) as the world described by the universe of discourse, and views the situation at any other time as a different "world" (a different state of the world). In an instantaneous "world", the concept "actuality" is easily understood, and its relationship to "exists" is well-defined. Once we start talking about relationships between states of affairs and time (particularly future time), the "world" described the UoD is no longer instantaneous, and the intuitive meaning of "actuality" is restricted to "now", while a thing that is a state of affairs must "exist" if it is to satisfy 'state of affairs will occur tomorrow'. This is what gives rise to the continuant/occurrent temporal model or the "4D" temporal model in upper ontologies. In both models, "exists in the UoD" has nothing to do with "occurs" or "actuality". There are no "actualities" -- there are only "situations" that are related to time by 'state of affairs occurs in time period' or something the like. Note also that in temporal models, 'proposition is true at time' and 'proposition is true' are different ideas, and the relationship between Necessity and time, as distinct from possible worlds, must be explained. IMO, SBVR has to decide whether it uses an instantaneous model of occurrence or a temporal model of occurrence. If it uses an instantaneous model, 'state of affairs formally exists' means 'state of affairs is actual in this world', and thus 'actuality' and 'state of affairs' are the same thing. If SBVR uses some temporal model of occurrence, the term 'actuality' only has meaning with respect to a time frame -- it is not a category of 'thing', it is a fact type role. And in temporal models, 'state of affairs formally exists' has nothing to do with 'actuality'. If SBVR prefers to be silent on this choice, it should never use the term 'actuality'. The resolution as written assumes an instantaneous model, because it seems to me that SBVR does. Editing issue: * I think that if you follow the editing instructions closely, you discover that the text will end up with two headings numbered 8.6.2. This is because the editing instructions insert a new 8.6.2 but fail to delete the old one. Well, yes, we should note that inserting the new 8.6.1 will renumber the existing 8.6.x headings. I will add that note. * Instruction 5b should say that it inserts THREE paragraphs. Oops. Yup. I have made a "d3" version with these changes, but I see no need to send it out until we have agreed on text. thanks, -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-KeepSent: CAC7F593:791104A5-852576A9:004F1BB3; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.0.2 HF623 January 16, 2009 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:56:43 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP1|November 13, 2008) at 01/12/2010 09:56:42, Serialize complete at 01/12/2010 09:56:42 Ed, I think it is a very big change -- and probably a mistake -- to say that "state of affairs" and "actuality" have the same extension and are synonyms. As for this being a big change -- the first note under "state of affairs" in 8.6 makes clear the existing distinction between "state of affairs" and "actuality". Specifically, the sentences "A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities." And the note under "actualities" says "Actualities are states of affairs that actually happen, as distinct from states of affairs that don't happen but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned." This distinction between states of affairs and actualities is very important -- a distinction that I don't think we should discard. As for this being a mistake -- we need to be able to define terms and write rules about states of affairs that may or may not ever actually exist. Taking the example from the book that Don referenced in his email, we need to be able to write a rule such as "if the Eiffel Tower is in London ....". You say that "The (general) term 'state of affairs' denotes the things that are instances of those individual concepts **in the world in question**" (emphasis added). But note that one doesn't necessarily give a "world in question" when mentioning a state of affairs. Often, the "world in question" is identified by the presence of some state of affairs. For example "When Ed is king ...." identifies a world with respect to when the proposition "Ed is king" holds. I think the existing 8.6 definitions of "state of affairs" and "actuality" work well for temporal models. Consider the proposition "the meeting happens at 4pm today". The proposition corresponds to a state of affairs. Once the given time is reached, we find out whether the state of affairs "the meeting happens at 4pm today" actually occurs or not. If the meeting did happen, then the state of affairs is an actuality, otherwise it is not. I believe the existing SBVR model is not so much "instantaneous" as "atemporal". SBVR says nothing about time because SBVR's main concern is about conditional or hypothetical possible worlds, independent of when they may exist. Consider the second example under "state of affairs": "Each rental must have at most three additional drivers." This rule applies for all time. Given a date-time vocabulary, the rule could be limited to some period of time by adding a temporal clause, for example by something like "From now on, each rental must have at most three additional drivers", in which case it would only apply for the time period starting now and extending into the future. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Ed Barkmeyer 01/11/2010 02:30 PM Please respond to edbark@nist.gov To Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS cc "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Mark H Linehan wrote: > I like the idea that "For every state of affairs that can be conceived, there is a corresponding individual concept that is the conceptualization of that state of affairs." However, why not say that "actuality" is the case where that individual concept has an instance in a particular possible world? Wouldn't that fit better into the way we've always understood the relationship between "state of affairs" and "actuality"? > The (general) term 'state of affairs' denotes the things that are instances of those individual concepts in the world in question. The (general) term 'actuality' denotes the same ones. The point of the proposed issue resolution is that the category of 'thing' that is called 'state of affairs' and the category of 'thing' that is called 'actuality' are the same category. Any 'thing' that satisfies either of them satisfies the other. The terms are synonyms. Are you saying that 'actuality' is the term that should be preferred for a particular instance, the image of a particular proposition, as opposed to the general concept? (In clause 9.2.7, there is an example of a variable ranging over 'actuality', as the general concept, and another example of a variable ranging over a fact-type, and thus taking on values which are 'actualities' per 8.1.1. I didn't see any reason to change these occurrences.) As I hinted in the proposed resolution, however, the fact types that relate states of affairs to date/time concepts may call into question the meaning of 'actuality'. In most business situations, the decision being taken views the current instantaneous state of the world (as perceived) as the world described by the universe of discourse, and views the situation at any other time as a different "world" (a different state of the world). In an instantaneous "world", the concept "actuality" is easily understood, and its relationship to "exists" is well-defined. Once we start talking about relationships between states of affairs and time (particularly future time), the "world" described the UoD is no longer instantaneous, and the intuitive meaning of "actuality" is restricted to "now", while a thing that is a state of affairs must "exist" if it is to satisfy 'state of affairs will occur tomorrow'. This is what gives rise to the continuant/occurrent temporal model or the "4D" temporal model in upper ontologies. In both models, "exists in the UoD" has nothing to do with "occurs" or "actuality". There are no "actualities" -- there are only "situations" that are related to time by 'state of affairs occurs in time period' or something the like. Note also that in temporal models, 'proposition is true at time' and 'proposition is true' are different ideas, and the relationship between Necessity and time, as distinct from possible worlds, must be explained. IMO, SBVR has to decide whether it uses an instantaneous model of occurrence or a temporal model of occurrence. If it uses an instantaneous model, 'state of affairs formally exists' means 'state of affairs is actual in this world', and thus 'actuality' and 'state of affairs' are the same thing. If SBVR uses some temporal model of occurrence, the term 'actuality' only has meaning with respect to a time frame -- it is not a category of 'thing', it is a fact type role. And in temporal models, 'state of affairs formally exists' has nothing to do with 'actuality'. If SBVR prefers to be silent on this choice, it should never use the term 'actuality'. The resolution as written assumes an instantaneous model, because it seems to me that SBVR does. > Editing issue: > > * I think that if you follow the editing instructions closely, you discover that the text will end up with two headings numbered 8.6.2. This is because the editing instructions insert a new 8.6.2 but fail to delete the old one. > Well, yes, we should note that inserting the new 8.6.1 will renumber the existing 8.6.x headings. I will add that note. > * Instruction 5b should say that it inserts THREE paragraphs. > Oops. Yup. I have made a "d3" version with these changes, but I see no need to send it out until we have agreed on text. thanks, -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:48:52 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: o0D0mv7N011896 X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-MailScanner-Watermark: 1263948542.40535@o/xZOMeuk5UDXaou9XBErQ X-Spam-Status: No Don Baisley wrote: Ed wrote: Once we start talking about relationships between states of affairs and time (particularly future time), the "world" described the UoD is no longer instantaneous, and the intuitive meaning of "actuality" is restricted to "now", while a thing that is a state of affairs must "exist" if it is to satisfy 'state of affairs will occur tomorrow'. This is a case where 'actuality' and 'state of affairs' are clearly different. Yes. And in this case, the SBVR definition of "actuality" is completely meaningless. At what time is "actuality" judged? SBVR's concept of 'state of affairs' is consistent with quite a bit of material, including linguistics books I've used, and material on the Web. The idea of a state of affairs being "actual" is often indicated using the verb "obtains" or the verb "holds". A search on the Web for "state of affairs obtains" and/or "state of affairs that obtains" shows some interesting results, such as the one below. I don't propose this as authoritative. I just give it as one example among many that can be found. Yes. The conventional references define a fact type "state of affairs holds in time period". If you want "state of affairs holds" instantaneously, then you don't talk about time periods -- this world is now. The problem is not the definition of "state of affairs"; the problem is the definition of "actuality". If I write the rule in 9.2.7, "The accounts of major customers are reviewed at headquarters", the fact type of interest is "state of affairs occurs at location", and the formalization is: for each state of affairs s that is an instance of 'account of major customer is reviewed', s occurs at headquarters. Now what is the set of referents of "s"? All the states of affairs of that kind that "exist". Now, I assumed that the ones that exist are those that actually occur -- the actualities. The reviews that don't occur don't occur at headquarters! (If they do, you have a contradiction in your terms.) The issue is whether "occurs" equals "exists" for states of affairs. It is possible to construct a logical model in which they are equal, and it appears to me that what is written in SBVR is consistent with that model. It is also possible to construct some other model, but then the concept "actuality" is a role of a 'state of affairs' in the 'occurs' fact type. I am concerned that if we change 'state of affairs' to mean 'actuality', we will no longer have a way to formulate (using semantic formulations) some propositions, such as rule using adverbs like "infrequently" (note the meaning of an adverb is often a characteristic with a role that ranges over 'state of affairs'). State of affairs doesn't "mean" actuality. It denotes actualities. Don thinks 'state of affairs' can denote a thing that is not an actuality as well, but then it denotes a state that exists but is not actual. Can we also have a customer that exists but is not actual? If the bus has to stop at every bus stop, does it have to stop at planned bus stops that aren't actual? If a state of affairs must be actual in order to refer to it, I fear that we will no longer be able to create a semantic formulation for a rule that requires a certain state of affairs to be actual within a certain time period that is not necessarily the present time. There is no requirement for a state of affairs to exist (be actual) in order to refer to it. Per SBVR, you refer to it by a proposition. It is not a requirement that the proposition actually denotes any instance in a given world. Whether there is an actuality or not, the proposition characterizes an individual concept that is a subtype of 'state of affairs'. The problem is that "actuality" doesn't mean anything when you start talking about time periods in your reference world. If the world has multiple time periods, "now" is a designation for some of them. And "actuality" is a relationship between a state of affairs and a time period. We also have to be able to write rules like: If the claimant was insured at the time of the accident, then the policy provisions in effect at that time apply to the accident. In that situation, the 'actuality' of interest was at some time other than 'now', but it is necessary that the state of affairs 'claimant is insured' was an "actuality" then, not just a conceptual state. So SBVR can't get this right by creating states of affairs that aren't actualities. Books and papers I have read on mapping from linguistics to logic have relied on the idea that a state of affairs might or might not "obtain" (be actual). Of course. Now, if Don had also read anything about temporal ontologies, he would realize that the issue is how the ontology treats time. "Actual" is meaningful in instantaneous models. Another time is another world. The extension of 'customer' also varies over time. So you can't talk about 'states of affairs' that are not 'actual' without being able to talk about 'customers' that are not 'actual' or bus stops that are not 'actual'! That is the problem. I have phrased the issue all along as the problem of relating "actuality" to "existence in the UoD". SBVR is not clear as to which ontological commitment it makes in this area. The traditional database model is instantaneous -- databases don't show what the situation was or will be; they only show what the situation is now. Compliments of the DAMA background of many BRG contributors, SBVR assumes the instantaneous model and the "possible worlds" model. In that model, every state of affairs is characterized by a row that is actually in the table -- there are no others. You can have a table of 'planned bus stops' or 'past customers', but that is different from 'bus stop' and 'customer', and it won't be visited when you query 'bus stops' or 'customers'. The state of affairs that "George is a past customer" can be actual when the state of affairs "that George is a customer" is not. If we move to temporal models, the concept "actuality" isn't a noun concept; it is a fact-type that relates a state to a time! (And in most temporal databases, it is a "meta-fact-type" that attaches to every assertion that is not a necessity.) If we are going to abandon that approach in SBVR, we need to first prove that we have another approach that works for the variety of propositions that SBVR must support. Well, the amazing thing is that the change I proposed doesn't affect any example in the specification, nor does it affect the meaning or formulation of any example! Whatever else you may think the specification says or requires, no part of it clearly makes any such requirement, or exhibits any need for one. IMO, the proposed change gets consistency of the specification by discarding a concept that is supported only by opinion/theology, and not required for any feature of the specification. But then I am known to be an infidel. Before SBVR's adoption, back in the days of the BRT, a lot of testing of mapping real business rules to semantic formulations went into verifying the completeness of SBVR's semantic formulations. Yup. And no example that requires non-actual states of affairs to exist has made it into the specification. So instead of repeating all that testing, why don't we find the example that proves that actuality must be a proper subtype of state of affairs? I think I can find a number of examples that make actuality a fact-type, such as the one above, and SBVR as formulated would have no problem supporting that. I don't have time to do that testing again. So I assume that those who intend to change the meaning of "state of affairs" also plan to demonstrate that rules and other propositions involving adverbs, tense, future, cause/effect, before/after, "plans to", "is scheduled to" and the like can still be formulated. No one is changing the meaning of state of affairs. But Don makes a point. I don't have a problem with the idea of a past actuality, or a future actuality, or a possible actuality, but apparently Don does. So, in order for SBVR to make sense to people like Don, we need to eliminate the term 'actuality' altogether. Consider "the accounts of major customers are reviewed at headquarters". That rule about the state of affairs "that a major customer account is reviewed" is independent of time. It applies whenever the state of affairs exists. It applies to any thing that is an instance of that concept, not just to the ones that are "actual" now. But the rule only applies when that thing is actual, i.e., to a world in which that state of affairs "exists" = "is an actuality". So if we talk about existence instead of actuality, all is well. We can in fact support all of the kinds of propositions Don mentions with SBVR as is, and we don't need "actuality", we only need "exists" and temporal concepts (a la the Date/Time project). "Actuality" is a relationship to time, and we should model relationships to time properly, not crudely. If everyone agrees, we can delete the term "actuality" entirely, and replace all (proper) occurrences of 'actuality' with 'state of affairs'. That will be a more significant edit, but it will eliminate the confusion, and remove any prejudices for the date/time work. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." To: SBVR-FTF Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-KeepSent: B1A7389E:9A19CE40-852576AA:00631F26; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.0.2 HF623 January 16, 2009 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2010 13:54:48 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP1|November 13, 2008) at 01/13/2010 13:54:50, Serialize complete at 01/13/2010 13:54:50 So now we have a proposal that "actuality" be dropped as a concept, rather than made a synonym with "state of affairs". Looking through the specification, I can see "actual" (or some variant) is very widely used throughout the document. A lot of other concepts depend upon "actuality". So I don't think we can or should drop "actuality". I agree with Ed that "actuality" is a relationship between a "state of affairs" and a "time period" -- specifically, it is about whether the state of affairs "holds" during the time period. And that is a problem for SBVR because SBVR does not formalize "time period". SBVR avoids this problem by its (self-referential) definition of "actuality" as "state of affairs that occurs in the actual world". My preference would be to leave this alone in the SBVR specification and perhaps let the date-time vocabulary redefine "actuality" with respect to time periods. This would require no change to the SBVR specification. I think we should refocus the discussion on the original issue, which is that the specification says that instances of fact types are actualities -- while many of us think that the instances of fact types are states of affairs. One way to think about this issue is to ask the question "what things are contained in the extension of fact types?" There are two possible answers, depending upon how one thinks about the question: 1. An instance of a fact type requires binding each fact type role to some thing that exists. You can't have an instance of a fact type without a real thing to bind to each role. But if you have a real thing for each role, then the fact type instance must be an actuality. This implies that instances of fact types are actualities. 2. An instance of a fact type requires binding each fact type role to a quantified variable that represents zero or more things. For example, the proposition "all people are human" binds a characteristic " is human" to a universal quantification over the concept "person". Per SBVR, this proposition corresponds to a state of affairs that "all person are human" -- regardless of how many people there are. The proposition corresponds to a state of affairs even if there are zero people! Notice that in #2, whether the state of affairs is an actuality does not depend upon whether there are any people. Instead, it depends upon how one defines "person". For example if in some possible world the term "person" includes "corporate persons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate) then not all persons are human and the state of affairs would not be an actuality. And (following Ed's point in another note), the proposition "all people are human" would not be a "fact". I prefer interpretation #2. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Ed Barkmeyer 01/12/2010 07:48 PM Please respond to edbark@nist.gov To Don Baisley cc "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Don Baisley wrote: > Ed wrote: > >> Once we start talking about relationships between states of affairs and time (particularly future time), >> the "world" described the UoD is no longer instantaneous, and the intuitive meaning of "actuality" is >> restricted to "now", while a thing that is a state of affairs must "exist" if it is to satisfy 'state of affairs >> will occur tomorrow'. >> > > This is a case where 'actuality' and 'state of affairs' are clearly different. > Yes. And in this case, the SBVR definition of "actuality" is completely meaningless. At what time is "actuality" judged? > SBVR's concept of 'state of affairs' is consistent with quite a bit of material, including linguistics books I've used, and material on the Web. The idea of a state of affairs being "actual" is often indicated using the verb "obtains" or the verb "holds". A search on the Web for "state of affairs obtains" and/or "state of affairs that obtains" shows some interesting results, such as the one below. I don't propose this as authoritative. I just give it as one example among many that can be found. > Yes. The conventional references define a fact type "state of affairs holds in time period". If you want "state of affairs holds" instantaneously, then you don't talk about time periods -- this world is now. The problem is not the definition of "state of affairs"; the problem is the definition of "actuality". If I write the rule in 9.2.7, "The accounts of major customers are reviewed at headquarters", the fact type of interest is "state of affairs occurs at location", and the formalization is: for each state of affairs s that is an instance of 'account of major customer is reviewed', s occurs at headquarters. Now what is the set of referents of "s"? All the states of affairs of that kind that "exist". Now, I assumed that the ones that exist are those that actually occur -- the actualities. The reviews that don't occur don't occur at headquarters! (If they do, you have a contradiction in your terms.) The issue is whether "occurs" equals "exists" for states of affairs. It is possible to construct a logical model in which they are equal, and it appears to me that what is written in SBVR is consistent with that model. It is also possible to construct some other model, but then the concept "actuality" is a role of a 'state of affairs' in the 'occurs' fact type. > I am concerned that if we change 'state of affairs' to mean 'actuality', we will no longer have a way to formulate (using semantic formulations) some propositions, such as rule using adverbs like "infrequently" (note the meaning of an adverb is often a characteristic with a role that ranges over 'state of affairs'). State of affairs doesn't "mean" actuality. It denotes actualities. Don thinks 'state of affairs' can denote a thing that is not an actuality as well, but then it denotes a state that exists but is not actual. Can we also have a customer that exists but is not actual? If the bus has to stop at every bus stop, does it have to stop at planned bus stops that aren't actual? > If a state of affairs must be actual in order to refer to it, I fear that we will no longer be able to create a semantic formulation for a rule that requires a certain state of affairs to be actual within a certain time period that is not necessarily the present time. There is no requirement for a state of affairs to exist (be actual) in order to refer to it. Per SBVR, you refer to it by a proposition. It is not a requirement that the proposition actually denotes any instance in a given world. Whether there is an actuality or not, the proposition characterizes an individual concept that is a subtype of 'state of affairs'. The problem is that "actuality" doesn't mean anything when you start talking about time periods in your reference world. If the world has multiple time periods, "now" is a designation for some of them. And "actuality" is a relationship between a state of affairs and a time period. We also have to be able to write rules like: If the claimant was insured at the time of the accident, then the policy provisions in effect at that time apply to the accident. In that situation, the 'actuality' of interest was at some time other than 'now', but it is necessary that the state of affairs 'claimant is insured' was an "actuality" then, not just a conceptual state. So SBVR can't get this right by creating states of affairs that aren't actualities. > Books and papers I have read on mapping from linguistics to logic have relied on the idea that a state of affairs might or might not "obtain" (be actual). Of course. Now, if Don had also read anything about temporal ontologies, he would realize that the issue is how the ontology treats time. "Actual" is meaningful in instantaneous models. Another time is another world. The extension of 'customer' also varies over time. So you can't talk about 'states of affairs' that are not 'actual' without being able to talk about 'customers' that are not 'actual' or bus stops that are not 'actual'! That is the problem. I have phrased the issue all along as the problem of relating "actuality" to "existence in the UoD". SBVR is not clear as to which ontological commitment it makes in this area. The traditional database model is instantaneous -- databases don't show what the situation was or will be; they only show what the situation is now. Compliments of the DAMA background of many BRG contributors, SBVR assumes the instantaneous model and the "possible worlds" model. In that model, every state of affairs is characterized by a row that is actually in the table -- there are no others. You can have a table of 'planned bus stops' or 'past customers', but that is different from 'bus stop' and 'customer', and it won't be visited when you query 'bus stops' or 'customers'. The state of affairs that "George is a past customer" can be actual when the state of affairs "that George is a customer" is not. If we move to temporal models, the concept "actuality" isn't a noun concept; it is a fact-type that relates a state to a time! (And in most temporal databases, it is a "meta-fact-type" that attaches to every assertion that is not a necessity.) > If we are going to abandon that approach in SBVR, we need to first prove that we have another approach that works for the variety of propositions that SBVR must support. Well, the amazing thing is that the change I proposed doesn't affect any example in the specification, nor does it affect the meaning or formulation of any example! Whatever else you may think the specification says or requires, no part of it clearly makes any such requirement, or exhibits any need for one. IMO, the proposed change gets consistency of the specification by discarding a concept that is supported only by opinion/theology, and not required for any feature of the specification. But then I am known to be an infidel. > Before SBVR's adoption, back in the days of the BRT, a lot of testing of mapping real business rules to semantic formulations went into verifying the completeness of SBVR's semantic formulations. Yup. And no example that requires non-actual states of affairs to exist has made it into the specification. So instead of repeating all that testing, why don't we find the example that proves that actuality must be a proper subtype of state of affairs? I think I can find a number of examples that make actuality a fact-type, such as the one above, and SBVR as formulated would have no problem supporting that. > I don't have time to do that testing again. So I assume that those who intend to change the meaning of "state of affairs" also plan to demonstrate that rules and other propositions involving adverbs, tense, future, cause/effect, before/after, "plans to", "is scheduled to" and the like can still be formulated. > No one is changing the meaning of state of affairs. But Don makes a point. I don't have a problem with the idea of a past actuality, or a future actuality, or a possible actuality, but apparently Don does. So, in order for SBVR to make sense to people like Don, we need to eliminate the term 'actuality' altogether. Consider "the accounts of major customers are reviewed at headquarters". That rule about the state of affairs "that a major customer account is reviewed" is independent of time. It applies whenever the state of affairs exists. It applies to any thing that is an instance of that concept, not just to the ones that are "actual" now. But the rule only applies when that thing is actual, i.e., to a world in which that state of affairs "exists" = "is an actuality". So if we talk about existence instead of actuality, all is well. We can in fact support all of the kinds of propositions Don mentions with SBVR as is, and we don't need "actuality", we only need "exists" and temporal concepts (a la the Date/Time project). "Actuality" is a relationship to time, and we should model relationships to time properly, not crudely. If everyone agrees, we can delete the term "actuality" entirely, and replace all (proper) occurrences of 'actuality' with 'state of affairs'. That will be a more significant edit, but it will eliminate the confusion, and remove any prejudices for the date/time work. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:29:20 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: SBVR-FTF Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: o0EITPma026121 X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-MailScanner-Watermark: 1264098567.21234@2RVt9W658fs5o0qWh6/BRA X-Spam-Status: No Mark wrote: So now we have a proposal that "actuality" be dropped as a concept, rather than made a synonym with "state of affairs". Looking through the specification, I can see "actual" (or some variant) is very widely used throughout the document. A lot of other concepts depend upon "actuality". So I don't think we can or should drop "actuality". Yes. I was trying to resolve the confusion by equating the terms, because they are both widely used. I agree with Ed that "actuality" is a relationship between a "state of affairs" and a "time period" -- specifically, it is about whether the state of affairs "holds" during the time period. And that is a problem for SBVR because SBVR does not formalize "time period". SBVR avoids this problem by its (self-referential) definition of "actuality" as "state of affairs that occurs in the actual world". My preference would be to leave this alone in the SBVR specification and perhaps let the date-time vocabulary redefine "actuality" with respect to time periods. This would require no change to the SBVR specification. I agree. I think we should refocus the discussion on the original issue, which is that the specification says that instances of fact types are actualities -- while many of us think that the instances of fact types are states of affairs. One way to think about this issue is to ask the question "what things are contained in the extension of fact types?" There are two possible answers, depending upon how one thinks about the question: The first rule, which does not depend on how one thinks about the extension of a fact type, is that the extension of any concept is a set of 'things' that exist in the current world. The set may be empty. 1. An instance of a fact type requires binding each fact type role to some thing that exists. You can't have an instance of a fact type without a real thing to bind to each role. But if you have a real thing for each role, then the fact type instance must be an actuality. This implies that instances of fact types are actualities. Strictly speaking, this is not true. One can bind real things to roles of a fact type and thereby produce a meaning (a conceptual state) that does not correspond to an actuality. E.g., Mark Linehan is president of the United States. All of the things involved are real in this world, but the proposition is false, and there is no corresponding actuality. 2. An instance of a fact type requires binding each fact type role to a quantified variable that represents zero or more things. For example, the proposition "all people are human" binds a characteristic " is human" to a universal quantification over the concept "person". This is a confusion. The proposition "For all p: person, 'is human' (person)" is not an "atomic proposition" (as Markus called it). It involves only one fact type, but it does not only involve that fact type. It also involves a quantification. "Mark Linehan is human" is an 'atomic proposition' and its actuality is an instance of the 'person is human' fact type. The state that 'all people are human' is an actuality that is not an instance of the 'person is human' fact type. Carefully stated, the 'person is human' fact type has a single free variable -- a fact type role: person. The proposition 'all persons are human' does not substitute a 'thing' for the role variable; instead it quantifies the role variable. Per SBVR, this proposition corresponds to a state of affairs that "all person are human" -- regardless of how many people there are. The proposition corresponds to a state of affairs even if there are zero people! In fact, it corresponds to an actuality when there are zero persons. A mathematician would say it is "satisfied vacuously" -- there are no counterexamples, so you can't deny it. Put another way, 'all persons are human' can be stated as an implication: If there exists a thing p and p is a person, then p is human. If there are no persons in the domain of discourse, then the antecedent is false. If follows that in that case the proposition must be true, because (FALSE implies p) is TRUE for any proposition p. Notice that in #2, whether the state of affairs is an actuality does not depend upon whether there are any people. Instead, it depends upon how one defines "person". For example if in some possible world the term "person" includes "corporate persons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate) then not all persons are human and the state of affairs would not be an actuality. And (following Ed's point in another note), the proposition "all people are human" would not be a "fact". All of this is correct, but even when 'all persons are human' is taken to be true, it is not an instance of 'person is human'. So this is regrettably beside the point. I prefer interpretation #2. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:01:35 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: SBVR RTF Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: o0EJ1efe029755 X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-MailScanner-Watermark: 1264100502.01652@VPoSEzrWvekL8pAYxXf72w X-Spam-Status: No For the record, my position is that there are two concepts here: 1) "conceptual state" -- a concept type whose instances are the individual concepts of states/actions that are characterized by propositions, regardless of whether they are true or false in various "worlds". 2) "actuality" -- a specialization of 'thing' whose instances are the instances of the individual concepts that are instances of "conceptual state", that is, the 'things' that are states or actions that actually exist in the current world. A proposition that is true in a given world corresponds to an actuality in that world. It follows that every instance of 'conceptual state' is a specialization of 'actuality'. The relationship between a (instance of) 'conceptual state' and a (instance of) 'actuality' is 'meaning corresponds to thing'. (This is what I said in the meeting.) In the adopted SBVR, only the "actuality" concept is clearly described, and it relates actuality to a world, rather than to a time. The 'state of affairs' concept in SBVR is a muddle of the 'conceptual state' concept, and it has the wrong relationship to 'actuality'. It is not a more general concept, and trying to make it a more general concept calls into question what its instances are, how to define "exists" for its instances in such a way as to make the definition consistent with "exists" for actualities, and how they relate to fact types. But, as used in the examples in the SBVR specification, in both clause 8 and clause 9, 'state of affairs' is equivalent to 'actuality'. If we change the relationship of 'state of affairs' to 'actuality', we can resolve the exists problem and the instances of fact types problem, but we can't use 'state of affairs' in the way it is used in examples in clause 8 and clause 9, and probably not as used in the date/time proposal, and who knows what else by now. It is not necessary to introduce the conceptual state concept or the relationships to time, in order for SBVR to make sense as written. But Don is right: SBVR as written does not support tenses or statements about planning or scheduling. It is not clear to me that SBVR v1 should try to address these concepts, especially since there is a date/time project whose objective is to add them. If we want to introduce the conceptual state concept (in order to enable statements about planning), then it is not clear that we want to call that concept 'state of affairs', because 'state of affairs' is used in the specification, in the date/time proposal, and in several implementations as a synonym for actuality (even if the authors don't realize that). That is my position. I have done what I promised the RTF. Mark directed a couple of minor editorial changes. I don't see any other proposed resolution. One possibility is that we resolve 14849 as Closed: No change, with the resolution: We mean actualities, because we all understand that, and we disagree on what states of affairs are, so we won't change the text to make them instances of fact types. Someone else can write that one. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:53:53 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: o0ELrxKR016077 X-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-MailScanner-Watermark: 1264110839.92476@l3ILZGrFzGaC3pIH+M4Dnw X-Spam-Status: No Mark H Linehan wrote: I think it is a very big change -- and probably a mistake -- to say that "state of affairs" and "actuality" have the same extension and are synonyms. It would be, if there were any difference in the way the specification uses the terms, or in the meaning that it clearly assigns to them in those usages. As for this being a big change -- the first note under "state of affairs" in 8.6 makes clear the existing distinction between "state of affairs" and "actuality". Specifically, the sentences "A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities." And the note under "actualities" says "Actualities are states of affairs that actually happen, as distinct from states of affairs that don't happen but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned." This distinction between states of affairs and actualities is very important -- a distinction that I don't think we should discard. I agree. But every example of use of 'state of affairs' in the specification relies on the existence of actualities, not conceptual situations, to instantiate the concept. Now "subjects of discourse that can be imagined" are 'concepts', but the definition doesn't say that 'state of affairs' is a concept type. Moreover, that text says 'actuality' is a specialization of 'state of affairs'. That is, the existence of an imaginary situation and the existence of a real situation are the same notion of existence. And that is nonsense! That discussion uses "happens", so as not to say "exists". With respect to states, "happens" and "exists" must be the same notion. If "happens" and "exists" are not the same notion, all the examples of objectification in 9.2.7 are broken, because they rely on logical quantification. If the specification means to distinguish 'state of affairs' from 'actuality', it must do so: 'actuality' cannot be a specialization of 'state of affairs', and the term 'actuality' must be substituted for 'state of affairs' in every example in the specification! As for this being a mistake -- we need to be able to define terms and write rules about states of affairs that may or may not ever actually exist. Taking the example from the book that Don referenced in his email, we need to be able to write a rule such as "if the Eiffel Tower is in London ....". Yes. We can refer to the _concept_ of the Eiffel Tower being in London without its having an instance. "All unicorns in the US" is a similar concept. We don't need to add some weird 'state of affairs' concept to cover either case. You say that "The (general) term 'state of affairs' denotes the things that are instances of those individual concepts **in the world in question**" (emphasis added). But note that one doesn't necessarily give a "world in question" when mentioning a state of affairs. We don't usually mention the world in referring to any concept, but the chosen world -- usually the Now -- is critical to the notion 'exists' and the notion 'instance of concept'. The world we are talking about determines the extension of 'customer' as well as the extension of 'actuality'. Often, the "world in question" is identified by the presence of some state of affairs. For example "When Ed is king ...." identifies a world with respect to when the proposition "Ed is king" holds. Yes. That is, when "Ed is king" is an actuality, or equivalently when the concept "Ed is king" has an instance. I think the existing 8.6 definitions of "state of affairs" and "actuality" work well for temporal models. Consider the proposition "the meeting happens at 4pm today". The proposition corresponds to a state of affairs. It refers to an instance of the concept 'meeting'. Does that instance exist in the Now world? I think it does, as a calendar item, but not as a gathering of persons in physical space. Those are two different notions of 'meeting'. And I would point out that the calendar item does not morph into the actual gathering of persons at 4:00. The existence of the calendar item and the existence of the gathering are entirely separate "existences". The gathering of persons at 4:00 is not an instance of 'calendar item'. Once the given time is reached, we find out whether the state of affairs "the meeting happens at 4pm today" actually occurs or not. If the meeting did happen, then the state of affairs is an actuality, otherwise it is not. So the proposition isn't true in the Now when you state it? "The meeting will happen at 4:00" is false? I disagree. The proposition is true when it is stated, and it corresponds to the actuality that is the existence of the calendar item. It just doesn't correspond to the existence of the gathering. This is a trick of business language in dealing with things like schedules. We use the same term to refer to a schedule item and also to the event to which the schedule item refers. But as 'things' go, those are cheese and chalk. The event is not a specialization of 'schedule item', and it is not a change of state of the schedule item. The event is the referent of the schedule item. (This semantic confusion is a fallacy that has a specific term in semiotics (which I have lost). It means confusing the sign with the thing it denotes. A picture of a man digging a hole is not a man digging a hole, and a schedule item for a meeting is not a meeting.) If we want to use 'state of affairs' to refer to concepts like 'schedule item', that's fine, but 'actuality' is not a specialization of that concept. And, relative to the issue at hand (14849), no one would make the mistake of thinking that a schedule item is an instance of a fact type. (My position is that a schedule item is a conceptualization of the actuality. The 'state of affairs' is the concept, the 'actuality' is the referent -- the instance.) I believe the existing SBVR model is not so much "instantaneous" as "atemporal". SBVR says nothing about time because SBVR's main concern is about conditional or hypothetical possible worlds, independent of when they may exist. That is fair. I can agree. But the concern is that "the world at a different time" is a different world. The extension of any concept you use may be different in that world. Whether "there exists an X" may depend on the world. Consider the second example under "state of affairs": "Each rental must have at most three additional drivers." This rule applies for all time. Given a date-time vocabulary, the rule could be limited to some period of time by adding a temporal clause, for example by something like "From now on, each rental must have at most three additional drivers", in which case it would only apply for the time period starting now and extending into the future. Yes. But when you explicitly bring future worlds or past worlds or hypothetical worlds into the universe of discourse for this world, you have to be very careful to qualify your references to extensions, actualities and existences. "S exists in world W" is not the logic concept "S exists". A 'concept' exists across all worlds. In that way, it is like a Necessity. (A logician would call it a "non-discourse item" - a semantic element that is not a thing in a universe of discourse, but it can be reified in any universe of discourse: any world.) The concept of a state exists when the state itself does not. The concept of a meeting at 4:00 can exist at 2:00, but the meeting doesn't. It should be clear by now that the individual concept is the model of 'state of affairs' that I think is consistent with Don's intended usages, but it is not consistent with the usages of 'state of affairs' in SBVR v1.0, or in the Date/time proposal. What I proposed is the quick RTF fix. SBVR doesn't actually use the 'conceptual state' concept anywhere, even if Don intended to. The existing uses of 'state of affairs' mean the definition given for 'actuality'. So I proposed to make them synonyms. Any other fix requires us to define two (or more) terms for two concepts: actual situations and conceptual situations and align all occurrences in the existing text with those terms. (They will all use one of the terms for actual situations.) I was originally going to change the definition of 'state of affairs' to mean conceptual situation, until I realized that that would require changing every occurrence of 'state of affairs' to 'actuality'! -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-KeepSent: 5460FB1E:CDA9F17A-852576B3:004BB182; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.0.2 HF623 January 16, 2009 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 08:52:21 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP1|November 13, 2008) at 01/22/2010 08:52:17, Serialize complete at 01/22/2010 08:52:17 (Sorry, I've been busy for the past week and haven't had time to continue this discussion until now.) I agree with what Ed says below, and I appreciate his patient instruction. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Ed Barkmeyer 01/14/2010 01:29 PM Please respond to edbark@nist.gov To Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS cc SBVR-FTF Subject Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Mark wrote: > So now we have a proposal that "actuality" be dropped as a concept, rather than made a synonym with "state of affairs". Looking through the specification, I can see "actual" (or some variant) is very widely used throughout the document. A lot of other concepts depend upon "actuality". So I don't think we can or should drop "actuality". > Yes. I was trying to resolve the confusion by equating the terms, because they are both widely used. > I agree with Ed that "actuality" is a relationship between a "state of affairs" and a "time period" -- specifically, it is about whether the state of affairs "holds" during the time period. And that is a problem for SBVR because SBVR does not formalize "time period". SBVR avoids this problem by its (self-referential) definition of "actuality" as "state of affairs that occurs in the actual world". My preference would be to leave this alone in the SBVR specification and perhaps let the date-time vocabulary redefine "actuality" with respect to time periods. This would require no change to the SBVR specification. > I agree. > I think we should refocus the discussion on the original issue, which is that the specification says that instances of fact types are actualities -- while many of us think that the instances of fact types are states of affairs. One way to think about this issue is to ask the question "what things are contained in the extension of fact types?" There are two possible answers, depending upon how one thinks about the question: > The first rule, which does not depend on how one thinks about the extension of a fact type, is that the extension of any concept is a set of 'things' that exist in the current world. The set may be empty. > 1. An instance of a fact type requires binding each fact type role to some thing that exists. You can't have an instance of a fact type without a real thing to bind to each role. But if you have a real thing for each role, then the fact type instance must be an actuality. This implies that instances of fact types are actualities. > Strictly speaking, this is not true. One can bind real things to roles of a fact type and thereby produce a meaning (a conceptual state) that does not correspond to an actuality. E.g., Mark Linehan is president of the United States. All of the things involved are real in this world, but the proposition is false, and there is no corresponding actuality. > 2. An instance of a fact type requires binding each fact type role to a quantified variable that represents zero or more things. For example, the proposition "all people are human" binds a characteristic " is human" to a universal quantification over the concept "person". This is a confusion. The proposition "For all p: person, 'is human' (person)" is not an "atomic proposition" (as Markus called it). It involves only one fact type, but it does not only involve that fact type. It also involves a quantification. "Mark Linehan is human" is an 'atomic proposition' and its actuality is an instance of the 'person is human' fact type. The state that 'all people are human' is an actuality that is not an instance of the 'person is human' fact type. Carefully stated, the 'person is human' fact type has a single free variable -- a fact type role: person. The proposition 'all persons are human' does not substitute a 'thing' for the role variable; instead it quantifies the role variable. > Per SBVR, this proposition corresponds to a state of affairs that "all person are human" -- regardless of how many people there are. The proposition corresponds to a state of affairs even if there are zero people! > In fact, it corresponds to an actuality when there are zero persons. A mathematician would say it is "satisfied vacuously" -- there are no counterexamples, so you can't deny it. Put another way, 'all persons are human' can be stated as an implication: If there exists a thing p and p is a person, then p is human. If there are no persons in the domain of discourse, then the antecedent is false. If follows that in that case the proposition must be true, because (FALSE implies p) is TRUE for any proposition p. > Notice that in #2, whether the state of affairs is an actuality does not depend upon whether there are any people. Instead, it depends upon how one defines "person". For example if in some possible world the term "person" includes "corporate persons" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood_debate) then not all persons are human and the state of affairs would not be an actuality. And (following Ed's point in another note), the proposition "all people are human" would not be a "fact". > All of this is correct, but even when 'all persons are human' is taken to be true, it is not an instance of 'person is human'. So this is regrettably beside the point. > I prefer interpretation #2. > -------------------------------- > Mark H. Linehan > STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation > IBM Research > -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution X-KeepSent: 60A9A3A4:3E26FC94-852576B3:005024C6; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.0.2 HF623 January 16, 2009 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:02:19 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP1|November 13, 2008) at 01/22/2010 10:02:15, Serialize complete at 01/22/2010 10:02:15 Ed, Your summary is pretty complex, so I drew a UML diagram to try to capture it. My UML drawing tool forces some compromises with the diagram symbols, since there is no way to show an instance that is also a concept (e.g. an individual concept that is an instance of 'conceptual state'). So I labelled each relationship with a note that explains the nature of the relationship. It seems to me that there is a "subset relationship" between the instances of 'conceptual state' and the instances of 'actuality'. I put a note about "subset relationship" in the diagram and marked it with my name since Ed did not mention it. By "subset relationship" I mean that the extension of 'actuality' (i.e. the set of instances of 'actuality') is a subset of the extension of 'conceptual state'. I did not understand these points in Ed's mail, so I marked them with question marks: 1. The idea that each instance of the concept 'conceptual state' is a specialization of the concept 'actuality'. I can't square this with the idea that instances of 'actuality' are also instances of the instances of 'conceptual state'. 2. The idea that there is a "meaning corresponds to thing" relationship between the instances of 'conceptual state' and the instances of 'actuality'. From previous email, I think what Ed means is that this relationship exists between *propositions* about the instances of 'conceptual state' and the instances of 'actuality'. I'm wondering if adding the concept 'proposition' to this diagram -- and the relationships between 'proposition' and 'conceptual state' and 'actuality' -- would clarify some of this. This could also bring 'fact' into the diagram. I'm also wondering if what SBVR means (or tries to mean) by 'state of affairs' is what is called "instance of 'conceptual state'" in Ed's note and in this diagram. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Ed Barkmeyer 01/14/2010 02:01 PM Please respond to edbark@nist.gov To SBVR RTF cc Subject Re: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution For the record, my position is that there are two concepts here: 1) "conceptual state" -- a concept type whose instances are the individual concepts of states/actions that are characterized by propositions, regardless of whether they are true or false in various "worlds". 2) "actuality" -- a specialization of 'thing' whose instances are the instances of the individual concepts that are instances of "conceptual state", that is, the 'things' that are states or actions that actually exist in the current world. A proposition that is true in a given world corresponds to an actuality in that world. It follows that every instance of 'conceptual state' is a specialization of 'actuality'. The relationship between a (instance of) 'conceptual state' and a (instance of) 'actuality' is 'meaning corresponds to thing'. (This is what I said in the meeting.) In the adopted SBVR, only the "actuality" concept is clearly described, and it relates actuality to a world, rather than to a time. The 'state of affairs' concept in SBVR is a muddle of the 'conceptual state' concept, and it has the wrong relationship to 'actuality'. It is not a more general concept, and trying to make it a more general concept calls into question what its instances are, how to define "exists" for its instances in such a way as to make the definition consistent with "exists" for actualities, and how they relate to fact types. But, as used in the examples in the SBVR specification, in both clause 8 and clause 9, 'state of affairs' is equivalent to 'actuality'. If we change the relationship of 'state of affairs' to 'actuality', we can resolve the exists problem and the instances of fact types problem, but we can't use 'state of affairs' in the way it is used in examples in clause 8 and clause 9, and probably not as used in the date/time proposal, and who knows what else by now. It is not necessary to introduce the conceptual state concept or the relationships to time, in order for SBVR to make sense as written. But Don is right: SBVR as written does not support tenses or statements about planning or scheduling. It is not clear to me that SBVR v1 should try to address these concepts, especially since there is a date/time project whose objective is to add them. If we want to introduce the conceptual state concept (in order to enable statements about planning), then it is not clear that we want to call that concept 'state of affairs', because 'state of affairs' is used in the specification, in the date/time proposal, and in several implementations as a synonym for actuality (even if the authors don't realize that). That is my position. I have done what I promised the RTF. Mark directed a couple of minor editorial changes. I don't see any other proposed resolution. One possibility is that we resolve 14849 as Closed: No change, with the resolution: We mean actualities, because we all understand that, and we disagree on what states of affairs are, so we won't change the text to make them instances of fact types. Someone else can write that one. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: "Barkmeyer, Edward J." To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 20:58:56 -0500 Subject: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Thread-Topic: Issue 14849 (fact type instance is state of affairs) -- proposed resolution Thread-Index: AQHKkM9Ne3PFgI1SX0iZa8yTuJL4IA== Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: acceptlanguage: en-US X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Happy New Year to the SBVR team and other lurkers! By agreement of the December meeting, I have drafted a resolution to Issue 14849 (by John Hall). I attach the draft in Word and PDF. While I insisted at the meeting that state of affairs is an individual concept, you will see that the draft resolution puts that statement in perspective. Don Baisley was quite right that it is inappropriate to make 'state of affairs' a concept type. I expect that the proposed resolution will astonish many; in fact it surprised me. But I believe the proposed explanation does a lot to undo the confusion around this issue, and makes very minimal change to the specification. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Office: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Mobile: +1 240-672-5800 Issue-14849-d2.doc Issue-14849-d2.pdf Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:41:11 -0500 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Markus Schacher CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: What is a fact? (was: Re: Issue 14849 ...) X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Markus, you wrote: This resolution does not astonish me at all - it makes a lot of sense to me. Good. This has been a confusing issue for some time. However, I have one remaining (series of) question(s): if state of affairs is an instance of a fact type, what is a fact? Is it a synonym of a state of afairs or what is the relationship between state of affairs and facts? This is a separate issue. (I thought it had been resolved, but if not, we could include it under 14849, I suppose.) Per Terry Halpin, the whole idea of a 'state of affairs' is to be a thing that is not a meaning and that can correspond to a meaning in much the same way that the actual "things of the business" can. 'Fact' cannot be a synonym for 'state of affairs', because the instances of 'fact' are meanings: 'fact' is defined to be a specialization of 'proposition', namely, "proposition that is taken to be true". So a 'fact' is a 'proposition' that 'corresponds to' a 'state of affairs', using the SBVR fact type: 'meaning corresponds to thing'. That is, it is a proposition that describes a state of affairs that actually exists in that world. Several years ago, Antoine Lonjon said: "A fact is the relationship between an actuality and a fact type". That is, it is a conceptualization of an actuality as an instance of a "general model" of states of affairs that we call a "fact type". This is analogous to the notion that a designation is the relationship between an expression and a concept. A fact is an interpretation of an actuality, in much the same way that a designation is an interpretation of an expression. The same actuality can be an instance of more than one fact type, e.g., in the minds of different witnesses, and thus correspond to more than one fact. This is precisely the situation that morale-builder guys exploit when they say things like "where one person sees a problem another sees an opportunity". It is also the kind of situation that leads to a need for rule precedence and policy priorities -- when the same situation is perceived as two different facts that satisfy the antecedents of two diverse (or even contradictory) rules. The only occurrences of states of affairs in SBVR "data sets" are the images of propositions and the instances of specific fact types. That is because SBVR itself is really about capturing and manipulating meanings. We can only talk about states of affairs in terms of perceptions of them. But business reality works the other way -- actualities exist/occur; business persons perceive them and act on the perceptions. Is a fact an atomic state of affairs, i.e. a state of affairs that is an instance of a proposition that is based on a single fact type? Markus' characterization here is very close to Antoine's above. But Markus is saying that a fact is a 'state of affairs', whereas SBVR says a fact is a 'proposition'. Markus' idea of an 'atomic proposition' is interesting. In general, the relationship between a proposition and a _named_ fact type is "one to many" -- a proposition can involve multiple fact types, using logical connectives. But many propositions are "atomic", in the sense that they can be represented entirely by an SBVR "atomic formulation", substituting constants (things) for the roles in a single fact type. I don't think we intend 'fact' to be restricted in this way. And that means that Antoine's characterization above is not quite accurate. Antoine did not intend that a 'fact' is the relationship between an actuality and a proposition; he correctly intended that a fact is a relationship to a more general concept of situations -- a fact type. But to make that work, one must understand 'generalized fact type' as "model for a class of propositions". If one distinguishes the intended roles in a proposition, one can always construct a fact type whose roles are the intended roles and whose definition is the proposition with free variables substituted for all occurrences of the intended roles. And in that way, every proposition can be said to be an atomic formulation -- the proposition is derived from exactly one fact type by filling its roles with things. But such a fact type rarely has a 'designation'. Rather, it has the "definition used as designation" property, e.g., "person swims but does not dive", "man is married to woman1 and has a child by woman2 and woman1 is not the same as woman2". We actually often use "generalized fact types" like these in describing business situations. The term 'fact type' in SBVR appears to be restricted to the ones that have designations -- the ones that will actually appear in a business vocabulary. But the term 'fact' is not restricted to "atomic propositions". -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: What is a fact? (was: Re: Issue 14849 ...) X-KeepSent: 2E1440D9:C5145CFD-852576A9:005AB6BD; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.0.2 HF623 January 16, 2009 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:07:44 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP1|November 13, 2008) at 01/12/2010 12:07:43, Serialize complete at 01/12/2010 12:07:43 Ed, This was the subject of a considerable discussion at the last RTF before you arrived. But it was not resolved. I like what you say -- I think it fits better into SBVR as it currently exists than other interpretations. It would be nice if the relationship "state of affairs corresponds to meaning" were shown in figure 8.9 and explained under "state of affairs". I like what you say about facts and would like to see the relationship among facts, fact types, actualities, and propositions more clearly described in the specification. One minor point: you say that the relationship between propositions and fact types is 1:N because a proposition can be composed of atomic formulations that are based on multiple fact types. I think the relationship is N:M because multiple propositions can be composed from atomic formulations that are based on multiple fact types. For example, here are two propositions based on the same two fact types "advance rental is assigned" and "rental requests car model": * Rental 123 is assigned and requests Ford * Rental 123 is not assigned and requests Ford -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Edward Barkmeyer 01/11/2010 12:41 PM Please respond to edbark@nist.gov To Markus Schacher cc "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject What is a fact? (was: Re: Issue 14849 ...) Markus, you wrote: > This resolution does not astonish me at all - it makes a lot of sense to > me. Good. This has been a confusing issue for some time. > However, I have one remaining (series of) question(s): if state of > affairs is an instance of a fact type, what is a fact? Is it a synonym > of a state of afairs or what is the relationship between state of > affairs and facts? This is a separate issue. (I thought it had been resolved, but if not, we could include it under 14849, I suppose.) Per Terry Halpin, the whole idea of a 'state of affairs' is to be a thing that is not a meaning and that can correspond to a meaning in much the same way that the actual "things of the business" can. 'Fact' cannot be a synonym for 'state of affairs', because the instances of 'fact' are meanings: 'fact' is defined to be a specialization of 'proposition', namely, "proposition that is taken to be true". So a 'fact' is a 'proposition' that 'corresponds to' a 'state of affairs', using the SBVR fact type: 'meaning corresponds to thing'. That is, it is a proposition that describes a state of affairs that actually exists in that world. Several years ago, Antoine Lonjon said: "A fact is the relationship between an actuality and a fact type". That is, it is a conceptualization of an actuality as an instance of a "general model" of states of affairs that we call a "fact type". This is analogous to the notion that a designation is the relationship between an expression and a concept. A fact is an interpretation of an actuality, in much the same way that a designation is an interpretation of an expression. The same actuality can be an instance of more than one fact type, e.g., in the minds of different witnesses, and thus correspond to more than one fact. This is precisely the situation that morale-builder guys exploit when they say things like "where one person sees a problem another sees an opportunity". It is also the kind of situation that leads to a need for rule precedence and policy priorities -- when the same situation is perceived as two different facts that satisfy the antecedents of two diverse (or even contradictory) rules. The only occurrences of states of affairs in SBVR "data sets" are the images of propositions and the instances of specific fact types. That is because SBVR itself is really about capturing and manipulating meanings. We can only talk about states of affairs in terms of perceptions of them. But business reality works the other way -- actualities exist/occur; business persons perceive them and act on the perceptions. > Is a fact an atomic state of affairs, i.e. a state of > affairs that is an instance of a proposition that is based on a single > fact type? > Markus' characterization here is very close to Antoine's above. But Markus is saying that a fact is a 'state of affairs', whereas SBVR says a fact is a 'proposition'. Markus' idea of an 'atomic proposition' is interesting. In general, the relationship between a proposition and a _named_ fact type is "one to many" -- a proposition can involve multiple fact types, using logical connectives. But many propositions are "atomic", in the sense that they can be represented entirely by an SBVR "atomic formulation", substituting constants (things) for the roles in a single fact type. I don't think we intend 'fact' to be restricted in this way. And that means that Antoine's characterization above is not quite accurate. Antoine did not intend that a 'fact' is the relationship between an actuality and a proposition; he correctly intended that a fact is a relationship to a more general concept of situations -- a fact type. But to make that work, one must understand 'generalized fact type' as "model for a class of propositions". If one distinguishes the intended roles in a proposition, one can always construct a fact type whose roles are the intended roles and whose definition is the proposition with free variables substituted for all occurrences of the intended roles. And in that way, every proposition can be said to be an atomic formulation -- the proposition is derived from exactly one fact type by filling its roles with things. But such a fact type rarely has a 'designation'. Rather, it has the "definition used as designation" property, e.g., "person swims but does not dive", "man is married to woman1 and has a child by woman2 and woman1 is not the same as woman2". We actually often use "generalized fact types" like these in describing business situations. The term 'fact type' in SBVR appears to be restricted to the ones that have designations -- the ones that will actually appear in a business vocabulary. But the term 'fact' is not restricted to "atomic propositions". -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5ICDzdQ Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:58:42 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: I put together the attached slides about states of affairs. Donald Chapin recommended that I send them out in regard to issue 14849. Best regards, Don From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org StateOfAffairs.pptx DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=btinternet.com; h=DKIM-Signature:Received:X-Yahoo-SMTP:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:Reply-To:From:To:References:Subject:Date:Organization:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type:X-Mailer:Thread-Index:X-MimeOLE:In-Reply-To; b=BEvdfvIqrOc3GKl9xAsE2gUD+tBVdU4sAhKFRvM07qMCDFHn70iezG3e84HRZdS53x/ywRublJNApYNGlkrRx0LH/zZ467QLYkaUprS4WSfGERsVb4SSh8O8/JwMZxGBbFQIJO2mFxeIDl/rWb3zNSnDUUR9CLnU8osDhys1yhI= ; DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=btinternet.com; s=s1024; t=1271918250; bh=TdFUSR9yd/pQoY2siT7s5qv/9g8mo+LRkRWHL73XpP0=; h=Received:X-Yahoo-SMTP:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:Reply-To:From:To:References:Subject:Date:Organization:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type:X-Mailer:Thread-Index:X-MimeOLE:In-Reply-To; b=hnfHMFmoyCwGNkDOpwNRR1ZxXupZdmX+iqisE6vwW8TuJzYG43flekkGkS6mFwNQiPWvoSOWftotlrw7d/aCGrojPDStPLoyp7UDO1ziEq+ghjyaFwkuLHptAwvftiAUtBj28Mun5cR2Yc0nY3iXn6Z5gqH2ERC5ht7svoRyr+I= X-Yahoo-SMTP: ipAFRh2swBALpDiVMXIwBxwhmA51J31AV6tKcA.nNICCSy6cH9UoQMM- X-YMail-OSG: 3Icx7vwVM1m9PEpCLWNkEc8.G1xxsJfbT7dWZpMA60cbhBfogUV9JVKR3GbBKHVWw9Paokymzec6JF1.i.M6BJPo5XO5rZN4_T2YeqeFLlXK9xASn4uGUBH.qPjYII1X7R_d7TOhIvGiLVLK6W4ewhdwC0LenRzVmxMmISKm8eaUJbPbKMH0H8oVOcaRwZvICi9kX9_3krgqDajYWpL81bwbStJelAhrAlgUBxYKWAsnuQAN8DFDOMhvq8E0z9sjqTxhYQdM X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 Reply-To: From: "Donald Chapin" To: "'Don Baisley'" , "'SBVR RTF'" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2010 07:37:21 +0100 Organization: Business Semantics Ltd X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5ICDzdQgAYy70CAJoHggA== Don, It.s understandable that you need input on your three points before completing the resolution to Issue 14849. However, there is one thing that you agreed to do that is absolutely essential for the SBVR RTF to make progress in the whole area of .state of affairs.. We spent a significant amount of time during the SBVR RTF meeting on March 25th trying to understand from you the delimiting difference in the SBVR specification between .state of affairs. and .actuality.. The best that came from that discussion was that it is the difference between the meaning of .exists. and .occurs. in the SBVR specification, but nowhere in the SBVR specification is either of those terms or their difference defined. From the discussion during the meeting I don.t believe that anyone on the SBVR RTF, except maybe you, understands the difference between .exists. and .occurs. and therefore the difference between .state of affairs. and .actuality.. .State of affairs. and .actuality. were introduced into SBVR by you and Terry Halpin. Obviously people thought the distinction was significant or they would not have been included by the Business Rules Team. We need you to provide as soon as possible, with Terry.s help if necessary, a clear, in-writing statement and/or definition of the difference (delimiting characteristics) between .exists. and .occurs.. It is possible that the delimiter is as simple as: - .exists. includes existing in the minds of the members of the semantic community as well as existing in the subject world external to the minds of the members of the semantic community Vs. - .occurs includes only existing the subject world external to the minds of the members of the semantic community. If this was not the distinction, please tell us what it is as a matter of urgency. Many Thanks, Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Don Baisley [mailto:Don.Baisley@microsoft.com] Sent: 28 March 2010 23:58 To: Donald.Chapin@btinternet.com; john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk; edbark@nist.gov Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue There are some things I would like to see before I write up a resolution for issue 14849. Per last week.s meeting, the resolution will: A. add descriptive material and diagrams based on the attached slides, B. add a new characteristic, .state of affairs occurs., and define .actuality. using that as its delimiting characteristic. I have the following concerns: 1. Ed has either not reviewed the slides, or I haven.t seen his comments. If Ed rejects what is presented by the slides, then we don.t yet have agreement on the approach to resolving the issue. 2. There are other issues still open wherein SBVR.s current concepts of .conceptual schema. and .fact model. are being challenged. My slides assume the current SBVR concepts. There is no point in my writing up anything in terms of those concepts until their status is known. 3. John is going to provide a new term to be included in the same resolution. If that is a required component of the resolution, then I want to see agreement on that. It is not clear to me why .proposition. is not the category of .meaning. that John wants. I say this because classifying propositions based on how they are formulated is not really a classification of the propositions, but of the formulations. One proposition can be stated and formulated in many ways. Given a statement, if I replace a term with its definition, I get a different statement, but the same proposition. SBVR makes this point multiple times. For example, based on definitional substitution I could end up with all three statements below having the same meaning . the same proposition. I use styling to make their formulations obvious. Every person feels tender affection for Pam and every person cherishes Pam. Every person loves Pam. Pam is universally loved. If we have .loves. defined as .feels tender affection for Pam and every person cherishes., and .is universally loved. defined as .loved by every person., then all three statements above represent the same proposition. Does being .elementary. apply to a proposition? If the first is not elementary, then neither is the last. It.s just one proposition. And it corresponds to just one state of affairs. I am suspicious of categorizing propositions based on their formulations. If people use SBVR in a context where much of natural language is implicitly available (I think John and I both want that context), then there will normally be lots of options for how a single proposition can be expressed and formulated. I.ll wait to see how things go on 1 through 3 above before I write up a resolution. Best regards, Don From: Don Baisley Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2010 12:59 PM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue I put together the attached slides about states of affairs. Donald Chapin recommended that I send them out in regard to issue 14849. Best regards, Don From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5JXW4ig Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 02:32:10 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Attached is a proposed resolution for issue 14849 based on our discussion at the last SBVR RTF meeting. Best regards, Don From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org SBVR Issue 14849.doc From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5JXW4ig Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 02:32:10 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Attached is a proposed resolution for issue 14849 based on our discussion at the last SBVR RTF meeting. Best regards, Don From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" X-KeepSent: 03A2E1C3:8F082521-852577F1:0073D199; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP1 SHF20 February 10, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 16:22:51 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP6|July 15, 2010) at 12/06/2010 16:22:50, Serialize complete at 12/06/2010 16:22:50 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER Don, Thanks for that copy of your proposed resolution for 14849. I wonder whether "state of affairs occurs" should be something like "state of affairs occurs in possible world". Consider the example "Kirk is Captain". It "occurs" (and hence is an actuality) in the Star Trek world. It does not occur and is not an actuality in the real world. So the predicate "state of events occurs" apparently is incomplete if the possible world is unspecified. Regarding Don's comment "It is hard to define âstate of affairsâ in terms of âpossible worldâ because âpossible worldâ specializes âstate of affairsâ. Itâs like using âmammalâ to define âanimalâ while we use âanimalâ to define âmammalâ. Itâs backwards." -- I do not suggest defining "state of affairs" in terms of "possible worlds". I suggest defining an "occurs in" relationship between "states of affairs" and "possible worlds". Clause 10 seems to support this idea, for example where it says on page 102 of the ballot 3 convenience document that "A proposition is possible if and only if it is true in at least one possible world. ". Donald, when is the RTF going to take this up again? The reason I am interested in this is that this same debate comes up in the context of the Date-Time Vocabulary. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Topic: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Index: AQHLlU5PXbE2HSNwtESJ7JiMT4IexpOTt/oAgACZSQD//384oIAAon6A//+CkPA= Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 22:18:28 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.78] The characteristic .state of affair occurs. differs from the binary fact type .state of affairs occurs in possible world. in the same way the characteristic .proposition is true. differs from the binary fact type .proposition is true for possible world.. SBVR defines the characteristics above, but not the binary fact types. If those binary fact types were added to SBVR, then they should be more general because a possible world is a state of affairs: .state of affairs occurs in state of affairs. .proposition is true for state of affairs. In this way, the relations are more generally useful to things business people talk about, like situations. A business situation might not be a possible world, but it is a state of affairs in which other states of affairs may occur and for which propositions may be true. This is all about the composition of states of affairs . how one state of affairs is oftten a composition of others. If people have some notion of .possible world. that does not specialize .state of affairs., then that notion would be inconsistent with SBVR as we have it. Enjoy, Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:23 PM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don, Thanks for that copy of your proposed resolution for 14849. I wonder whether "state of affairs occurs" should be something like "state of affairs occurs in possible world". Consider the example "Kirk is Captain". It "occurs" (and hence is an actuality) in the Star Trek world. It does not occur and is not an actuality in the real world. So the predicate "state of events occurs" apparently is incomplete if the possible world is unspecified. Regarding Don's comment "It is hard to define .state of affairs. in terms of .possible world. because .possible world. specializes .state of affairs.. It.s like using .mammal. to define .animal. while we use .animal. to define .mammal.. It.s backwards." -- I do not suggest defining "state of affairs" in terms of "possible worlds". I suggest defining an "occurs in" relationship between "states of affairs" and "possible worlds". Clause 10 seems to support this idea, for example where it says on page 102 of the ballot 3 convenience document that "A proposition is possible if and only if it is true in at least one possible world. ". Donald, when is the RTF going to take this up again? The reason I am interested in this is that this same debate comes up in the context of the Date-Time Vocabulary. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Topic: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Index: AQHLlU5PXbE2HSNwtESJ7JiMT4IexpOTt/oAgACZSQD//384oIAAon6A//+CkPCAABD2UA== Date: Mon, 6 Dec 2010 22:58:50 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.78] Correction: SBVR does not yet define the characteristic .state of affairs occurs., which is defined in the proposed resolution to 14849. However, that characteristic is equivalent to a state of affairs being an actuality: Occurs(SoA) is equivalent to Actuality(SoA). .Actuality. is defined in the current SBVR. Regards, Don From: Don Baisley Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 2:18 PM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" The characteristic .state of affair occurs. differs from the binary fact type .state of affairs occurs in possible world. in the same way the characteristic .proposition is true. differs from the binary fact type .proposition is true for possible world.. SBVR defines the characteristics above, but not the binary fact types. If those binary fact types were added to SBVR, then they should be more general because a possible world is a state of affairs: .state of affairs occurs in state of affairs. .proposition is true for state of affairs. In this way, the relations are more generally useful to things business people talk about, like situations. A business situation might not be a possible world, but it is a state of affairs in which other states of affairs may occur and for which propositions may be true. This is all about the composition of states of affairs . how one state of affairs is offten a composition of others. If people have some notion of .possible world. that does not specialize .state of affairs., then that notion would be inconsistent with SBVR as we have it. Enjoy, Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 1:23 PM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don, Thanks for that copy of your proposed resolution for 14849. I wonder whether "state of affairs occurs" should be something like "state of affairs occurs in possible world". Consider the example "Kirk is Captain". It "occurs" (and hence is an actuality) in the Star Trek world. It does not occur and is not an actuality in the real world. So the predicate "state of events occurs" apparently is incomplete if the possible world is unspecified. Regarding Don's comment "It is hard to define .state of affairs. in terms of .possible world. because .possible world. specializes .state of affairs.. It.s like using .mammal. to define .animal. while we use .animal. to define .mammal.. It.s backwards." -- I do not suggest defining "state of affairs" in terms of "possible worlds". I suggest defining an "occurs in" relationship between "states of affairs" and "possible worlds". Clause 10 seems to support this idea, for example where it says on page 102 of the ballot 3 convenience document that "A proposition is possible if and only if it is true in at least one possible world. ". Donald, when is the RTF going to take this up again? The reason I am interested in this is that this same debate comes up in the context of the Date-Time Vocabulary. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com From: Don Baisley To: "edbark@nist.gov" CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Topic: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Index: AQHLlU5PXbE2HSNwtESJ7JiMT4IexpOTt/oAgACZSQD//384oIAAzAEA//+CH4A= Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 00:40:12 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.78] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id oB70Jl8E018739 Fortunately, many database systems have an awareness of current time and can tell us things like current balance as well as an account balance at a particular point in time. Present tense facts are common among data coming out of databases. Databases are full of dates and times, but some identities are seen as ongoing, so they are recorded without reference to time. SBVR supports modeling with or without involving temporal relations. Fortunately, the Date/Time work will help provide some consistency in temporal relations. As for the supposed "agreement" in June: no new definition was ever proposed, let alone agreed. However a majority did want to see a proposal for "individual verb concept", which is no more than a signifier with no defined meaning at this point. I'm sorry to miss the OMG meeting. Sounds like fun discussions are going on. All the best, Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 3:51 PM To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don Baisley wrote: > > Hi Mark, > > I attached the email with the attachment that defines "_state of > affairs_ occurs". > This proposed resolution text is out of date. It is not what the RTF agreed to in the June 2010 meeting. But the June agreement was related to resolving the issue of what an instance of a fact type is. A state of affairs is a concept; an actuality is a thing that is not a concept; and an instance of a fact type is an actuality, not a state of affairs. Adding 'state of affairs occurs' only makes the confusion worse. It is counterproductive, because it doesn't answer the critical question: What does it mean for a state of affairs to exist? Can you have a universal quantifier for a state of affairs? Instead, it creates another undefined verb. So we need to revisit 14849. > > > It is hard to define 'state of affairs' in terms of 'possible world' > because 'possible world' specializes 'state of affairs'. It's like > using 'mammal' to define 'animal' while we use 'animal' to define > 'mammal'. It's backwards. > This statement is seriously confused. Formal logics define "true" and "false" with respect to a universe of discourse. Alethic logic postulates the existence of multiple universes, each with its own things and actualities. These distinct universes are referred to in SBVR as "possible worlds". A 'necessity' is a proposition that is true in all of the possible worlds in which the concepts in an SBVR model are populated. A 'fact' is a proposition that is true in a given possible world. 'Possible world' does not specialize the SBVR concept 'state of affairs'. It is a foundational concept of the formal interpretation of SBVR. In database land, each instantaneous (consistent) database population represents a possible world. It can be understood as a set of propositions/statements that are true in the world represented by that database at that instant. That is, it represents the actualities that exist in that world at that instant. A different time is a different possible world. The conceptual schema introduces both the vocabularies in which those propositions can be formulated and a set of "necessities": propositions that are taken to be true of all possible worlds that the database can describe. A state of affairs exists (is an 'actuality') in zero or more possible worlds. The proposition that describes the state of affairs is true in a possible world in which the state of affairs exists. Unless it is the objectification of a 'necessity', a state of affairs may fail to exist (be an 'actuality') in one or more possible worlds. The proposition that describes the state of affairs is false in a world in which that state of affairs does not exist. As the SBVR RTF agreed at the June meeting, a 'state of affairs' is an individual concept whose instance (when it exists) is an 'actuality'. (For Don's benefit: This is exactly the same model as we use for 'unicorns'. We can talk about the concept 'unicorn' and we can ascribe characteristics to the concept, and we can even make rules about the behavior of unicorns. That doesn't mean they exist. But the business rules for unicorns will only be applied in a world in which a unicorn actually exists. Similarly, we can talk about a state of affairs, and we can make rules about its behavior. But those rules will only be applied to an actuality (thing) that corresponds to the state of affairs (concept).) The discussion Mark and I had this morning was about the relationship of propositions and states of affairs to time intervals. In the database model, a different time is a different possible world. Once you introduce the idea of time intervals as an element of a given world, a sentence like "Ed is at the office" does not satisfy the SBVR definition of 'proposition': If the world of interest has multiple time intervals as part of it, then "Ed is at the office" is neither true nor false! It is true at some times and false at others. People use other linguistic cues to determine proposition that was meant, e.g. Ed is in the office at the present/referent time. This problem is resolved in databases by explicitly stating what relations (fact type forms) have time point roles and what relations don't (and are taken to be timeless). How this problem is resolved in ontologies is a matter of 'ontological commitment'. There are several approaches to solving the problem, and each can be made to work. In one model (DOLCE and others), some propositions ('endurants') are timeless: they are always true or always false in the given world over all interesting time. "France is a nation" is an example of this. It is true over all times that are in the world of interest to some business activity. Other propositions ('perdurants') must have a time component to have meaning: "Ed is in the office at 17:00 on 6.12.2010" is true; "Ed is in the office" is not a valid proposition. (This approach is analogous to the database model.) In the so-called 4D model (e.g. ISO 15926), every thing in the world of interest has a time component. The idea of 'exists' is always qualified by time: "Ed" only exists between 1943 and some unspecified future time; the actuality of Ed's being in the office exists in a time interval. And there are other models. By making a 'state of affairs' an individual concept, we can avoid most of these problems. The 'state of affairs' denoted "Ed is in the office" is a concept -- a part of the concept system.. It is a meaning that is formulated by a linguistic sentence, but it is used as a noun concept when it is objectified, i.e. used to refer to an actuality -- a situation/thing/occurrence in a given possible world, or an occurrence in time. In a world with time intervals, propositions of the form 'state of affairs occurs in time interval' are meaningful. In an instantaneous world without a temporal model, 'state of affairs exists' has meaning. SBVR v1.0 appears to use an instantaneous model (which means that the 14849 proposal makes 'occurs' a synonym for 'exists' in any useful interpretation). -Ed P.S. As you might guess, there is a fair amount of philosophical and formal logic literature on this subject. I can't do justice to it. I know that this is pretty esoteric stuff, but it comes of trying to create a formal interpretation of SBVR. As someone recently said in a Smart Grid meeting, "a model of time and events is not 'simple'." SBVR opened Pandora's box by putting 'state of affairs' into the base vocabulary without making the interpretation model clear. One of the requirements of Date/Time is to provide a clear interpretation model for statements about states of affairs involving time. > > > Best regards, > > Don > > > > > > *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] > *Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 11:22 AM > *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org > *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and > "proposition nominalization" > > > > Don, thanks for the feedback. > > I would be interested in seeing your proposed definition of "state of > affairs occurs". I searched the OMG's sbvr-rtf issue archive, and I > guess it may be a resolution of 14849 but unfortunately the archives > do not seem to capture attachments.... > > It seems to me that the truth of a proposition must be evaluated with > respect to a particular possible world. Kirk is Captain of Star Trek > in the possible world of the TV series, but not in the real world. > With respect to the TV series, it is an actuality that Kirk is > Captain of Star Trek. > > It also seems to me that specifying a time is one way of identifying a > possible world. "William conquers England" is a true proposition with > respect to the year 1066 and a false proposition with respect to other > years. > > So I do agree with you, upon reflection, that 'state of affairs that > occurs at some point in time' is not the right definition. Going > further (and based on a conversation with Ed, today), it seems that > "state of affairs occurs" is in some sense a matter of epistemological > commitment. "The world is a globe" is an actuality that most of us > recognize, but apparently there are (still) some people who subscribe > to an alternative possible world in which "the world is flat". This > point is consistent with SBVR's definition of "fact" as "proposition > taken as true". > -------------------------------- > Mark H. Linehan > STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research > > phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 > internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com > > > > From: Don Baisley > > To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS, "sbvr-rtf@omg.org > " > > Date: 12/06/2010 01:39 PM > Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and > "proposition nominalization" > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > > > > > Mark, > You have it right regarding your two examples below. When creating a > logical formulation from a sentence, we choose objectification vs. > proposition nominalization based on what the fact type form requires > (what the verb wants). It seems to work out very well. > > Also, you correctly noted that the example of the statement (Ron said, > "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to that airport.) > involves a binding to the same variable from within the quotation and > from outside. This forces the formulation to use proposition > nominalization rather than treat the quoted part as an opaque text. > The embedded statement is fully identified by the combination of its > expression and, using proposition nominalization, the formulation of > the proposition. > > Regarding "occurs", at other people's request I submitted a resolution > to an issue regarding 'state of affairs'. The resolution added the > characteristic '_state of affairs_ occurs' and then used that to > define 'actuality'. It would be incorrect to define 'actuality' as > 'state of affairs that occurs at some point in time'. An actuality is > simply a 'state of affairs that occurs'. Otherwise, the > correspondence from proposition to actuality would not line up with > the proposition being true. A proposition corresponds to an actuality > if and only if the proposition is true. > > Best regards, > Don > > > *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] * > Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 6:03 AM* > To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org * > Subject:* Fw: Question: difference between "objectification" and > "proposition nominalization" > > Going a little further, the only differences between these two examples: > > 1. a retailer wishes that every customer of the retailer be > registered > 2. a retailer says that every customer of the retailer is > registered > > ... are "wishes" versus "says" and "be registered" versus "is > registered". So one has to know the meaning of the verb "wishes" or > "says" to understand whether to use objectification or nominalization. > Right? There's nothing in the surface English form that tells > whether to use one or the other. > > From a technical point of view, one must have declared verb concepts > " wishes " and " says > -------------------------------- > Mark H. Linehan > STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research > > phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 > internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com > ----- Forwarded by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM on 12/06/2010 08:53 AM > ----- > > From: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS > To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org > Date: 12/05/2010 08:55 AM > Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and > "proposition nominalization" > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > > > > > > Thanks for the confirmation and further explanation, Ed. > > Regarding "Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave > directions to that airport." -- it seems to me that a formulation > should nominalize "Amsterdam has an airport" to enable the two > references to "airport" to bind to the same existentially-quantified > variable. > > Regarding "The distinction between 'Amsterdam's having an airport > causes pollution' and 'Podunk's having an airport would cause > pollution' is one SBVR lacks the expressiveness to make." -- the only > difference between these is "would", which in this case fits this > definition from Wiktionary: > 2. As a modal verb. > 1. Used to give a conditional or potential "softening" to the present; > might , might wish > . > > SBVR formulates the modal sense using "it is possible that ...." So I > would formulate the second example as "It is possible that the > objectification of 'Podunk has an airport' causes polution". Net: I > disagree that SBVR lacks the expressiveness for this statement. > > ------------------------ > On a related topic, Don says that "The SBVR specification brings out > the distinction in its entry for 'state of affairs' in 8.6." -- but I > think that our debates last summer about this clause show that the > distinction is not at all clear. I think part of the problem is that > the definition of actuality, "state of affairs that occurs in the > actual world ", uses an undefined verb "occurs". Given that the verb > is undefined it is fair to assume that it is a synonym of "exists". > This leads to the reasoning that a state of affairs that is not an > actuality does not exist. And that conclusion brings one to all kinds > of contradictions with the SBVR definition and usage of "state of > affairs". > > In our Date-Time Vocabulary, we have introduced a verb concept > "*_state of affairs_** /is at /**_time point_*" with various > synonymous forms, including "_state of affairs_/ occurs at /_time > point_". The discussion in this email thread suggests an alternative > definition of "actuality": "state of affairs that occurs at at least > one time point". If a state of affairs never has a time point, then it > is not an actuality. If it is an actuality, then it occurs at some > time point. Some states of affairs (like "the rising of the sun") > occur many times. > > (Note: in our discussions about Date-Time, we are moving towards > changing the verb concept to "*_state of affairs_** /is at /**_time > _*interval" -- but we haven't officially made that change in our text > quite yet.) > -------------------------------- > Mark H. Linehan > STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research > > phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 > internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com > > Inactive hide details for Ed Barkmeyer ---12/03/2010 08:14:14 > PM---Mark H Linehan wrote: >Ed Barkmeyer ---12/03/2010 08:14:14 > PM---Mark H Linehan wrote: > > > From: Ed Barkmeyer > > To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS > Cc: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org " >, "Stan@hendryxassoc.com > " > > Date: 12/03/2010 08:14 PM > Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and > "proposition nominalization" > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > > > > > > > > Mark H Linehan wrote: > > > > I've been puzzling about the difference between SBVR's > > 'objectification' and 'proposition nominalization'. In the > > definitions of these concepts both bind to a bindable target and > > consider a logical formulation. In objectification "the thing to > > which the bindable target refers is a state of affairs that > > corresponds to the meaning of the considered logical formulation ". > > In proposition nominalization, "the thing to which the bindable > > target refers is the proposition that is formulated by the > > considered logical formulation ". So one refers to a thing that > > corresponds to the meaning of a proposition, while the other refers to the proposition itself. > > > > An example objectification: "a retailer wishes that every customer > > of the retailer is registered". The retailer wishes the state of > > affairs corresponding to "every customer of the retailer is > > registered". using a verb concept such as " wishes ". > > > > An example proposition nominalization: "a retailer says that every > > customer of the retailer is registered". The retailer makes a > > statement that "every customer of the retailer is registered" using > > a verb concept such as " says ". > > > > I think the key semantic difference here is that a "state of affairs" > > can happen (or not). And if it happens, it may have a time when it > > happens and a place where it happens. Whereas a statement does not > > "happen", it just is. But this distinction is not brought out > > anywhere in the specification. > > > > Do I have this right? > > > Yes. You hit upon the distinction. The nominalization of the > proposition is a 'thing' in the universe of discourse. The thing is > the conceptualization/meaning itself. In Don's example, the > nominalization is the thing that is the Idea that Amsterdam has an > airport. The designation for that thing is a statement of the > proposition. The objectification of the proposition is a 'state of > affairs', which we agreed in June is an individual concept to which an > actuality (a thing in the universe of discourse of a given world) may > (or may not) correspond. A statement of the proposition is a > designation for that concept. > > Whether that distinction is carefully stated in the standard is > another matter. It seemed to me that it was pretty clearly stated in > the objectification formulation in clause 9. But perhaps it was > somewhat muddled by the continuing confusion about what a state of affairs is. > > Using Don's example: > > > * *Expression (literal text)* > > > > . John did a Google search for "Amsterdam has an airport." > > > > * *Representation (quoting a statement)* > > > > . Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to > > that airport. > > > > What Ron said is a Statement, which is a representation of a > proposition. Thus the statement involves an Expression (the text) and > a Proposition that may have a logical formulation (or not, since it > has a representation). The Statement, the expression and the > Proposition are all elements of the Universe of Discourse in this case. > > Note that we provide no guidance for this case. If the vocabulary > contains only 'person says proposition', then the exchange form may > contain only Fact(says, Ron, proposition4) and Statement("Amsterdam > has an airport", proposition4). What is wanted is that a tool that > supports clause 9 should provide a logical formulation of the stated > proposition, as well as the Expression, since the recipient tool might > not be able to parse the Expression. (Who knows what language Ron > used?) > > > * *Meaning (nominalization of a proposition)* > > > > . Keri said that Amsterdam has an airport. > > > > Yes. "That Amsterdam has an airport" is the proposition -- the Idea > that is now an element of the universe of discourse. It is expected > that a tool that supports clause 9 will in this case provide a logical > formulation of Keri's utterance using a nominalization of the > proposition, instead of a statement. But the atomic formulation > Fact(says, Keri, proposition4) might well be the same as the above. > The difference here is that proposition is expected to be the bindable > target of a proposition nominalization. > > > * *Extension (objectification of a proposition)* > > > > . A cause of pollution is that Amsterdam has an airport. > > Agreed. What causes pollution is the actuality of the state of affairs > in the world in which the pollution exists. It has nothing to do with > the Idea. The distinction between 'Amsterdam's having an airport > causes pollution' and 'Podunk's having an airport would cause > pollution' is one SBVR lacks the expressiveness to make. Both are > statements about possible worlds. The problem is that we have no way > to characterize the world each talks about. > > A more interesting question is the following: > Hitler's decision to invade Poland led to World War II. > This can be cast as a nominalization: > Hitler's decision that Germany should invade Poland led to World War II. > > This sentence says that the decision -- the Idea and its related > course of action -- is what led to World War II. That use is a nominalization. > The sentence does not say that the invasion of Poland ("that Germany > invaded Poland") is what led to World War II. That use would be an > objectification. > > And OBTW, this is another use of the missing "cast" concept in SBVR -- > it declares the proposition to be an instance of 'decision', as > distinct from an instance of 'issue' or 'objection', etc. > > -Ed > > > > > > -------------------------------- > > Mark H. Linehan > > STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research > > > > phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 > > internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com > > > > -- > Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov > > National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems > Integration Division > 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 > Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 > > "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and > have not been reviewed by any Government authority." > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > -- > > Subject: > RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue > From: > Don Baisley > Date: > Mon, 17 May 2010 22:32:10 -0400 > To: > "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" > > To: > "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" > > > Attached is a proposed resolution for issue 14849 based on our > discussion at the last SBVR RTF meeting. > > > > Best regards, > > Don > > > > *From:* Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] > *Sent:* Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM > *To:* issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org > *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue > > > > this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk > > > > > 'Actuality' is a specialization of 'state of affairs'. > > Clause 8 says: > > fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a > verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose > instances are all actualities > > There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, > such as: > > § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities > > § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the > semantic community does not yet know for sure > > Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. > > > > * > > Juergen Boldt > Director, Member Services > Object Management Group > 140 Kendrick St > Building A Suite 300 > Needham, MA 02494 > USA > > tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 > fax: +1 781 444 0320 > email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org > > *[] > > > -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:12:22 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: oB71CRr5024312 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1292289148.01048@UmBCvg4fpS2yvMR7K9gbTA X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: The characteristic â_state of affair_ occursâ differs from the binary fact type â_state of affairs_ occurs in _possible world_â in the same way the characteristic â_proposition_ is trueâ differs from the binary fact type â_proposition_ is true for _possible world_â. This is a whole set of undefined concepts that SBVR does not have. In SBVR, 'possible world' is a part of the _interpretation_ of 'true'. 'proposition is true' means the proposition is taken to be true, i.e. to correspond to an actuality, in the world of interest, a possible world. 'proposition is a necessity' means the proposition is taken to be true in all possible worlds. Neither of these ideas is involved with the confused notion of 'state of affairs' in any way. The characteristic 'state of affairs occurs' in the proposed resolution of 14849 is "defined" by: Definition: the state of affairs happens (i.e., takes place, obtains) Now if the model of a possible world is a snapshot of the real world at a given time, what does that mean? Is it happening, taking place, or not? How is it different from 'state of affairs is an actuality'? And does the state (of affairs) 'exist' (is a thing in the world of interest), or not exist? OTOH, if the model of a possible world is a world in which time intervals are things that exist and actualities are things that exist and are related to time intervals, what does "the state of affairs occurs" mean? That there are time intervals in which the state of affairs occurs? If that is the meaning, we are much better off with 'state of affairs occurs in time interval'. That allows us to state not only that it happens (by "xxx occurs in _some_ time interval"), but also to specify the time intervals when that is appropriate. SBVR defines the characteristics above, but not the binary fact types. Actually, the only one it has is 'proposition is true'. If those binary fact types were added to SBVR, then they should be more general because a possible world is a state of affairs: â_state of affairs_ occurs in _state of affairs_â â_proposition_ is true for _state of affairs_â See previous email. This is merely confused. In this way, the relations are more generally useful to things business people talk about, like situations. In this way, everyone becomes more confused. A business situation might not be a possible world, We are comparing cheese and chalk here. A conceptual situation is a "possible world" (a world of interest) if the business wants quantifiers like 'all' and 'at least n' to be referenced to that situation, and it is a 'state of affairs' if the business wants to talk about its properties using fact types about situations and events. but it is a state of affairs in which other states of affairs may occur and for which propositions may be true. SBVR has not introduced any fact types for relating situations to statements, e.g., 'proposition is true in situation'. But it does have a construct for doing so: E.g., IF a nuclear device is detonated in Washington, our European headquarters will take over management of worldwide activities. Using this construct is fairly common in business circles, even though "if" is sometimes spelled "in the situation that". SBVR does not however, have time-related versions of this: E.g., when the last of the 2010 line is produced, the factory in Middleburg will be closed. This can be stated: The factory in Middleburg will be closed at the time that 'the last of the 2010 line is produced' occurs. But only if we have 'state of affairs occurs at time', which Date/Time will provide. In that example, we are not talking about other possible worlds, we are talking about time intervals as a concept in the world of interest and using a fact type about a state of affairs. This is all about the composition of states of affairs ­ how one state > of affairs is often a composition of others. Yes, a state of affairs can involve other states of affairs, and a state of affairs can cause other states of affairs, etc. These are all statements about relationships among conceptual situations, and they can be realized by actualities. But that has nothing directly to do with propositions. The related, but separable, fact is that a state of affairs is an objectification of a proposition, and the proposition is true in exactly those worlds in which the state of affairs corresponds to an actuality. This particular behavior, that a state of affairs is formulated as a proposition, means that a construct like If A then B can be used to formulate a relationship between states of affairs. SBVR needs the state of affairs and objectification concepts in addition to If..then, so that vocabularies can attach "independent" adverbial phrases to other fact types, such as where something occurs, or when, or who the agent must be. If people have some notion of âpossible worldâ that does not specialize âstate of affairsâ, then that notion would be inconsistent with SBVR as we have it. Well, then "SBVR as we have it" (whoever "we" may be) has no sensible logical model, and it surely does not correspond to Terry Halpin's model of 'necessity' in clause 10. Don's confusion about state of affairs has led to endless wrangling in the FTF and RTF for years. This is a new confusion about states of affairs that threatens the formal underpinnings of SBVR. -Ed Enjoy, Don *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] *Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 1:23 PM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don, Thanks for that copy of your proposed resolution for 14849. I wonder whether "_state of affairs_ /occurs/" should be something like "_state of affairs_ /occurs in/ _possible world_". Consider the example "Kirk is Captain". It "occurs" (and hence is an actuality) in the Star Trek world. It does not occur and is not an actuality in the real world. So the predicate "state of events occurs" apparently is incomplete if the possible world is unspecified. Regarding Don's comment "It is hard to define âstate of affairsâ in terms of âpossible worldâ because âpossible worldâ specializes âstate of affairsâ. Itâs like using âmammalâ to define âanimalâ while we use âanimalâ to define âmammalâ. Itâs backwards." -- I do not suggest defining "state of affairs" in terms of "possible worlds". I suggest defining an "occurs in" relationship between "states of affairs" and "possible worlds". Clause 10 seems to support this idea, for example where it says on page 102 of the ballot 3 convenience document that "A proposition is possible if and only if it is true in at least one possible world. ". Donald, when is the RTF going to take this up again? The reason I am interested in this is that this same debate comes up in the context of the Date-Time Vocabulary. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Mon, 06 Dec 2010 20:29:53 -0500 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: Fortunately, many database systems have an awareness of current time and can tell us things like current balance as well as an account balance at a particular point in time. Present tense facts are common among data coming out of databases. Databases are full of dates and times, but some identities are seen as ongoing, so they are recorded without reference to time. Yes. Databases have a mix of endurant and perdurant fact types, together with snapshots whose underlying interpretation may be either ("present" is just a particular time), or undefined. "present" often just means 'the time interval since the last time it was changed' and that time may or may not have been recorded. For account balances it most certainly is recorded. SBVR supports modeling with or without involving temporal relations. As long as the usage is supported by the database-style capturing of times that matter. And SBVR provides no support for doing that. Fortunately, the Date/Time work will help provide some consistency in temporal relations. Yes. That is why Mark raised the question. As for the supposed "agreement" in June: no new definition was ever proposed, let alone agreed. However a majority did want to see a proposal for "individual verb concept", which is no more than a signifier with no defined meaning at this point. Well, my notes say that the definition "individual verb concept that corresponds to at most one actuality" was what was discussed, and the vote was 5-1-2. When Don disagrees with everyone else, it is not consensus, but it is agreement of the RTF. I don't recall voting on the proposed resolution to 14849, either, but if I did, I'm sure I voted NO. With respect to the writeup, John Hall took the action item, and Lord knows, he has ample excuse for failing to deliver in the recent past. I'm sorry to miss the OMG meeting. Sounds like fun discussions are going on. Computer scientists have a strange concept of fun... (I won't make the meeting, either. I will maybe be on the RTF telecon.) Best, -Ed All the best, Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 3:51 PM To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don Baisley wrote: Hi Mark, I attached the email with the attachment that defines "_state of affairs_ occurs". This proposed resolution text is out of date. It is not what the RTF agreed to in the June 2010 meeting. But the June agreement was related to resolving the issue of what an instance of a fact type is. A state of affairs is a concept; an actuality is a thing that is not a concept; and an instance of a fact type is an actuality, not a state of affairs. Adding 'state of affairs occurs' only makes the confusion worse. It is counterproductive, because it doesn't answer the critical question: What does it mean for a state of affairs to exist? Can you have a universal quantifier for a state of affairs? Instead, it creates another undefined verb. So we need to revisit 14849. It is hard to define 'state of affairs' in terms of 'possible world' because 'possible world' specializes 'state of affairs'. It's like using 'mammal' to define 'animal' while we use 'animal' to define 'mammal'. It's backwards. This statement is seriously confused. Formal logics define "true" and "false" with respect to a universe of discourse. Alethic logic postulates the existence of multiple universes, each with its own things and actualities. These distinct universes are referred to in SBVR as "possible worlds". A 'necessity' is a proposition that is true in all of the possible worlds in which the concepts in an SBVR model are populated. A 'fact' is a proposition that is true in a given possible world. 'Possible world' does not specialize the SBVR concept 'state of affairs'. It is a foundational concept of the formal interpretation of SBVR. In database land, each instantaneous (consistent) database population represents a possible world. It can be understood as a set of propositions/statements that are true in the world represented by that database at that instant. That is, it represents the actualities that exist in that world at that instant. A different time is a different possible world. The conceptual schema introduces both the vocabularies in which those propositions can be formulated and a set of "necessities": propositions that are taken to be true of all possible worlds that the database can describe. A state of affairs exists (is an 'actuality') in zero or more possible worlds. The proposition that describes the state of affairs is true in a possible world in which the state of affairs exists. Unless it is the objectification of a 'necessity', a state of affairs may fail to exist (be an 'actuality') in one or more possible worlds. The proposition that describes the state of affairs is false in a world in which that state of affairs does not exist. As the SBVR RTF agreed at the June meeting, a 'state of affairs' is an individual concept whose instance (when it exists) is an 'actuality'. (For Don's benefit: This is exactly the same model as we use for 'unicorns'. We can talk about the concept 'unicorn' and we can ascribe characteristics to the concept, and we can even make rules about the behavior of unicorns. That doesn't mean they exist. But the business rules for unicorns will only be applied in a world in which a unicorn actually exists. Similarly, we can talk about a state of affairs, and we can make rules about its behavior. But those rules will only be applied to an actuality (thing) that corresponds to the state of affairs (concept).) The discussion Mark and I had this morning was about the relationship of propositions and states of affairs to time intervals. In the database model, a different time is a different possible world. Once you introduce the idea of time intervals as an element of a given world, a sentence like "Ed is at the office" does not satisfy the SBVR definition of 'proposition': If the world of interest has multiple time intervals as part of it, then "Ed is at the office" is neither true nor false! It is true at some times and false at others. People use other linguistic cues to determine proposition that was meant, e.g. Ed is in the office at the present/referent time. This problem is resolved in databases by explicitly stating what relations (fact type forms) have time point roles and what relations don't (and are taken to be timeless). How this problem is resolved in ontologies is a matter of 'ontological commitment'. There are several approaches to solving the problem, and each can be made to work. In one model (DOLCE and others), some propositions ('endurants') are timeless: they are always true or always false in the given world over all interesting time. "France is a nation" is an example of this. It is true over all times that are in the world of interest to some business activity. Other propositions ('perdurants') must have a time component to have meaning: "Ed is in the office at 17:00 on 6.12.2010" is true; "Ed is in the office" is not a valid proposition. (This approach is analogous to the database model.) In the so-called 4D model (e.g. ISO 15926), every thing in the world of interest has a time component. The idea of 'exists' is always qualified by time: "Ed" only exists between 1943 and some unspecified future time; the actuality of Ed's being in the office exists in a time interval. And there are other models. By making a 'state of affairs' an individual concept, we can avoid most of these problems. The 'state of affairs' denoted "Ed is in the office" is a concept -- a part of the concept system.. It is a meaning that is formulated by a linguistic sentence, but it is used as a noun concept when it is objectified, i.e. used to refer to an actuality -- a situation/thing/occurrence in a given possible world, or an occurrence in time. In a world with time intervals, propositions of the form 'state of affairs occurs in time interval' are meaningful. In an instantaneous world without a temporal model, 'state of affairs exists' has meaning. SBVR v1.0 appears to use an instantaneous model (which means that the 14849 proposal makes 'occurs' a synonym for 'exists' in any useful interpretation). -Ed P.S. As you might guess, there is a fair amount of philosophical and formal logic literature on this subject. I can't do justice to it. I know that this is pretty esoteric stuff, but it comes of trying to create a formal interpretation of SBVR. As someone recently said in a Smart Grid meeting, "a model of time and events is not 'simple'." SBVR opened Pandora's box by putting 'state of affairs' into the base vocabulary without making the interpretation model clear. One of the requirements of Date/Time is to provide a clear interpretation model for statements about states of affairs involving time. Best regards, Don *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] *Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 11:22 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don, thanks for the feedback. I would be interested in seeing your proposed definition of "state of affairs occurs". I searched the OMG's sbvr-rtf issue archive, and I guess it may be a resolution of 14849 but unfortunately the archives do not seem to capture attachments.... It seems to me that the truth of a proposition must be evaluated with respect to a particular possible world. Kirk is Captain of Star Trek in the possible world of the TV series, but not in the real world. With respect to the TV series, it is an actuality that Kirk is Captain of Star Trek. It also seems to me that specifying a time is one way of identifying a possible world. "William conquers England" is a true proposition with respect to the year 1066 and a false proposition with respect to other years. So I do agree with you, upon reflection, that 'state of affairs that occurs at some point in time' is not the right definition. Going further (and based on a conversation with Ed, today), it seems that "state of affairs occurs" is in some sense a matter of epistemological commitment. "The world is a globe" is an actuality that most of us recognize, but apparently there are (still) some people who subscribe to an alternative possible world in which "the world is flat". This point is consistent with SBVR's definition of "fact" as "proposition taken as true". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com From: Don Baisley > To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS, "sbvr-rtf@omg.org " > Date: 12/06/2010 01:39 PM Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Mark, You have it right regarding your two examples below. When creating a logical formulation from a sentence, we choose objectification vs. proposition nominalization based on what the fact type form requires (what the verb wants). It seems to work out very well. Also, you correctly noted that the example of the statement (Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to that airport.) involves a binding to the same variable from within the quotation and from outside. This forces the formulation to use proposition nominalization rather than treat the quoted part as an opaque text. The embedded statement is fully identified by the combination of its expression and, using proposition nominalization, the formulation of the proposition. Regarding "occurs", at other people's request I submitted a resolution to an issue regarding 'state of affairs'. The resolution added the characteristic '_state of affairs_ occurs' and then used that to define 'actuality'. It would be incorrect to define 'actuality' as 'state of affairs that occurs at some point in time'. An actuality is simply a 'state of affairs that occurs'. Otherwise, the correspondence from proposition to actuality would not line up with the proposition being true. A proposition corresponds to an actuality if and only if the proposition is true. Best regards, Don *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] * Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 6:03 AM* To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org * Subject:* Fw: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Going a little further, the only differences between these two examples: 1. a retailer wishes that every customer of the retailer be registered 2. a retailer says that every customer of the retailer is registered ... are "wishes" versus "says" and "be registered" versus "is registered". So one has to know the meaning of the verb "wishes" or "says" to understand whether to use objectification or nominalization. Right? There's nothing in the surface English form that tells whether to use one or the other. From a technical point of view, one must have declared verb concepts " wishes " and " says ----- Forwarded by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM on 12/06/2010 08:53 AM ----- From: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Date: 12/05/2010 08:55 AM Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Thanks for the confirmation and further explanation, Ed. Regarding "Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to that airport." -- it seems to me that a formulation should nominalize "Amsterdam has an airport" to enable the two references to "airport" to bind to the same existentially-quantified variable. Regarding "The distinction between 'Amsterdam's having an airport causes pollution' and 'Podunk's having an airport would cause pollution' is one SBVR lacks the expressiveness to make." -- the only difference between these is "would", which in this case fits this definition from Wiktionary: 2. As a modal verb. 1. Used to give a conditional or potential "softening" to the present; might , might wish . SBVR formulates the modal sense using "it is possible that ...." So I would formulate the second example as "It is possible that the objectification of 'Podunk has an airport' causes polution". Net: I disagree that SBVR lacks the expressiveness for this statement. ------------------------ On a related topic, Don says that "The SBVR specification brings out the distinction in its entry for 'state of affairs' in 8.6." -- but I think that our debates last summer about this clause show that the distinction is not at all clear. I think part of the problem is that the definition of actuality, "state of affairs that occurs in the actual world ", uses an undefined verb "occurs". Given that the verb is undefined it is fair to assume that it is a synonym of "exists". This leads to the reasoning that a state of affairs that is not an actuality does not exist. And that conclusion brings one to all kinds of contradictions with the SBVR definition and usage of "state of affairs". In our Date-Time Vocabulary, we have introduced a verb concept "*_state of affairs_** /is at /**_time point_*" with various synonymous forms, including "_state of affairs_/ occurs at /_time point_". The discussion in this email thread suggests an alternative definition of "actuality": "state of affairs that occurs at at least one time point". If a state of affairs never has a time point, then it is not an actuality. If it is an actuality, then it occurs at some time point. Some states of affairs (like "the rising of the sun") occur many times. (Note: in our discussions about Date-Time, we are moving towards changing the verb concept to "*_state of affairs_** /is at /**_time _*interval" -- but we haven't officially made that change in our text quite yet.) -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Inactive hide details for Ed Barkmeyer ---12/03/2010 08:14:14 PM---Mark H Linehan wrote: >Ed Barkmeyer ---12/03/2010 08:14:14 PM---Mark H Linehan wrote: > From: Ed Barkmeyer > To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Cc: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org " >, "Stan@hendryxassoc.com " > Date: 12/03/2010 08:14 PM Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Mark H Linehan wrote: I've been puzzling about the difference between SBVR's 'objectification' and 'proposition nominalization'. In the definitions of these concepts both bind to a bindable target and consider a logical formulation. In objectification "the thing to which the bindable target refers is a state of affairs that corresponds to the meaning of the considered logical formulation ". In proposition nominalization, "the thing to which the bindable target refers is the proposition that is formulated by the considered logical formulation ". So one refers to a thing that corresponds to the meaning of a proposition, while the other refers to the proposition itself. An example objectification: "a retailer wishes that every customer of the retailer is registered". The retailer wishes the state of affairs corresponding to "every customer of the retailer is registered". using a verb concept such as " wishes ". An example proposition nominalization: "a retailer says that every customer of the retailer is registered". The retailer makes a statement that "every customer of the retailer is registered" using a verb concept such as " says ". I think the key semantic difference here is that a "state of affairs" can happen (or not). And if it happens, it may have a time when it happens and a place where it happens. Whereas a statement does not "happen", it just is. But this distinction is not brought out anywhere in the specification. Do I have this right? Yes. You hit upon the distinction. The nominalization of the proposition is a 'thing' in the universe of discourse. The thing is the conceptualization/meaning itself. In Don's example, the nominalization is the thing that is the Idea that Amsterdam has an airport. The designation for that thing is a statement of the proposition. The objectification of the proposition is a 'state of affairs', which we agreed in June is an individual concept to which an actuality (a thing in the universe of discourse of a given world) may (or may not) correspond. A statement of the proposition is a designation for that concept. Whether that distinction is carefully stated in the standard is another matter. It seemed to me that it was pretty clearly stated in the objectification formulation in clause 9. But perhaps it was somewhat muddled by the continuing confusion about what a state of affairs is. Using Don's example: * *Expression (literal text)* . John did a Google search for "Amsterdam has an airport." * *Representation (quoting a statement)* . Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to that airport. What Ron said is a Statement, which is a representation of a proposition. Thus the statement involves an Expression (the text) and a Proposition that may have a logical formulation (or not, since it has a representation). The Statement, the expression and the Proposition are all elements of the Universe of Discourse in this case. Note that we provide no guidance for this case. If the vocabulary contains only 'person says proposition', then the exchange form may contain only Fact(says, Ron, proposition4) and Statement("Amsterdam has an airport", proposition4). What is wanted is that a tool that supports clause 9 should provide a logical formulation of the stated proposition, as well as the Expression, since the recipient tool might not be able to parse the Expression. (Who knows what language Ron used?) * *Meaning (nominalization of a proposition)* . Keri said that Amsterdam has an airport. Yes. "That Amsterdam has an airport" is the proposition -- the Idea that is now an element of the universe of discourse. It is expected that a tool that supports clause 9 will in this case provide a logical formulation of Keri's utterance using a nominalization of the proposition, instead of a statement. But the atomic formulation Fact(says, Keri, proposition4) might well be the same as the above. The difference here is that proposition is expected to be the bindable target of a proposition nominalization. * *Extension (objectification of a proposition)* . A cause of pollution is that Amsterdam has an airport. Agreed. What causes pollution is the actuality of the state of affairs in the world in which the pollution exists. It has nothing to do with the Idea. The distinction between 'Amsterdam's having an airport causes pollution' and 'Podunk's having an airport would cause pollution' is one SBVR lacks the expressiveness to make. Both are statements about possible worlds. The problem is that we have no way to characterize the world each talks about. A more interesting question is the following: Hitler's decision to invade Poland led to World War II. This can be cast as a nominalization: Hitler's decision that Germany should invade Poland led to World War II. This sentence says that the decision -- the Idea and its related course of action -- is what led to World War II. That use is a nominalization. The sentence does not say that the invasion of Poland ("that Germany invaded Poland") is what led to World War II. That use would be an objectification. And OBTW, this is another use of the missing "cast" concept in SBVR -- it declares the proposition to be an instance of 'decision', as distinct from an instance of 'issue' or 'objection', etc. -Ed -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue From: Don Baisley Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 22:32:10 -0400 To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Attached is a proposed resolution for issue 14849 based on our discussion at the last SBVR RTF meeting. Best regards, Don *From:* Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] *Sent:* Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM *To:* issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk 'Actuality' is a specialization of 'state of affairs'. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org *[] -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "edbark@nist.gov" CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Topic: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Index: AQHLlU5PXbE2HSNwtESJ7JiMT4IexpOTt/oAgACZSQD//384oIAAzAEA//+CH4CAAJljgP//mw1A Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 03:45:27 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.78] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id oB73P2hU007767 > Well, my notes say that the definition "individual verb concept that corresponds to at most one actuality" was what was discussed... I've seen no definition of "individual verb concept". I assume your definition above is not for "individual verb concept" since it uses "individual verb concept". I'll have to wait for John to see if there is anything that can be agreed upon. Don -----Original Message----- From: Edward Barkmeyer [mailto:edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 5:30 PM To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don Baisley wrote: > Fortunately, many database systems have an awareness of current time and can tell us things like current balance as well as an account balance at a particular point in time. Present tense facts are common among data coming out of databases. Databases are full of dates and times, but some identities are seen as ongoing, so they are recorded without reference to time. Yes. Databases have a mix of endurant and perdurant fact types, together with snapshots whose underlying interpretation may be either ("present" is just a particular time), or undefined. "present" often just means 'the time interval since the last time it was changed' and that time may or may not have been recorded. For account balances it most certainly is recorded. > SBVR supports modeling with or without involving temporal relations. As long as the usage is supported by the database-style capturing of times that matter. And SBVR provides no support for doing that. > Fortunately, the Date/Time work will help provide some consistency in temporal relations. > Yes. That is why Mark raised the question. > As for the supposed "agreement" in June: no new definition was ever proposed, let alone agreed. However a majority did want to see a proposal for "individual verb concept", which is no more than a signifier with no defined meaning at this point. > Well, my notes say that the definition "individual verb concept that corresponds to at most one actuality" was what was discussed, and the vote was 5-1-2. When Don disagrees with everyone else, it is not consensus, but it is agreement of the RTF. I don't recall voting on the proposed resolution to 14849, either, but if I did, I'm sure I voted NO. With respect to the writeup, John Hall took the action item, and Lord knows, he has ample excuse for failing to deliver in the recent past. > I'm sorry to miss the OMG meeting. Sounds like fun discussions are going on. > Computer scientists have a strange concept of fun... (I won't make the meeting, either. I will maybe be on the RTF telecon.) Best, -Ed > All the best, > Don > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] > Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 3:51 PM > To: Don Baisley > Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org > Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" > > > > Don Baisley wrote: > >> Hi Mark, >> >> I attached the email with the attachment that defines "_state of >> affairs_ occurs". >> >> > > This proposed resolution text is out of date. It is not what the RTF agreed to in the June 2010 meeting. But the June agreement was related to resolving the issue of what an instance of a fact type is. A state of affairs is a concept; an actuality is a thing that is not a concept; and an instance of a fact type is an actuality, not a state of affairs. > > Adding 'state of affairs occurs' only makes the confusion worse. It is counterproductive, because it doesn't answer the critical question: > What does it mean for a state of affairs to exist? Can you have a universal quantifier for a state of affairs? Instead, it creates another undefined verb. So we need to revisit 14849. > > >> It is hard to define 'state of affairs' in terms of 'possible world' >> because 'possible world' specializes 'state of affairs'. It's like >> using 'mammal' to define 'animal' while we use 'animal' to define >> 'mammal'. It's backwards. >> >> > > This statement is seriously confused. Formal logics define "true" and "false" with respect to a universe of discourse. Alethic logic postulates the existence of multiple universes, each with its own things and actualities. These distinct universes are referred to in SBVR as "possible worlds". A 'necessity' is a proposition that is true in all of the possible worlds in which the concepts in an SBVR model are populated. A 'fact' is a proposition that is true in a given possible world. 'Possible world' does not specialize the SBVR concept 'state of affairs'. It is a foundational concept of the formal interpretation of SBVR. > > In database land, each instantaneous (consistent) database population > represents a possible world. It can be understood as a set of > propositions/statements that are true in the world represented by that > database at that instant. That is, it represents the actualities that > exist in that world at that instant. A different time is a different > possible world. The conceptual schema introduces both the > vocabularies in which those propositions can be formulated and a set > of > "necessities": propositions that are taken to be true of all possible worlds that the database can describe. > > A state of affairs exists (is an 'actuality') in zero or more possible worlds. The proposition that describes the state of affairs is true in a possible world in which the state of affairs exists. Unless it is the objectification of a 'necessity', a state of affairs may fail to exist (be an 'actuality') in one or more possible worlds. The proposition that describes the state of affairs is false in a world in which that state of affairs does not exist. As the SBVR RTF agreed at the June meeting, a 'state of affairs' is an individual concept whose instance (when it exists) is an 'actuality'. > > (For Don's benefit: This is exactly the same model as we use for > 'unicorns'. We can talk about the concept 'unicorn' and we can > ascribe characteristics to the concept, and we can even make rules > about the behavior of unicorns. That doesn't mean they exist. But > the business rules for unicorns will only be applied in a world in > which a unicorn actually exists. Similarly, we can talk about a state > of affairs, and we can make rules about its behavior. But those rules > will only be applied to an actuality (thing) that corresponds to the > state of affairs > (concept).) > > The discussion Mark and I had this morning was about the relationship of propositions and states of affairs to time intervals. In the database model, a different time is a different possible world. Once you introduce the idea of time intervals as an element of a given world, a sentence like "Ed is at the office" does not satisfy the SBVR definition of 'proposition': If the world of interest has multiple time intervals as part of it, then "Ed is at the office" is neither true nor false! It is true at some times and false at others. People use other linguistic cues to determine proposition that was meant, e.g. Ed is in the office at the present/referent time. This problem is resolved in databases by explicitly stating what relations (fact type forms) have time point roles and what relations don't (and are taken to be timeless). > > How this problem is resolved in ontologies is a matter of 'ontological > commitment'. There are several approaches to solving the problem, and > each can be made to work. In one model (DOLCE and others), some > propositions ('endurants') are timeless: they are always true or > always false in the given world over all interesting time. "France is > a nation" is an example of this. It is true over all times that are > in the world of interest to some business activity. Other > propositions > ('perdurants') must have a time component to have meaning: "Ed is in > the office at 17:00 on 6.12.2010" is true; "Ed is in the office" is > not a valid proposition. (This approach is analogous to the database > model.) In the so-called 4D model (e.g. ISO 15926), every thing in the world of interest has a time component. The idea of 'exists' is always qualified by time: "Ed" only exists between 1943 and some unspecified future time; the actuality of Ed's being in the office exists in a time interval. And there are other models. > > By making a 'state of affairs' an individual concept, we can avoid most of these problems. The 'state of affairs' denoted "Ed is in the office" > is a concept -- a part of the concept system.. It is a meaning that is formulated by a linguistic sentence, but it is used as a noun concept when it is objectified, i.e. used to refer to an actuality -- a situation/thing/occurrence in a given possible world, or an occurrence in time. In a world with time intervals, propositions of the form 'state of affairs occurs in time interval' are meaningful. In an instantaneous world without a temporal model, 'state of affairs exists' > has meaning. SBVR v1.0 appears to use an instantaneous model (which means that the 14849 proposal makes 'occurs' a synonym for 'exists' in any useful interpretation). > > -Ed > > P.S. As you might guess, there is a fair amount of philosophical and formal logic literature on this subject. I can't do justice to it. I know that this is pretty esoteric stuff, but it comes of trying to create a formal interpretation of SBVR. As someone recently said in a Smart Grid meeting, "a model of time and events is not 'simple'." SBVR opened Pandora's box by putting 'state of affairs' into the base vocabulary without making the interpretation model clear. One of the requirements of Date/Time is to provide a clear interpretation model for statements about states of affairs involving time. > > > >> Best regards, >> >> Don >> >> >> >> >> >> *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] >> *Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 11:22 AM >> *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org >> *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and >> "proposition nominalization" >> >> >> >> Don, thanks for the feedback. >> >> I would be interested in seeing your proposed definition of "state of >> affairs occurs". I searched the OMG's sbvr-rtf issue archive, and I >> guess it may be a resolution of 14849 but unfortunately the archives >> do not seem to capture attachments.... >> >> It seems to me that the truth of a proposition must be evaluated with >> respect to a particular possible world. Kirk is Captain of Star Trek >> in the possible world of the TV series, but not in the real world. >> With respect to the TV series, it is an actuality that Kirk is >> Captain of Star Trek. >> >> It also seems to me that specifying a time is one way of identifying >> a possible world. "William conquers England" is a true proposition >> with respect to the year 1066 and a false proposition with respect to >> other years. >> >> So I do agree with you, upon reflection, that 'state of affairs that >> occurs at some point in time' is not the right definition. Going >> further (and based on a conversation with Ed, today), it seems that >> "state of affairs occurs" is in some sense a matter of >> epistemological commitment. "The world is a globe" is an actuality >> that most of us recognize, but apparently there are (still) some people who subscribe >> to an alternative possible world in which "the world is flat". This >> point is consistent with SBVR's definition of "fact" as "proposition >> taken as true". >> -------------------------------- >> Mark H. Linehan >> STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research >> >> phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 >> internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com >> >> >> >> From: Don Baisley > > >> To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS, "sbvr-rtf@omg.org >> " > >> Date: 12/06/2010 01:39 PM >> Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and >> "proposition nominalization" >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> -- >> >> >> >> >> Mark, >> You have it right regarding your two examples below. When creating a >> logical formulation from a sentence, we choose objectification vs. >> proposition nominalization based on what the fact type form requires >> (what the verb wants). It seems to work out very well. >> >> Also, you correctly noted that the example of the statement (Ron >> said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to that >> airport.) involves a binding to the same variable from within the >> quotation and from outside. This forces the formulation to use >> proposition nominalization rather than treat the quoted part as an opaque text. >> The embedded statement is fully identified by the combination of its >> expression and, using proposition nominalization, the formulation of >> the proposition. >> >> Regarding "occurs", at other people's request I submitted a >> resolution to an issue regarding 'state of affairs'. The resolution >> added the characteristic '_state of affairs_ occurs' and then used that to >> define 'actuality'. It would be incorrect to define 'actuality' as >> 'state of affairs that occurs at some point in time'. An actuality >> is simply a 'state of affairs that occurs'. Otherwise, the >> correspondence from proposition to actuality would not line up with >> the proposition being true. A proposition corresponds to an >> actuality if and only if the proposition is true. >> >> Best regards, >> Don >> >> >> *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] * >> Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 6:03 AM* >> To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org * >> Subject:* Fw: Question: difference between "objectification" and >> "proposition nominalization" >> >> Going a little further, the only differences between these two examples: >> >> 1. a retailer wishes that every customer of the retailer be >> registered >> 2. a retailer says that every customer of the retailer is >> registered >> >> ... are "wishes" versus "says" and "be registered" versus "is >> registered". So one has to know the meaning of the verb "wishes" or >> "says" to understand whether to use objectification or nominalization. >> Right? There's nothing in the surface English form that tells >> whether to use one or the other. >> >> From a technical point of view, one must have declared verb concepts >> " wishes " and " says >> > -------------------------------- >> Mark H. Linehan >> STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research >> >> phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 >> internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com >> ----- Forwarded by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM on 12/06/2010 08:53 AM >> ----- >> >> From: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS >> To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org >> Date: 12/05/2010 08:55 AM >> Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and >> "proposition nominalization" >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> -- >> >> >> >> >> >> Thanks for the confirmation and further explanation, Ed. >> >> Regarding "Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave >> directions to that airport." -- it seems to me that a formulation >> should nominalize "Amsterdam has an airport" to enable the two >> references to "airport" to bind to the same existentially-quantified >> variable. >> >> Regarding "The distinction between 'Amsterdam's having an airport >> causes pollution' and 'Podunk's having an airport would cause >> pollution' is one SBVR lacks the expressiveness to make." -- the only >> difference between these is "would", which in this case fits this >> definition from Wiktionary: >> 2. As a modal verb. >> 1. Used to give a conditional or potential "softening" to the >> present; might , might wish >> . >> >> SBVR formulates the modal sense using "it is possible that ...." So I >> would formulate the second example as "It is possible that the >> objectification of 'Podunk has an airport' causes polution". Net: I >> disagree that SBVR lacks the expressiveness for this statement. >> >> ------------------------ >> On a related topic, Don says that "The SBVR specification brings out >> the distinction in its entry for 'state of affairs' in 8.6." -- but I >> think that our debates last summer about this clause show that the >> distinction is not at all clear. I think part of the problem is that >> the definition of actuality, "state of affairs that occurs in the >> actual world ", uses an undefined verb "occurs". Given that the verb >> is undefined it is fair to assume that it is a synonym of "exists". >> This leads to the reasoning that a state of affairs that is not an >> actuality does not exist. And that conclusion brings one to all kinds >> of contradictions with the SBVR definition and usage of "state of >> affairs". >> >> In our Date-Time Vocabulary, we have introduced a verb concept >> "*_state of affairs_** /is at /**_time point_*" with various >> synonymous forms, including "_state of affairs_/ occurs at /_time >> point_". The discussion in this email thread suggests an alternative >> definition of "actuality": "state of affairs that occurs at at least >> one time point". If a state of affairs never has a time point, then >> it is not an actuality. If it is an actuality, then it occurs at some >> time point. Some states of affairs (like "the rising of the sun") >> occur many times. >> >> (Note: in our discussions about Date-Time, we are moving towards >> changing the verb concept to "*_state of affairs_** /is at /**_time >> _*interval" -- but we haven't officially made that change in our text >> quite yet.) >> -------------------------------- >> Mark H. Linehan >> STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research >> >> phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 >> internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com >> >> Inactive hide details for Ed Barkmeyer ---12/03/2010 08:14:14 >> PM---Mark H Linehan wrote: >Ed Barkmeyer ---12/03/2010 08:14:14 >> PM---Mark H Linehan wrote: > >> >> From: Ed Barkmeyer > >> To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS >> Cc: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org " > >, "Stan@hendryxassoc.com >> " > > >> Date: 12/03/2010 08:14 PM >> Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and >> "proposition nominalization" >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> -- >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> Mark H Linehan wrote: >> >>> I've been puzzling about the difference between SBVR's >>> 'objectification' and 'proposition nominalization'. In the >>> definitions of these concepts both bind to a bindable target and >>> consider a logical formulation. In objectification "the thing to >>> which the bindable target refers is a state of affairs that >>> corresponds to the meaning of the considered logical formulation ". >>> In proposition nominalization, "the thing to which the bindable >>> target refers is the proposition that is formulated by the >>> considered logical formulation ". So one refers to a thing that >>> corresponds to the meaning of a proposition, while the other refers to the proposition itself. >>> >>> An example objectification: "a retailer wishes that every customer >>> of the retailer is registered". The retailer wishes the state of >>> affairs corresponding to "every customer of the retailer is >>> registered". using a verb concept such as " wishes ". >>> >>> An example proposition nominalization: "a retailer says that every >>> customer of the retailer is registered". The retailer makes a >>> statement that "every customer of the retailer is registered" using >>> a verb concept such as " says ". >>> >>> I think the key semantic difference here is that a "state of affairs" >>> can happen (or not). And if it happens, it may have a time when it >>> happens and a place where it happens. Whereas a statement does not >>> "happen", it just is. But this distinction is not brought out >>> anywhere in the specification. >>> >>> Do I have this right? >>> >>> >> Yes. You hit upon the distinction. The nominalization of the >> proposition is a 'thing' in the universe of discourse. The thing is >> the conceptualization/meaning itself. In Don's example, the >> nominalization is the thing that is the Idea that Amsterdam has an >> airport. The designation for that thing is a statement of the >> proposition. The objectification of the proposition is a 'state of >> affairs', which we agreed in June is an individual concept to which >> an actuality (a thing in the universe of discourse of a given world) >> may (or may not) correspond. A statement of the proposition is a >> designation for that concept. >> >> Whether that distinction is carefully stated in the standard is >> another matter. It seemed to me that it was pretty clearly stated in >> the objectification formulation in clause 9. But perhaps it was >> somewhat muddled by the continuing confusion about what a state of affairs is. >> >> Using Don's example: >> >> >>> * *Expression (literal text)* >>> >>> . John did a Google search for "Amsterdam has an airport." >>> >>> * *Representation (quoting a statement)* >>> >>> . Ron said, "Amsterdam has an airport", and then gave directions to >>> that airport. >>> >>> >> What Ron said is a Statement, which is a representation of a >> proposition. Thus the statement involves an Expression (the text) and >> a Proposition that may have a logical formulation (or not, since it >> has a representation). The Statement, the expression and the >> Proposition are all elements of the Universe of Discourse in this case. >> >> Note that we provide no guidance for this case. If the vocabulary >> contains only 'person says proposition', then the exchange form may >> contain only Fact(says, Ron, proposition4) and Statement("Amsterdam >> has an airport", proposition4). What is wanted is that a tool that >> supports clause 9 should provide a logical formulation of the stated >> proposition, as well as the Expression, since the recipient tool >> might not be able to parse the Expression. (Who knows what language >> Ron >> used?) >> >> >>> * *Meaning (nominalization of a proposition)* >>> >>> . Keri said that Amsterdam has an airport. >>> >>> >> Yes. "That Amsterdam has an airport" is the proposition -- the Idea >> that is now an element of the universe of discourse. It is expected >> that a tool that supports clause 9 will in this case provide a >> logical formulation of Keri's utterance using a nominalization of the >> proposition, instead of a statement. But the atomic formulation >> Fact(says, Keri, proposition4) might well be the same as the above. >> The difference here is that proposition is expected to be the >> bindable target of a proposition nominalization. >> >> >>> * *Extension (objectification of a proposition)* >>> >>> . A cause of pollution is that Amsterdam has an airport. >>> >> Agreed. What causes pollution is the actuality of the state of >> affairs in the world in which the pollution exists. It has nothing to >> do with the Idea. The distinction between 'Amsterdam's having an >> airport causes pollution' and 'Podunk's having an airport would cause >> pollution' is one SBVR lacks the expressiveness to make. Both are >> statements about possible worlds. The problem is that we have no way >> to characterize the world each talks about. >> >> A more interesting question is the following: >> Hitler's decision to invade Poland led to World War II. >> This can be cast as a nominalization: >> Hitler's decision that Germany should invade Poland led to World War II. >> >> This sentence says that the decision -- the Idea and its related >> course of action -- is what led to World War II. That use is a nominalization. >> The sentence does not say that the invasion of Poland ("that Germany >> invaded Poland") is what led to World War II. That use would be an >> objectification. >> >> And OBTW, this is another use of the missing "cast" concept in SBVR >> -- it declares the proposition to be an instance of 'decision', as >> distinct from an instance of 'issue' or 'objection', etc. >> >> -Ed >> >> >> >> >> >>> -------------------------------- >>> Mark H. Linehan >>> STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research >>> >>> phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 >>> internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com >>> >>> >> -- >> Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov >> >> National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems >> Integration Division >> 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 >> Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 >> >> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and >> have not been reviewed by any Government authority." >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> - >> -- >> >> Subject: >> RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue >> From: >> Don Baisley >> Date: >> Mon, 17 May 2010 22:32:10 -0400 >> To: >> "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" >> >> To: >> "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" >> >> >> Attached is a proposed resolution for issue 14849 based on our >> discussion at the last SBVR RTF meeting. >> >> >> >> Best regards, >> >> Don >> >> >> >> *From:* Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] >> *Sent:* Wednesday, December 23, 2009 10:29 AM >> *To:* issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org >> *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue >> >> >> >> this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk >> >> >> >> >> 'Actuality' is a specialization of 'state of affairs'. >> >> Clause 8 says: >> >> fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a >> verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose >> instances are all actualities >> >> There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, >> such as: >> >> § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities >> >> § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the >> semantic community does not yet know for sure >> >> Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. >> >> >> >> * >> >> Juergen Boldt >> Director, Member Services >> Object Management Group >> 140 Kendrick St >> Building A Suite 300 >> Needham, MA 02494 >> USA >> >> tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 >> fax: +1 781 444 0320 >> email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org >> >> *[] >> >> >> >> > > -- > Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov > National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division > 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 > Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 > > "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." > > > -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "edbark@nist.gov" CC: "'SBVR RTF' (sbvr-rtf@omg.org)" Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Topic: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Index: AQHLlU5PXbE2HSNwtESJ7JiMT4IexpOTt/oAgACZSQD//384oIAAon6A//+CkPCAAL2QAP//og4A Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 03:45:33 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.78] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id oB73P4YM007780 I am not opposed to adding a binary fact type that considers a state of affairs with respect to a composite state of affairs, such as a possible world. This supports our SBVR idea of model. If we take all the facts of a model conjunctively, we have one big fact that corresponds to once possible world. If that possible world is an actuality, then every state of affairs that occurs in it is an actuality. This seems to be a simple matter of composition of state of affairs corresponding to conjunction of propositions. All the best, Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 5:12 PM To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don Baisley wrote: > > The characteristic â_state of affair_ occursâ differs from the binary > fact type â_state of affairs_ occurs in _possible world_â in the same > way the characteristic â_proposition_ is trueâ differs from the binary > fact type â_proposition_ is true for _possible world_â. > This is a whole set of undefined concepts that SBVR does not have. In SBVR, 'possible world' is a part of the _interpretation_ of 'true'. 'proposition is true' means the proposition is taken to be true, i.e. to correspond to an actuality, in the world of interest, a possible world. 'proposition is a necessity' means the proposition is taken to be true in all possible worlds. Neither of these ideas is involved with the confused notion of 'state of affairs' in any way. The characteristic 'state of affairs occurs' in the proposed resolution of 14849 is "defined" by: Definition: the state of affairs happens (i.e., takes place, obtains) Now if the model of a possible world is a snapshot of the real world at a given time, what does that mean? Is it happening, taking place, or not? How is it different from 'state of affairs is an actuality'? And does the state (of affairs) 'exist' (is a thing in the world of interest), or not exist? OTOH, if the model of a possible world is a world in which time intervals are things that exist and actualities are things that exist and are related to time intervals, what does "the state of affairs occurs" mean? That there are time intervals in which the state of affairs occurs? If that is the meaning, we are much better off with 'state of affairs occurs in time interval'. That allows us to state not only that it happens (by "xxx occurs in _some_ time interval"), but also to specify the time intervals when that is appropriate. > SBVR defines the characteristics above, but not the binary fact types. > Actually, the only one it has is 'proposition is true'. > If those binary fact types were added to SBVR, then they should be > more general because a possible world is a state of affairs: > > â_state of affairs_ occurs in _state of affairs_â > > â_proposition_ is true for _state of affairs_â > See previous email. This is merely confused. > In this way, the relations are more generally useful to things > business people talk about, like situations. > In this way, everyone becomes more confused. > A business situation might not be a possible world, > We are comparing cheese and chalk here. A conceptual situation is a "possible world" (a world of interest) if the business wants quantifiers like 'all' and 'at least n' to be referenced to that situation, and it is a 'state of affairs' if the business wants to talk about its properties using fact types about situations and events. > but it is a state of affairs in which other states of affairs may > occur and for which propositions may be true. > SBVR has not introduced any fact types for relating situations to statements, e.g., 'proposition is true in situation'. But it does have a construct for doing so: E.g., IF a nuclear device is detonated in Washington, our European headquarters will take over management of worldwide activities. Using this construct is fairly common in business circles, even though "if" is sometimes spelled "in the situation that". SBVR does not however, have time-related versions of this: E.g., when the last of the 2010 line is produced, the factory in Middleburg will be closed. This can be stated: The factory in Middleburg will be closed at the time that 'the last of the 2010 line is produced' occurs. But only if we have 'state of affairs occurs at time', which Date/Time will provide. In that example, we are not talking about other possible worlds, we are talking about time intervals as a concept in the world of interest and using a fact type about a state of affairs. > This is all about the composition of states of affairs ­ how one state > of affairs is often a composition of others. > Yes, a state of affairs can involve other states of affairs, and a state of affairs can cause other states of affairs, etc. These are all statements about relationships among conceptual situations, and they can be realized by actualities. But that has nothing directly to do with propositions. The related, but separable, fact is that a state of affairs is an objectification of a proposition, and the proposition is true in exactly those worlds in which the state of affairs corresponds to an actuality. This particular behavior, that a state of affairs is formulated as a proposition, means that a construct like If A then B can be used to formulate a relationship between states of affairs. SBVR needs the state of affairs and objectification concepts in addition to If..then, so that vocabularies can attach "independent" adverbial phrases to other fact types, such as where something occurs, or when, or who the agent must be. > If people have some notion of âpossible worldâ that does not > specialize âstate of affairsâ, then that notion would be inconsistent > with SBVR as we have it. > Well, then "SBVR as we have it" (whoever "we" may be) has no sensible logical model, and it surely does not correspond to Terry Halpin's model of 'necessity' in clause 10. Don's confusion about state of affairs has led to endless wrangling in the FTF and RTF for years. This is a new confusion about states of affairs that threatens the formal underpinnings of SBVR. -Ed > > > Enjoy, > > Don > > > > *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] > *Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 1:23 PM > *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org > *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and > "proposition nominalization" > > > > Don, > > Thanks for that copy of your proposed resolution for 14849. I wonder > whether "_state of affairs_ /occurs/" should be something like "_state > of affairs_ /occurs in/ _possible world_". Consider the example "Kirk > is Captain". It "occurs" (and hence is an actuality) in the Star Trek > world. It does not occur and is not an actuality in the real world. > So the predicate "state of events occurs" apparently is incomplete if > the possible world is unspecified. > > Regarding Don's comment "It is hard to define âstate of affairsâ in > terms of âpossible worldâ because âpossible worldâ specializes âstate > of affairsâ. Itâs like using âmammalâ to define âanimalâ while we use > âanimalâ to define âmammalâ. Itâs backwards." -- I do not suggest > defining "state of affairs" in terms of "possible worlds". I suggest > defining an "occurs in" relationship between "states of affairs" and > "possible worlds". Clause 10 seems to support this idea, for example > where it says on page 102 of the ballot 3 convenience document that "A > proposition is possible if and only if it is true in at least one > possible world. ". > > Donald, when is the RTF going to take this up again? The reason I am > interested in this is that this same debate comes up in the context of > the Date-Time Vocabulary. > -------------------------------- > Mark H. Linehan > STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation > IBM Research > > phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 > internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com > -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" X-KeepSent: 29E84BD6:E320795E-852577F2:00616273; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP1 SHF20 February 10, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 13:24:46 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP6|July 15, 2010) at 12/07/2010 13:24:48, Serialize complete at 12/07/2010 13:24:48 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER I want to respond to a couple of points that have been made in this email thread. 1. Don says that a state of affairs can compose other states of affairs. My response: this is a new idea that is not supported by anything that I can find in SBVR. If we want this idea, then we have to get much more specific about the nature of the composition, since things can be composed in many ways. In one of his emails, Don suggests "composition of state of affairs corresponding to conjunction of propositions" which certainly is possible. But this is going well beyond what currently is in SBVR. 2. Don says that a "possible world" is itself a state of affairs. My response: the only formal definition of "possible world" in SBVR is in clause 10, where the definition reads "any state (situation) of some given universe of discourse (domain) that is implicitly characterized, by an accepted expert on that domain, as logically consistent with some set of laws seen by that expert as applying to that domain ". I note that the words "state" and "situation" in this definition are neither colorized as terms nor use the same spelling as the formal SBVR concept "state of affairs". So I think it is a stretch to say that "state" and "situation" in this definition mean the same as "state of affairs". More importantly, I think it is clear that a possible world is the union of many individual states of affairs. Whether this might be achieved via the idea that a state of affairs is composed from other states of affairs or via some other mechanism is something we could discuss. 3. Ed reminds us that, at the June meeting, we discussed the idea that a state of affairs is an individual concept, that a proposition is a definite description of the corresponding state of affairs/individual concept, and that an actuality is the instance of the state of affairs/individual concept in some possible world. As Ed implies, with this interpretation, quantification over a state of affairs (i.e. the individual concept described by a proposition) follows the standard meaning of quantification. "if there exists a unicorn" means "if the number of things in the extension of the concept 'unicorn' is at least 1 ...." "If there exists EU-Rent owning 10,000 cars" can be decomposed as an if test on the existence of a state of affairs "EU-Rent owning 10,000 cars" which has zero instances if the state of affairs is false (in some possible world) and otherwise has one instance. Note that the net result is the same as the more likely formulation "if EU-Rent owns 10,000 cars ...." I looked at Donald's notes from the June 24 meeting, which were distributed on September 22. The notes show that John presented a model that Ed, Donald, and I agree with -- and Don disagreed. I don't remember discussing 14849 at the September meeting (perhaps I missed it) but Donald's notes of September 23 say that we "Provided input to John Hall for writing up the revised resolution." It would be helpful to the Date-Time Vocabulary effort if we could make some progress on 14849 at Thursday's meeting. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:33:51 -0500 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "'SBVR RTF' (sbvr-rtf@omg.org)" Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: I am not opposed to adding a binary fact type that considers a state of affairs with respect to a composite state of affairs, such as a possible world. I am now opposed to putting any such fact type in SBVR, because it will beget some further confusion, and Don is already confused. This supports our SBVR idea of model. If we take all the facts of a model conjunctively, we have one big fact that corresponds to one possible world. Almost. An SBVR 'fact model' corresponds to the 'model' concept of formal logics, and is indeed a description of a possible world. The conjunction of all the facts in a fact model is a proposition that objectifies to a 'state of affairs'. But per SBVR, that state of affairs is satisfied by one (composite) actuality in that possible world, not by the world itself, even though you may see them as metaphysically equivalent. Every 'actuality' is a thing IN a possible world; the world itself is by definition the universe of discourse, not a thing in that universe. This is formal logic, not intuitive philosophy. (Frege's paradox forced this kind of care.) If that possible world is an actuality, then every state of affairs that occurs in it is an actuality. As indicated above, the antecedent "If that possible world is an actuality" is meaningless. The consequent is nearly correct: Every state of affairs that occurs in a possible world corresponds to an actuality in that world. That is, the term 'actuality' means "an occurence of the state of affairs in the world of interest". That is why the 14849 proposal doesn't say anything useful. This seems to be a simple matter of composition of state of affairs corresponding to conjunction of propositions. Well, it isn't. It is a simple matter of formal logic concepts. BTW, it occurred to me last night that what Terry originally meant by 'objectification' is a formalization of an ORM construct. In ORM, it is possible to "reify" a fact type to make it an object type. You draw the object type ellipse around the fact type reading boxes. The effect of this is to allow instances of the fact type (actualities) to participate (as 'things') in other fact types. The reification literally turns the fact type into an object type -- a noun concept -- that corresponds to the actualities that are the instances of the fact type. And the conceptual schema can use that object type as the range class of roles in other fact types. Objectification occurs at the population level -- it turns facts that are atomic formulations using the fact type (e.g., database rows) into actuality objects that appear in other facts. In that model, reification converts a fact type to an object type, and objectification converts propositions that are formulated using the fact type into the corresponding actualities. This doesn't help in resolving the "what is a state of affairs" issue, however. The problem arises when the database row does not represent a fact/actuality but rather a conceptual state such as a planned state, or a "what if" state. The database row is still a proposition; it just doesn't correspond to anything in the current world. Now, formal logic is quite capable of dealing with those things, by using them as antecedents in statements about the alternative world they represent: we just prefix them with "if" or "when". If we want to assign properties to those things, however, we need something more. We can do it at the reification level: instances of this fact type can participate in this or that other fact type. But what are the instances of the reified object type? John Hall's model is that they are conceptual states -- meanings -- that are related to the actualities (when they occur) in the same way that an individual concept of a thing is meaning that is related to the thing (when it exists). Atlantis is a term for an individual concept that doesn't correspond to a thing in our world, but we can say anything we need to about it, because we are using the concept to stand for the thing if there were one. In the same way, we can use the 'state of affairs' -- the individual concept of the actuality -- to say anything we need to about the actuality if there were one. We can, in both cases, say something about the concept itself, e.g. we can say Atlantis is a myth, or that a state of affairs is planned. The important thing is that conceptual states, like other conceptual things, only satisfy quantifiers over concept types, not quantifiers over the things that might correspond to them. That is, if we say our service reaches every continent, it isn't a requirement that our service reaches Atlantis, because Atlantis the individual concept does not correspond to an instance of 'continent' in our world. In the same way, a statement that 'the broker shall withhold taxes on dividends paid and pay the U.S. Treasury the corresponding amount' does not require the broker to withhold and pay taxes on dividends that are planned. The planned dividend payments do not exist -- they are not instances of dividend payment -- in the current world. They are individual concepts whose general concept is 'dividend payment' (or 'company pays dividend') but they do not correspond to any _thing_ in the current world. This is the critical change, and it correctly carries all of the SBVR intent, but in a way that is amenable to formal interpretation. The important ideas here are two: - objectification of a proposition produces a concept of a state -- a 'state of a affairs' -- that corresponds to an actuality in each world in which the proposition is true. - an individual concept is distinct from the thing, if any, that it conceptualizes, and the individual concept itself (the thing that is the concept) has none of the properties of the thing it conceptualizes! Atlantis the concept is not just beyond the Pillars of Hercules; the instance of that concept, if it exists, is just beyond the Pillars of Hercules (according to Plato, third hand). The set of 2000-stadia-wide land masses just west of Gibraltar is empty in our world, but we can still talk about Atlantis, and similarly, Supeman, and the state of affairs that 'humans land on Mars'. -Ed All the best, Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Monday, December 06, 2010 5:12 PM To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don Baisley wrote: The characteristic â_state of affair_ occursâ differs from the binary fact type â_state of affairs_ occurs in _possible world_â in the same way the characteristic â_proposition_ is trueâ differs from the binary fact type â_proposition_ is true for _possible world_â. This is a whole set of undefined concepts that SBVR does not have. In SBVR, 'possible world' is a part of the _interpretation_ of 'true'. 'proposition is true' means the proposition is taken to be true, i.e. to correspond to an actuality, in the world of interest, a possible world. 'proposition is a necessity' means the proposition is taken to be true in all possible worlds. Neither of these ideas is involved with the confused notion of 'state of affairs' in any way. The characteristic 'state of affairs occurs' in the proposed resolution of 14849 is "defined" by: Definition: the state of affairs happens (i.e., takes place, obtains) Now if the model of a possible world is a snapshot of the real world at a given time, what does that mean? Is it happening, taking place, or not? How is it different from 'state of affairs is an actuality'? And does the state (of affairs) 'exist' (is a thing in the world of interest), or not exist? OTOH, if the model of a possible world is a world in which time intervals are things that exist and actualities are things that exist and are related to time intervals, what does "the state of affairs occurs" mean? That there are time intervals in which the state of affairs occurs? If that is the meaning, we are much better off with 'state of affairs occurs in time interval'. That allows us to state not only that it happens (by "xxx occurs in _some_ time interval"), but also to specify the time intervals when that is appropriate. SBVR defines the characteristics above, but not the binary fact types. Actually, the only one it has is 'proposition is true'. If those binary fact types were added to SBVR, then they should be more general because a possible world is a state of affairs: â_state of affairs_ occurs in _state of affairs_â â_proposition_ is true for _state of affairs_â See previous email. This is merely confused. In this way, the relations are more generally useful to things business people talk about, like situations. In this way, everyone becomes more confused. A business situation might not be a possible world, We are comparing cheese and chalk here. A conceptual situation is a "possible world" (a world of interest) if the business wants quantifiers like 'all' and 'at least n' to be referenced to that situation, and it is a 'state of affairs' if the business wants to talk about its properties using fact types about situations and events. but it is a state of affairs in which other states of affairs may occur and for which propositions may be true. SBVR has not introduced any fact types for relating situations to statements, e.g., 'proposition is true in situation'. But it does have a construct for doing so: E.g., IF a nuclear device is detonated in Washington, our European headquarters will take over management of worldwide activities. Using this construct is fairly common in business circles, even though "if" is sometimes spelled "in the situation that". SBVR does not however, have time-related versions of this: E.g., when the last of the 2010 line is produced, the factory in Middleburg will be closed. This can be stated: The factory in Middleburg will be closed at the time that 'the last of the 2010 line is produced' occurs. But only if we have 'state of affairs occurs at time', which Date/Time will provide. In that example, we are not talking about other possible worlds, we are talking about time intervals as a concept in the world of interest and using a fact type about a state of affairs. This is all about the composition of states of affairs ­ how one state >> of affairs is often a composition of others. Yes, a state of affairs can involve other states of affairs, and a state of affairs can cause other states of affairs, etc. These are all statements about relationships among conceptual situations, and they can be realized by actualities. But that has nothing directly to do with propositions. The related, but separable, fact is that a state of affairs is an objectification of a proposition, and the proposition is true in exactly those worlds in which the state of affairs corresponds to an actuality. This particular behavior, that a state of affairs is formulated as a proposition, means that a construct like If A then B can be used to formulate a relationship between states of affairs. SBVR needs the state of affairs and objectification concepts in addition to If..then, so that vocabularies can attach "independent" adverbial phrases to other fact types, such as where something occurs, or when, or who the agent must be. If people have some notion of âpossible worldâ that does not specialize âstate of affairsâ, then that notion would be inconsistent with SBVR as we have it. Well, then "SBVR as we have it" (whoever "we" may be) has no sensible logical model, and it surely does not correspond to Terry Halpin's model of 'necessity' in clause 10. Don's confusion about state of affairs has led to endless wrangling in the FTF and RTF for years. This is a new confusion about states of affairs that threatens the formal underpinnings of SBVR. -Ed Enjoy, Don *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] *Sent:* Monday, December 06, 2010 1:23 PM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Don, Thanks for that copy of your proposed resolution for 14849. I wonder whether "_state of affairs_ /occurs/" should be something like "_state of affairs_ /occurs in/ _possible world_". Consider the example "Kirk is Captain". It "occurs" (and hence is an actuality) in the Star Trek world. It does not occur and is not an actuality in the real world. So the predicate "state of events occurs" apparently is incomplete if the possible world is unspecified. Regarding Don's comment "It is hard to define âstate of affairsâ in terms of âpossible worldâ because âpossible worldâ specializes âstate of affairsâ. Itâs like using âmammalâ to define âanimalâ while we use âanimalâ to define âmammalâ. Itâs backwards." -- I do not suggest defining "state of affairs" in terms of "possible worlds". I suggest defining an "occurs in" relationship between "states of affairs" and "possible worlds". Clause 10 seems to support this idea, for example where it says on page 102 of the ballot 3 convenience document that "A proposition is possible if and only if it is true in at least one possible world. ". Donald, when is the RTF going to take this up again? The reason I am interested in this is that this same debate comes up in the context of the Date-Time Vocabulary. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Topic: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" Thread-Index: AQHLlU5PXbE2HSNwtESJ7JiMT4IexpOTt/oAgACZSQD//384oIAAon6A//+CkPCAAL2QAP//og4AAC/MrwAADmGJIA== Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 19:45:57 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.79] Mark wrote: > So I think it is a stretch to say that "state" and "situation" in this definition mean the same as "state of affairs". I think it would be a stretch to say that the word .situation. in SBVR.s definition of .possible world. means something different from SBVR.s definition of .situation., regardless of font or coloring. In any case, for those who say that every situation is actual, I wonder whether they would say by the same reasoning that every possible world is actual. It.s a fractal universe (of discourse), Enjoy Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 10:25 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" I want to respond to a couple of points that have been made in this email thread. 1. Don says that a state of affairs can compose other states of affairs. My response: this is a new idea that is not supported by anything that I can find in SBVR. If we want this idea, then we have to get much more specific about the nature of the composition, since things can be composed in many ways. In one of his emails, Don suggests "composition of state of affairs corresponding to conjunction of propositions" which certainly is possible. But this is going well beyond what currently is in SBVR. 2. Don says that a "possible world" is itself a state of affairs. My response: the only formal definition of "possible world" in SBVR is in clause 10, where the definition reads "any state (situation) of some given universe of discourse (domain) that is implicitly characterized, by an accepted expert on that domain, as logically consistent with some set of laws seen by that expert as applying to that domain ". I note that the words "state" and "situation" in this definition are neither colorized as terms nor use the same spelling as the formal SBVR concept "state of affairs". So I think it is a stretch to say that "state" and "situation" in this definition mean the same as "state of affairs". More importantly, I think it is clear that a possible world is the union of many individual states of affairs. Whether this might be achieved via the idea that a state of affairs is composed from other states of affairs or via some other mechanism is something we could discuss. 3. Ed reminds us that, at the June meeting, we discussed the idea that a state of affairs is an individual concept, that a proposition is a definite description of the corresponding state of affairs/individual concept, and that an actuality is the instance of the state of affairs/individual concept in some possible world. As Ed implies, with this interpretation, quantification over a state of affairs (i.e. the individual concept described by a proposition) follows the standard meaning of quantification. "if there exists a unicorn" means "if the number of things in the extension of the concept 'unicorn' is at least 1 ...." "If there exists EU-Rent owning 10,000 cars" can be decomposed as an if test on the existence of a state of affairs "EU-Rent owning 10,000 cars" which has zero instances if the state of affairs is false (in some possible world) and otherwise has one instance. Note that the net result is the same as the more likely formulation "if EU-Rent owns 10,000 cars ...." I looked at Donald's notes from the June 24 meeting, which were distributed on September 22. The notes show that John presented a model that Ed, Donald, and I agree with -- and Don disagreed. I don't remember discussing 14849 at the September meeting (perhaps I missed it) but Donald's notes of September 23 say that we "Provided input to John Hall for writing up the revised resolution." It would be helpful to the Date-Time Vocabulary effort if we could make some progress on 14849 at Thursday's meeting. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2010 15:37:41 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: oB7Kbku2023169 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1292359068.92975@qWpo2ANN+rZ52DRI4+74kA X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: Mark wrote: > So I think it is a stretch to say that "state" and "situation" in this definition mean the same as "state of affairs". I think it would be a stretch to say that the word .situation. in SBVR.s definition of .possible world. means something different from SBVR.s definition of .situation., regardless of font or coloring. I think it would be a stretch to say that the word 'situation' in Terry's formal definition of 'possible world' means anything much like SBVR's definition by committee of the term 'situation'. The one is for a formal logic audience, the other is for a business audience. In any case, for those who say that every situation is actual, I wonder whether they would say by the same reasoning that every possible world is actual. All we are saying is that conceptual situations don't satisfy quantifiers over situations in the universe of discourse, only actualities do. I don't have to dial the emergency number if I conceptualize a fire in my office. I do have to dial the emergency number if a fire exists in my office. But formally, if a conceptual situation exists and is an instance of situation, then it satisfies any requirement for the existence of a situation. If there is a fire,... So one of the following must be false: either 'the conceptual situation exists' or 'the conceptual situation is an instance of situation'. Pick one. As I said before, this is not intuitive philosophy, this is formal logic. -Ed It.s a fractal universe (of discourse), Enjoy Don *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] *Sent:* Tuesday, December 07, 2010 10:25 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* RE: Question: difference between "objectification" and "proposition nominalization" I want to respond to a couple of points that have been made in this email thread. 1. Don says that a state of affairs can compose other states of affairs. My response: this is a new idea that is not supported by anything that I can find in SBVR. If we want this idea, then we have to get much more specific about the nature of the composition, since things can be composed in many ways. In one of his emails, Don suggests "composition of state of affairs corresponding to conjunction of propositions" which certainly is possible. But this is going well beyond what currently is in SBVR. 2. Don says that a "possible world" is itself a state of affairs. My response: the only formal definition of "possible world" in SBVR is in clause 10, where the definition reads "any state (situation) of some given universe of discourse (domain) that is implicitly characterized, by an accepted expert on that domain, as logically consistent with some set of laws seen by that expert as applying to that domain ". I note that the words "state" and "situation" in this definition are neither colorized as terms nor use the same spelling as the formal SBVR concept "state of affairs". So I think it is a stretch to say that "state" and "situation" in this definition mean the same as "state of affairs". More importantly, I think it is clear that a possible world is the union of many individual states of affairs. Whether this might be achieved via the idea that a state of affairs is composed from other states of affairs or via some other mechanism is something we could discuss. 3. Ed reminds us that, at the June meeting, we discussed the idea that a state of affairs is an individual concept, that a proposition is a definite description of the corresponding state of affairs/individual concept, and that an actuality is the instance of the state of affairs/individual concept in some possible world. As Ed implies, with this interpretation, quantification over a state of affairs (i.e. the individual concept described by a proposition) follows the standard meaning of quantification. "if there exists a unicorn" means "if the number of things in the extension of the concept 'unicorn' is at least 1 ...." "If there exists EU-Rent owning 10,000 cars" can be decomposed as an if test on the existence of a state of affairs "EU-Rent owning 10,000 cars" which has zero instances if the state of affairs is false (in some possible world) and otherwise has one instance. Note that the net result is the same as the more likely formulation "if EU-Rent owns 10,000 cars ...." I looked at Donald's notes from the June 24 meeting, which were distributed on September 22. The notes show that John presented a model that Ed, Donald, and I agree with -- and Don disagreed. I don't remember discussing 14849 at the September meeting (perhaps I missed it) but Donald's notes of September 23 say that we "Provided input to John Hall for writing up the revised resolution." It would be helpful to the Date-Time Vocabulary effort if we could make some progress on 14849 at Thursday's meeting. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research phone: (914) 784-7002 or IBM tieline 863-7002 internet: mlinehan@us.ibm.com -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Dictionary Definitions for 'state of affairs' Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:46:02 -0000 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysFQMAsig X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Fair-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4D666F31.0075, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2bthomr14.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0203.4D666FCF.0237,ss=1,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=single engine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Here.s the .state of affairs. definitions are that the meaning currently in the SBVR v1.0 specification, especially the first one: Wikipedia: state of affairs (philosophy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_affairs_(philosophy) a way that the actual world must be in order to make some given proposition about the actual work true, in other words, a state of affairs is a truth maker whereas a proposition is a truth bearer. Whereas states of affairs either obtain or fail-to obtain, propositions are either true or false. Syn: situation see also Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Online http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/states-of-affairs) Word Net the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time syn: situation Bloomsbury / Encarta a set of circumstances; situation Macmillan the situation that a person, place or process is in at a particular time Also the reference to states of affairs (states + circumstances) in Larson & Segal.s book, .Knowledge of Meaning. is page 491 ff. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:12:27 -0000 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysFQNkAIA X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Fair-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4D667561.029D, actions=TAG X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2bthomr07.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0201.4D667637.00CD,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=single engine X-Junkmail-IWF: false All . I.m sorry that this is being sent out so close to the telecom meeting. At least we can discuss the approach to the resolution under .Resolution:. and they everyone can review the detailed .Revised Text:. editing instructions between now and the next meeting. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution (2011-02-24).doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: Each instances of a verb concept is an actuality, but a state of affairs that is not an actuality can be identified using a logical formulation based on that verb concept. Such a state of affairs can be involved in actualities, even though it is not itself an actuality. The issue is resolved through several clarifications, one fix and two additions: 1. Clarify the concept .state of affairs. by making its definition explicit and it bringing into line with that SBVR says elsewhere about .state of affairs. 2. Add a new characteristic, .state of affairs occursobtains. and use it to define .actuality., and . 2. Eexplain the difference between .occursobtains. and .exists. with respect to states of affairs. 3. Clarify the definition of .actuality. in terms of .state of affairs obtains. and bring its Note into line with the wording of the definition 4. Avoid SBVR readers overlooking a key understanding of the concept .thing. that was adopted from ISO 1087-1 (3.1.1) .object. by copying the Note in the ISO 1087-1 .object. entry verbatim into the SBVR entry for .thing.. This is particularly important as .state of affairs. is a kind of .thing.. 5. Fix the definition of Clause 8 fact type so that states of affairs that have not ontained in the material world, e.g. plans and imaginary (what if) states of affairs, can be talked about, and clarify the definition of Clause 8 fact type so that is it clear how it relates to the sentences business people use. 6. Add the concept .individual verb concept. for a proposition that is a Clause 8 fact type with all its roles quantified (cloased). 7. Replace the use of the phase .state of affairs obtains. in Annexes C & E, which now has a particular more narrow meaning in SBVR with the phrase .state of affairs begins.. Revised Text: On page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs. REPLACE this definition: Definition: event, activity, situation, or circumstance WITH: Definition: set of circumstances that has been imagined and expressed in some form, had been planned and set forth in some way, or has come into being in the material (physical) domain and that inherently exist over time Synonym: situation Note: States of affairs obtain or do not obtain in the domain that is the subject of the SBVR model, i.e. the universe of discourse, for which the SBVR Model provides meanings, representations and expressions. .States of affairs., which are a kind of .thing. in the universe of discourse, correspond to .propositions., which are a kind of SBVR .meaning.. Note: While the possibility of .obtaining. over time in inherent in state of affairs, in practice the time during which the state of affairs obtains may be so short that is its viewed by the semantic community as obtaining at a point in time. On page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs REPLACE this Note; Note: A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities. A state of affairs is what is denoted by a proposition. A state of affairs either obtains or does not obtain, whereas a proposition is either true or false. A state of affairs is not a meaning. It is a thing that exists and can be an instance of a concept, even if it does not happen. WITH this Note: Note: A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities. A state of affairs is what is denoted by a proposition. A state of affairs either obtains or does not obtain, whereas a proposition is either true or false. A state of affairs is not a meaning. It is a thing that exists and can be an instance of a concept, even if it does not obtain. On page 39 Iin 8.6 REPLACE Figure 8.9 with the following figure (which adds .state of affairs occursobtains. and .actuality.). On page 39 iIn 8.6 after the entry for .state of affairs. ADD the following: state of affairs occursobtains Definition: the state of affairs happens (i.e., takes place, obtainscomes into being in the material (physical) domain) Note: The meaning of .occursobtains. should not be confused with .exists., meaning existential quantification. A state of affairs can exist as an imaginary thing or an immaterial thing and thereby participate in relationships to other things (e.g., plans, desires, fears, expectations) even if it does not occurobtain in the material domain, even if it never occursobtains in the material domain. Example: The situation of the EU-Rent London-Heathrow Branch being profitable is a state of affairs. The situation exists as an object of desire and planning (i.e., EU-Rent wants the London-Heathrow Branch to be profitable) regardless of whether the situation ever occursobtains. The situation occursobtains only when the branch is actually profitable, but the situation exists and is involved in an actuality (an instance of the fact type .company wants state of affairs.) even when the branch is unprofitable. On page 39 Iin 8.6 in the definition of .actuality., REMOVE the words .in the actual world.; CHANGE the word .occurs. to .obtains. and CHANGE the style of the word .occursobtains. to the verb style. The definition should look like this: Definition: state of affairs that occursobtains On page 39 in 8.6 under the entry for .actuality. REPLACE this Note: Note: Actualities are states of affairs that actually happen, as distinct from states of affairs that don.t happen but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned. WITH this Note: Note: Actualities are states of affairs that actually obtain in the material domain, as distinct from states of affairs that don.t obtain in the material domain but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned. On page 41 under the entry for .thing. ADD the Note under ISO 1087-1 (3.1.1) .object. which is adopted into SBVR as .thing. as the second Note under .thing. as follows: NOTE .Things. [objects] may be material (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond), immaterial (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan) or imagined (e.g. a unicorn). On page 21 in 8.1.1 under the entry for .fact type. REPLACE this Definition: Definition: concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities WITH this Definition: Definition: concept that is the meaning of a clause of an incomplete sentence that involves one or more noun concepts in roles as subject, direct object, or indirect object(s) where at least one of them is unquantified and therefore an .open. role; and whose instances are all states of affairs On page 21 in 8.1.1 after the entry for .fact type. ADD this entry for .individual verb concept.: individual verb concept Definition: proposition that is created from a (Clause 8) fact type by adding quantifications to close each unquantified fact type role in the fact type On page 242 in Annex C.1.5 REPLACE ..occurs. WITH .begins. in the following two verb concepts: state of affairs occurs before point in time state of affairs1 occurs before state of affairs2 occurs On the following pages in the Annex E Clauses cited REPLACE .occurs. with .begins. in the verb concept .state of affairs occurs at date/time.: On page 271 in E.1.4 two times On page 326 in E.2.2.2.5 one time On page 329 in E.2.2.2.5 one time On page 331 in E.2.2.2.9 one time On page 332 in E.2.2.2.9 one time On the following pages in the Annex E Clauses cited REPLACE .occurs. with .begins. in the verb concept .state of affairs occurs after date/time.: On page 325 in E.2.2.2.3 one time On page 338 in E.2.3.3 under the entry for .actual data/time. REPLACE .occurs. WITH .begins. in this Definition: .Definition: date/time at which a state of affairs occurs. On page 339 in E.2.3.3 REPLACE .occurs. WITH .begins. in these verb concepts: state of affairs occurs after date/time state of affairs occurs at date/time state of affairs occurs before date/time state of affairs1 occurs before state of affairs2 occurs Disposition: Resolved Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Dictionary Definitions for 'state of affairs' Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 16:34:57 +0100 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Dictionary Definitions for 'state of affairs' thread-index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysFQMAsigAAIZ57w= From: "Sjir Nijssen" To: "Donald Chapin" , To all, My proposal is to add some concrete examples that readers can easily understand. Examples (8) of state of affairs: The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo; The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded in Stockholm; Linus Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954; Linus Pauling was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962; Until 2010 Leonid Hurwicz was with 90 years the oldest laureate; Until 2010 Lawrence Bragg was with 25 years the youngest laureate; Until 2010 28 Nobel Prize in Physics were shared by 2 laureates; Until 2010 32 Nobel Prizes in Medicine were shared by 3 laureates. My experience in teaching SBVR is that concrete examples like the ones proposed help to communicate the SBVR message. Regards Sjir PS I support the proposal by John Hall: Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here.s the .state of affairs. definitions are that the meaning currently in the SBVR v1.0 specification, especially the first one: Wikipedia: state of affairs (philosophy) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_affairs_(philosophy) a way that the actual world must be in order to make some given proposition about the actual work true, in other words, a state of affairs is a truth maker whereas a proposition is a truth bearer. Whereas states of affairs either obtain or fail-to obtain, propositions are either true or false. Syn: situation see also Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy Online http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/states-of-affairs) Word Net the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time syn: situation Bloomsbury / Encarta a set of circumstances; situation Macmillan the situation that a person, place or process is in at a particular time Also the reference to states of affairs (states + circumstances) in Larson & Segal.s book, .Knowledge of Meaning. is page 491 ff. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-KeepSent: C1F9F74A:17DDFE35-85257841:00646C95; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:07:48 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.0.2FP6|July 15, 2010) at 02/24/2011 14:07:52 I agree with Sjir that working from real examples helps a lot in disentangling concepts. In this case, I believe we have 3 (not 2) modeling levels to consider. Consider one of Sjir's examples: the statement "The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo". 1) We know that there are multiple instances of this statement. (We have used the terms "actuality" and "occurrence" for these instances.) 2) The multiple instances of "The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo" share the common "distinguishing characteristic" of being instances of that statement. Hence the instances can be jointly conceptualized. That is, the statement "The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo" implicitly defines a concept that corresponds to those instances. Of course, there are many such statements. For example, another proposition is Sjir's "The Nobel Prize in Medicine is awarded in Stockholm". Each such statement implicitly defines an (unnamed) concept. We don't have a term for these implicit concepts, but it seems clear that each one is a different kind of state of affairs. 3) From (2) it is clear that there can be multiple categories of states of affairs, each of which may have zero or more instances. Hence the concept "state of affairs" is a concept about concepts. There are many states of affairs (such as the two listed above). And each such state of affairs has many instances. I believe that the specification and much of our discussion is confused because we don't recognize the three distinct modeling levels I outline above. In particular, the middle level (2) is often glossed-over. For example, in the second note under "proposition" in 8.1.2, the first sentence reads "A proposition corresponds to a state of affairs in a possible world defined by a collection of things of interest and possibly a time frame." What does "a state of affairs" mean in this sentence? An instance of (1) above or an instance of (2) above? I think it could be read either way. One thing we could do in the specification is to make clear that "state of affairs" (#3 above) is a concept about concepts. In SBVR, we have a way to do that, we call it a "concept type" (i.e. "an object type that specializes concepts" per 8.1.1). My motivation for suggesting this is to make the vocabulary entry for "state of affairs" clear that the term is a 3rd-level or metamodel concept. It also means that vocabularies could contain concepts of states of affairs, as in: Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony concept type: state of affairs definition: the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo // probably better defined in present tense subject-verb-object form but left this way for consistency ... which seems ok in principle. With this definition, one could say things like "if there exists a Nobel Prize Award Ceremony ..." or "each Nobel Prize Award Ceremony ..." and be clear that the statements are about the instances. Another thing we could do in the specification is to include an example like the first one above, in which we clearly distinguish the three different conceptual levels. I think that's what would really help clear up the confusion. (Thanks to Ed and Don and Stan for many discussions about this topic -- though any remaining confusion is mine not theirs!) -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:23:53 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p1OKNvdY011000 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1299183839.145@co3xPKEgPQupjhEqlOkK2Q X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Anent today's discussion in the SBVR RTF, I attach a UML diagram of the more-or-less current version of the state-of-affairs model proposed by the Date/Time submission. (We are still arguing about terms, including whether to replace state-of-affairs with some other term.) The concept here is that situations that exist in a possible world are 'things' that are 'occurrences'. Occurrences can have properties, such as an 'occurrence interval' (the time interval over which the situation exists in the world), a location, things involved, etc. An actuality is an occurrence whose occurrence interval is all the time that is of interest in the possible world. That makes it a specialization of 'occurrence'. (There is still disagreement about this.) Occurrences are conceptualized as 'states of affairs' (or 'situational concepts' or 'occurrence concepts'). A given occurrence could be conceptualized in more than one way -- it may be an instance of more than one state of affairs. A state of affairs is described/characterized by a 'proposition'. (Technically, it is just represented by a sentence or a closed logical formulation. Unlike a proposition, which is said to be either true or false in a given world, the sentence that describes a state of affairs could be sometimes true and sometimes false in the same world. More on this below.) We believe this model is consistent with the proposal that John Hall made. SBVR as adopted describes 'snapshot worlds' -- the kind of possible world that is the 'now' of making a business decision. The model is that of first-order logic -- a different time is a different possible world. In a snapshot world, things don't change, what is fact now is fact, whatever occurs in that world is an actuality -- it occurs over the entire 'now'. In such a world, an 'occurrence' is always an 'actuality'. A given situation is either present in that world or it isn't. And therefore, as John proposed, in such a world, a state of affairs is an individual concept -- it corresponds to at most one actuality. One thing we have discovered in doing the Date/Time model -- you can't kludge situation and time concepts into SBVR. You can add time to SBVR worlds by making statements in which some role is played by a time concept, but then you must add the time role to every fact type that characterizes situations that can change over the time of interest in your world. Otherwise you can get sentences that are neither true nor false. The formal logic solution to that problem is to declare that those are sentences that do not represent propositions. (In fact, we would say those 'sentences' are 'incomplete', they are used to represent 'states of affairs'.) 'Sally goes to the market on Fridays' is a proposition. 'Sally goes to the market' is a proposition if it means 'Sally sometimes goes to the market' or 'Sally is currently going to the market'. Otherwise, 'Sally goes to the market' is _not a proposition_ --it is neither a fact nor a lie; it is a description of a situation that may occur zero, one or more times in the time span of the possible world. Time and location are similar kinds of things, but _situations_ are special. You can ignore space/location when you talk about 'existence', because you can have the notion that the existence of any material thing implies that it has a location, whether you know what it is or not. You can do the same thing with situations and time, and know that every situation has an 'occurrence interval', whether you know what it is or not. And as long as you treat material things and situations as instances of concepts, location and place in time are just intrinsic properties. The problem arises when you associate a situation with a proposition, because now that intrinsic time property, and the sometimes intrinsic location property, affect the meaning of 'true'. True at some times, or true in some places, is not the same thing as 'true'. We need to break that link. In the attached diagram, the relationship between proposition and state of affairs is not quite the right idea. What we really mean is that a state of affairs is represented by the representation of a proposition -- a sentence, or a closed logical formulation. That is, we have two kinds of meaning -- proposition and situational concept ('state of affairs') -- that share a common representation form. And I believe that is the proper understanding of Terry's 'objectification' -- it interprets a sentential form as representing a situational concept (and thus as a reference to the instances of that concept), instead of representing a proposition. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." 12-3-3-States of affairs.png Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:25:02 -0500 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: SBVR RTF X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p1PLP6NN001410 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1299273907.75927@on5iQVYDWj+1iCdQqglRxA X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Subject: Re: issue 14849 SBVR RTF Issue Upon reflection, and some discussion with Stan Hendryx, I think the 'state of affairs' concept as described in SBVR is valid. The question is whether we are using it properly. As I understand it, the 'state of affairs' idea in SBVR, as described by Don and Donald, is a planned or putative situation, such as one might find in a business plan, or a meeting agenda item, or a market study. There is no doubt that such things exist, and they exist the moment the plan is made, or the meeting is scheduled, or the study is completed. And sometimes these putative situations coincide with situations or events in the world of interest, which I think is what we mean by 'actuality'. In a similar way, I can talk about a 'product' that is a toaster, and I have a design for the toaster and I can use that design to evaluate power characteristics and safety features and so on, all without ever building the toaster. Then we finally start building them, and I have a 'product' that is the toaster itself. We can argue that the 'product' I used for engineering was a 'concept' of the toaster, but we usually call it a 'design'. All the features I ascribed to that 'product' or 'design', however, are actually properties of the toaster when it becomes a real thing. But the design for the toaster doesn't do anything to bread; only the physical device does. Now, let us consider a state of affairs that is an element of a business plan. When that planned element is fulfilled, there is an actuality that is its fulfillment. Is the actuality the planned element? Does the planned element become the actuality? Amazing though it may be to the consultants among us, no element of a business plan has ever generated revenue, but the fulfillment of that element -- the actuality -- may. The planned element is still just a part of the business plan. It changes state to fulfilled, but it is not the fulfillment, and we must not confuse them. In a similar way, if FEMA has a meeting agenda item to discuss dealing with a putative state of affairs that is a hurricane in Tampa, and the hurricane arrives in Tampa on the day of the meeting, the state of affairs on the agenda remains a thing on the agenda. It does not become the actuality -- the 100-knot winds don't blow through the meeting room (unless, perhaps, it is in Tampa). The state of affairs on the agenda just changes state -- it now refers to an actual situation. So, when SBVR says that an actuality is a state of affairs that occurs in the world of interest, it must mean that it is the fulfilled plan element, or the agenda item that refers to an ongoing disaster, like the design for the toaster in my kitchen. And that is not what we mean. We mean that the 'actuality' is the fulfillment, is the hurricane, is the device that alters the crystal structure of bread. So the relationship between 'actuality' and 'state of affairs' is not 'subtype' or 'category'. The relationship is 'state of affairs' /occurs as/ 'actuality', to formalize the term SBVR uses informally. Now, we can argue about the spelling of 'occurs as', i.e. what term to choose. But the important thing is not to confuse the fulfilled plan element with the fulfillment itself -- the fulfilled plan element /occurs as/ the fulfillment, and it is the fulfillment that generates revenue. The remaining problem is how we use these terms in examples. In the SBVR example of objectification: "The corporate books are reviewed at headquarters." The fact types are said to be 'record is reviewed' and 'state of affairs occurs at location', and the sentence is interpreted as: "The state of affairs that the corporate books are reviewed occurs at headquarters." But what is meant is: "Each actuality that is an occurrrence of the state of affairs that the corporate books are reviewed occurs at headquarters." The plan element is not what occurs at headquarters; the activity that fulfills that element is what occurs at headquarters. The example doesn't use 'state of affairs' to mean the plan element; it uses it to mean the fulfillment. Business people make this leap all the time, but if SBVR does that, it becomes logical nonsense -- toasting bread with the design for the toaster. The fact type of interest for the above is 'actuality occurs at location', not 'state of affairs occurs at location'. (This was my point of a year ago, but I went the wrong way from there.) Now, what John Hall proposed is that 'state of affairs occurs as actuality' can be considered to be the same fact type as 'state of affairs corresponds to actuality' -- making it a concept to instance relationship. And if we can agree to that, we can use the convenient behavior of concept signifiers to bridge the verbal gap: the signifier designates the concept (when mentioned) and denotes its instances (when used). So if 'state of affairs' is considered to be a concept type, and the instances of each state of affairs are actualities, then the usage that appears in the example is acceptable: "The (instance of the) state of affairs that the corporate books are reviewed occurs at headquarters." "The state of affairs that the corporate books are reviewed" is the designation for an individual concept, and it is being used to denote the instance -- the actual review of the books. The use of the signifier refers to an actuality. Stan's position is that it doesn't make a difference whether 'state of affairs occurs as actuality' is considered to be a concept-instance relationship or not, from the point of view of logical formulation. 'states of affairs' are things, and actualities are things, and they are related. And he is right. It only makes a difference when it comes to the expression rules for the business language. Nothing prevents us from substituting 'actuality' for 'state of affairs' in the wording of the example, but nothing would prevent SBVR Structured English from having a more complex implicit elaboration of phrases involving the term 'state of affairs', if that is preferred. And whatever works for SBVR can probably be used directly in Date/Time, with the further association of actuality/occurrence to time. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: Donald Chapin , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) Thread-Index: AQHL1DYiC3wjVsBRM0eG2uPVmms1CpQWN9+Q Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 04:31:33 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.123.12] Donald, First I want to say I am glad that your resolution tries to stay close to the original intended meaning for .state of affairs. and attempts to be consistent with mainstream thinking in computational linguistics and in mapping from language to logic. Here are some comments. 1. The existing definition of .state of affairs. is intentionally broader than the narrower definition that you propose. It is meant to include the full range of results of objectifications, which includes events. Your proposed definition is overly limiting, making it difficult to see how every proposition corresponds to a state of affairs. 2. The existing definition of .state of affairs. intentionally avoids presenting a structural breakdown of a state of affairs. Such a breakdown was considered outside of the scope of SBVR. Your proposed definition makes .state of affairs. a category of .set. and further defines that a state of affairs is a set of circumstances. This leaves a potentially recursive definition. By the current definition of .state of affairs., a circumstance is a state of affairs. It is not clear whether your proposed definition encompasses circumstances, but if it does, then you have a recursive definition and if it doesn.t, then the proposed definition is too narrow to include the range of things that propositions correspond to. 3. The intransitive verb .obtains. is understood by a rather small community. The intransitive .occurs. is widely familiar for the same meaning. 4. It is a good change to remove the words .in the actual world. from the definition of .actuality.. 5. If you change the note under .actuality. it would be more clear if expressed in the singular rather than in the plural. 6. It is not clear that the proposed note under .thing. adds anything because the definition, .anything perceivable or conceivable ., makes clear that a thing can be merely conceivable. 7. Your proposed change to the definition of .fact type. introduces a whole new concept, which could generalize .fact type. and could be called .proposition type. because it removes any relevance of a corresponding proposition being taken as true. Removing the existing concept of .fact type. from SBVR would be a breaking change and could not possibly be done in an RTF. There does not appear to be any reason to make the change or even to introduce the new concept with some other signifier (like .proposition type.). There is a need to be able to refer to states of affairs that are not actualities, and this need is already satisfied using objectification. Using objectification, facts in a model refer to states of affairs that are planned, wanted, etc. even when they are not actualities. 8. The proposed .individual verb concept. which is defined to be a category of .proposition., not .concept., does not belong in the section on concepts. It could go in the section introducing other categories of .proposition.. But it has a more serious problem: It is not understandable. So far we have not categorized propositions in clause 8 based on how they are formulated. This is because, through definitional substitution, the same proposition can be formulated in many different ways. Perhaps you can help clarify your idea by sending out some examples -- describe some instances of the concept you have in mind and perhaps the idea can be refined using examples and counterexamples through email. 9. Changing .occurs. to .begins. in C.1.5 breaks from the pattern described later in that section, which is a general pattern for objectification in SBVR Structured English. Do you propose the change because the overly restrictive definition you proposed for .state of affairs. would not handle objectifying over the eventive verb .begins.? Normally, associating a beginning with a time is just like associating an ending. The beginning occurs at a time just like the ending occurs at a time. In both cases something occurs at a time. Regards, Don From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 7:12 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) All . I.m sorry that this is being sent out so close to the telecom meeting. At least we can discuss the approach to the resolution under .Resolution:. and they everyone can review the detailed .Revised Text:. editing instructions between now and the next meeting. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 409748.86560.bm@omp1022.mail.sp2.yahoo.com X-Yahoo-SMTP: yZmfYpGswBANaaRY2ZOOLP_anhSkh.0YqFwv79wX8IAI X-YMail-OSG: B9.TEcoVM1lbCzxkQlNFNTbpc2ElJ4oJpa4XV9mP0sYT.mO VcmWTyTGTov0r82lWiUEIAPabMzx1gN0pfU..Z_zYLmbCpEWJzlrvs3Q4Y1C dEuKZCa_AdKScxxm_GYoliO6PVgO7wNbVkDyLpW_tiKBbVHeVduhswZqttQq TCJLXtnqWBurPPocLhQBEx9h9.CxyJ6B_XoScv7TIfbld6JCoLQSl02gZBDD VRJKE1MN8Gmt1PzWd_f8- X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 From: "Stan Hendryx" To: "'Mark H Linehan'" , Cc: "'Juergen Boldt'" , , "'Elisa F. Kendall'" , "'Don Baisley'" , "'Sjir Nijssen'" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 11:21:01 -0800 Organization: Hendryx & Associates X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcvUViCim1A0WSPnSpCrDi306adwZgC/WuRQ A point of view championed by Donald Davidson is that a statement is a definite description of a state of affairs. Following this idea, the statement .The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo. designates an individual concept whose one instance is a state of affairs, and has this logical formulation: exists The Nobel Peace Prize: prize unitary exists Oslo: place unitary .statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( .The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo., exists s0: state of affairs unitary where .state of affairs occurs in place.(s0, Oslo) object(s0) .prize is awarded.(The Nobel Peace Prize) ) The use of .occurs. in the above does not explicitly admit occurrences, but it implies occurrences and restricts all of them to occur in Oslo. .occurrence. is to be defined as .instance of the fact type .state of affairs occurs over time interval. A state of affairs might occur and recur at different times, or not at all. Each occurrence is distinct and is distinguished from other occurrences of the same state of affairs by its distinct space-time interval. Time is necessarily introduced when considering occurrences. The above formulation can be modified to admit occurrences of the state of affairs, all of which occur in Oslo: .statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( .The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo., exists s0: state of affairs unitary where .state of affairs occurs in place.(s0, Oslo) for each t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) object(s0) .prize is awarded.(The Nobel Peace Prize) ) Note in the above that t0 is not restricted; nothing is stated or implied about when the awarding occurs or that it necessarily occurs. However, if it occurs, it will always occur in Oslo at some time. If a state of affairs occurs, it is an actuality. .actuality. specializes .state of affairs. and is defined as a state of affairs that occurs. If the proposition expressed by a statement that is not paradoxical is true, the proposition corresponds to exactly one actuality. Paradoxical statements do not correspond to any state of affairs. A proposition that is not paradoxical and that is false corresponds to exactly one state of affairs that is not an actuality. The negation of a proposition that is false is true and corresponds to an actuality. The truth of a proposition is relative to a fact model and depends on the closed logical formulation of the proposition being satisfied by the fact model: if it is satisfied, it is true. States of affairs are in the possible world being modeled; truth is in a fact model of the possible world. Note that .state of affairs., .time interval. and .place. are all assumed to be primitive concepts in the above, specializing only .thing.. Instances of these concepts are implicit in every statement. If a state of affairs occurs, it always occurs at some time in some place. The upper ontology of these concepts is not important here; the relationship among these concepts is very important. Note that the objectification in the above considers a logical formulation of the original statement from which references to time and place have been removed. This separation of time and place from the core meaning of a statement simplifies the problem of constructing and interpreting closed logical formulations of statements. Here is a general pattern for formalizing statements: .statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( .S., exists s0: state of affairs unitary [for each | exists t0: time interval [unitary] where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0)] [for each | exists p0: place [unitary] where .state of affairs occurs in place.(s0, p0)] object(s0) and < closed logical formulation of .S. .> [] [] ) Substitute the expression of the statement for S. S. is S with its implicit and explicit spatio-temporal references removed. The removed references are cast as restrictions on t0 and p0 and are reflected in the quantifications of t0 and p0. Implicit references to time are conveyed in the tense and aspect of verbs. S. is always in the simple present tense, which is the preferred tense of fact types in SBVR vocabularies. Use of the pattern with S. simplifies parsing by making explicit exact matches to fact types of the conceptual schema. Explicit references to time and space are literal date-time expressions, literal spatial expressions, indexicals of times and places, and definite descriptions of times and places. The restrictions on t0 and p0 in S, if any, constrain the referents of these variables to at least overlap the implicit and explicit times and places of each occurrence, respectively, and may be more restrictive. t0 and p0 are unitary if s0 is a one-time occurrence. I assume that aggregates of time intervals and aggregates of spatial intervals each satisfy the usual axioms of mereology by .thing is part of thing., which defines .overlaps. as I use the term. I also assume time intervals that do not overlap are totally ordered by .time interval is before time interval.. The pattern can be applied to individual concepts well as statements, using instantiation formulations, to admit, define, or restrict the lifetimes of things: exists 1901: Gregorian year: time interval exists The Nobel Peace Prize: prize unitary exists t0: time interval unitary where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(The Nobel Peace Prize, t0) // the lifetime of The Nobel Peace Prize and object(The Nobel Peace Prize) { pr: prize unitary | pr is from the legacy of Alfred Nobel and pr is awarded from time to time to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses} .time interval is since time interval.( t0, 1901) The only change to SBVR I think really needs to be made to accommodate temporal and spatial extensions is to clean up the entry for .actuality. by eliminating the phrase .in the actual world. from the definition and eliminating .but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned. from the note. These references to .the actual world. in SBVR are unfortunate; they are misleading and have been very confusing: a state of affairs can be an actuality in a possible world, not just the .actual world.. For example, in a possible world of a plan or a fictional story, actualities can occur in the future as well as the past or present. I suggest adding a clarifying note in 8.6.2 related to .Each proposition corresponds to at most one state of affairs.. saying, .Paradoxical propositions, such as the liar statement .this statement is false., do not correspond to any state of affairs. Each proposition that is not paradoxical corresponds to exactly one state of affairs.. Thank you, Stan Hendryx Hendryx & Associates N.B. The notation for logical formulations I used above is attributed to Don Baisley, to whom I am also indebted for many helpful suggestions that contributed to my understanding of the logical formulation of spatio-temporal statements. The notation is being proposed for inclusion in the Date-Time specification. Square brackets denote that the enclosed term is optional, depending on S and the purpose of the formulation (whether t0 or p0 should be included, whether S is not in the simple present tense or has explicit spatial-temporal references). Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) AMS-2011-02-28-2047 Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 20:45:12 +0100 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) AMS-2011-02-28-2047 thread-index: AQHL1DYiC3wjVsBRM0eG2uPVmms1CpQWN9+QgAEaSgw= From: "Sjir Nijssen" To: "Don Baisley" , "Donald Chapin" , To all, In order to answer the email of Don, I believe it is helpful to use a representative set of examples of ground facts in place of a general formulation. I am happy to provide them provided we can establish the meaning of at least one concept very clear. I have used the following two facts to get this clear: Given the following two facts: President Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953. President Reagan married Jane Wyman in 1940. Additional information: In case a president married more than once the same spouse, then we are only interested in knowing in which year the first marriage of that president with that spouse was established. We are only interested in these kind of facts, no other kinds of facts. The question is: how many roles are there in each of the two facts? Please answer this question (an integer) by return mail. I will anonymize the results and provide each of you with the statistics. In case you want me to know your result anonymously get an account like SBVR1276 at gmail or another and answer from there. Please randomly select the 4 digits but stick to SBVR. Thanks for your cooperation. I will close this session within 2 times 24 hours. The answers will be used in the next part when I try to provide the examples to answer Don's email. Kind regards Sjir ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Donald, First I want to say I am glad that your resolution tries to stay close to the original intended meaning for .state of affairs. and attempts to be consistent with mainstream thinking in computational linguistics and in mapping from language to logic. Here are some comments. 1. The existing definition of .state of affairs. is intentionally broader than the narrower definition that you propose. It is meant to include the full range of results of objectifications, which includes events. Your proposed definition is overly limiting, making it difficult to see how every proposition corresponds to a state of affairs. 2. The existing definition of .state of affairs. intentionally avoids presenting a structural breakdown of a state of affairs. Such a breakdown was considered outside of the scope of SBVR. Your proposed definition makes .state of affairs. a category of .set. and further defines that a state of affairs is a set of circumstances. This leaves a potentially recursive definition. By the current definition of .state of affairs., a circumstance is a state of affairs. It is not clear whether your proposed definition encompasses circumstances, but if it does, then you have a recursive definition and if it doesn.t, then the proposed definition is too narrow to include the range of things that propositions correspond to. 3. The intransitive verb .obtains. is understood by a rather small community. The intransitive .occurs. is widely familiar for the same meaning. 4. It is a good change to remove the words .in the actual world. from the definition of .actuality.. 5. If you change the note under .actuality. it would be more clear if expressed in the singular rather than in the plural. 6. It is not clear that the proposed note under .thing. adds anything because the definition, .anything perceivable or conceivable ., makes clear that a thing can be merely conceivable. 7. Your proposed change to the definition of .fact type. introduces a whole new concept, which could generalize .fact type. and could be called .proposition type. because it removes any relevance of a corresponding proposition being taken as true. Removing the existing concept of .fact type. from SBVR would be a breaking change and could not possibly be done in an RTF. There does not appear to be any reason to make the change or even to introduce the new concept with some other signifier (like .proposition type.). There is a need to be able to refer to states of affairs that are not actualities, and this need is already satisfied using objectification. Using objectification, facts in a model refer to states of affairs that are planned, wanted, etc. even when they are not actualities. 8. The proposed .individual verb concept. which is defined to be a category of .proposition., not .concept., does not belong in the section on concepts. It could go in the section introducing other categories of .proposition.. But it has a more serious problem: It is not understandable. So far we have not categorized propositions in clause 8 based on how they are formulated. This is because, through definitional substitution, the same proposition can be formulated in many different ways. Perhaps you can help clarify your idea by sending out some examples -- describe some instances of the concept you have in mind and perhaps the idea can be refined using examples and counterexamples through email. 9. Changing .occurs. to .begins. in C.1.5 breaks from the pattern described later in that section, which is a general pattern for objectification in SBVR Structured English. Do you propose the change because the overly restrictive definition you proposed for .state of affairs. would not handle objectifying over the eventive verb .begins.? Normally, associating a beginning with a time is just like associating an ending. The beginning occurs at a time just like the ending occurs at a time. In both cases something occurs at a time. Regards, Don From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2011 7:12 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Draft Resolution (2011-02-24) All . I.m sorry that this is being sent out so close to the telecom meeting. At least we can discuss the approach to the resolution under .Resolution:. and they everyone can review the detailed .Revised Text:. editing instructions between now and the next meeting. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Revised Draft Resolution (2011-03-31) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 18:05:31 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 thread-index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysFrx42MQ X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Fair-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0303.4D94B461.0014, actions=TAG X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.3.30.105423:17:9.975, ip=81.149.51.65, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, DOC_ATTACHED, LINK_TO_IMAGE, __FRAUD_CONTACT_NUM, __CP_URI_IN_BODY, __C230066_P5, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_BOLD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __IMGSPAM_BODY, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, __RATWARE_SIGNATURE_3_N1, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, __URI_NS, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, IMGSPAM_BODY X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2beaomr06.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0204.4D94B482.01CD,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Attached is the revised draft resolution for SBVR Issue 14849 with input from emails and meeting discussion posted, as promised. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution (2011-03-31).doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: The issue is resolved through several clarifications, one fix and two additions: 1. Clarify the concept .state of affairs. by making its definition explicit and it bringing into line with what SBVR says elsewhere about .state of affairs. 2. Add a new characteristic, .state of affairs obtains. is materialized. and use it to define .actuality., and explain the difference between .obtains. is materialized. and .exists. with respect to states of affairs. 3. Clarify the definition of .actuality. in terms of .state of affairs obtains. is materalized. and bring its Note into line with the wording of the definition 4. Avoid SBVR readers overlooking a key understanding of the concept .thing. that was adopted from ISO 1087-1 (3.1.1) .object. by copying the Note in the ISO 1087-1 .object. entry verbatim into the SBVR entry for .thing.. This is particularly important as .state of affairs. is a kind of .thing.. 5. Fix the definition of Clause 8 fact type so that states of affairs that have not obtained been materializedin the material world, e.g. plans and imaginary (what if) states of affairs, can be talked about, and clarify the definition of Clause 8 fact type so that is it clear how it relates to the sentences business people use. 6. Add the concept .individual verb concept. for a proposition that is a Clause 8 fact type with all its roles quantified (closed). 7. Replace the use of the phase .state of affairs obtainsoccurs. in Annexes C & E, which now has a particular more narrow meaning in SBVR with the phrase .state of affairs beginsis materialized.. Revised Text: On page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs. REPLACE this definition: Definition: event, activity, situation, or circumstance WITH: Definition: event or activity or situation or circumstance that has been imagined and expressed in some form (e.g. a unicorn); has been planned and set forth in some way (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan); or has come into being in the material (physical) domain (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond) in the universe of discourse -- not in a model of the universe of discourse.set of circumstances that has been imagined and expressed in some form, had been planned and set forth in some way, or has come into being in the material (physical) domain and that inherently exist over time Synonym:situation Note: States of affairs obtain are materialized or do are not obtain materialized in the domain that is the subject of the SBVR model, i.e. the universe of discourse, for which the SBVR Model provides meanings, representations and expressions. .States of affairs., which are a kind of .thing. in the universe of discourse, correspond to .propositions., which are a kind of SBVR .meaning.. Note: While the possibility of .obtainingbeing materialized. over time in inherent in state of affairs, in practice the time during which the state of affairs obtains may be so short that it is viewed by the semantic community as obtaining being materialized only at a point in time. On printed page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs REPLACE this Note; Note: A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities. A state of affairs is what is denoted by a proposition. A state of affairs either obtains occurs or does not obtainoccur, whereas a proposition is either true or false. A state of affairs is not a meaning. It is a thing that exists and can be an instance of a concept, even if it does not happen. WITH this Note: Note: A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities. A state of affairs is what is denoted by a proposition. A state of affairs either obtains is materialized or does is not obtainmaterialized, whereas a proposition is either true or false. A state of affairs is not a meaning. It is a thing that exists in the universe of discourse and can be an instance of a concept, even if it does is not obtainmaterialized. On printed page 39 after the entry for .state of affairs ADD these entries; event Definition: thing that happens or takes place, especially one of importance Source: [NODE: .event,. 1] Definition: something that happens or is thought of as happening; an occurrence, an incident; now esp. one that is significant or noteworthy. Source: [NSOED: .event,. A-1] Definition: something that happens at a given place and time Source: [WordNet: .event,. 1] activity Definition: thing that a person or group does or has done Source: [NODE: .activity,. 2] Definition: any specific behavior Source: [WordNet: .activity,. 1] situation Definition: set of circumstances in which one finds oneself Source: [NODE: .situation,. 1] Definition: the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time Source: [WordNet: .situation,. 1] circumstance Definition: fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action Source: [NODE: .circumstance,. 1] Definition: material, logical, or other environmental condition of an act or event; the time, place, manner, cause, occasion, etc., of an act or event; the external condition affecting or that might affect action Source: [NSOED: .circumstance,. I-A-2] Definition: a condition that accompanies or influences some event or activity Source: [WordNet: .circumstance,. 1] On page 39 in 8.6 REPLACE Figure 8.9 with the following figure (which adds .state of affairs obtains. is materialized. and .actuality.). On page 39 in 8.6 after the entry for .state of affairs. ADD the following: state of affairs obtains is materialized Definition: the state of affairs comes into being has perceptible existence in the material (physical) domain) Note: The meaning of .obtains. materialized. should not be confused with .exists., meaning existential quantification. A state of affairs can exist as an imaginary thing or an immaterial thing and thereby participate in relationships to other things (e.g., plans, desires, fears, expectations) even if it does is not obtain materialized in the material domain, even if it is never materialized obtains in the material domain. Example: The situation of the EU-Rent London-Heathrow Branch being profitable is a state of affairs. The situation exists as an object of desire and planning (i.e., EU-Rent wants the London-Heathrow Branch to be profitable) regardless of whether the situation is ever obtainsmaterialized. The situation obtains is materialized only when the branch is actually profitable, but the situation exists and is involved in an actuality (an instance of the fact type .company wants state of affairs.) even when the branch is unprofitable. On page 39 in 8.6 in the definition of .actuality., REMOVE the words .in the actual world.; CHANGE the word .occurs. to .obtainsis materialized. and CHANGE the style of the word .obtainsis materialized. to the verb style. The definition should look like this: Definition: state of affairs that obtainsis materalized On page 39 in 8.6 under the entry for .actuality. REPLACE this Note: Note: Actualities are states of affairs that actually happen, as distinct from states of affairs that don.t happen but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned. WITH this Note: Note: An actualities are is a states of affairs that actually obtainare materialized in the material domainuniverse of discourse, as distinct from a states of affairs that don.t obtainare not materialized in the universe of discourse in the material domain but nevertheless exists as a subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned. On page 41 under the entry for .thing. ADD the Note under ISO 1087-1 (3.1.1) .object. which is adopted into SBVR as .thing. as the second Note under .thing. as follows: NOTE .Things. [objects] may be.Anything perceivable or conceivable. includes anything that has been imagined and expressed in some form (e.g. a unicorn); that has been planned and set forth in some way (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan); and that has come into being in the material (physical) domain (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond). material (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond), immaterial (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan) or imagined (e.g. a unicorn). On page 21 in 8.1.1 under the entry for .fact type. REPLACE this Definition: Definition: concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities WITH theseis Definition: Definition: concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all states of affairs Definition: concept that is the meaning of a clause of an incomplete sentence that involves one or more noun concepts in roles as subject, direct object, or indirect object(s) where at least one of them is unquantified and therefore an .open. role; and whose instances are all states of affairs state of affairs concept Definition: noun concept that objectifies a fact type noun concept objectifies fact type Definition: the noun concept can be defined using an objectification On printed page 21 25 in 8.1.1 2 after the entry for .fact type.at the end of the clause ADD this entry for .individual verb concept.: individual verb concept Definition: proposition that is created from a (Clause 8) fact type by (open proposition)addingwith quantifications to close each of the unquantified fact type role in the fact type quantified to create a (closed) proposition On page 242 in Annex C.1.5 REPLACE ..occurs. WITH .beginsis materialized. in the following two verb concepts: state of affairs occurs is materialized before point in time state of affairs1 occurs is materialized before state of affairs2 occurs On the following pages in the Annex E Clauses cited REPLACE .occurs. with .beginsis materialized. in the verb concept .state of affairs occurs at date/time.: On page 271 in E.1.4 two times On page 326 in E.2.2.2.5 one time On page 329 in E.2.2.2.5 one time On page 331 in E.2.2.2.9 one time On page 332 in E.2.2.2.9 one time On the following pages in the Annex E Clauses cited REPLACE .occurs. with .beginsis materialized. in the verb concept .state of affairs occurs after date/time.: On page 325 in E.2.2.2.3 one time On page 338 in E.2.3.3 under the entry for .actual data/time. REPLACE .occurs. WITH .beginsis materialized. in this Definition: .Definition: date/time at which a state of affairs occurs. On page 339 in E.2.3.3 REPLACE .occurs. WITH .beginsis materialized. in these verb concepts: state of affairs occurs after date/time state of affairs occurs at date/time state of affairs occurs before date/time state of affairs1 occurs before state of affairs2 occurs Disposition: Resolved Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- Revised Draft Resolution (2011-03-31) X-KeepSent: 73B0B821:CC9BCD2B-85257864:00611379; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 14:42:10 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 03/31/2011 14:42:20 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER The proposed definition of 'state of affairs' seems very strange. I don't think of "a unicorn" or "a project plan" or "an engine" as a state of affairs. These are just instances of the corresponding noun concepts. Valid examples of states of affairs might be "a unicorn being magical", "a project plan that is agreed", "an engine that has failed / a failed engine". I think we should be cautious about defining "event", "activity", "situation", etc. After talking to the TimeML people, I looked a little bit into the literature about these concepts and discovered that there is considerable debate about which elements of speech map to each of these concepts. Does defining these concepts add real value to SBVR? I agree that such definitions might help clarify "state of affairs", but maybe at the cost of introducing new controversies. The fact symbol "is materialized" for "state of affairs" is ok, but I like "occurs" better. I don't like the definition, which talks about "perceptible existence in the material (physical) domain". * I'm not sure what you mean by "perceptible" but I think there are states of affairs that are not (easily) perceived. For example, one may not be able to perceive various kinds of pollution in water or air that is polluted. And there are many cases where perception is unclear, as in medical diagnoses. * I think we need to support simulated domains, for example in business planning. States of affairs that are within simulations are not physical but they may be materialized within the simulation. * Unless we define the term, "material domain" doesn't help much. I don't agree with the note "Occurs is problematic because its most common understanding is as an occurrence or happening, which applies only to states of affairs that are events." Situations, activities, and circumstances can also occur. For example, "The situation of the EU-Rent London-Heathrow Branch being profitable" might occur in 2008 and 2010 but not 2009. Regarding the proposed definition of "actuality": what happens if a state of affairs is materialized multiple times, as in the "EU-Rent Branch being profitable" in 2008 and 2010? Is the state of affairs an actuality? In 2008? In 2009? In 2010? I don't understand the point of the second proposed definition of 'fact type'. I think it is subsumed by the first definition, anyway. The comment "â..state of affairs conceptâ.. should be the SBVR equivalent to the Data-Time concept â..state of affairsâ.." is not true. Date-Time is NOT trying to redefine "state of affairs" -- but just make sense of it for models that include time. We have thought of "objectification of state of affairs" the same way you propose. Regarding "noun concept objectifies fact type" defined as "the noun concept can be defined using an objectification": * Suggest you add an example or two, otherwise people won't understand. * "objectification" is a clause 9 concept, a kind of logical formulation. Do you really want to use this technical idea in a clause 8 definition? On the other hand, should "objectification" be one of the fact type kinds (or whatever we call them now) in clause 11.1.5 (and use another term for the formulation). Regarding "individual verb concept": * I don't think the definition is what we intended. I suggest "proposition that employs exactly one fact type, and in which each role is filled by an individual concept". * I don't think we should reference "(clause 8)" in a definition like this, especially because it is a close 8 definition. * I don't think we should include "open proposition" in the definition since that term is undefined. I don't think we should change "occurs" to "is materialized" in Annexes C and E. "Is materialized" is ok as a technical term in SBVR but is not close to anything a business person would actually say. This suggests that "occurs" is a better term than "is materialized". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5RMrz5g Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2011 02:30:00 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.72] Interesting stuff about states of affairs in Terry and Tony.s book. http://books.google.com/books?id=puO_VlbR_x4C&pg=PA440&lpg=PA440&dq=%22state+of+affairs%22+%22proposition%22+event&source=bl&ots=LaUspTtY6q&sig=pMRckWIxv5na5teVZyyTxqln05M&hl=en&ei=E4SWTe7tE4z2tgPF7-i6BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22state%20of%20affairs%22%20%22proposition%22%20event&f=false Enjoy, Don Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-KeepSent: 825E39EE:FDBD073F-85257866:003DBE7A; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2011 07:51:16 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/02/2011 07:51:25 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-KeepSent: 8E6694F9:62013409-85257868:0043C1B0; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: "Stan Hendryx" X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 09:02:42 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/04/2011 09:02:53 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER Stan, Your formulation has two states of affairs in it because you introduced one that was not in my original email: "train is late". I only used "train is arriving", which corresponds to your objectification s1. As you say, "You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1." Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? Regarding "The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it." I certainly don't understand this distinction, but I would say that SBVR terms can represent both real things and ideas. Clause 10 has an example rule about other rules: "It is not permitted that some department adopts a rule that says it is obligatory that each employee of that department is male. " Regarding your request to present complete examples: consider the propositions "train123 arrives after noon" and "train 123 arrival is after noon", where "train arrival" is defined as "train that arrives". Formulation 1: statement is formalized by closed logical formulationâ..( "train arrives after noonâ.ť, exists s0: state of affairs unitary where "train arrivesâ.ť (train 123) exists t0: time interval where â..state of affairs occurs over time intervalâ..(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Formulation 2: statement is formalized by closed logical formulationâ..( "train 123 arrival is after noonâ.ť, exists t0: time interval where â..state of affairs occurs over time intervalâ..(train 123 arrival, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Notice that in formulation 2, I have to treat the individual concept 'train 123 arrival' as a state of affairs -- which isn't really legitimate. Maybe it should be the following, which is basically the same as formulation 1: (?) Formulation 3: statement is formalized by closed logical formulationâ..( "train 123 arrival is after noonâ.ť, exists s0: state of affairs unitary where train 123 arrival exists t0: time interval where â..state of affairs occurs over time intervalâ..(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research "Stan Hendryx" ---04/03/2011 12:58:44 AM---The logical formulation of 'if P then Q', where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): From: "Stan Hendryx" To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Date: 04/03/2011 12:58 AM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The logical formulation of â..if P then Qâ.., where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): if (logical formulation of P) then (logical formulation of Q) Focusing on P, your example does not give a complete proposition for the antecedent, so it is difficult to analyze what you have stated. You also complicated the analysis by incorporating an existential quantifier, â..aâ... Your verb concept â..train is arrivingâ.. uses the present progressive tense, not the simple present tense as recommended in SBVR. The preferred fact type form is â..train arrivesâ... Your rule might be stated (making a proposition out of your phrase) as â..if a train that is arriving after noon is late, then (the passengers get a refund).â.ť This is some kind of pidgin English. It would be more common to say â..if a train arrives after noon and the train is late, then each passenger on such a train gets a refund of their ticket priceâ.ť. However, as a rule, this does not make a lot of sense to me. A more perspicuous rule might be â..for each train that arrives after noon and is late, each passenger...â.ť. However, Iâ..ll stay with your example as closely as possible (making the antecedent a proposition): The logical formulation of P is â..statement is formalized by closed logical formulationâ..( â..There is a state of affairs that a train that is arriving after noon is lateâ.ť, exists s0: state of affairs unitary exists t0: time interval where â..state of affairs occurs over time intervalâ..(s0, t0) object(s0) exists tr:train where â..train is lateâ..(tr) exists s1:state of affairs exists t1:time interval where â..state of affairs occurs over time intervalâ..(s1, t1) exists t2:noon:time interval object(s1) â..train is arrivingâ..(tr) â..time interval is after time intervalâ..(t1,t2) â..time interval is convex hull of scheduleâ..(t0, {t1}) ) I do not agree with your conclusion that a state of affairs is a noun concept. The flaw in your argument is your formulation, which is not correct, at least by my reckoning. You are trying to make one state of affairs do the work of both s0 and s1, aggregating levels. You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1. Please make a meaningful example out of your partial meanings and then show how your model entails a state of affairs being a noun concept. This debate about whether or not a state of affairs is a concept smacks of the age-old debate over nature of the entities that are represented by logical symbols. There are three prominent schools of thought: conceptualism, Platonism, and realism. Here is an explanation from L.T.F Gamut Logic, Language, and Meaning: Volume 2, Intensional Logic and Logical Grammar, University of Chicago Press, 1991: â..According to conceptualism, meaning is a relation between symbols and the contents of consciousness. Concepts...are mental entities, with language functioning as a system of observable symbols which mediates between individuals, thus making communications possible...According to Platonism, concepts and propositions are not mental entities but real things. Only they do not belong to the world of observable phenomena but to the world of ideas...According to realism, the entities to which linguistic symbols bear the relation of meaning all belong to the concrete, observable reality around us: they are individuals, properties, relations, and states of affairs....Frege is generally seen as a Platonist...The fundamental distinction drawn in Fregeâ..s theory of meaning is that between sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung)....Reference, we may say, is what explains the function of sense: expressions have a sense only by virtue of the fact that they also have a reference, and their sense is nothing more than the way their reference is presented. Thus, sense determines reference. Two expressions with the same sense have the same reference, although this does not hold the other way around.â.ť A classical example is that the expressions â..the morning starâ.ť and â..the evening starâ.ť have different senses that but the same reference. To Frege, names include definite descriptions, as well as proper nouns. To Davidson, a statement is a definite description of a state of affairs. In Fregeâ..s terms, a statement is a name for a state of affairs. The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it. Which camp do you think SBVR is in (mostly)? The key might be in the SBVR definition of â..definite descriptionâ..: intensional definition of an individual. If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent. Stan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 13:40:39 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , Stan Hendryx Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p34Heigv032365 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1302543647.19535@Y9KKU8RpGRclqzBIlABMow X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Mark H Linehan wrote (to Stan, but I don't see the email): Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? Davidson's principal idea was what Terry Halpin calls 'objectification' -- the idea that a 'state' or 'event' that is described by a proposition can be a 'thing' in the domain of discourse, and therefore play roles in relations, such as '(state of affairs) occurs at (time)' or (instance of) 'train arrival'. This is a means of allowing such things to be supported entirely by first-order logics. Davidson's version of 'state of affairs' is just a unary relation (noun concept) that is satisfied by all such states and events. He acknowledges that these state/event things can also play other roles, and that a role that ranges over states of affairs might well be played by more than one of them. Among other things, a Davidson state/event can 'be an instance of' a category that selects its members by having some shared property -- a noun concept. Davidson says that the proposition that describes a 'state of affairs' is (logically) 'true' if and only if the 'state of affairs' thing exists in the domain of discourse (the world of interest). That is, given the proposition "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39", then the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is true implies that there is an actual arrival of train 4040 in New York. Now, since the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" does not involve a quantification, we assume that Amtrak 4040 and New York are both logical constants -- designations for specific things in the UoD. If so, then there can be only one thing that is "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York", and it either does or does not arrive at 12:39. But if "Amtrak 4040" is a term for a concept that is satisfied by different physical trains on different days, then "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is a unary fact type in which "Amtrak 4040" is a placeholder. And the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" is not a proposition and doesn't have an objectification. I don't think Davidson supports the idea that a proposition can refer to more than one 'thing' in the Domain of Discourse. He assumes that every variable in the proposition is quantified (i.e., that the proposition is a closed logical form), so that exactly one distinguishable state is described. "The sun rises" does not have distinct instances. There is only one sun and either it rises or it doesn't. If the sun rises every day, the proposition is true and there is only one thing that corresponds -- the state that the sun (ever) rises, as distinct from the event of an individual sunrise. Put another way, if you can distinguish two instances of 'the sun rises', then 'the sun rises' names some category of things rather than naming a specific thing, and those things are distinguished by some additional property. In essence, the Davidsonian proposition is presumed to be based on a fact type that includes all the needed properties for some reference scheme for the event/state thing. For all practical purposes, any distinguishing property that was omitted is implicitly existentialized. If you can use place and day to distinguish sunrises, then "the sun rises" means "there exists a place and a day such that the sun rises at that place on that day", Reading Davidson is what led Stan to think that a proposition is true if it is true at any time in the world of interest. What Davidson means is that the interpretation of a proposition like "the sun rises" is the state that such events happen in the world of interest. If the sun ever rises, that state exists, and it is the 'actuality'. The proposition does not refer to the individual events, it only refers to the actuality of the state (that such individual events exist). Davidson doesn't talk about occurrences. He has the idea that you can have many individual events, each of which is completely identified by a proposition, and that those individuals can play roles, such as satisfying a more general noun concept. And that is the model that John Hall suggested. That is also why I said that when we talk about 'occurrences' in the Date/Time ontology, we are moving away from Davidson's model. In the occurrence model, the proposition is used as a concept that is satisfied by 'occurrence' things; in Davidson's model, the proposition is used as a designation for an individual thing (an actuality). Now when Don talks about 'planned states of affairs' he is talking about 'planned occurrences of a state of affairs'. Davidson would completely agree that if the planned occurrence of the train coming into the station exists, then the state of affairs 'that the train comes into the station' exists. But Davidson would also insist that the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is thus taken to be true! If you can distinguish 'the train is coming into the station now' from 'the train comes into the station at 12:39 tomorrow', then those are two different propositions, they describe different events, and they are independently true or false, and the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is true if either of them is true. But per Davidson, the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' does not relate directly to either of those events. For the record, I agree with Mark that the model that Date/Time uses is that 'state of affairs' is a concept type, and that its instances are 'noun concepts'. But that is not the model that is in SBVR. The model in SBVR is that 'state of affairs' is a category of things in the UoD that are not meanings, and that it has two subtypes: 'actuality' and "imagined event/state", and that an 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that 'occurs', while an 'imagined event/state' is a 'state of affairs' that does not 'occur'. According to SBVR, the proposition that describes a state of affairs is true if and only if the state of affairs is an actuality, which means that the proposition that describes an "imagined state/event" must be false. I don't see how such a model can be meaningfully related to time at all. A proposition does not 'become true' in an SBVR world -- it is either true or false, full stop. And a state of affairs that is described by a false proposition can logically include porcine aerobatics. That is why I supported Stan's observation that the smallest change to SBVR is to agree that 'states of affairs' and 'actualities' are different kinds of things that are related by '(state of affairs) occurs as (actuality)' And that will allow us to talk about plans and discussion items and preventive measures and their relationship to real events. An actuality is "an event, situtation, or state that exists or happens in the world of interest". A state of affairs is "a _description of_ an event, situation or state that may or may not occur in the world of interest". And that also allows the relationship between states of affairs and actualities to be many-to-many. A single event can simultaneously be the realization of multiple descriptions that are different in their viewpoints, and a single state of affairs can have zero or more occurrences. So when "Jenny prevents Jimmy from playing with matches" (i.e., Jenny prevents that Jimmy plays with matches), Jenny prevents the state of affairs 'Jimmy plays with matches' from occurring, i.e., having an associated actuality. That said, 'the description of an x' is perilously close to 'the definite description of an x', which is what we used to say was the 'indivdual concept' of an x. Which means that Stan's proposal is not far from Mark's -- the instances of a state of affairs concept are the actualities (things in the domain of discourse). I don't want to address the further elements of the Linehan/Hendryx exchange, because they are on entirely different wavelengths. This is not about philosophy, and it is not about logical formulation. It is about having an interpretation of 'state of affairs', 'occurs' and 'actuality' that effectively supports first-order reasoning about situations. -Ed P.S. I know that Don will not accept any change to the existing SBVR model, but he must realize that the OMG ontology folk cannot reason using a model in which a false proposition can have an instance that is a state/event in the world of interest. In a Davidsonian model, every state/event thing that exists in the world of interest corresponds to a true proposition. -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" CC: "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5RMrz5ggAEWqQCAAxXvwA== Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 17:58:54 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.73] Hi Mark, .train arrival. would not be defined .train that is arriving.. It would be defined as .actuality that a given train arrives at a given place at a given time.. If you define it as .train that is arriving., then the train that arrives is the arrival, which is not right. Using the definition that I gave, you see that yesterday.s arrival and today.s arrival of the same train are not the same arrival. If you want to talk about the state of affairs that .some train is arriving somewhere., that state of affairs is an actuality as long as there exists a train that is arriving at any place anywhere . not very interesting. On the other hand, a formulation of a fact: .Train123 arrives at Station456 at Noon 1/1/2011. can use objectification in obvious ways. Note that the fact, if true, corresponds to a train arrival as defined above. A formulation can take the shape of the following (where each parenthesized expression is an objectification): ( (Train123 arrives) occurs at Station456) occurs at Noon 1/1/2011. You can simplify this example to ignore location if you want to stick with .time. only. States of affairs do not correspond to actualities. States of affairs that obtain (occur) are actualities. The concept .train arrival. defined above is not a state of affairs. All the best, Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:59:31 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: "Barkmeyer, Edward J." CC: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , Stan Hendryx Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue: Correction/Epiphany? X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p34JxaWd011928 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1302551976.80795@1omUX4B+K52w/PfcudrVrA X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Ed Barkmeyer wrote: Mark H Linehan wrote (to Stan, but I don't see the email): Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? Davidson's principal idea was what Terry Halpin calls 'objectification' -- the idea that a 'state' or 'event' that is described by a proposition can be a 'thing' in the domain of discourse, and therefore play roles in relations, such as '(state of affairs) occurs at (time)' or (instance of) 'train arrival'. This is a means of allowing such things to be supported entirely by first-order logics. Davidson's version of 'state of affairs' is just a unary relation (noun concept) that is satisfied by all such states and events. He acknowledges that these state/event things can also play other roles, and that a role that ranges over states of affairs might well be played by more than one of them. Among other things, a Davidson state/event can 'be an instance of' a category that selects its members by having some shared property -- a noun concept. Davidson says that the proposition that describes a 'state of affairs' is (logically) 'true' if and only if the 'state of affairs' thing exists in the domain of discourse (the world of interest). This last is importantly inaccurate. What Davidson actually says is that 'mental events' can exist as 'things' in the domain of discourse, and they can be manipulated as 'things'. But their relationship to 'physical events' is not always well understood. Both mental events and physical events are things that can be manipulated. The proposition that describes a 'physical event' is objectively true if and only if the physical event happens, but 'mental events' don't "happen". The proposition that corresponds to a mental event would be true if the mental event has a physical counterpart and objectively false otherwise, but the idea of "counterpart" is not well-defined. Davidson's concern is that a mental event can be subjectively true in the mind of an agent and thus imply consequences for the actions of that agent, regardless of the presence or absence of a corresponding physical event. So the truth of its characterizing proposition is irrelevant to its existence. What is important for us is that planned events, scheduled events and hypothetical situations are all 'mental events' in Davidson's terminology, they do exist as things in the domain of discourse, a mental event can have properties, and the existence of a mental event can have consequences. That is, given the proposition "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39", then the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is true implies that there is an actual arrival of train 4040 in New York. Correctly (I think), Davidson says that the railroad schedule that shows "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" contains a 'mental event' that may or may not be associated with the 'physical event' of the arrival of the Amtrak 4040 train in New York. The proposition is objectively 'true' if and only if the physical event of the arrival exists. Now, since the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" does not involve a quantification, we assume that Amtrak 4040 and New York are both logical constants -- designations for specific things in the UoD. If so, then there can be only one thing that is "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York", and it either does or does not arrive at 12:39. But if "Amtrak 4040" is a term for a concept that is satisfied by different physical trains on different days, then "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is a unary fact type in which "Amtrak 4040" is a placeholder. And the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" is not a proposition and doesn't have an objectification. I don't think Davidson supports the idea that a proposition can refer to more than one 'thing' in the Domain of Discourse. He assumes that every variable in the proposition is quantified (i.e., that the proposition is a closed logical form), so that exactly one distinguishable state is described. "The sun rises" does not have distinct instances. There is only one sun and either it rises or it doesn't. If the sun rises every day, the proposition is true and there is only one thing that corresponds -- the state that the sun (ever) rises, as distinct from the event of an individual sunrise. Put another way, if you can distinguish two instances of 'the sun rises', then 'the sun rises' names some category of things rather than naming a specific thing, and those things are distinguished by some additional property. In essence, the Davidsonian proposition is presumed to be based on a fact type that includes all the needed properties for some reference scheme for the event/state thing. For all practical purposes, any distinguishing property that was omitted is implicitly existentialized. If you can use place and day to distinguish sunrises, then "the sun rises" means "there exists a place and a day such that the sun rises at that place on that day". Reading Davidson is what led Stan to think that a proposition is true if it is true at any time in the world of interest. What Davidson means is that the interpretation of a proposition like "the sun rises" is the state that such events happen in the world of interest. If the sun ever rises, that state exists, and it is the 'actuality'. The proposition does not refer to the individual events, it only refers to the actuality of the state (that such individual events exist). Davidson doesn't talk about occurrences. He has the idea that you can have many individual events, each of which is completely identified by a proposition, and that those individuals can play roles, such as satisfying a more general noun concept. And that is the model that John Hall suggested. That is also why I said that when we talk about 'occurrences' in the Date/Time ontology, we are moving away from Davidson's model. In the occurrence model, the proposition is used as a concept that is satisfied by 'occurrence' things; in Davidson's model, the proposition is used as a designation for an individual thing (an actuality). I am pretty sure that this part is correct. That is, for Davidson a 'mental event' is a single thing, and a 'physical event' is a single thing, and the proposition that characterizes either is sufficiently detailed to identify the thing. Now when Don talks about 'planned states of affairs' he is talking about 'planned occurrences of a state of affairs'. Davidson would completely agree that if the planned occurrence of the train coming into the station exists, then the state of affairs 'that the train comes into the station' exists. But Davidson would also insist that the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is thus taken to be true! This is wrong. When Don talks about 'planned states of affairs', he is talking about 'mental events' as described by Davidson. For Davidson, there is no clear relationship between the 'mental event' and the objective truth of the proposition. The mental event is simply a conceptualization of a state of affairs. But Davidson's idea is that the business activities may well be conducted as if that proposition were taken to be true -- they assume that the plan is going to happen. If you can distinguish 'the train is coming into the station now' from 'the train comes into the station at 12:39 tomorrow', then those are two different propositions, they describe different events, and they are independently true or false, and the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is true if either of them is true. But per Davidson, the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' does not relate directly to either of those events. This is correct. For the record, I agree with Mark that the model that Date/Time uses is that 'state of affairs' is a concept type, and that its instances are 'noun concepts'. That is, the Date/Time model of 'mental event' is a concept type, whose instances are conceptualizations of events, states and situations. Each state of affairs is a 'mental event' that conceptualizes one or more 'physical events'. But that is not the model that is in SBVR. The model in SBVR is that 'state of affairs' is a category of things in the UoD that are not meanings, and that it has two subtypes: 'actuality' and "imagined event/state", and that an 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that 'occurs', while an 'imagined event/state' is a 'state of affairs' that does not 'occur'. So, SBVR is actually very close to Davidson. It says there is a concept 'state of affairs' that includes both 'physical events', which are called 'actualities', and 'mental events', for which SBVR currently has no term. And SBVR is aligned in saying that a 'physical event'/'actuality' is a state of affairs that 'occurs', and that an 'actuality' corresponds to the truth of the characterizing proposition. According to SBVR, the proposition that describes a state of affairs is true if and only if the state of affairs is an actuality, which means that the proposition that describes an "imagined state/event" must be false. This is the real problem with the SBVR model. The conclusion that the characterizing proposition for a 'mental event' is false is not intended. But one can only conclude that any state of affairs that is not an 'actuality' ('physical event') must be one that does not 'occur', and that implies that the characterizing proposition must be false. And this conclusion arises from the idea that both 'physical event' and 'mental event' are specializations of a common general concept 'state of affairs' and are distinguished by a fact type 'state of affairs occurs'. I don't see how such a model can be meaningfully related to time at all. A proposition does not 'become true' in an SBVR world -- it is either true or false, full stop. And a state of affairs that is described by a false proposition can logically include porcine aerobatics. In so many words, SBVR chose the wrong delimiting characteristic. Davidson's 'mental event' and 'physical event' are subtypes of a common concept 'event', but the distinction is 'thing in the mind' v. 'thing in the world', not 'occurs' v. 'does not occur'. And 'occurs' is only a property of physical events; it does not have meaning for 'mental events'. Davidson's 'mental events' can be associated with physical events by a concept he calls 'realization'. But that is a binary fact type: 'mental event' is realized as 'physical event'. So, if SBVR is to mirror Davidson's model, it needs to add a 'mental event' concept that also specializes 'state of affairs' and is related to 'actuality' by some fact type that corresponds to 'is realized as'. Alternatively, we can do what Stan and Mark suggested -- use 'state of affairs' for Davidson's 'mental event', and 'actuality' for 'physical event'. (Now, Davidson needed the common more general concept 'event', because he wanted to explore causality: 'event' causes 'event'. SBVR doesn't include a causality model, but we may want one at some future time. And for that reason, what is suggested below may not be best.) That is why I supported Stan's observation that the smallest change to SBVR is to agree that 'states of affairs' and 'actualities' are different kinds of things that are related by '(state of affairs) occurs as (actuality)' And that will allow us to talk about plans and discussion items and preventive measures and their relationship to real events. An actuality is "an event, situtation, or state that exists or happens in the world of interest". A state of affairs is "a _description of_ an event, situation or state that may or may not occur in the world of interest". And that also allows the relationship between states of affairs and actualities to be many-to-many. A single event can simultaneously be the realization of multiple descriptions that are different in their viewpoints, and a single state of affairs can have zero or more occurrences. That is 'state of affairs' is 'mental event', and its relationship to 'physical events' is called 'occurs as' and is many-to-many. So when "Jenny prevents Jimmy from playing with matches" (i.e., Jenny prevents that Jimmy plays with matches), Jenny prevents the state of affairs 'Jimmy plays with matches' from occurring, i.e., having an associated actuality. Davidson would say that Jenny prevents a 'mental event' of Jimmy playing with matches. That said, 'the description of an x' is perilously close to 'the definite description of an x', which is what we used to say was the 'indivdual concept' of an x. Which means that Stan's proposal is not far from Mark's -- the instances of a state of affairs concept are the actualities (things in the domain of discourse). I don't want to address the further elements of the Linehan/Hendryx exchange, because they are on entirely different wavelengths. This is not about philosophy, and it is not about logical formulation. It is about having an interpretation of 'state of affairs', 'occurs' and 'actuality' that effectively supports first-order reasoning about situations. -Ed P.S. I know that Don will not accept any change to the existing SBVR model, but he must realize that the OMG ontology folk cannot reason using a model in which a false proposition can have an instance that is a state/event in the world of interest. In a Davidsonian model, every state/event thing that exists in the world of interest corresponds to a true proposition. With apologies to Don, I think I now understand what SBVR was trying to capture. But failing to enunciate 'mental event' and clarify its relationship to 'physical event' (actuality) made it very hard for me and Elisa and others to recognize the intended model. And while SBVR 'state of affairs' was not intended to be a kind of concept (indeed it is a bag of apples and oranges), 'mental event' very definitely is a kind of 'concept', and exposing that idea would have made the intent a lot easier to comprehend. -Ed P.S. I should have re-read one more part of Davidson's work BEFORE I wrote the previous email. I realized the significance of the 'mental event' stuff when I was putting the book away. -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10432:5.2.15,1.0.148,0.0.0000 definitions=2011-04-04_05:2011-04-04,2011-04-04,1970-01-01 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 suspectscore=0 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=6.0.2-1012030000 definitions=main-1104040113 Cc: "Barkmeyer, Edward J." , Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , Stan Hendryx X-Mailer: iPhone Mail (8C148) From: keri_ah Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue: Correction/Epiphany? Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 10:29:13 -1000 To: "edbark@nist.gov" X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p34KPiqj018250 PMFJI - Could one of you please supply some citations for the "Davidson" notions that have entered this discussion. Thx. Keri Sent from my iPhone On Apr 4, 2011, at 9:59 AM, Ed Barkmeyer wrote: > > > Ed Barkmeyer wrote: >> Mark H Linehan wrote (to Stan, but I don't see the email): >> >>> Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? >> Davidson's principal idea was what Terry Halpin calls 'objectification' -- the idea that a 'state' or 'event' that is described by a proposition can be a 'thing' in the domain of discourse, and therefore play roles in relations, such as '(state of affairs) occurs at (time)' or (instance of) 'train arrival'. This is a means of allowing such things to be supported entirely by first-order logics. >> >> Davidson's version of 'state of affairs' is just a unary relation (noun concept) that is satisfied by all such states and events. He acknowledges that these state/event things can also play other roles, and that a role that ranges over states of affairs might well be played by more than one of them. Among other things, a Davidson state/event can 'be an instance of' a category that selects its members by having some shared property -- a noun concept. >> >> Davidson says that the proposition that describes a 'state of affairs' is (logically) 'true' if and only if the 'state of affairs' thing exists in the domain of discourse (the world of interest). > > This last is importantly inaccurate. What Davidson actually says is that 'mental events' can exist as 'things' in the domain of discourse, and they can be manipulated as 'things'. But their relationship to 'physical events' is not always well understood. Both mental events and physical events are things that can be manipulated. The proposition that describes a 'physical event' is objectively true if and only if the physical event happens, but 'mental events' don't "happen". The proposition that corresponds to a mental event would be true if the mental event has a physical counterpart and objectively false otherwise, but the idea of "counterpart" is not well-defined. > > Davidson's concern is that a mental event can be subjectively true in the mind of an agent and thus imply consequences for the actions of that agent, regardless of the presence or absence of a corresponding physical event. So the truth of its characterizing proposition is irrelevant to its existence. What is important for us is that planned events, scheduled events and hypothetical situations are all 'mental events' in Davidson's terminology, they do exist as things in the domain of discourse, a mental event can have properties, and the existence of a mental event can have consequences. > >> That is, given the proposition "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39", then the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is true implies that there is an actual arrival of train 4040 in New York. > > Correctly (I think), Davidson says that the railroad schedule that shows "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" contains a 'mental event' that may or may not be associated with the 'physical event' of the arrival of the Amtrak 4040 train in New York. The proposition is objectively 'true' if and only if the physical event of the arrival exists. > >> Now, since the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" does not involve a quantification, we assume that Amtrak 4040 and New York are both logical constants -- designations for specific things in the UoD. If so, then there can be only one thing that is "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York", and it either does or does not arrive at 12:39. But if "Amtrak 4040" is a term for a concept that is satisfied by different physical trains on different days, then "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is a unary fact type in which "Amtrak 4040" is a placeholder. And the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" is not a proposition and doesn't have an objectification. >> I don't think Davidson supports the idea that a proposition can refer to more than one 'thing' in the Domain of Discourse. He assumes that every variable in the proposition is quantified (i.e., that the proposition is a closed logical form), so that exactly one distinguishable state is described. "The sun rises" does not have distinct instances. There is only one sun and either it rises or it doesn't. If the sun rises every day, the proposition is true and there is only one thing that corresponds -- the state that the sun (ever) rises, as distinct from the event of an individual sunrise. Put another way, if you can distinguish two instances of 'the sun rises', then 'the sun rises' names some category of things rather than naming a specific thing, and those things are distinguished by some additional property. In essence, the Davidsonian proposition is presumed to be based on a fact type that includes all the needed properties for some reference scheme for the event/state thing. For all practical purposes, any distinguishing property that was omitted is implicitly existentialized. If you can use place and day to distinguish sunrises, then "the sun rises" means "there exists a place and a day such that the sun rises at that place on that day". >> >> Reading Davidson is what led Stan to think that a proposition is true if it is true at any time in the world of interest. What Davidson means is that the interpretation of a proposition like "the sun rises" is the state that such events happen in the world of interest. If the sun ever rises, that state exists, and it is the 'actuality'. The proposition does not refer to the individual events, it only refers to the actuality of the state (that such individual events exist). >> >> Davidson doesn't talk about occurrences. He has the idea that you can have many individual events, each of which is completely identified by a proposition, and that those individuals can play roles, such as satisfying a more general noun concept. And that is the model that John Hall suggested. >> >> That is also why I said that when we talk about 'occurrences' in the Date/Time ontology, we are moving away from Davidson's model. In the occurrence model, the proposition is used as a concept that is satisfied by 'occurrence' things; in Davidson's model, the proposition is used as a designation for an individual thing (an actuality). >> > > I am pretty sure that this part is correct. That is, for Davidson a 'mental event' is a single thing, and a 'physical event' is a single thing, and the proposition that characterizes either is sufficiently detailed to identify the thing. > >> Now when Don talks about 'planned states of affairs' he is talking about 'planned occurrences of a state of affairs'. Davidson would completely agree that if the planned occurrence of the train coming into the station exists, then the state of affairs 'that the train comes into the station' exists. But Davidson would also insist that the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is thus taken to be true! > > This is wrong. When Don talks about 'planned states of affairs', he is talking about 'mental events' as described by Davidson. For Davidson, there is no clear relationship between the 'mental event' and the objective truth of the proposition. The mental event is simply a conceptualization of a state of affairs. But Davidson's idea is that the business activities may well be conducted as if that proposition were taken to be true -- they assume that the plan is going to happen. > >> If you can distinguish 'the train is coming into the station now' from 'the train comes into the station at 12:39 tomorrow', then those are two different propositions, they describe different events, and they are independently true or false, and the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is true if either of them is true. But per Davidson, the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' does not relate directly to either of those events. >> > > This is correct. > >> For the record, I agree with Mark that the model that Date/Time uses is that 'state of affairs' is a concept type, and that its instances are 'noun concepts'. > > That is, the Date/Time model of 'mental event' is a concept type, whose instances are conceptualizations of events, states and situations. Each state of affairs is a 'mental event' that conceptualizes one or more 'physical events'. > >> But that is not the model that is in SBVR. The model in SBVR is that 'state of affairs' is a category of things in the UoD that are not meanings, and that it has two subtypes: 'actuality' and "imagined event/state", and that an 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that 'occurs', while an 'imagined event/state' is a 'state of affairs' that does not 'occur'. > > So, SBVR is actually very close to Davidson. It says there is a concept 'state of affairs' that includes both 'physical events', which are called 'actualities', and 'mental events', for which SBVR currently has no term. And SBVR is aligned in saying that a 'physical event'/'actuality' is a state of affairs that 'occurs', and that an 'actuality' corresponds to the truth of the characterizing proposition. >> According to SBVR, the proposition that describes a state of affairs is true if and only if the state of affairs is an actuality, which means that the proposition that describes an "imagined state/event" must be false. > > This is the real problem with the SBVR model. The conclusion that the characterizing proposition for a 'mental event' is false is not intended. But one can only conclude that any state of affairs that is not an 'actuality' ('physical event') must be one that does not 'occur', and that implies that the characterizing proposition must be false. And this conclusion arises from the idea that both 'physical event' and 'mental event' are specializations of a common general concept 'state of affairs' and are distinguished by a fact type 'state of affairs occurs'. >> I don't see how such a model can be meaningfully related to time at all. A proposition does not 'become true' in an SBVR world -- it is either true or false, full stop. And a state of affairs that is described by a false proposition can logically include porcine aerobatics. >> > > In so many words, SBVR chose the wrong delimiting characteristic. Davidson's 'mental event' and 'physical event' are subtypes of a common concept 'event', but the distinction is 'thing in the mind' v. 'thing in the world', not 'occurs' v. 'does not occur'. And 'occurs' is only a property of physical events; it does not have meaning for 'mental events'. Davidson's 'mental events' can be associated with physical events by a concept he calls 'realization'. But that is a binary fact type: 'mental event' is realized as 'physical event'. > > So, if SBVR is to mirror Davidson's model, it needs to add a 'mental event' concept that also specializes 'state of affairs' and is related to 'actuality' by some fact type that corresponds to 'is realized as'. > > Alternatively, we can do what Stan and Mark suggested -- use 'state of affairs' for Davidson's 'mental event', and 'actuality' for 'physical event'. (Now, Davidson needed the common more general concept 'event', because he wanted to explore causality: 'event' causes 'event'. SBVR doesn't include a causality model, but we may want one at some future time. And for that reason, what is suggested below may not be best.) > >> That is why I supported Stan's observation that the smallest change to SBVR is to agree that 'states of affairs' and 'actualities' are different kinds of things that are related by >> '(state of affairs) occurs as (actuality)' >> And that will allow us to talk about plans and discussion items and preventive measures and their relationship to real events. An actuality is "an event, situtation, or state that exists or happens in the world of interest". A state of affairs is "a _description of_ an event, situation or state that may or may not occur in the world of interest". And that also allows the relationship between states of affairs and actualities to be many-to-many. A single event can simultaneously be the realization of multiple descriptions that are different in their viewpoints, and a single state of affairs can have zero or more occurrences. >> > > That is 'state of affairs' is 'mental event', and its relationship to 'physical events' is called 'occurs as' and is many-to-many. > >> So when "Jenny prevents Jimmy from playing with matches" (i.e., Jenny prevents that Jimmy plays with matches), Jenny prevents the state of affairs 'Jimmy plays with matches' from occurring, i.e., having an associated actuality. >> > > Davidson would say that Jenny prevents a 'mental event' of Jimmy playing with matches. > >> That said, 'the description of an x' is perilously close to 'the definite description of an x', which is what we used to say was the 'indivdual concept' of an x. Which means that Stan's proposal is not far from Mark's -- the instances of a state of affairs concept are the actualities (things in the domain of discourse). >> >> I don't want to address the further elements of the Linehan/Hendryx exchange, because they are on entirely different wavelengths. This is not about philosophy, and it is not about logical formulation. It is about having an interpretation of 'state of affairs', 'occurs' and 'actuality' that effectively supports first-order reasoning about situations. >> >> -Ed >> >> P.S. I know that Don will not accept any change to the existing SBVR model, but he must realize that the OMG ontology folk cannot reason using a model in which a false proposition can have an instance that is a state/event in the world of interest. In a Davidsonian model, every state/event thing that exists in the world of interest corresponds to a true proposition. >> > > With apologies to Don, I think I now understand what SBVR was trying to capture. But failing to enunciate 'mental event' and clarify its relationship to 'physical event' (actuality) made it very hard for me and Elisa and others to recognize the intended model. And while SBVR 'state of affairs' was not intended to be a kind of concept (indeed it is a bag of apples and oranges), 'mental event' very definitely is a kind of 'concept', and exposing that idea would have made the intent a lot easier to comprehend. > > -Ed > > P.S. I should have re-read one more part of Davidson's work BEFORE I wrote the previous email. I realized the significance of the 'mental event' stuff when I was putting the book away. > > -- > Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov > National Institute of Standards & Technology > Manufacturing Systems Integration Division > 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 > Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 > > "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." > X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 251578.12456.bm@omp1023.mail.sp2.yahoo.com X-Yahoo-SMTP: yZmfYpGswBANaaRY2ZOOLP_anhSkh.0YqFwv79wX8IAI X-YMail-OSG: BLrgAlEVM1l1WbD6aoWCNtcBtMd_mygEaPfWF4hTAzhJJMu ot7cSK8I7WE.eA2dTGqCUfw3GqeTTmVYtpB.9.BlseglMLg9pWrKk7o8JTqL gPio3piHESz35obvgh76z2Nh615hDUiOJrZXLdjX.dRGB_d_1Xo2xWqJTphn MEpAlCz98JthAeu.wxlXnDJYjThXKekxvHHjnCwKLfKeI.3robAxJjBTaria k2awGrlCU70zFTL3XkaynpLjUcSheJgeRWQ6D2XRZXK8TVlp90mfFknMAZRx yifp_z9bR0ew37swSpjuW3nCMmKc2RXomlZhvUBUulU1CFfUCH_10lj3fEO. zP1YRA0Bqw7rHPZIdnty.bfosHAY4o99J6Kx4aq8- X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 From: "Stan Hendryx" To: "'Mark H Linehan'" , Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 21:49:11 -0700 Organization: Hendryx & Associates X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcvyyKJEclBqtUBwQwqKB1TZTYOtMgAfqiwA Mark, A problem I see with your formulation 1 is that you do not include the objectification of the fact type (.object. in Annex F). A problem with formulation 2 is the definition of .train arrival.. A train arrival is not a train, but a state of affairs that a train arrives. The state of affairs is an actuality if it occurs. Another problem is that there is implicitly with train arrival the fact type .train arrival involves train.. There is no such thing as .train123 arrival.; that term is undefined in your vocabulary. With these fixes we have: Formulation 1: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train123 arrives after noon., exists s0: state of affairs unitary object(s0) // this is the objectification .train arrives. (train123) // this atomic formulation is what is considered by the objectification that binds to s0. exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Formulation 2: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "a train arrival that involves train123 is after noon., exists s0: train arrival: state of affairs where .train arrival involves train.(s0,train123) exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Of course, one problem with the above is that there is always some noon after which train123 arrives! Also, train123 may likely be a general concept rather than an individual: there might be one train123 each day. These issues would need to be accounted for in a really meaningful statement, but the examples show the structure of the formulations. Stan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 6:03 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan Hendryx Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Stan, Your formulation has two states of affairs in it because you introduced one that was not in my original email: "train is late". I only used "train is arriving", which corresponds to your objectification s1. As you say, "You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1." Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? Regarding "The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it." I certainly don't understand this distinction, but I would say that SBVR terms can represent both real things and ideas. Clause 10 has an example rule about other rules: "It is not permitted that some department adopts a rule that says it is obligatory that each employee of that department is male. " Regarding your request to present complete examples: consider the propositions "train123 arrives after noon" and "train 123 arrival is after noon", where "train arrival" is defined as "train that arrives". Formulation 1: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train arrives after noon., exists s0: state of affairs unitary where "train arrives. (train 123) exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1)) Formulation 2: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train 123 arrival is after noon., exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(train 123 arrival, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Notice that in formulation 2, I have to treat the individual concept 'train 123 arrival' as a state of affairs -- which isn't really legitimate. Maybe it should be the following, which is basically the same as formulation 1: (?) Formulation 3: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train 123 arrival is after noon., exists s0: state of affairs unitary where train 123 arrival exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research "Stan Hendryx" ---04/03/2011 12:58:44 AM---The logical formulation of 'if P then Q', where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): From: "Stan Hendryx" To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Date: 04/03/2011 12:58 AM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The logical formulation of .if P then Q., where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): if (logical formulation of P) then (logical formulation of Q) Focusing on P, your example does not give a complete proposition for the antecedent, so it is difficult to analyze what you have stated. You also complicated the analysis by incorporating an existential quantifier, .a.. Your verb concept .train is arriving. uses the present progressive tense, not the simple present tense as recommended in SBVR. The preferred fact type form is .train arrives.. Your rule might be stated (making a proposition out of your phrase) as .if a train that is arriving after noon is late, then (the passengers get a refund).. This is some kind of pidgin English. It would be more common to say .if a train arrives after noon and the train is late, then each passenger on such a train gets a refund of their ticket price.. However, as a rule, this does not make a lot of sense to me. A more perspicuous rule might be .for each train that arrives after noon and is late, each passenger..... However, I.ll stay with your example as closely as possible (making the antecedent a proposition): The logical formulation of P is .statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( .There is a state of affairs that a train that is arriving after noon is late., exists s0: state of affairs unitary exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) object(s0) exists tr:train where .train is late.(tr) exists s1:state of affairs exists t1:time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s1, t1) exists t2:noon:time interval object(s1) .train is arriving.(tr) .time interval is after time interval.(t1,t2) .time interval is convex hull of schedule.(t0, {t1}) ) I do not agree with your conclusion that a state of affairs is a noun concept. The flaw in your argument is your formulation, which is not correct, at least by my reckoning. You are trying to make one state of affairs do the work of both s0 and s1, aggregating levels. You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1. Please make a meaningful example out of your partial meanings and then show how your model entails a state of affairs being a noun concept. This debate about whether or not a state of affairs is a concept smacks of the age-old debate over nature of the entities that are represented by logical symbols. There are three prominent schools of thought: conceptualism, Platonism, and realism. Here is an explanation from L.T.F Gamut Logic, Language, and Meaning: Volume 2, Intensional Logic and Logical Grammar, University of Chicago Press, 1991: .According to conceptualism, meaning is a relation between symbols and the contents of consciousness. Concepts...are mental entities, with language functioning as a system of observable symbols which mediates between individuals, thus making communications possible...According to Platonism, concepts and propositions are not mental entities but real things. Only they do not belong to the world of observable phenomena but to the world of ideas...According to realism, the entities to which linguistic symbols bear the relation of meaning all belong to the concrete, observable reality around us: they are individuals, properties, relations, and states of affairs....Frege is generally seen as a Platonist...The fundamental distinction drawn in Frege.s theory of meaning is that between sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung)....Reference, we may say, is what explains the function of sense: expressions have a sense only by virtue of the fact that they also have a reference, and their sense is nothing more than the way their reference is presented. Thus, sense determines reference. Two expressions with the same sense have the same reference, although this does not hold the other way around.. A classical example is that the expressions .the morning star. and .the evening star. have different senses that but the same reference. To Frege, names include definite descriptions, as well as proper nouns. To Davidson, a statement is a definite description of a state of affairs. In Frege.s terms, a statement is a name for a state of affairs. The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it. Which camp do you think SBVR is in (mostly)? The key might be in the SBVR definition of .definite description.: intensional definition of an individual. If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent. Stan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 634310.68060.bm@omp1046.mail.sp2.yahoo.com X-Yahoo-SMTP: yZmfYpGswBANaaRY2ZOOLP_anhSkh.0YqFwv79wX8IAI X-YMail-OSG: TBAVlA4VM1mzpt5fBXdRRBxItOskDWo6ad6UeDvVkKvxdoI 7Wh.2DVn4RKHeAELGlHpS1cSCWiozvW1.4IcQShP6aTf5HveauzwKQP6F0H. 21thrDQooNaqscjt_ofht6Sd44LCg2xXc9zlY3c6LDY.mSyAuQdNpOsCPJku .mTaHetzBFH7eqCvGpnhsCQutyQj_d8FhG8S.eZa23sB.EQpdRrlTarrY5Or XPz_qwnvKdvjSkIMXTeWN6Ql34NU3aeNZhh_l5xR9SakSE8GWy9O_bDQPgqV oJLmWx2JwyujCCwZZ22Tm7EodogI3ZJLy0b3MloM2cwoWSEzmRiG21zeHCOj G5QQf6xNZGJYvroBE7kjmlG6phzl0vGunrpwf_0Q- X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 From: "Stan Hendryx" To: "'Mark H Linehan'" , Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 23:25:09 -0700 Organization: Hendryx & Associates X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcvyyKJEclBqtUBwQwqKB1TZTYOtMgAjJoKg Mark, You wrote: > How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? While not speaking for Davidson, according to SBVR, a state of affairs either occurs or it does not occur. If it occurs, it is an actuality, which is a kind of state of affairs, as defined in SBVR. If a state of affairs occurs, it has at least one occurrence. An occurrence is an instance of the fact type .state of affairs occurs over time interval.. Occurrences are distinguished by their time interval. An occurrence can be further identified by where it occurs: .state of affairs occurs in place.. This allows a state of affairs to occur at the same time in many places, or at different times in the same place, or at different times and places. I think the SBVR model of proposition, truth, actuality, and state of affairs is satisfactory, with the minor changes to the entry for .actuality. I mentioned previously. If you are a Platonist, you might think of a state of affairs as an individual concept that is designated by a statement. If you are a realist, you might think of a state of affairs as a concrete, observable real thing that is described by the statement. Any thing can be conceptualized as an individual concept. Since the logical formulations of states of affairs do not depend on the general concept of .state of affairs., we can either pick one view or the other, or take a neutral position like SBVR does with its informal definition of .state of affairs.. Our formulations are still amenable to predicate logic for reasoning. As I understand it, Davidson.s main objective in proposing that a proposition be considered a description of a state of affairs was so that the ordinary machinery of predicate logic and conjunctions could be used to reason about them. Stan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 6:03 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan Hendryx Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Stan, Your formulation has two states of affairs in it because you introduced one that was not in my original email: "train is late". I only used "train is arriving", which corresponds to your objectification s1. As you say, "You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1." Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? Regarding "The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it." I certainly don't understand this distinction, but I would say that SBVR terms can represent both real things and ideas. Clause 10 has an example rule about other rules: "It is not permitted that some department adopts a rule that says it is obligatory that each employee of that department is male. " Regarding your request to present complete examples: consider the propositions "train123 arrives after noon" and "train 123 arrival is after noon", where "train arrival" is defined as "train that arrives". Formulation 1: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train arrives after noon., exists s0: state of affairs unitary where "train arrives. (train 123) exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Formulation 2: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train 123 arrival is after noon., exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(train 123 arrival, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Notice that in formulation 2, I have to treat the individual concept 'train 123 arrival' as a state of affairs -- which isn't really legitimate. Maybe it should be the following, which is basically the same as formulation 1: (?) Formulation 3: statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( "train 123 arrival is after noon., exists s0: state of affairs unitary where train 123 arrival exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: time interval 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research "Stan Hendryx" ---04/03/2011 12:58:44 AM---The logical formulation of 'if P then Q', where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): From: "Stan Hendryx" To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Date: 04/03/2011 12:58 AM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The logical formulation of .if P then Q., where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): if (logical formulation of P) then (logical formulation of Q) Focusing on P, your example does not give a complete proposition for the antecedent, so it is difficult to analyze what you have stated. You also complicated the analysis by incorporating an existential quantifier, .a.. Your verb concept .train is arriving. uses the present progressive tense, not the simple present tense as recommended in SBVR. The preferred fact type form is .train arrives.. Your rule might be stated (making a proposition out of your phrase) as .if a train that is arriving after noon is late, then (the passengers get a refund).. This is some kind of pidgin English. It would be more common to say .if a train arrives after noon and the train is late, then each passenger on such a train gets a refund of their ticket price.. However, as a rule, this does not make a lot of sense to me. A more perspicuous rule might be .for each train that arrives after noon and is late, each passenger..... However, I.ll stay with your example as closely as possible (making the antecedent a proposition): The logical formulation of P is .statement is formalized by closed logical formulation.( .There is a state of affairs that a train that is arriving after noon is late., exists s0: state of affairs unitary exists t0: time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s0, t0) object(s0) exists tr:train where .train is late.(tr) exists s1:state of affairs exists t1:time interval where .state of affairs occurs over time interval.(s1, t1) exists t2:noon:time interval object(s1) .train is arriving.(tr) .time interval is after time interval.(t1,t2) .time interval is convex hull of schedule.(t0, {t1}) ) I do not agree with your conclusion that a state of affairs is a noun concept. The flaw in your argument is your formulation, which is not correct, at least by my reckoning. You are trying to make one state of affairs do the work of both s0 and s1, aggregating levels. You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1. Please make a meaningful example out of your partial meanings and then show how your model entails a state of affairs being a noun concept. This debate about whether or not a state of affairs is a concept smacks of the age-old debate over nature of the entities that are represented by logical symbols. There are three prominent schools of thought: conceptualism, Platonism, and realism. Here is an explanation from L.T.F Gamut Logic, Language, and Meaning: Volume 2, Intensional Logic and Logical Grammar, University of Chicago Press, 1991: .According to conceptualism, meaning is a relation between symbols and the contents of consciousness. Concepts...are mental entities, with language functioning as a system of observable symbols which mediates between individuals, thus making communications possible...According to Platonism, concepts and propositions are not mental entities but real things. Only they do not belong to the world of observable phenomena but to the world of ideas...According to realism, the entities to which linguistic symbols bear the relation of meaning all belong to the concrete, observable reality around us: they are individuals, properties, relations, and states of affairs....Frege is generally seen as a Platonist...The fundamental distinction drawn in Frege.s theory of meaning is that between sense (Sinn) and reference (Bedeutung)....Reference, we may say, is what explains the function of sense: expressions have a sense only by virtue of the fact that they also have a reference, and their sense is nothing more than the way their reference is presented. Thus, sense determines reference. Two expressions with the same sense have the same reference, although this does not hold the other way around.. A classical example is that the expressions .the morning star. and .the evening star. have different senses that but the same reference. To Frege, names include definite descriptions, as well as proper nouns. To Davidson, a statement is a definite description of a state of affairs. In Frege.s terms, a statement is a name for a state of affairs. The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it. Which camp do you think SBVR is in (mostly)? The key might be in the SBVR definition of .definite description.: intensional definition of an individual. If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent. Stan -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue: Correction/Epiphany? X-KeepSent: 5B2A2750:D1E66D54-85257869:004129A3; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:28:16 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/05/2011 09:28:28 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER I have the following citation in the references Annex of the Date-Time submission. I don't know whether this is the best reference, nor which book Ed has read. Davidson, Donald, The Logical Form of Action Sentences. In: Nicholas Rescher (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action, Pittsburgh: The University Press, pp. 81-95. (1967). Cited in [Kamp, Reyle]. Searching online, I found that Davidson published a lot over 40 years, and that there are also books that review and comment on his work. See http://books.google.com/books?id=OzTERK2ceXMC&dq=the+logic+of+decision+and+action&source=gbs_similarbooks_s&cad=1, particularly the "Related Books" section. See also Donaldson's Wikipedia entry, which says "His philosophical work as a whole is said to be concerned with the way human beings communicate and interact with and understand each other. " Another resource that seems useful is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on "state of affairs", at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/states-of-affairs/. Date-Time folks may want to look at sections 9.3 and 9.4 -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research keri_ah ---04/04/2011 04:30:56 PM---PMFJI - Could one of you please supply some citations for the "Davidson" notions that have entered t From: keri_ah To: "edbark@nist.gov" Cc: "Barkmeyer, Edward J." , Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS, "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , Stan Hendryx Date: 04/04/2011 04:30 PM Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue: Correction/Epiphany? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PMFJI - Could one of you please supply some citations for the "Davidson" notions that have entered this discussion. Thx. Keri Sent from my iPhone On Apr 4, 2011, at 9:59 AM, Ed Barkmeyer wrote: > > > Ed Barkmeyer wrote: >> Mark H Linehan wrote (to Stan, but I don't see the email): >> >>> Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? >> Davidson's principal idea was what Terry Halpin calls 'objectification' -- the idea that a 'state' or 'event' that is described by a proposition can be a 'thing' in the domain of discourse, and therefore play roles in relations, such as '(state of affairs) occurs at (time)' or (instance of) 'train arrival'. This is a means of allowing such things to be supported entirely by first-order logics. >> >> Davidson's version of 'state of affairs' is just a unary relation (noun concept) that is satisfied by all such states and events. He acknowledges that these state/event things can also play other roles, and that a role that ranges over states of affairs might well be played by more than one of them. Among other things, a Davidson state/event can 'be an instance of' a category that selects its members by having some shared property -- a noun concept. >> >> Davidson says that the proposition that describes a 'state of affairs' is (logically) 'true' if and only if the 'state of affairs' thing exists in the domain of discourse (the world of interest). > > This last is importantly inaccurate. What Davidson actually says is that 'mental events' can exist as 'things' in the domain of discourse, and they can be manipulated as 'things'. But their relationship to 'physical events' is not always well understood. Both mental events and physical events are things that can be manipulated. The proposition that describes a 'physical event' is objectively true if and only if the physical event happens, but 'mental events' don't "happen". The proposition that corresponds to a mental event would be true if the mental event has a physical counterpart and objectively false otherwise, but the idea of "counterpart" is not well-defined. > > Davidson's concern is that a mental event can be subjectively true in the mind of an agent and thus imply consequences for the actions of that agent, regardless of the presence or absence of a corresponding physical event. So the truth of its characterizing proposition is irrelevant to its existence. What is important for us is that planned events, scheduled events and hypothetical situations are all 'mental events' in Davidson's terminology, they do exist as things in the domain of discourse, a mental event can have properties, and the existence of a mental event can have consequences. > >> That is, given the proposition "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39", then the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is true implies that there is an actual arrival of train 4040 in New York. > > Correctly (I think), Davidson says that the railroad schedule that shows "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" contains a 'mental event' that may or may not be associated with the 'physical event' of the arrival of the Amtrak 4040 train in New York. The proposition is objectively 'true' if and only if the physical event of the arrival exists. > >> Now, since the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" does not involve a quantification, we assume that Amtrak 4040 and New York are both logical constants -- designations for specific things in the UoD. If so, then there can be only one thing that is "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York", and it either does or does not arrive at 12:39. But if "Amtrak 4040" is a term for a concept that is satisfied by different physical trains on different days, then "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York" is a unary fact type in which "Amtrak 4040" is a placeholder. And the statement "Amtrak 4040 arrives in New York at 12:39" is not a proposition and doesn't have an objectification. >> I don't think Davidson supports the idea that a proposition can refer to more than one 'thing' in the Domain of Discourse. He assumes that every variable in the proposition is quantified (i.e., that the proposition is a closed logical form), so that exactly one distinguishable state is described. "The sun rises" does not have distinct instances. There is only one sun and either it rises or it doesn't. If the sun rises every day, the proposition is true and there is only one thing that corresponds -- the state that the sun (ever) rises, as distinct from the event of an individual sunrise. Put another way, if you can distinguish two instances of 'the sun rises', then 'the sun rises' names some category of things rather than naming a specific thing, and those things are distinguished by some additional property. In essence, the Davidsonian proposition is presumed to be based on a fact type that includes all the needed properties for some reference scheme for the event/state thing. For all practical purposes, any distinguishing property that was omitted is implicitly existentialized. If you can use place and day to distinguish sunrises, then "the sun rises" means "there exists a place and a day such that the sun rises at that place on that day". >> >> Reading Davidson is what led Stan to think that a proposition is true if it is true at any time in the world of interest. What Davidson means is that the interpretation of a proposition like "the sun rises" is the state that such events happen in the world of interest. If the sun ever rises, that state exists, and it is the 'actuality'. The proposition does not refer to the individual events, it only refers to the actuality of the state (that such individual events exist). >> >> Davidson doesn't talk about occurrences. He has the idea that you can have many individual events, each of which is completely identified by a proposition, and that those individuals can play roles, such as satisfying a more general noun concept. And that is the model that John Hall suggested. >> >> That is also why I said that when we talk about 'occurrences' in the Date/Time ontology, we are moving away from Davidson's model. In the occurrence model, the proposition is used as a concept that is satisfied by 'occurrence' things; in Davidson's model, the proposition is used as a designation for an individual thing (an actuality). >> > > I am pretty sure that this part is correct. That is, for Davidson a 'mental event' is a single thing, and a 'physical event' is a single thing, and the proposition that characterizes either is sufficiently detailed to identify the thing. > >> Now when Don talks about 'planned states of affairs' he is talking about 'planned occurrences of a state of affairs'. Davidson would completely agree that if the planned occurrence of the train coming into the station exists, then the state of affairs 'that the train comes into the station' exists. But Davidson would also insist that the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is thus taken to be true! > > This is wrong. When Don talks about 'planned states of affairs', he is talking about 'mental events' as described by Davidson. For Davidson, there is no clear relationship between the 'mental event' and the objective truth of the proposition. The mental event is simply a conceptualization of a state of affairs. But Davidson's idea is that the business activities may well be conducted as if that proposition were taken to be true -- they assume that the plan is going to happen. > >> If you can distinguish 'the train is coming into the station now' from 'the train comes into the station at 12:39 tomorrow', then those are two different propositions, they describe different events, and they are independently true or false, and the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' is true if either of them is true. But per Davidson, the proposition 'the train comes into the station (at some time)' does not relate directly to either of those events. >> > > This is correct. > >> For the record, I agree with Mark that the model that Date/Time uses is that 'state of affairs' is a concept type, and that its instances are 'noun concepts'. > > That is, the Date/Time model of 'mental event' is a concept type, whose instances are conceptualizations of events, states and situations. Each state of affairs is a 'mental event' that conceptualizes one or more 'physical events'. > >> But that is not the model that is in SBVR. The model in SBVR is that 'state of affairs' is a category of things in the UoD that are not meanings, and that it has two subtypes: 'actuality' and "imagined event/state", and that an 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that 'occurs', while an 'imagined event/state' is a 'state of affairs' that does not 'occur'. > > So, SBVR is actually very close to Davidson. It says there is a concept 'state of affairs' that includes both 'physical events', which are called 'actualities', and 'mental events', for which SBVR currently has no term. And SBVR is aligned in saying that a 'physical event'/'actuality' is a state of affairs that 'occurs', and that an 'actuality' corresponds to the truth of the characterizing proposition. >> According to SBVR, the proposition that describes a state of affairs is true if and only if the state of affairs is an actuality, which means that the proposition that describes an "imagined state/event" must be false. > > This is the real problem with the SBVR model. The conclusion that the characterizing proposition for a 'mental event' is false is not intended. But one can only conclude that any state of affairs that is not an 'actuality' ('physical event') must be one that does not 'occur', and that implies that the characterizing proposition must be false. And this conclusion arises from the idea that both 'physical event' and 'mental event' are specializations of a common general concept 'state of affairs' and are distinguished by a fact type 'state of affairs occurs'. >> I don't see how such a model can be meaningfully related to time at all. A proposition does not 'become true' in an SBVR world -- it is either true or false, full stop. And a state of affairs that is described by a false proposition can logically include porcine aerobatics. >> > > In so many words, SBVR chose the wrong delimiting characteristic. Davidson's 'mental event' and 'physical event' are subtypes of a common concept 'event', but the distinction is 'thing in the mind' v. 'thing in the world', not 'occurs' v. 'does not occur'. And 'occurs' is only a property of physical events; it does not have meaning for 'mental events'. Davidson's 'mental events' can be associated with physical events by a concept he calls 'realization'. But that is a binary fact type: 'mental event' is realized as 'physical event'. > > So, if SBVR is to mirror Davidson's model, it needs to add a 'mental event' concept that also specializes 'state of affairs' and is related to 'actuality' by some fact type that corresponds to 'is realized as'. > > Alternatively, we can do what Stan and Mark suggested -- use 'state of affairs' for Davidson's 'mental event', and 'actuality' for 'physical event'. (Now, Davidson needed the common more general concept 'event', because he wanted to explore causality: 'event' causes 'event'. SBVR doesn't include a causality model, but we may want one at some future time. And for that reason, what is suggested below may not be best.) > >> That is why I supported Stan's observation that the smallest change to SBVR is to agree that 'states of affairs' and 'actualities' are different kinds of things that are related by >> '(state of affairs) occurs as (actuality)' >> And that will allow us to talk about plans and discussion items and preventive measures and their relationship to real events. An actuality is "an event, situtation, or state that exists or happens in the world of interest". A state of affairs is "a _description of_ an event, situation or state that may or may not occur in the world of interest". And that also allows the relationship between states of affairs and actualities to be many-to-many. A single event can simultaneously be the realization of multiple descriptions that are different in their viewpoints, and a single state of affairs can have zero or more occurrences. >> > > That is 'state of affairs' is 'mental event', and its relationship to 'physical events' is called 'occurs as' and is many-to-many. > >> So when "Jenny prevents Jimmy from playing with matches" (i.e., Jenny prevents that Jimmy plays with matches), Jenny prevents the state of affairs 'Jimmy plays with matches' from occurring, i.e., having an associated actuality. >> > > Davidson would say that Jenny prevents a 'mental event' of Jimmy playing with matches. > >> That said, 'the description of an x' is perilously close to 'the definite description of an x', which is what we used to say was the 'indivdual concept' of an x. Which means that Stan's proposal is not far from Mark's -- the instances of a state of affairs concept are the actualities (things in the domain of discourse). >> >> I don't want to address the further elements of the Linehan/Hendryx exchange, because they are on entirely different wavelengths. This is not about philosophy, and it is not about logical formulation. It is about having an interpretation of 'state of affairs', 'occurs' and 'actuality' that effectively supports first-order reasoning about situations. >> >> -Ed >> >> P.S. I know that Don will not accept any change to the existing SBVR model, but he must realize that the OMG ontology folk cannot reason using a model in which a false proposition can have an instance that is a state/event in the world of interest. In a Davidsonian model, every state/event thing that exists in the world of interest corresponds to a true proposition. >> > > With apologies to Don, I think I now understand what SBVR was trying to capture. But failing to enunciate 'mental event' and clarify its relationship to 'physical event' (actuality) made it very hard for me and Elisa and others to recognize the intended model. And while SBVR 'state of affairs' was not intended to be a kind of concept (indeed it is a bag of apples and oranges), 'mental event' very definitely is a kind of 'concept', and exposing that idea would have made the intent a lot easier to comprehend. > > -Ed > > P.S. I should have re-read one more part of Davidson's work BEFORE I wrote the previous email. I realized the significance of the 'mental event' stuff when I was putting the book away. > > -- > Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov > National Institute of Standards & Technology > Manufacturing Systems Integration Division > 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 > Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 > > "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." > Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-KeepSent: FD4FD99D:99511F51-85257869:004A7008; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 09:43:49 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/05/2011 09:43:57 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER OK, I accept that "train arrival", defined my way, just subtypes "train". But why do you want to define it as "actuality that ..." rather than "state of affairs that ..."? Defining "train arrival" as an actuality seems to interfere with hypothetical use of the concept. For example, a timetable shows when a train arrival is supposed to happen -- but a train arrival may not happen when indicated, or may not happen at all. Do you ever define concepts as "state of affairs that ..."? -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Don Baisley ---04/04/2011 02:04:51 PM---Sorry for sending to you twice. I noticed I didn't do a "Reply All" when I sent the first reply. Al From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Date: 04/04/2011 02:04 PM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry for sending to you twice. I noticed I didnâ..t do a â..Reply Allâ.ť when I sent the first reply. All the best, Don From: Don Baisley Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 10:59 AM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Hi Mark, â..train arrivalâ.. would not be defined â..train that is arrivingâ.ť. It would be defined as â..actuality that a given train arrives at a given place at a given timeâ.ť. If you define it as â..train that is arrivingâ.ť, then the train that arrives is the arrival, which is not right. Using the definition that I gave, you see that yesterdayâ..s arrival and todayâ..s arrival of the same train are not the same arrival. If you want to talk about the state of affairs that â..some train is arriving somewhereâ.ť, that state of affairs is an actuality as long as there exists a train that is arriving at any place anywhere . not very interesting. On the other hand, a formulation of a fact: â..Train123 arrives at Station456 at Noon 1/1/2011â.ť can use objectification in obvious ways. Note that the fact, if true, corresponds to a train arrival as defined above. A formulation can take the shape of the following (where each parenthesized expression is an objectification): ( (Train123 arrives) occurs at Station456) occurs at Noon 1/1/2011. You can simplify this example to ignore location if you want to stick with â..timeâ.ť only. States of affairs do not correspond to actualities. States of affairs that obtain (occur) are actualities. The concept â..train arrivalâ.ť defined above is not a state of affairs. All the best, Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:00:37 -0400 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: keri_ah CC: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , Stan Hendryx Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue: Correction/Epiphany? X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov keri_ah wrote: PMFJI - Could one of you please supply some citations for the "Davidson" notions that have entered this discussion. Thx. Keri The book I have is: /The Essential Davidson/. (a compendium of papers of Donald Davidson), Oxford University Press. 2006. "Mental Events" is one of the papers, published in 1970. I observe that there is also a Wikipedia article that summarizes some of Davidson's ideas, although it doesn't really discuss his work on the formal interpretation of sentences about actions. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:02:05 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Stan Hendryx CC: "'Mark H Linehan'" , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p35F2AMt007434 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1302620532.7429@o9Z+TgaOgdtN+1RX8h8x7g X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Stan Hendryx wrote: Mark, You wrote: > How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? While not speaking for Davidson, according to SBVR, a state of affairs either occurs or it does not occur. If it occurs, it is an actuality, which is a kind of state of affairs, as defined in SBVR. If a state of affairs occurs, it has at least one occurrence. An occurrence is an instance of the fact type ._state of affairs_/ occurs over /_time interval_.. Occurrences are distinguished by their time interval. An occurrence can be further identified by where it occurs: ._state of affairs_/ occurs in /_place_.. This allows a state of affairs to occur at the same time in many places, or at different times in the same place, or at different times and places. This has nothing much to do with Davidson, and the whole problem is that the SBVR model is unclear. I think the SBVR model of proposition, truth, actuality, and state of affairs is satisfactory, with the minor changes to the entry for ._actuality_. I mentioned previously. I don't. I think the SBVR model needs to be clarified, and its usages need to be clarified to match. If you are a Platonist, you might think of a state of affairs as an individual concept that is designated by a statement. If you are a realist, you might think of a state of affairs as a concrete, observable real thing that is described by the statement. If you are a Davidsonian, you refer to the first as a 'mental event' and the second as a 'physical event'. They are distinct subtypes of 'event', and for Davidson in the 1960s, the critical fact type was: event causes event. That was a major philosophical contribution -- that mental events like plans and perceptions of happenings (real, imagined, misinterpreted) can be the causes of physical events, and conversely, that a physical event can cause the formation of mental events whose relationship to the physical event is hard to explain. It includes, but it not limited to, Antoine Lonjon's observation that 'a fact is an actuality interpreted by a fact type' -- the mental event imposes verbs and roles and participants on the physical event. Any thing can be conceptualized as an individual concept. Yes. But we can also have individual concepts that don't correspond to things. (Well, we changed the definition of 'individual concept' so that is not true, but we can have concepts that correspond to zero or one thing in all domains of discourse.) Davidson's 'mental event' is a conceptualization of an event or situation and the conceptualization itself is a thing. It has properties, and it can have causal and perceptual antecedents and physical consequences. Most importantly, the relationship of a mental event to a physical event is "some relationship" -- a mental event can be an interpretation of a physical event that has happened or is happening, or it can be deemed to be fulfilled by a physical event that subsequently occurs, or it may never correspond to a physical event. For example, we have a communal 'mental event': "Issue 14849 is resolved", but at this point its relationship to any physical event is gravely in doubt! So Davidson's 'mental event' is not "the concept that corresponds to a given physical event"; it is rather "a concept that may correspond to some one physical event". Since the logical formulations of states of affairs do not depend on the general concept of ._state of affairs_., SBVR v1.1 (interim): _objectification _Definition: logical formulation that involves a bindable target and a considered logical formulation and that formulates the meaning: the thing to which the bindable target refers is a _state of affairs_ that corresponds to the meaning of the considered logical formulation The logical formulation represents a proposition, and the proposition does not depend on the concept 'state of affairs', but interpretation of an objectification (formulation) very clearly does. we can either pick one view or the other, or take a neutral position like SBVR does with its informal definition of ._state of affairs_.. That informal definition means that the concept 'objectification' is not well-defined, and for those of us who are trying to produce a logical grounding for SBVR, it means we don't know how to do that. Our formulations are still amenable to predicate logic for reasoning. As I understand it, Davidson.s main objective in proposing that a proposition be considered a description of a state of affairs was so that the ordinary machinery of predicate logic and conjunctions could be used to reason about them. Yes, in one of his later papers. It is a formalization of his earlier linguistic idea that both mental events and physical events can play roles with respect to verbs (i.e., in fact types) and be instances of general concepts. And, as observed above, Davidson was particularly concerned that his general concept 'event' (SBVR 'state of affairs'?) characterizes the things that can play the roles in 'event causes event'. IMO, aligning SBVR with Davidson requires at least four changes 1) We must make clear that an 'actuality' is an "event, situation or circumstance that actually happens/occurs/obtains in the world of interest" 2) We must introduce a concept that is the 'mental event', as "a conceptualization of an event, situation or circumstance in the world of interest". The conceptualization may be related to an 'actuality' that happened in the past or present, or to a situation that is expected to happen in the future, to a hypothetical situation, or to a situation that is to be feared or avoided. 3) We must define "state of affairs" to be "'actuality' or 'mental event', treated as a thing in the world of interest". 4) We must determine for each example whether the range of a given role is intended to be 'state of affairs' or 'actuality' or 'mental event' and correct them as necessary. The definition of 'objectification' should stand. (I would not be surprised to find that business rules never refer to the general concept 'state of affairs', but rather to a particular subtype. All the examples in the normative text only refer to instances of 'actuality', but I'm not sure about EU Rent.) Now, as to how the Davidson model relates to Date/Time and the concept of 'occurrence', that is "quite another thing entirely". Davidson's notion is that a 'state of affairs' is an individual. So I think the Date/Time 'occurrence' is what he calls a 'physical event'. What we have been calling a 'state of affairs' is just a general concept that corresponds to those things. An OBTW, in 'The corporate books must be audited at headquarters", if the "state of affairs" is "the corporate books are audited", then it is surely intended to be a general concept that corresponds to each (annual) instance of the books being audited, and is thus a specialization of 'actuality', not an instance of 'state of affairs'. And the objectification appears to create a concept over which a variable denoting individual actualities ranges. (That is why (4) above.) -Ed Stan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] *Sent:* Monday, April 04, 2011 6:03 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Cc:* Stan Hendryx *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Stan, Your formulation has two states of affairs in it because you introduced one that was not in my original email: "train is late". I only used "train is arriving", which corresponds to your objectification s1. As you say, "You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1." Regarding your comment "If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent." This is exactly the proposal made by John Hall to the RTF. However, we have to deal with the fact that some states of affairs (e.g. "the sun rises") recur. How does Davidson deal with recurring states of affairs? Regarding "The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it." I certainly don't understand this distinction, but I would say that SBVR terms can represent both real things and ideas. Clause 10 has an example rule about other rules: "It is not permitted that some department adopts a rule that says it is obligatory that each employee of that department is male. " Regarding your request to present complete examples: consider the propositions "_train123_/ arrives/ /after /_noon_" and "_train 123 arrival_ /is after/ _noon_", where "_train arrival_" is defined as "_train_ that /arrives/". Formulation 1: _statement_/ is formalized by /_closed logical formulation_.( "_train_/ arrives/ /after /_noon_., exists s0: _state of affairs_ unitary where "_train_/ arrives/. (_train 123_) exists t0: _time interval_ where ._state of affairs_/ occurs over /_time interval_.(s0, t0) exists t1: _noon_: _time interval_ 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Formulation 2: _statement_/ is formalized by /_closed logical formulation_.( "_train 123/ arrival/_/ is after /_noon_., exists t0: _time interval_ where ._state of affairs_/ occurs over /_time interval_.(_train 123 arrival_, t0) exists t1: _noon_: _time interval_ 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) Notice that in formulation 2, I have to treat the individual concept '_train 123 arrival_' as a state of affairs -- which isn't really legitimate. Maybe it should be the following, which is basically the same as formulation 1: (?) Formulation 3: _statement_/ is formalized by /_closed logical formulation_.( "_train 123/ arrival/_/ is after /_noon_., exists s0: _state of affairs_ unitary where _train 123/ arrival/_ exists t0: _time interval_ where ._state of affairs_/ occurs over /_time interval_.(s0, t0) exists t1: noon: _time interval_ 'time interval is after time interval' (t0, t1) -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Inactive hide details for "Stan Hendryx" ---04/03/2011 12:58:44 AM---The logical formulation of 'if P then Q', where P and Q ar"Stan Hendryx" ---04/03/2011 12:58:44 AM---The logical formulation of 'if P then Q', where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): From: "Stan Hendryx" To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Date: 04/03/2011 12:58 AM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The logical formulation of .if P then Q., where P and Q are propositions is (see Annex F): *if *(logical formulation of P) *then* (logical formulation of Q) Focusing on P, your example does not give a complete proposition for the antecedent, so it is difficult to analyze what you have stated. You also complicated the analysis by incorporating an existential quantifier, .a.. Your verb concept ._train_/ is arriving/. uses the present progressive tense, not the simple present tense as recommended in SBVR. The preferred fact type form is ._train_/ arrives/.. Your rule might be stated (making a proposition out of your phrase) as .if a train that is arriving after noon is late, then (the passengers get a refund).. This is some kind of pidgin English. It would be more common to say .if a train arrives after noon and the train is late, then each passenger on such a train gets a refund of their ticket price.. However, as a rule, this does not make a lot of sense to me. A more perspicuous rule might be .for each train that arrives after noon and is late, each passenger..... However, I.ll stay with your example as closely as possible (making the antecedent a proposition): The logical formulation of P is ._statement_/ is formalized by /_closed logical formulation_.( .There is a state of affairs that a train that is arriving after noon is late., exists s0: _state of affairs_ unitary exists t0: _time interval_ where ._state of affairs_/ occurs over /_time interval_.(s0, t0) object(s0) exists tr:_train_ where ._train_/ is late/.(tr) exists s1:_state of affairs_ exists t1:_time interval_ where ._state of affairs_/ occurs over /_time interval_.(s1, t1) exists t2:_noon_:_time interval_ object(s1) ._train_/ is arriving/.(tr) ._time interval_/ is after /_time interval_.(t1,t2) ._time interval_ /is convex hull of /_schedule_.(t0, {t1}) ) I do not agree with your conclusion that a state of affairs is a noun concept. The flaw in your argument is your formulation, which is not correct, at least by my reckoning. You are trying to make one state of affairs do the work of both s0 and s1, aggregating levels. You are correct that objectification s1 can be replaced by an instance of a noun concept that is an objectification of the fact type considered by s1. Please make a meaningful example out of your partial meanings and then show how your model entails a state of affairs being a noun concept. This debate about whether or not a state of affairs is a concept smacks of the age-old debate over nature of the entities that are represented by logical symbols. There are three prominent schools of thought: conceptualism, Platonism, and realism. Here is an explanation from L.T.F Gamut /Logic, Language, and Meaning: Volume 2, Intensional Logic and Logical Grammar/, University of Chicago Press, 1991: .According to conceptualism, meaning is a relation between symbols and the contents of consciousness. Concepts...are mental entities, with language functioning as a system of observable symbols which mediates between individuals, thus making communications possible...According to Platonism, concepts and propositions are not mental entities but real things. Only they do not belong to the world of observable phenomena but to the world of ideas...According to realism, the entities to which linguistic symbols bear the relation of meaning all belong to the concrete, observable reality around us: they are individuals, properties, relations, and states of affairs....Frege is generally seen as a Platonist...The fundamental distinction drawn in Frege.s theory of meaning is that between /sense/ (/Sinn/) and /reference /(/Bedeutung/)....Reference, we may say, is what explains the function of sense: expressions have a sense only by virtue of the fact that they also have a reference, and their sense is nothing more than the way their reference is presented. Thus, sense determines reference. Two expressions with the same sense have the same reference, although this does not hold the other way around.. A classical example is that the expressions .the morning star. and .the evening star. have different senses that but the same reference. To Frege, names include definite descriptions, as well as proper nouns. To Davidson, a statement is a definite description of a state of affairs. In Frege.s terms, a statement is a name for a state of affairs. The debate in the RTF seems to be a clash between realists and Platonists. Who is right? I think we should pick a point of view and stick with it. Which camp do you think SBVR is in (mostly)? The key might be in the SBVR definition of .definite description.: _intensional definition_ of an individual. If a state of affairs turns out to be a noun concept, it must be unitary, having only one referent. Stan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] * Sent:* Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM* To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org* Cc:* Stan@hendryxassoc.com* Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: '_train_/ is arriving/' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a _train_ that is arriving after _noon_ ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept '_state of affairs_ /after/ _time interval_', and a noun concept '_noon_' that is a kind of '_time interval_'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a _state of affairs_ that 'a _train_ /is arriving/' /after/ _noon_ ...." Now consider the noun concept '_train arrival_' defined as "_train_ that /is arriving/", and a rule "if a _train arrival_ /is after/ _noon_ ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a _train_ that is arriving is after _noon_ ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "_train arrival_" and the formulation "_state of affairs_ that a _train_ /is arriving/". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "_meaning_ /corresponds to/ _thing_". This implies that "_states of affairs_ /correspond to/ _actualities_". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5RMrz5ggAEWqQCAAxXvwIAAACPAgAHAX4CAABVp0A== Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 22:24:10 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.79] Hi Mark, You asked: > Do you ever define concepts as "state of affairs that ..."? Examples: Eventuality: state of affairs that can occur but does not necessarily occur Impossible state: state of affairs that cannot occur Possible state: state of affairs that can occur Prohibited state: state of affairs that must not occur You are correct that the definition I gave for .train arrival. does not include all possible train arrivals in its extension. Here is another concept that does. Possible train arrival: state of affairs that a given train arrives at a given place at a given time and that can occur Every train arrival is a possible train arrival, but not every possible train arrival is a train arrival. Enjoy, Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2011 6:44 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue OK, I accept that "train arrival", defined my way, just subtypes "train". But why do you want to define it as "actuality that ..." rather than "state of affairs that ..."? Defining "train arrival" as an actuality seems to interfere with hypothetical use of the concept. For example, a timetable shows when a train arrival is supposed to happen -- but a train arrival may not happen when indicated, or may not happen at all. Do you ever define concepts as "state of affairs that ..."? -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research Don Baisley ---04/04/2011 02:04:51 PM---Sorry for sending to you twice. I noticed I didn't do a "Reply All" when I sent the first reply. Al From: Don Baisley To: Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM@IBMUS Date: 04/04/2011 02:04 PM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry for sending to you twice. I noticed I didn.t do a .Reply All. when I sent the first reply. All the best, Don From: Don Baisley Sent: Monday, April 04, 2011 10:59 AM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Hi Mark, .train arrival. would not be defined .train that is arriving.. It would be defined as .actuality that a given train arrives at a given place at a given time.. If you define it as .train that is arriving., then the train that arrives is the arrival, which is not right. Using the definition that I gave, you see that yesterday.s arrival and today.s arrival of the same train are not the same arrival. If you want to talk about the state of affairs that .some train is arriving somewhere., that state of affairs is an actuality as long as there exists a train that is arriving at any place anywhere . not very interesting. On the other hand, a formulation of a fact: .Train123 arrives at Station456 at Noon 1/1/2011. can use objectification in obvious ways. Note that the fact, if true, corresponds to a train arrival as defined above. A formulation can take the shape of the following (where each parenthesized expression is an objectification): ( (Train123 arrives) occurs at Station456) occurs at Noon 1/1/2011. You can simplify this example to ignore location if you want to stick with .time. only. States of affairs do not correspond to actualities. States of affairs that obtain (occur) are actualities. The concept .train arrival. defined above is not a state of affairs. All the best, Don From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: Saturday, April 02, 2011 4:51 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Consider this verb concept: 'train is arriving' and a (partial) rule using this verb concept: "if a train that is arriving after noon ...." (This rule also uses a verb concept 'state of affairs after time interval', and a noun concept 'noon' that is a kind of 'time interval'.) I would formulate the rule as "if a state of affairs that 'a train is arriving' after noon ...." Now consider the noun concept 'train arrival' defined as "train that is arriving", and a rule "if a train arrival is after noon ...." Using the rule that a definition can substitute for a term, we can convert this latter rule to "if a train that is arriving is after noon ...", which is exactly the same as the first rule given above. So there seems to be an equivalence between the noun concept "train arrival" and the formulation "state of affairs that a train is arriving". This suggest that a state of affairs is a (usually unnamed) noun concept. If a state of affairs is a noun concept, then the instances of a state of affairs are instances of the noun and the relationship between the state of affairs and its instances is captured by SBVR's "meaning corresponds to thing". This implies that "states of affairs correspond to actualities". SBVR says that the instances of verb concepts are actualities. Put that together with the analysis above, and we get a relationship triangle that is self-consistent: * The instances of verb concepts are actualities. * A state of affairs is equivalent to a nominalized verb concept. * The instances of a state of affairs are actualities - the same ones that are the instances of the nominalized verb concept and the instances of the verb concept itself. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 20:49:42 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysGHXwgSw X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Good-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4DC2FF5E.006C, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.5.5.190317:17:9.975, ip=81.149.51.65, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, DOC_ATTACHED, LINK_TO_IMAGE, __FRAUD_CONTACT_NUM, __CP_URI_IN_BODY, __C230066_P5, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_BOLD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __IMGSPAM_BODY, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, __RATWARE_SIGNATURE_3_N1, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, IMGSPAM_BODY X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2beaomr09.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B020D.4DC2FF99.0130,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Updated Proposed Resolution for Issue 14849 with examples added . two versions: with and without changes showing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution -- CHANGES ACCEPTED (2011-05-05).doc SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution -- WITH CHANGES (2011-05-05).doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: The issue is resolved through several clarifications, one fix and two additions: 1. Clarify the concept .state of affairs. by making its definition explicit and it bringing into line with what SBVR says elsewhere about .state of affairs. 2. Add a new characteristic, .state of affairs is materializedoccurring. and use it to define .actuality., and explain the difference between .is materializedoccurring. and .exists. is merely taken into account. with respect to states of affairs. 3. Clarify the definition of .actuality. in terms of .state of affairs is materalizedoccurring. and bring its Note into line with the wording of the definition 4. Avoid SBVR readers overlooking a key understanding of the concept .thing. that was adopted from ISO 1087-1 (3.1.1) .object. by copying the Note in the ISO 1087-1 .object. entry verbatim into the SBVR entry for .thing.. This is particularly important as .state of affairs. is a kind of .thing.. 5. Fix the definition of Clause 8 fact type so that states of affairs that have not been materializedoccurred, e.g. plans and imaginary (what if) states of affairs, can be talked about, and clarify the definition of Clause 8 fact type so that is it clear how it relates to the sentences business people use. 6. Add the concept .individual verb concept. for a proposition that is a Clause 8 fact type with all its roles quantified (closed). 7. Replace the use of the phase .state of affairs occurs. in Annexes C & E, which now has a particular more narrow meaning in SBVR with the phrase .state of affairs is materializedoccurring.. Revised Text: On page 39 in 8.6 under the entry for .state of affairs. REPLACE this definition: Definition: event, activity, situation, or circumstance WITH: Definition: thing that is an event, or activity, or situation, or circumstance that is taken into account in the universe of discourse. Note: States of affairs may behas been imagined and expressed in some form (e.g. a unicorn); has been planned and set forth in some way (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan); or has have come into being in the material (physical) domain (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond) in the universe of discourse Note: -- not in a model of the universe of discourse.States of affairs are materialized occuring or are not materialized occurring in the domain that is the subject of the SBVR model, i.e. the universe of discourse, for which the SBVR Model provides meanings, representations and expressions. .States of affairs., which are a kind of .thing. in the universe of discourse, correspond to .propositions., which are a kind of SBVR .meaning.. Note: While the possibility of .being materializedoccurring. over time in is inherent in state of affairs, in practice the time during which the state of affairs obtains is occuring may be so short that it is viewed by the semantic community as being materializedoccurring only at a point in time. On page 39 in 8.6 under the entry for .state of affairs. ADD these Examples: Example: For the proposition .the Thames is at high tide at Westminster Bridge. the corresponding state of affairs would be the level of the real water within the physical banks of the Thames being at a level that is defined as .high tide. at Westminster Bridge. The state of this state of affairs (occurring or non-occurring) is known by standing by/on the Westminster Bridge and observing the level of the water in relation to a high tide mark painted on the wall of the river bank. There are many, many time periods (twice a day, every day as far back as Westminster Bridge has existed) during which this state of affairs (the level of the real water within the physical banks of the Thames being at a level that is defined as .high tide. at Westminster Bridge) is classified as a actuality because it is in the state of .occurring. as observed in the present by the level of the real water being within the high tide mark on the wall of the Thames river bank. During all of the in-between time periods, this state of affairs is in the state of .non-occurring. and is not classified as an actuality. While this state of affairs is in the state of .occurring,. the proposition .the Thames is at high tide at Westminster Bridge. is true. While this state of affairs is in the state of .non-occurring,. the proposition .the Thames is at high tide at Westminster Bridge. is false. While the state of affairs is non-occurring, we can still take it into account, talk about it and write it. We can consider it. Example 1: Statement of a proposition: "The Season 2 Finale episode of The Good Wife airs May 17 2011." . Today this is a fact . i.e., corresponds to the real world state of affairs (actuality) that the airing is listed with this date in the Episode Guide. . Back in January, it wasn't a fact. On Jan. 8 2011 I queried to see when the Season 2 Finale would air and there wasn't yet a schedule for it. Today (May 5 2011), I can google and find the planned air date of the final Season 2 episode (Episode 23). . On May 18 2011 there will (likely) be this statement of fact: "The Season 2 Finale of The Good Wife aired on May 17 2011." (That's assuming that the airing happens as scheduled.) Example 2: Statement of a proposition: "The Season 3-Episode 17 of The Mentalist airs March 10 2011." . On Jan. 8 2011 when I googled the Episode Guide, Season 3-Episode 17 did not have an air date. The stated proposition was not then a fact. . On Mar. 1 2011, Season 3-Episode 17 had a scheduled air date of March 10 2011, so it was a statement of a fact. . On March 11 2011 (after the Japan tsunami) we see that Season 3-Episode 17 did not air -- the airing was bumped by the tsunami coverage. . On March 11 2011, it is still true that Episode 17 was originally scheduled to air on March 10 2011. However, the schedule does not show a new (future) air date. I asked our local CBS station about the rebroadcast and got this "interesting" set of rules around airings and rebroadcasts: . Unfortunately, we are unable to rebroadcast that episode as it was an unplanned event which preempted the CBS shows. We normally reschedule CBS shows to late night when we have a planned preemption. Thursday night was due to the natural disaster and was not planned. Also, CBS only allows us to rebroadcast these shows that same night following Craig Ferguson. Trains, stations, and repeating schedules: Continuing with the Good Wife example I can state that "The Good Wife is scheduled to air every Tuesday at 9 p.m." (until the Finale airs). That itself is a fact -- I enter that one fact into my DVR scheduler and every week (barring an equipment glitch) a recording is produced that reflects the fact of an actual airing of a specific episode. But that fact is a different fact (different kind of fact) from the fact(s) of each of the airings. On printed page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs REPLACE this Note; Note: A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities. A state of affairs is what is denoted by a proposition. A state of affairs either occurs or does not occur, whereas a proposition is either true or false. A state of affairs is not a meaning. It is a thing that exists and can be an instance of a concept, even if it does not happen. WITH this Note: Note: A state of affairs can be possible or impossible. Some of the possible ones are actualities. A state of affairs is what is denoted by a proposition. A state of affairs either is materializedoccuring or is not materializedoccurring, whereas a proposition is either true or false. A state of affairs is not a meaning. It is a thing that exists is considered in the universe of discourse and, as such, can be an instance (as defined in SBVR) of a concept, even if it is not materializedoccurring. On printed page 39 after the entry for .state of affairs ADD these entries; event Definition:thing that happens or takes place, especially one of importance Source:[NODE: .event,. 1] Definition:something that happens or is thought of as happening; an occurrence, an incident; now esp. one that is significant or noteworthy. Source:[NSOED: .event,. A-1] Definition:something that happens at a given place and time Source:[WordNet: .event,. 1] activity Definition:thing that a person or group does or has done Source:[NODE: .activity,. 2] Definition:any specific behavior Source:[WordNet: .activity,. 1] situation Definition:set of circumstances in which one finds oneself Source:[NODE: .situation,. 1] Definition:the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time Source:[WordNet: .situation,. 1] circumstance Definition:fact or condition connected with or relevant to an event or action Source:[NODE: .circumstance,. 1] Definition:material, logical, or other environmental condition of an act or event; the time, place, manner, cause, occasion, etc., of an act or event; the external condition affecting or that might affect action Source:[NSOED: .circumstance,. I-A-2] Definition:a condition that accompanies or influences some event or activity Source:[WordNet: .circumstance,. 1] On page 39 in 8.6 REPLACE Figure 8.9 with the following figure (which adds .state of affairs is materialized. occurring. and .actuality.). On page 39 in 8.6 after the entry for .state of affairs. ADD the following: state of affairs is materializedoccurring Definition: the state of affairs has perceptible existence in the material (physical) domain is met with or found, appears, happens, (in some place, conditions, context, etc.). Note: The meaning of .materialized. is occurring should not be confused with merely .exists.being taken into account, meaning existential quantification. A state of affairs can exist be taken into account in the universe of discourse as an imaginary thing or an immaterial thing and thereby participate in relationships to other things (e.g., plans, desires, fears, expectations) even if it is not materialized occurring in the material domain, even if it is never materialized is occurring . Example: The situation of the EU-Rent London-Heathrow Branch being profitable is a state of affairs. The situation exists is taken into account as an object of desire and planning (i.e., EU-Rent wants the London-Heathrow Branch to be profitable) regardless of whether the situation is ever is materializedoccurring. The situation is materializedoccurring only when the branch is actually profitable, but the situation exists is taken into account and is involved in an actuality (an instance of the fact type .company wants state of affairs.) even when the branch is unprofitable. On page 39 in 8.6 in the definition of .actuality., REMOVE the words .in the actual world.; CHANGE the word .occurs. to .is materializedoccurring. and CHANGE the style of the word .is materializedoccurring. to the verb style. The definition should look like this: Definition: state of affairs that is materalizedoccurring On page 39 in 8.6 under the entry for .actuality. REPLACE this Note: Note: Actualities are states of affairs that actually happen, as distinct from states of affairs that don.t happen but nevertheless exist as subjects of discourse and can be imagined or planned. WITH this Note: Note: An actualityies is a state of affairs that are is materialized occurring in the universe of discourse, as distinct from a state of affairs that are is not materialized occurring in the universe of discourse but nevertheless exists is taken into account as a subject of discourse and can be imagined or planned. MOVE the entry for .thing from page 41 in 8.7 to page 40 as the first entry in 8.6.1. On page 40 in 8.6.1 under the moved entry for .thing REPLACE this Definition: Definition: anything perceivable or conceivable WITH this Definition: Definition: anything perceivable or conceivable; i.e. whatever can be talked about or written about in the universe of discourse On page 40 in 8.6.1 under the moved entry for .thing ADD this Note: Note: Things are always in the universe of discourse and never go into an SBVR model (Clause 15.3) file. Only representations of meanings, containers, communities and other supporting concepts as set forth in Clause 7, 8, 9, 11 & 12 go into an SBVR model (Clause 15.3) file. On page 401 in 8.6.1 under the moved entry for .thing. ADD the Note under ISO 1087-1 (3.1.1) .object. which is adopted into SBVR as .thing. as the second Note under .thing. as follows: Note: .Anything perceivable or conceivable. includes anything that has been imagined and expressed in some form (e.g. a unicornwhat if scenario); that has been planned and set forth in some way (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan); and that has come into being in the material (physical) domain (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond). On page 42 in 8.7 REPLACE this entry for thing1 is thing2: thing1 is thing2 FL Definition: The thing1 and the thing2 are the same thing WITH this Entry and move it to page 19 in Clause 8.1 after the entry for .meaning..: meaning1 is semantically equivalent to meaning2 FL Definition: The thing1 and the thing2 are the same thing MOVE the entry for ..thing is in set. from page 42 in 8.7 to page 40 in 8.6.1 after the entry .meaning corresponds to thing. On page 21 in 8.1.1 under the entry for .fact type. REPLACE this Definition: Definition: concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities WITH these Definition: Definition: concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all states of affairs Definition: concept that is the meaning of a clause of an incomplete sentence that involves one or more noun concepts in roles as subject, direct object, or indirect object(s) where at least one of them is unquantified and therefore an .open. role; and whose instances are all states of affairs state of affairs concept Definition: noun concept that objectifies a fact type noun concept objectifies fact type Definition: the noun concept can be defined using an objectification Example: company purchase objectifies .company buys product. On printed page 25 in 8.1.2 at the end of the clause ADD this entry for .individual verb concept.: individual verb concept Definition: proposition that uses exactly one fact type in which each fact type role is filled with an individual (noun) conceptis a (Clause 8) fact type (open proposition)with each of the fact type role in the fact type quantified to create a (closed) proposition On page 242 in Annex C.1.5 REPLACE ..occurs. WITH .is materializedoccurring. in the following two verb concepts: state of affairs is materializedoccurs before point in time state of affairs1 is materializedoccurs before state of affairs2 is occursring On the following pages in the Annex E Clauses cited REPLACE .occurs. with .is materializedoccurring. in the verb concept .state of affairs occurs at date/time.: On page 271 in E.1.4 two times On page 326 in E.2.2.2.5 one time On page 329 in E.2.2.2.5 one time On page 331 in E.2.2.2.9 one time On page 332 in E.2.2.2.9 one time On the following pages in the Annex E Clauses cited REPLACE .occurs. with .is materializedoccurring. in the verb concept .state of affairs occurs after date/time.: On page 325 in E.2.2.2.3 one time On page 338 in E.2.3.3 under the entry for .actual data/time. REPLACE .occurs. WITH .is materializedoccurring. in this Definition: .Definition: date/time at which a state of affairs occurs. On page 339 in E.2.3.3 REPLACE .occurs. WITH .is materializedoccurring. in these verb concepts: state of affairs occurs after date/time state of affairs occurs at date/time state of affairs occurs before date/time state of affairs1 occurs before state of affairs2 occurs Disposition: Resolved X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10432:5.2.15,1.0.148,0.0.0000 definitions=2011-05-05_08:2011-05-05,2011-05-05,1970-01-01 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 suspectscore=0 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=6.0.2-1012030000 definitions=main-1105050139 Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue From: keri Date: Thu, 05 May 2011 11:06:20 -1000 Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org To: Donald Chapin X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084) On May 5, 2011, at 9:49 AM, Donald Chapin wrote: > Updated Proposed Resolution for Issue 14849 with examples added ­ two versions: with and without changes showing. Donald, I've marked a few typos I spotted on a quick pass through your write-up. Perhaps I was reading too quickly ... but are you really proposing to replace (remove) "thing is thing"? Isn't a lot of the 'wiring' of SBVR built on that? ~ Keri On May 5, 2011, at 9:49 AM, Donald Chapin wrote: Updated Proposed Resolution for Issue 14849 with examples added . two versions: with and without changes showing. Donald, I've marked a few typos I spotted on a quick pass through your write-up. Perhaps I was reading too quickly ... but are you really proposing to replace (remove) "thing is thing"? Isn't a lot of the 'wiring' of SBVR built on that? ~ Keri Content-type: application/msword; name="SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution -- CHANGES ACCEPTED" (2011-05-05)-typosMarked.doc" Content-disposition: attachment; filename*0="SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution -- CHA"; filename*1="NGES ACCEPTED (2011-05-05)-typosMarked.d"; filename*2=oc SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution -- CHANGES ACCEPTED.doc From: "Donald Chapin" To: "'keri'" Cc: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Fri, 6 May 2011 06:41:14 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcwLaFP1x8BjHUzMQ6y6Z7KbYPbb/gARUFCg X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Good-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4DC38A03.0007, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=7/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.5.6.45120:17:7.944, ip=81.149.51.65, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_ALT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, __URI_NO_WWW, __URI_NO_PATH, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_BOLD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2beaomr09.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B020A.4DC38A19.010D,ss=1,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Keri, Thanks for catching the typos. Regarding .thing is thing., all that is proposed is to bring it within the scope of SBVR: Meanings and their Representations. I don.t see anything reason why the plumbing need be broken. It.s a matter of using the SBVR concepts and terms consistently. This has been an Issue since 2006 shortly after SBVR was first adopted, and is at the heart of the misunderstanding of state of affairs as it has always been in SBVR. Saying that .thing is thing. is like saying that the left blue car and the right blue car both in the parking lot are the same car. The only things that go in an SBVR model are Meanings and their Representations and supporting concepts like containers, communities, etc. We can say that meaning is meaning. That is to assert that they are semantically equivalent. Since a foundation principle of SBVR to define each discrete meaning only once in an SBVR, even .meaning is meaning. is an expedient for operational problems with SBVR content where the same meaning got entered twice by mistake. Dealing with that is a matter for tools. The same thing holds true on the representation side. The only way we have (and all that is needed) to refer to given things in the universe of discourse is designations, .names. for most kinds of things. The (only) way we say in SBVR that the thing referred to by a given name is the same thing that is referred by another given name is to define an individual concept which makes both names designations of the individual concept and names for the thing itself, i.e. define them as synonyms. I have been through every reference to .thing. in the entire SBVR v1.0 specification and except for a few places where the wording is not as clear as it should be, .thing. is used to refer to what is in the universe of discourse and not in the SBVR model. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: keri [mailto:keri_ah@mac.com] Sent: 05 May 2011 22:06 To: Donald Chapin Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue On May 5, 2011, at 9:49 AM, Donald Chapin wrote: Updated Proposed Resolution for Issue 14849 with examples added . two versions: with and without changes showing. Donald, I've marked a few typos I spotted on a quick pass through your write-up. Perhaps I was reading too quickly ... but are you really proposing to replace (remove) "thing is thing"? Isn't a lot of the 'wiring' of SBVR built on that? ~ Keri X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10432:5.2.15,1.0.148,0.0.0000 definitions=2011-05-06_06:2011-05-06,2011-05-06,1970-01-01 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 suspectscore=0 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=6.0.2-1012030000 definitions=main-1105060109 Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue From: keri Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 07:00:05 -1000 Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org To: Donald Chapin X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084) On May 5, 2011, at 7:41 PM, Donald Chapin wrote: Regarding .thing is thing., ... Interesting discussion this morning. We use the SBVR definition of "is" (that comes from the fact type "thing is thing") in defining 'classification'. How would that be done if we no longer have "is" defined? Keri X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10432:5.2.15,1.0.148,0.0.0000 definitions=2011-05-06_07:2011-05-06,2011-05-06,1970-01-01 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 suspectscore=0 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=6.0.2-1012030000 definitions=main-1105060154 From: keri Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Fri, 06 May 2011 10:17:55 -1000 To: Donald Chapin , sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084) SBVR is not only about stuff that's "in" an SBVR model. There are also uses of SBVR vocabulary, say, to state propositions and to be able to determine whether or not some proposition is true. The "is" (defined via "thing is thing") plays a role there. Consider this statement: "The big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday at noon is the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside." Is this a true proposition? The way to determine that would be to: determine the correspondence between "the big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday" (concept) and some actual truck in the real world (thing) determine the correspondence between "the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside" (concept) and some actual truck in the real world (thing) determine that these "two" things are the one, single truck in the real world (thing is thing) I don't see this as the two concepts having "semantic equivalence" -- I am evaluating this to be a true proposition (or not) by testing the "is-ness" of the things in the UOD as being the same thing. ~ Keri On May 6, 2011, at 7:00 AM, keri wrote: On May 5, 2011, at 7:41 PM, Donald Chapin wrote: Regarding .thing is thing., ... Interesting discussion this morning. We use the SBVR definition of "is" (that comes from the fact type "thing is thing") in defining 'classification'. How would that be done if we no longer have "is" defined? Keri Date: Sat, 07 May 2011 06:12:03 +0100 From: John Hall User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.17) Gecko/20110414 Thunderbird/3.1.10 To: keri CC: Donald Chapin , sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-Mailcore-Auth: 4600872 X-Mailcore-Domain: 13170 Keri, The fact type in SBVR is not 'thing is thing' it's 'thing1 is thing2' (where the '1' and '2' are subscripts - I can't do subscripts in my email). When, in a fact type, we have two (subscripted) fact type roles for a given object type, we are saying that: Either, the fact type roles are played by different things of the given object type Or (not necessarily exclusive 'or') the fact type roles are different roles of the same thing I think that when we say 'thing1 is thing2' we mean that the fact type roles are different roles of the same thing. In instances of the fact type, the role designations are different ways of referring to the same object - in your example, different ways of referring to the same truck. That's what I thought Donald was trying to fix in his draft of the issue resolution. I disagreed with 'meaning1 is semantically equivalent to meaning2'. 'The big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday at noon' is not semantically equivalent to 'the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside'. But they are two individual concepts (in the model) that are co-extensive - two roles played by the same truck (in the real world). The '1' and '2' in 'truck1 is truck2' are differentiating the individual concepts, not two trucks. Compare your 'is' example with 'truck1 bumps truck2', in which - by the meaning of 'bumps' - we mean two different trucks. John On 06/05/2011 21:17, keri wrote: SBVR is not only about stuff that's "in" an SBVR model. There are also uses of SBVR vocabulary, say, to state propositions and to be able to determine whether or not some proposition is true. The "is" (defined via "thing is thing") plays a role there. Consider this statement: "The big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday at noon is the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside." Is this a true proposition? The way to determine that would be to: determine the correspondence between "the big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday" (concept) and some actual truck in the real world (thing) determine the correspondence between "the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside" (concept) and some actual truck in the real world (thing) determine that these "two" things are the one, single truck in the real world (thing is thing) I don't see this as the two concepts having "semantic equivalence" -- I am evaluating this to be a true proposition (or not) by testing the "is-ness" of the things in the UOD as being the same thing. ~ Keri On May 6, 2011, at 7:00 AM, keri wrote: On May 5, 2011, at 7:41 PM, Donald Chapin wrote: Regarding .thing is thing., ... Interesting discussion this morning. We use the SBVR definition of "is" (that comes from the fact type "thing is thing") in defining 'classification'. How would that be done if we no longer have "is" defined? Keri --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Text inserted by Panda GP 2011: This message has NOT been classified as spam. If it is unsolicited mail (spam), click on the following link to reclassify it: It is spam! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 16:48:30 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: SBVR RTF Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3KKmZrj026271 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1303937320.16745@h4IqMpMGoALpY/uJZzVtVw X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of affairs' that have been bandied about. I attach a writeup, for better or worse. It is 8 pages long, but you may just want to look at the diagram on p.7. I do _not_ suggest that all of these concepts be added to (or modified in) SBVR. This is my understanding of how they are, or could be, related. (And it isn't any of the models I had in my head before, either.) The most notable feature of this is that 'mental event', 'event concept', 'abstract event' are all different things, and none of them is explicitly in SBVR v1.0. They reflect the idea that different viewpoints display different concerns. And I don't know how this helps to resolve Issue 14849. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." States of Affairs.pdf States of Affairs.doc States of Affairs The Davidson ideas Davidson's fundamental idea is that an event (something that happens or may happen) is a thing in the domain of discourse that can play roles in relations (fact types) and be an instance of classifiers (noun concepts). Another important Davidson contribution to philosophy is the idea that events are of two kinds: mental events and physical events. A physical event is an individual happening in the world of interest . a state, situation, occurrence in the world of interest. A mental event is the conceptualization of a state, situation or occurrence that has some significance ("force") to the person or persons who conceive it. All of the following are mental events: a plan to do X, a decision to do X, an obligation to do X, the knowledge that X is occurring or has occurred, the perception that X has occurred, the belief that X will occur, the fear that X will occur, etc. Both kinds of event are described by statements. (Davidson uses the term 'proposition', but he uses it, as logicians do, to mean 'a statement in a formally grounded language'.) A mental event is described by a statement and a category that assigns a mental force to the statement. Thus a plan is different from an obligation or a belief or a perception or a fear. So a statement alone does not characterize a mental event; it only characterizes the conceptualization. A physical event can be "completely" described by a statement alone (together with the fact that the event is physical). But a given physical event can often be described by more than one statement, each of which emphasizes a different aspect or interpretation of the physical occurrence. What this means is that an observer of a physical event formulates a corresponding mental event (of the "interpretation" kind) and whether the statements that describe a physical event are equivalent or not has to do with the associated mental events. No mental event is ever a physical event, but there are important relationships between them. Interpretation, is a relationship between physical events and mental events . the mental event is created by observation of the physical event: what the observer thought he saw, as distinct from what happened. Conversely, a physical event can be perceived as the realization of a pre-existing mental event. So when an event occurs according to plan, it is perceived as a fulfillment of the planned event. And similarly, a physical event may be deemed to be the fulfillment of an obligation or of a prophecy. Davidson says that there are many such relationships, and the relationship of a given mental event to a given physical event is not always clear. Finally, Davidson's purpose in developing this model is his most important contribution: that either kind of event can play the event1 and event2 roles in 'event1 causes event2'. That is, a mental event can cause a physical event, or be the result of one. And further, a causation chain can involve mixed sequences of mental and physical events. Relationship of language to events In English, the statement of a physical event usually takes the form a sentence, e.g., "The annual budget for the XYZ project is $12 million." When the physical event plays a role, however, the statement of the physical event takes one of two other forms: - a noun clause that is preceded by a term for a noun concept that designates a specialization of physical event: "the fact that South Africa is a leading supplier of diamonds", "the situation in which ABC Corp. is supplying the parts". - a qualified noun that is a derivative of a verb and designates a specialization of physical event: "the sailing of the Mayflower", the election of President Bush" In English, the statement of a mental event usually takes one of two forms: - an infinitive phrase, as in "(the decision) to acquire ABC Corp.", or - a noun clause, as in "(the belief) that the budget will be balanced." These linguistic structures appear in two syntactic forms: - as the direct object of a verb that conveys the "force" of a mental event: "John believes that the budget will be balanced." "Hewlett-Packard decided to acquire Compaq." - in a noun phrase in which it is immediately preceded by the term for a noun concept that is a specialization of mental event: "The plan to invade Iraq was incomplete." "The EU has an obligation to provide humanitarian assistance." "It is our mutual understanding that the product will be delivered by 1 July." That is, in English we make syntactic distinctions between the descriptions of mental events and the descriptions of physical events, but in many cases, we make the distinction by using a specific term (noun or verb) that conveys the distinction in intent. Relationship of propositions to events Davidson only says that a logical statement ("proposition") describes events. A statement that describes a physical event is true if and only if the physical event exists in the world of interest, i.e., that the physical event is "objective reality" in that world. His concern is that the statement that describes a mental event can be subjectively true in the mind of an agent and thus imply consequences for the actions of that agent, regardless of the presence or absence of a corresponding physical event. So the truth of the statement that describes the mental event (its characterizing proposition) is irrelevant to the existence of the mental event, and it may be irrelevant to its consequences. The Davidson idea is that an event is an individual thing, and it either does or does not exist. A proposition that describes that event has to be narrow enough to identify the individual event. "The sun rises" does not have distinct instances . it refers to at most one instance. There is only one sun and either it rises or it doesn't. If the sun rises every day, the proposition is true and there is only one thing that corresponds -- the state that the sun (ever) rises, as distinct from the event of an individual sunrise. Put another way, if you can distinguish two instances of 'the sun rises', then the expression 'the sun rises' represents some category of things (a concept) rather than representing a specific individual event/thing. And since it does not represent an individual event thing, it does not represent a meaningful proposition. It does not have the property of being true or false. In essence, a Davidsonian proposition (a description of a physical event) is presumed to be based on a fact type that includes all the needed properties for some reference scheme for the physical event thing. For all practical purposes, any distinguishing property that was omitted is implicitly existentialized. If you can use day to distinguish sunrises, then "the sun rises" means "there exists a day such that the sun rises on that day". And that proposition is true. The proposition describes exactly one physical event (a state of the world of interest). The relationship of the Davidsonian model to time is simple. In general, temporal properties of a physical event are either part of its description, or fact types that relate events to time. That is, Davidson adopts the view that time is orthogonal to the model of events as things. Relationship of SBVR to Davidson SBVR agrees with Davidson's idea that a state or event is a thing in the world of interest. It calls the category of such things state of affairs. So SBVR state of affairs is a synonym for Davidson's event. SBVR agrees that there is a specialization of state of affairs that corresponds to states, situations and events that actually "occur" in the world of interest. It calls the category of such things actuality. So SBVR actuality is a synonym for Davidson's physical event. In the discussion of state of affairs, SBVR suggests that there is a specialization of state of affairs that corresponds to Davidson's mental event, but SBVR does not define the mental event concept nor contain a term for it. If we are to use the Davidson conceptual model, SBVR should define the concept and give it a designation. SBVR contains examples of planned states of affairs, which is a specialization of mental event. Note also that a mental event involves both a conceptualization of the event and a "force". For Davidson the 'meaning' of a statement is the event that it describes. The formal semantics of such a statement assigns a value to the statement: true or false, that corresponds to the existence or absence of the described physical event in the world of interest. In SBVR, a statement represents what SBVR calls a proposition . the formal semantic object that has a true or false value. But SBVR agrees that a proposition is true if and only if the meaning . the event that it describes . is an actuality, i.e., a physical event that exists in the world of interest. SBVR says nothing about the relationship between a proposition and a mental event. And since SBVR says the proposition is the formal semantic object, there is no clear relationship there. For Davidson, the meaning of the objective statement . the event it describes . is a part of the mental event, and the force is the rest. Now, SBVR defines fact types that assign force to propositions: obligation, permission, prohibition, possibility and impossibility. In Davidson's terms, each of those assignments means that the combination of the force and the proposition defines a specialization of mental event. But SBVR defines these as characteristics of propositions, which suggests that the proposition must still be true or false. This apparently conflicts with the Davidson philosophical model. SBVR clause 9 attempts to sort out different uses of logical formulation (another form of 'statement'), but it is not clear that an objectification formulation refers to an individual event. Further, it says that a closed logical formulation represents a proposition, which conflicts with the use of such formulations to represent mental events. So, if we want to support the Davidson model, we need to look at the phraseology for several groups of concepts in SBVR. Alternative: Conceptual vs. Actual Events The simplest step away from the Davidson model is to distinguish physical events . events, states, situations as things that happen in the world of interest . from concepts of such things. This gives rise to actual events and event concepts, and the relationship between them is: actual event is instance of event concept, that is, 'thing is instance of concept'. That is, an event concept is a description of an event that may or may not occur. This approach loses the Davidson idea of mental events having force and description. Event concepts have only description. An event concept of itself it is none of required, planned, feared, etc. In this model, the state of a proposition being required, planned, feared is a distinct actual event and can be separately described as the application of a force to the event concept . a distinct state or event. That is, a plan to do something is a different thing from the deed, the fear of an event is different from the event. But both are things that can be instances of individual and general concepts. In short, a Davidson "mental event" is nothing special in this model. An event concept can be an individual concept or a general concept . it may correspond to zero, one or more actual events. The actual events that instantiate an event concept may be called instances or occurrences of the event concept. In this approach, a statement that has the structure of a proposition represents an event concept, and such a statement is true if and only if the event concept has an instance in the world of interest. As in the Davidsonian model, however, a statement describes at most one actual event in the world of interest. As a consequence, a propositional statement describes an event concept that is an individual concept. An expression can describe multiple distinct events in the world of interest, and such an expression defines an event concept, but it does not represent a true/false proposition. In this model, an event concept has no properties in common with an actual event. Actual events are things that exist in the world of interest. Event concepts are concepts that correspond to them. Some individual event concepts are semantically isomorphic to propositions and have similar representations. Relationship to SBVR This model is very close to the model John Hall proposes. The actual event concept is actuality. Each proposition describes an individual concept that is a specialization of actuality. The proposition is true if and only if the actuality exists. The SBVR term state of affairs does not apply to any concept in this model. All events are actualities. And there is no useful concept that is either an actual event or an event concept. There is no SBVR term for event concept, i.e., a concept that corresponds to zero, one or more actualities. So one must be introduced. John proposes to use the existing term state of affairs for event concept. Event concept is a concept type: Each instance of event concept is a specialization of actuality. For this model, objectification of a logical formulation creates an individual event concept. A variable that ranges over the result of an objectification ranges over the actuality, if any, that is an instance of that event concept. This is just a difference in terminology from the current intent. The current SBVR description of objectification suggests that an objectification might produce a mental event instead of an actual event. By describing the result of objectification as an event concept, a revised specification would allow the formulation of a mental event using that event concept and assigning a "force", e.g., in the fact type in which the event concept plays a role, as in 'body plans event concept'. The difference is that a 'planned event' is neither an event nor an event concept. We would need to explicitly model the mental event concept, and define state of affairs to be either an actuality or a mental event, to support Davidsonian causation models. That is, we can achieve a clear formalization of the alleged intent of the current state of affairs, using a clear underlying model. Alternative: The occurrences model (I would have said this is the Kamp and Reile model, but Stan disagrees.) The fundamental idea in this model is that every event is associated with a time (and possibly a location) of its occurrence. The time interval associated with its occurrence, which we may call the event interval, is the time that begins when it begins happening and ends when it stops happening, and the event is happening at all times within that time interval. Each event that exists in a world of interest has an event interval in the world of interest. Actual event is a specialization of event that has the additional required property of a spatial location. Actual events are distinguished from abstract events that occur in time but have no physical properties per se. This goes to other philosophical concerns. An abstract event seems to be one in which at least one of the roles in the fact type that models the event is satisfied existentially, rather than by a specific thing, e.g. "some tree falls in the forest". The relationship of a specific actual event to such an abstraction is not 'instance of concept', but rather 'demonstration of the abstraction' . one of the actual events that proves that the proposition describing the abstract event is true. A state of affairs is a description of some set of properties of events, usually phrased as the statement of a proposition that is true throughout the event interval, and false immediately before and immediately after. A state of affairs is thus a kind of concept of events that corresponds to one or more events that exist in the world of interest and are distinguished by their event intervals. Further, an event can be an instance of multiple states of affairs, so long as the event makes the proposition that describes each such state of affairs true. In this model, past events, current events, and future events (including planned events) are distinguished by their event intervals, as well as by any state of affairs to which they may correspond. The major difference in this model is the idea that a proposition can be true at one time and false at another in the same world. And that is because this model views the "timeless" propositional semantics as only a supporting element of a "temporal semantics". Like the event concept model above, this model does not really support mental events that are distinguished by "force" other than future tenses. The notion of abstract event is not about force per se, but rather about the nature of the event itself. Relationship to SBVR The concepts in this model seem to be completely skew to the concepts in SBVR. There is little or no commonality. The main idea here is that time is an intrinsic part of the event; it is not a separable concept that can be added to an event by another fact type. And in consequence, one creates concepts whose instances are events that have common properties other than time of occurrence, such as scheduled flights. By comparison, the SBVR examples associate time to an event, or perhaps to an event concept, by a separate fact type. These approaches are antithetical. The SBVR idea of actuality is a state or event that occurs over all time in the world of interest. In the occurrences model, that is a special case of event. Both actuality and event correspond to the truth of a proposition, but in the occurrences model, truth is relative to time. The idea of an abstract event is something entirely different from both event concept and mental event, and seems to have no counterpart in SBVR. Integrated View Figure 1 shows a somewhat integrated view of the concepts in SBVR, Davidson, Event Concepts and Kamp and Rehle. Figure 1: The Integrated View of Events Figure 2 is an instance diagram that shows the technical differences in a model of "A tree falls in the forest". In particular, it may surprise readers to see that "a tree falls in the forest" refers to a single actuality that is not clearly related to the fall of any given tree. Thinking that 'a tree falls' is a concept that corresponds to its 'demonstrations' is not supported by any of the models. The K&R model has the idea that a proposition can be true of more than one event, but the idea is just a necessity that holds for all (time-dependent) instances of some unspecified event concept. Figure 2: Example objects for 'A tree falls'. Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:53:06 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) CC: SBVR RTF Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3KMrBd4004124 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1303944792.243@xcPIUxirxQmBitJHmIZH9Q X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Ed Barkmeyer wrote: I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of affairs' that have been bandied about. ... It occurs to me that all this effort merely demonstrates that most of the discussion we have been having is irrelevant to the issue. The distinction Don is trying to make is between a 'putative instance' of a concept and an 'actual instance' of a concept. That idea has nothing directly to do with states of affairs. A putative instance of a concept has the properties (putatively) of an instance of the concept, and we can talk about them. A putative instance is different from the concept itself, which has no such properties, and it is different from an actual instance in some way that is important to the community. One formal logic dodge is the 'possible worlds' approach. The putative instance is an actual instance in some possible world, and you can reason about things in that world, and assess the impact of assorted putative things. It is my understanding that that is the philosophical approach SBVR takes. What we have elected to do is to define semantics based on 'possible worlds'. So, a putative object is a thing that exists in some possible world that is not perceived to be the business reality of the moment. But business people create putative instances of concepts that have actual instances all the time. While Don discovered this problem in trying to capture putative events, we also have proposed products and putative services, and putative markets, and putative skill sets, and projected income, and proposed projects, and so on. And all of these have the same problem. Formally, putative things /exist/ in the world of interest, alongside the 'actual things' of the same general kinds. By their existence, they cause statements of the form: there exists a thing that ..., or there exists a situation in which ..., to be true or false. By their existence, they are included in 'every whatnot does X'. So it is often necessary to exclude them by choosing a business-assigned characteristic that only 'actual' things possess when writing the business rules. There is a well-known approach to dealing with putative objects -- creation of two categories of widget: actual widget, putative widget. They are all treated as existing in the business reality, and thus they are all instances of 'widget'. So we must be careful in stating facts and making rules to pick the right category for the things we intend to reference. If 'all experimental projects must be approved by the Vice President for Research' is the rule, and there are ongoing experimental projects and proposed experimental projects, the 'all' applies to both. And if 'the annual report must describe outlays for each experimental project using Form 26', that will be interpreted to include 'proposed experimental projects', even if that was not intended. (Anyone who has experience with corporate lawyers will be aware of this kind of thing.) So, if the 'state of affairs' hullabaloo is just about 'actual events' versus 'putative events', as categories of 'event', we can easily resolve that. We just need to define 'putativities' ( ) to go with 'actualities'. The distinction is between things regarded as 'real' in the world of interest, vs. things regarded as 'hypothetical' or 'expected'. They both 'exist', which has important semantics. The test we are using is that the proposition that corresponds to an 'actual event' is true, and the proposition that corresponds to a putative event is false. Do we agree on that? If we don't, then SBVR is not defining a relationship between the truth of propositions and categories of events, and we are not defining the categories, either, so there is no reason for us to create them. And yes, with this model, the instances of a fact type are states of affairs, not just actualities. They are things that exist and are characterized by other things playing roles in states/events described by the fact type. So if a rule is intended to apply only to actualities, it should not designate the range of the role as 'state of affairs'. Objectification produces an 'event' (a 'state of affairs') without regard to its actual or putative nature, but also without regard to whether it exists or not. And that means that 'objectification' of a proposition produces a ___concept_, not a _thing_, and that concept may be satisfied by actual or putative events, according to its usage. The point is that objectification does not create the event, it only describes it. Not every concept of an event is a putative event, just as not every concept of possible revenue is a projected income. So the result of an objectification is a specialization of 'state of affairs', not an instance of 'state of affairs'. The concept of an event is distinct from both putative and actual instances. Putative events must be explicitly created by the business users. I suggest that this is a possible resolution, and it is largely a clarification of what SBVR v1.0 apparently intended. (At the same time, I would suggest that explicit discussion of 'putative' instances vs. 'real' instances of any concept is philosophically risky. When business people do it, they have specific distinctions in mind.) I don't think this will help the date/time folk much, if at all. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-KeepSent: 14A5975A:42FBBEAC-85257879:00567759; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: SBVR RTF Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:51:56 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/21/2011 12:52:15 Ed, Thanks for doing this. I think the combination of your two recent notes on this subject definitely helps move the discussion forward. First, I want to say that I like your proposal in your other note. But I will comment on that separately. Here are various comments on the models you describe in your document: * I don't think we should consider Davidson's idea of "mental force" because we would have to figure out how that idea relates to SBVR's modalities. And I don't see why it is necessary. Our definition of 'state of affairs' (etc.) should allow for verb concepts such as "business plans state of affairs" or "person fears state of affairs". We model "mental force" as the semantic of a verb concept. [I see that you make a similar proposal at the end of the section on the "Event Concept" model.] * The point made above does raise again a point made by Stan: it appears that states of affairs can be composed from other states of affairs. For example: (1) the state of affairs that a trees falls in the forest. (2) the state of affairs that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. (3) the state of affairs that Joe knows that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. In Davidson's terminology, (2) and (3) are mental events built on (1) as a physical event -- but I think one can have physical events composed from other physical events. For example, the state of affairs that x people were killed when the tsunami hit northern Japan. Do you agree that composition of states of affairs is meaningful, and how would that affect the models you outlined? Does this relate to your point (in the section on "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events") that "a Davidson 'mental event' is nothing special in this model"? * At the end of the "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events" section, you have a discussion about how the idea of "mental event" would fit into the "Event Concepts" model. I think this "mental event" is what you called a 'putative event' in your other note. Is that right? * I believe that a "causation model" is outside the scope of SBVR. Such a model could be built on top of SBVR but (I think) does not belong in SBVR itself. * Regarding the "Occurrences Model": I am not convinced that every 'actual event' has a 'spatial location'. If we agree that mental events (e.g. the 'fear' in the example above) may occur, then what location would be associated with the occurrence? "The rebels" may be in multiple locations, and their fear may be actual for all of them in all those locations. * I don't understand how "abstract event" differs from "event concept" or "state of affairs". * In figure 7 you show a relationship between "state of affairs" and "Davidson:event". That's correct for some of the models, but in the "Event Concept" model, you say that "John proposes to use the existing term 'state of affairs' for event concept". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: SBVR RTF Date: 04/20/2011 04:52 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of affairs' that have been bandied about. I attach a writeup, for better or worse. It is 8 pages long, but you may just want to look at the diagram on p.7. I do _not_ suggest that all of these concepts be added to (or modified in) SBVR. This is my understanding of how they are, or could be, related. (And it isn't any of the models I had in my head before, either.) The most notable feature of this is that 'mental event', 'event concept', 'abstract event' are all different things, and none of them is explicitly in SBVR v1.0. They reflect the idea that different viewpoints display different concerns. And I don't know how this helps to resolve Issue 14849. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." [attachment "States of Affairs.pdf" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "States of Affairs.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-KeepSent: 45C3FCBC:BCA3B278-85257879:005DD1CB; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 14:48:34 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/21/2011 14:48:54 Ed, It seems to me that what you propose here is consistent with the "Event Concept" model. And 'putative event' is equivalent to what 'mental event' would be in that model. Right? Much of your discussion seems to relate to something Don has hinted at: when defining a noun concept that is a situation or event (etc.), one has to be careful to define the noun concept as 'putative' (i.e. apparently what 'state of affairs' means in current SBVR) or real (i.e. apparently what is meant by 'actuality' in current SBVR). For example: car crash: actuality that a car impacts an object of mass greater than 5kg. Example: EU-Rent must be notified about each car crash that involves an EU-Rent car. course of action: putative event that a business may undertake. Example: each considered course of action must be evaluated against applicable regulations. Overall, I think that what you suggest is a reasonable resolution of the 'state of affairs' issue. And I think it does help with the date-time model. If an 'event concept' can have multiple actualities, then we can say that each actuality has a time interval (an 'event interval'). And there is a convex hull consisting of the event intervals of all the actualities of an event concept (an "occurrence span" in the current draft). Note: this model makes 'occurrence' a synonym of 'actuality'. The only outstanding issue is the meaning (in a temporal model) of a proposition that is stated without reference to time, such as "Lincoln is alive". Restating the options we have discussed: 1. The proposition is true if it is an actuality at any time in the possible world. This one doesn't seem to make sense. 2. The proposition is true if it is an actuality at all times in the possible world. This one also doesn't make any sense. 3. The (temporal) possible world has an implicit concept of "current time" and the proposition is true if it is an actuality in some time interval that overlaps the current time. #3 seems workable but requires the idea of "current time". An argument in favor of this is that we also want "current time" in order to support concepts such as "today" and "tomorrow". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: Cc: SBVR RTF Date: 04/20/2011 06:55 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less Ed Barkmeyer wrote: > I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of > affairs' that have been bandied about. ... > It occurs to me that all this effort merely demonstrates that most of the discussion we have been having is irrelevant to the issue. The distinction Don is trying to make is between a 'putative instance' of a concept and an 'actual instance' of a concept. That idea has nothing directly to do with states of affairs. A putative instance of a concept has the properties (putatively) of an instance of the concept, and we can talk about them. A putative instance is different from the concept itself, which has no such properties, and it is different from an actual instance in some way that is important to the community. One formal logic dodge is the 'possible worlds' approach. The putative instance is an actual instance in some possible world, and you can reason about things in that world, and assess the impact of assorted putative things. It is my understanding that that is the philosophical approach SBVR takes. What we have elected to do is to define semantics based on 'possible worlds'. So, a putative object is a thing that exists in some possible world that is not perceived to be the business reality of the moment. But business people create putative instances of concepts that have actual instances all the time. While Don discovered this problem in trying to capture putative events, we also have proposed products and putative services, and putative markets, and putative skill sets, and projected income, and proposed projects, and so on. And all of these have the same problem. Formally, putative things /exist/ in the world of interest, alongside the 'actual things' of the same general kinds. By their existence, they cause statements of the form: there exists a thing that ..., or there exists a situation in which ..., to be true or false. By their existence, they are included in 'every whatnot does X'. So it is often necessary to exclude them by choosing a business-assigned characteristic that only 'actual' things possess when writing the business rules. There is a well-known approach to dealing with putative objects -- creation of two categories of widget: actual widget, putative widget. They are all treated as existing in the business reality, and thus they are all instances of 'widget'. So we must be careful in stating facts and making rules to pick the right category for the things we intend to reference. If 'all experimental projects must be approved by the Vice President for Research' is the rule, and there are ongoing experimental projects and proposed experimental projects, the 'all' applies to both. And if 'the annual report must describe outlays for each experimental project using Form 26', that will be interpreted to include 'proposed experimental projects', even if that was not intended. (Anyone who has experience with corporate lawyers will be aware of this kind of thing.) So, if the 'state of affairs' hullabaloo is just about 'actual events' versus 'putative events', as categories of 'event', we can easily resolve that. We just need to define 'putativities' ( ) to go with 'actualities'. The distinction is between things regarded as 'real' in the world of interest, vs. things regarded as 'hypothetical' or 'expected'. They both 'exist', which has important semantics. The test we are using is that the proposition that corresponds to an 'actual event' is true, and the proposition that corresponds to a putative event is false. Do we agree on that? If we don't, then SBVR is not defining a relationship between the truth of propositions and categories of events, and we are not defining the categories, either, so there is no reason for us to create them. And yes, with this model, the instances of a fact type are states of affairs, not just actualities. They are things that exist and are characterized by other things playing roles in states/events described by the fact type. So if a rule is intended to apply only to actualities, it should not designate the range of the role as 'state of affairs'. Objectification produces an 'event' (a 'state of affairs') without regard to its actual or putative nature, but also without regard to whether it exists or not. And that means that 'objectification' of a proposition produces a ___concept_, not a _thing_, and that concept may be satisfied by actual or putative events, according to its usage. The point is that objectification does not create the event, it only describes it. Not every concept of an event is a putative event, just as not every concept of possible revenue is a projected income. So the result of an objectification is a specialization of 'state of affairs', not an instance of 'state of affairs'. The concept of an event is distinct from both putative and actual instances. Putative events must be explicitly created by the business users. I suggest that this is a possible resolution, and it is largely a clarification of what SBVR v1.0 apparently intended. (At the same time, I would suggest that explicit discussion of 'putative' instances vs. 'real' instances of any concept is philosophically risky. When business people do it, they have specific distinctions in mind.) I don't think this will help the date/time folk much, if at all. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:20:54 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: SBVR RTF , "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3LNKxQX030117 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1304032862.38177@Gd8y9UlgAbDdzxE0rvvh1Q X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Mark, Thanks. I have little time to address this further, but I would like to make one clarification. An 'event concept' is just that -- the concepualization of an event or state. Whether it happens or even could happen is irrelevant. A 'mental event' is a conceptual ('putative') instantiation of an event concept. A corporation might describe the interesting 'forces' as 'planned', 'proposed', 'legally mandated', etc. So what I said in my second email about 'putative events' is probably the same idea as 'mental event'. We don't plan the concept, we plan an instantiation of it; and we don't fear a concept, we fear its instantiation. Figure 1 was misleading in this area, in that the relationship between a 'mental event' and the base 'event concept' should just be 'instance of' (see attached revision). It is the conceptual instance that carries the 'force' load -- the instance is planned, is feared, is mandated. In a similar way, when Jenny prevents Mike from playing with matches, she doesn't prevent the concept, she prevents the conceptual instance (from having a physical counterpart) and its consequences. An 'abstract event' is not a concept. It is an individual state of the world that is described by an _aggregation_ of separate individual events. A statement like 'the team is in full health' really means that every individual on the team is healthy. It is not a concept, it is a state, but there is no single physical manifestation. Similarly, '1200 people were killed by the earthquake' is an abstract event. The actual events -- the 'demonstrations' -- were many individual deaths and perhaps some simultaneous deaths in small groups in different circumstances resulting from the earthquake. The relationship between the concept of 1200 people being killed and 1 person being killed is this aggregation idea -- it is statistical. Similarly, any statement about 'all x' or 'at least 1 x' is some kind of aggregation. -Ed Mark H Linehan wrote: Ed, Thanks for doing this. I think the combination of your two recent notes on this subject definitely helps move the discussion forward. First, I want to say that I like your proposal in your other note. But I will comment on that separately. Here are various comments on the models you describe in your document: * I don't think we should consider Davidson's idea of "mental force" because we would have to figure out how that idea relates to SBVR's modalities. And I don't see why it is necessary. Our definition of 'state of affairs' (etc.) should allow for verb concepts such as "business plans state of affairs" or "person fears state of affairs". We model "mental force" as the semantic of a verb concept. [I see that you make a similar proposal at the end of the section on the "Event Concept" model.] * The point made above does raise again a point made by Stan: it appears that states of affairs can be composed from other states of affairs. For example: (1) the state of affairs that a trees falls in the forest. (2) the state of affairs that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. (3) the state of affairs that Joe knows that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. In Davidson's terminology, (2) and (3) are mental events built on (1) as a physical event -- but I think one can have physical events composed from other physical events. For example, the state of affairs that x people were killed when the tsunami hit northern Japan. Do you agree that composition of states of affairs is meaningful, and how would that affect the models you outlined? Does this relate to your point (in the section on "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events") that "a Davidson 'mental event' is nothing special in this model"? * At the end of the "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events" section, you have a discussion about how the idea of "mental event" would fit into the "Event Concepts" model. I think this "mental event" is what you called a 'putative event' in your other note. Is that right? * I believe that a "causation model" is outside the scope of SBVR. Such a model could be built on top of SBVR but (I think) does not belong in SBVR itself. * Regarding the "Occurrences Model": I am not convinced that every 'actual event' has a 'spatial location'. If we agree that mental events (e.g. the 'fear' in the example above) may occur, then what location would be associated with the occurrence? "The rebels" may be in multiple locations, and their fear may be actual for all of them in all those locations. * I don't understand how "abstract event" differs from "event concept" or "state of affairs". * In figure 7 you show a relationship between "state of affairs" and "Davidson:event". That's correct for some of the models, but in the "Event Concept" model, you say that "John proposes to use the existing term 'state of affairs' for event concept". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: SBVR RTF Date: 04/20/2011 04:52 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of affairs' that have been bandied about. I attach a writeup, for better or worse. It is 8 pages long, but you may just want to look at the diagram on p.7. I do _not_ suggest that all of these concepts be added to (or modified in) SBVR. This is my understanding of how they are, or could be, related. (And it isn't any of the models I had in my head before, either.) The most notable feature of this is that 'mental event', 'event concept', 'abstract event' are all different things, and none of them is explicitly in SBVR v1.0. They reflect the idea that different viewpoints display different concerns. And I don't know how this helps to resolve Issue 14849. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." [attachment "States of Affairs.pdf" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "States of Affairs.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Events.png Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:34:45 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: SBVR RTF CC: "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3PGYo1e003468 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1304354092.04706@ZQJxOMAsBGXw9ck9I4kXsQ X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov One more observation about 'mental events'. A mental event never /becomes/ a physical event. If the proposition is true, then there exists a 'physical event' (actuality) that it corresponds to. But there may also be other states of affairs -- 'mental events' -- that exist prior to or parallel to the actuality and are instances of the same proposition (seen as an 'event concept'). If we planned a course of action, then the plan exists as a mental event corresponding to the conceptual course of action, and when we take that course of action, an actuality exists that corresponds to the conceptual course of action, but the planned course of action still exists as it was. That allows us to say that the planned course of action is fulfilled by the actuality. The fact type is 'actuality fulfills mental event' and that means both things have to exist in the world of interest at the same time. A consequence of this is that an actuality exists if and only if the proposition is true, but the existence of a mental event has nothing to do with the truth of the proposition -- it can be either true or false or sometimes true. And the same event concept (proposition) can correspond to both at the same time. This leads to the observation that an 'event concept' (a proposition treated as a concept that corresponds to state-of-affairs things) is _not_ an 'individual concept'. An 'actuality concept' -- an event concept that specializes 'actuality' rather than 'state of affairs' ('event') is an 'individual concept'. And it seems to me that, with this model, the instances of a fact type are 'states of affairs' in general, and not just 'actualities'. I should say that my previous use of 'epiphany' is correct -- I now agree with Don Baisley that there are states of affairs that exist and are not actualities -- these 'mental event' things. But I add agreement with Mark that 'event concept' is a concept whose instances are states of affairs (actualities and mental events), and that 'propositions' are considered to be 'event concepts' when we talk about their correspondence to states of affairs. I argue then that 'objectification' turns a 'closed logical formulation' into an 'event concept'. And I now believe that Elisa and I can produce a formal logic rendition of these concepts that has an acceptable formal semantics (a la Davidson). The question is: Does anyone else agree? -Ed P.S. How this relates to 'occurrence' in Date/Time is a further mental exercise, but it is pretty clear that it is based on the idea of things that satisfy an 'event concept' and that it extends or replaces the notion of 'actuality'. Ed Barkmeyer wrote: Mark, Thanks. I have little time to address this further, but I would like to make one clarification. An 'event concept' is just that -- the concepualization of an event or state. Whether it happens or even could happen is irrelevant. A 'mental event' is a conceptual ('putative') instantiation of an event concept. A corporation might describe the interesting 'forces' as 'planned', 'proposed', 'legally mandated', etc. So what I said in my second email about 'putative events' is probably the same idea as 'mental event'. We don't plan the concept, we plan an instantiation of it; and we don't fear a concept, we fear its instantiation. Figure 1 was misleading in this area, in that the relationship between a 'mental event' and the base 'event concept' should just be 'instance of' (see attached revision). It is the conceptual instance that carries the 'force' load -- the instance is planned, is feared, is mandated. In a similar way, when Jenny prevents Mike from playing with matches, she doesn't prevent the concept, she prevents the conceptual instance (from having a physical counterpart) and its consequences. An 'abstract event' is not a concept. It is an individual state of the world that is described by an _aggregation_ of separate individual events. A statement like 'the team is in full health' really means that every individual on the team is healthy. It is not a concept, it is a state, but there is no single physical manifestation. Similarly, '1200 people were killed by the earthquake' is an abstract event. The actual events -- the 'demonstrations' -- were many individual deaths and perhaps some simultaneous deaths in small groups in different circumstances resulting from the earthquake. The relationship between the concept of 1200 people being killed and 1 person being killed is this aggregation idea -- it is statistical. Similarly, any statement about 'all x' or 'at least 1 x' is some kind of aggregation. -Ed Mark H Linehan wrote: Ed, Thanks for doing this. I think the combination of your two recent notes on this subject definitely helps move the discussion forward. First, I want to say that I like your proposal in your other note. But I will comment on that separately. Here are various comments on the models you describe in your document: * I don't think we should consider Davidson's idea of "mental force" because we would have to figure out how that idea relates to SBVR's modalities. And I don't see why it is necessary. Our definition of 'state of affairs' (etc.) should allow for verb concepts such as "business plans state of affairs" or "person fears state of affairs". We model "mental force" as the semantic of a verb concept. [I see that you make a similar proposal at the end of the section on the "Event Concept" model.] * The point made above does raise again a point made by Stan: it appears that states of affairs can be composed from other states of affairs. For example: (1) the state of affairs that a trees falls in the forest. (2) the state of affairs that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. (3) the state of affairs that Joe knows that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. In Davidson's terminology, (2) and (3) are mental events built on (1) as a physical event -- but I think one can have physical events composed from other physical events. For example, the state of affairs that x people were killed when the tsunami hit northern Japan. Do you agree that composition of states of affairs is meaningful, and how would that affect the models you outlined? Does this relate to your point (in the section on "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events") that "a Davidson 'mental event' is nothing special in this model"? * At the end of the "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events" section, you have a discussion about how the idea of "mental event" would fit into the "Event Concepts" model. I think this "mental event" is what you called a 'putative event' in your other note. Is that right? * I believe that a "causation model" is outside the scope of SBVR. Such a model could be built on top of SBVR but (I think) does not belong in SBVR itself. * Regarding the "Occurrences Model": I am not convinced that every 'actual event' has a 'spatial location'. If we agree that mental events (e.g. the 'fear' in the example above) may occur, then what location would be associated with the occurrence? "The rebels" may be in multiple locations, and their fear may be actual for all of them in all those locations. * I don't understand how "abstract event" differs from "event concept" or "state of affairs". * In figure 7 you show a relationship between "state of affairs" and "Davidson:event". That's correct for some of the models, but in the "Event Concept" model, you say that "John proposes to use the existing term 'state of affairs' for event concept". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: SBVR RTF Date: 04/20/2011 04:52 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of affairs' that have been bandied about. I attach a writeup, for better or worse. It is 8 pages long, but you may just want to look at the diagram on p.7. I do _not_ suggest that all of these concepts be added to (or modified in) SBVR. This is my understanding of how they are, or could be, related. (And it isn't any of the models I had in my head before, either.) The most notable feature of this is that 'mental event', 'event concept', 'abstract event' are all different things, and none of them is explicitly in SBVR v1.0. They reflect the idea that different viewpoints display different concerns. And I don't know how this helps to resolve Issue 14849. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." [attachment "States of Affairs.pdf" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "States of Affairs.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-KeepSent: 6C5DA9E7:8B109DBA-8525787D:005DA94D; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Cc: Stan@hendryxassoc.com X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 13:38:19 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1|November 29, 2010) at 04/25/2011 13:38:44 Before agreeing on this, I want to understand how this relates to the idea of "possible world". Consider the "Star Trek" example. Presumably that fictional TV show makes up one or more "possible worlds". In those possible worlds, we have the "mental concept" of "Kirk being Captain". In many (but not all) of those possible words, we have the actuality that "Kirk is Captain". Right? What I draw from the example is that "mental concepts" and "actualities" exist (or not) in "possible worlds". If so, then your statement "an actuality exists if and only if the proposition is true" should be revised to read "an actuality exists *in a given possible world* if and only if the proposition is true". One thing I like about distinguishing "mental concepts" from "actualities" is that now we can understand more clearly what it means for each to have an "occurrence time". For example, it seems clear that some of the "mental concepts" of Archimedes are lost (and thus their "occurrence time" has finished) while others are still known but no longer accepted in the scientific community, and still others are both known and accepted. It seems like the occurrence time of a "mental concept" starts when the mental concept is first formed (or maybe when articulated?) It seems like the occurrence time of a mental concept ends when it is discarded, i.e. no longer thought of by anybody nor referenced in any document. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: SBVR RTF Cc: "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Date: 04/25/2011 12:39 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less One more observation about 'mental events'. A mental event never /becomes/ a physical event. If the proposition is true, then there exists a 'physical event' (actuality) that it corresponds to. But there may also be other states of affairs -- 'mental events' -- that exist prior to or parallel to the actuality and are instances of the same proposition (seen as an 'event concept'). If we planned a course of action, then the plan exists as a mental event corresponding to the conceptual course of action, and when we take that course of action, an actuality exists that corresponds to the conceptual course of action, but the planned course of action still exists as it was. That allows us to say that the planned course of action is fulfilled by the actuality. The fact type is 'actuality fulfills mental event' and that means both things have to exist in the world of interest at the same time. A consequence of this is that an actuality exists if and only if the proposition is true, but the existence of a mental event has nothing to do with the truth of the proposition -- it can be either true or false or sometimes true. And the same event concept (proposition) can correspond to both at the same time. This leads to the observation that an 'event concept' (a proposition treated as a concept that corresponds to state-of-affairs things) is _not_ an 'individual concept'. An 'actuality concept' -- an event concept that specializes 'actuality' rather than 'state of affairs' ('event') is an 'individual concept'. And it seems to me that, with this model, the instances of a fact type are 'states of affairs' in general, and not just 'actualities'. I should say that my previous use of 'epiphany' is correct -- I now agree with Don Baisley that there are states of affairs that exist and are not actualities -- these 'mental event' things. But I add agreement with Mark that 'event concept' is a concept whose instances are states of affairs (actualities and mental events), and that 'propositions' are considered to be 'event concepts' when we talk about their correspondence to states of affairs. I argue then that 'objectification' turns a 'closed logical formulation' into an 'event concept'. And I now believe that Elisa and I can produce a formal logic rendition of these concepts that has an acceptable formal semantics (a la Davidson). The question is: Does anyone else agree? -Ed P.S. How this relates to 'occurrence' in Date/Time is a further mental exercise, but it is pretty clear that it is based on the idea of things that satisfy an 'event concept' and that it extends or replaces the notion of 'actuality'. Ed Barkmeyer wrote: > Mark, > > Thanks. I have little time to address this further, but I would like to > make one clarification. > > An 'event concept' is just that -- the concepualization of an event or > state. Whether it happens or even could happen is irrelevant. > > A 'mental event' is a conceptual ('putative') instantiation of an event > concept. A corporation might describe the interesting 'forces' as > 'planned', 'proposed', 'legally mandated', etc. So what I said in my > second email about 'putative events' is probably the same idea as > 'mental event'. We don't plan the concept, we plan an instantiation of > it; and we don't fear a concept, we fear its instantiation. Figure 1 > was misleading in this area, in that the relationship between a 'mental > event' and the base 'event concept' should just be 'instance of' (see > attached revision). It is the conceptual instance that carries the > 'force' load -- the instance is planned, is feared, is mandated. In a > similar way, when Jenny prevents Mike from playing with matches, she > doesn't prevent the concept, she prevents the conceptual instance (from > having a physical counterpart) and its consequences. > > An 'abstract event' is not a concept. It is an individual state of the > world that is described by an _aggregation_ of separate individual > events. A statement like 'the team is in full health' really means that > every individual on the team is healthy. It is not a concept, it is a > state, but there is no single physical manifestation. Similarly, '1200 > people were killed by the earthquake' is an abstract event. The actual > events -- the 'demonstrations' -- were many individual deaths and > perhaps some simultaneous deaths in small groups in different > circumstances resulting from the earthquake. The relationship between > the concept of 1200 people being killed and 1 person being killed is > this aggregation idea -- it is statistical. Similarly, any statement > about 'all x' or 'at least 1 x' is some kind of aggregation. > > > -Ed > > > Mark H Linehan wrote: > >> Ed, >> >> Thanks for doing this. I think the combination of your two recent notes on >> this subject definitely helps move the discussion forward. >> >> First, I want to say that I like your proposal in your other note. But I >> will comment on that separately. >> >> Here are various comments on the models you describe in your document: >> >> * I don't think we should consider Davidson's idea of "mental force" >> because we would have to figure out how that idea relates to SBVR's >> modalities. And I don't see why it is necessary. Our definition of 'state >> of affairs' (etc.) should allow for verb concepts such as "business plans >> state of affairs" or "person fears state of affairs". We model "mental >> force" as the semantic of a verb concept. [I see that you make a similar >> proposal at the end of the section on the "Event Concept" model.] >> >> * The point made above does raise again a point made by Stan: it appears >> that states of affairs can be composed from other states of affairs. For >> example: (1) the state of affairs that a trees falls in the forest. (2) the >> state of affairs that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. (3) >> the state of affairs that Joe knows that Bill is afraid that a tree falls >> in the forest. In Davidson's terminology, (2) and (3) are mental events >> built on (1) as a physical event -- but I think one can have physical >> events composed from other physical events. For example, the state of >> affairs that x people were killed when the tsunami hit northern Japan. Do >> you agree that composition of states of affairs is meaningful, and how >> would that affect the models you outlined? >> >> Does this relate to your point (in the section on "Alternative: Conceptual >> vs Actual Events") that "a Davidson 'mental event' is nothing special in >> this model"? >> >> * At the end of the "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events" section, you >> have a discussion about how the idea of "mental event" would fit into the >> "Event Concepts" model. I think this "mental event" is what you called a >> 'putative event' in your other note. Is that right? >> >> * I believe that a "causation model" is outside the scope of SBVR. Such a >> model could be built on top of SBVR but (I think) does not belong in SBVR >> itself. >> >> * Regarding the "Occurrences Model": I am not convinced that every 'actual >> event' has a 'spatial location'. If we agree that mental events (e.g. the >> 'fear' in the example above) may occur, then what location would be >> associated with the occurrence? "The rebels" may be in multiple locations, >> and their fear may be actual for all of them in all those locations. >> >> * I don't understand how "abstract event" differs from "event concept" or >> "state of affairs". >> >> * In figure 7 you show a relationship between "state of affairs" and >> "Davidson:event". That's correct for some of the models, but in the "Event >> Concept" model, you say that "John proposes to use the existing term 'state >> of affairs' for event concept". >> >> >> -------------------------------- >> Mark H. Linehan >> STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation >> IBM Research >> >> >> >> From: Ed Barkmeyer >> To: SBVR RTF >> Date: 04/20/2011 04:52 PM >> Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less >> >> >> >> I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of >> affairs' that have been bandied about. >> >> I attach a writeup, for better or worse. It is 8 pages long, but you >> may just want to look at the diagram on p.7. >> I do _not_ suggest that all of these concepts be added to (or modified >> in) SBVR. This is my understanding of how they are, or could be, >> related. (And it isn't any of the models I had in my head before, either.) >> >> The most notable feature of this is that 'mental event', 'event >> concept', 'abstract event' are all different things, and none of them is >> explicitly in SBVR v1.0. They reflect the idea that different >> viewpoints display different concerns. >> >> And I don't know how this helps to resolve Issue 14849. >> >> -Ed >> >> >> -- >> Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov >> National Institute of Standards & Technology >> Manufacturing Systems Integration Division >> 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 >> Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 >> >> "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, >> and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." >> >> [attachment "States of Affairs.pdf" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] >> [attachment "States of Affairs.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] >> >> >> > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2011 16:12:08 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3PKCDrL023240 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1304367135.61248@oR3TSuwqxJykx5Nc4Isj1w X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Mark H Linehan wrote: Before agreeing on this, I want to understand how this relates to the idea of "possible world". Consider the "Star Trek" example. Presumably that fictional TV show makes up one or more "possible worlds". In those possible worlds, we have the "mental concept" of "Kirk being Captain". In many (but not all) of those possible words, we have the actuality that "Kirk is Captain". Right? Agree. What I draw from the example is that "mental concepts" and "actualities" exist (or not) in "possible worlds". If so, then your statement "an actuality exists if and only if the proposition is true" should be revised to read "an actuality exists *in a given possible world* if and only if the proposition is true". Yes. That is, "exists" in formal logic, and in SBVR, always means 'exists in the world of interest'. If we meant "exists in all possible worlds", we would say something like "necessarily exists". One thing I like about distinguishing "mental concepts" from "actualities" is that now we can understand more clearly what it means for each to have an "occurrence time". For example, it seems clear that some of the "mental concepts" of Archimedes are lost (and thus their "occurrence time" has finished) while others are still known but no longer accepted in the scientific community, and still others are both known and accepted. It seems like the occurrence time of a "mental concept" starts when the mental concept is first formed (or maybe when articulated?) It seems like the occurrence time of a mental concept ends when it is discarded, i.e. no longer thought of by anybody nor referenced in any document. Agree, with the substituton of 'mental event' for 'mental concept'. That is, for SBVR, a mental event either exists in the world of interest or it doesn't. But, for date/time, do we want to talk about occurrences of mental events? I suppose we should. (I had thought of 'occurrence' as a relative of 'actuality'.) It is certainly true that a planned course of action comes into existence when the plan is adopted, which has some time stamp. We can argue about whether and when it stops existing, if anyone actually cares. -Ed -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: SBVR RTF Cc: "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Date: 04/25/2011 12:39 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less One more observation about 'mental events'. A mental event never /becomes/ a physical event. If the proposition is true, then there exists a 'physical event' (actuality) that it corresponds to. But there may also be other states of affairs -- 'mental events' -- that exist prior to or parallel to the actuality and are instances of the same proposition (seen as an 'event concept'). If we planned a course of action, then the plan exists as a mental event corresponding to the conceptual course of action, and when we take that course of action, an actuality exists that corresponds to the conceptual course of action, but the planned course of action still exists as it was. That allows us to say that the planned course of action is fulfilled by the actuality. The fact type is 'actuality fulfills mental event' and that means both things have to exist in the world of interest at the same time. A consequence of this is that an actuality exists if and only if the proposition is true, but the existence of a mental event has nothing to do with the truth of the proposition -- it can be either true or false or sometimes true. And the same event concept (proposition) can correspond to both at the same time. This leads to the observation that an 'event concept' (a proposition treated as a concept that corresponds to state-of-affairs things) is _not_ an 'individual concept'. An 'actuality concept' -- an event concept that specializes 'actuality' rather than 'state of affairs' ('event') is an 'individual concept'. And it seems to me that, with this model, the instances of a fact type are 'states of affairs' in general, and not just 'actualities'. I should say that my previous use of 'epiphany' is correct -- I now agree with Don Baisley that there are states of affairs that exist and are not actualities -- these 'mental event' things. But I add agreement with Mark that 'event concept' is a concept whose instances are states of affairs (actualities and mental events), and that 'propositions' are considered to be 'event concepts' when we talk about their correspondence to states of affairs. I argue then that 'objectification' turns a 'closed logical formulation' into an 'event concept'. And I now believe that Elisa and I can produce a formal logic rendition of these concepts that has an acceptable formal semantics (a la Davidson). The question is: Does anyone else agree? -Ed P.S. How this relates to 'occurrence' in Date/Time is a further mental exercise, but it is pretty clear that it is based on the idea of things that satisfy an 'event concept' and that it extends or replaces the notion of 'actuality'. Ed Barkmeyer wrote: Mark, Thanks. I have little time to address this further, but I would like to make one clarification. An 'event concept' is just that -- the concepualization of an event or state. Whether it happens or even could happen is irrelevant. A 'mental event' is a conceptual ('putative') instantiation of an event concept. A corporation might describe the interesting 'forces' as 'planned', 'proposed', 'legally mandated', etc. So what I said in my second email about 'putative events' is probably the same idea as 'mental event'. We don't plan the concept, we plan an instantiation of it; and we don't fear a concept, we fear its instantiation. Figure 1 was misleading in this area, in that the relationship between a 'mental event' and the base 'event concept' should just be 'instance of' (see attached revision). It is the conceptual instance that carries the 'force' load -- the instance is planned, is feared, is mandated. In a similar way, when Jenny prevents Mike from playing with matches, she doesn't prevent the concept, she prevents the conceptual instance (from having a physical counterpart) and its consequences. An 'abstract event' is not a concept. It is an individual state of the world that is described by an _aggregation_ of separate individual events. A statement like 'the team is in full health' really means that every individual on the team is healthy. It is not a concept, it is a state, but there is no single physical manifestation. Similarly, '1200 people were killed by the earthquake' is an abstract event. The actual events -- the 'demonstrations' -- were many individual deaths and perhaps some simultaneous deaths in small groups in different circumstances resulting from the earthquake. The relationship between the concept of 1200 people being killed and 1 person being killed is this aggregation idea -- it is statistical. Similarly, any statement about 'all x' or 'at least 1 x' is some kind of aggregation. -Ed Mark H Linehan wrote: Ed, Thanks for doing this. I think the combination of your two recent notes on this subject definitely helps move the discussion forward. First, I want to say that I like your proposal in your other note. But I will comment on that separately. Here are various comments on the models you describe in your document: * I don't think we should consider Davidson's idea of "mental force" because we would have to figure out how that idea relates to SBVR's modalities. And I don't see why it is necessary. Our definition of 'state of affairs' (etc.) should allow for verb concepts such as "business plans state of affairs" or "person fears state of affairs". We model "mental force" as the semantic of a verb concept. [I see that you make a similar proposal at the end of the section on the "Event Concept" model.] * The point made above does raise again a point made by Stan: it appears that states of affairs can be composed from other states of affairs. For example: (1) the state of affairs that a trees falls in the forest. (2) the state of affairs that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. (3) the state of affairs that Joe knows that Bill is afraid that a tree falls in the forest. In Davidson's terminology, (2) and (3) are mental events built on (1) as a physical event -- but I think one can have physical events composed from other physical events. For example, the state of affairs that x people were killed when the tsunami hit northern Japan. Do you agree that composition of states of affairs is meaningful, and how would that affect the models you outlined? Does this relate to your point (in the section on "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events") that "a Davidson 'mental event' is nothing special in this model"? * At the end of the "Alternative: Conceptual vs Actual Events" section, you have a discussion about how the idea of "mental event" would fit into the "Event Concepts" model. I think this "mental event" is what you called a 'putative event' in your other note. Is that right? * I believe that a "causation model" is outside the scope of SBVR. Such a model could be built on top of SBVR but (I think) does not belong in SBVR itself. * Regarding the "Occurrences Model": I am not convinced that every 'actual event' has a 'spatial location'. If we agree that mental events (e.g. the 'fear' in the example above) may occur, then what location would be associated with the occurrence? "The rebels" may be in multiple locations, and their fear may be actual for all of them in all those locations. * I don't understand how "abstract event" differs from "event concept" or "state of affairs". * In figure 7 you show a relationship between "state of affairs" and "Davidson:event". That's correct for some of the models, but in the "Event Concept" model, you say that "John proposes to use the existing term 'state of affairs' for event concept". -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Ed Barkmeyer To: SBVR RTF Date: 04/20/2011 04:52 PM Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less I promised to try to write up the several different models of 'state of affairs' that have been bandied about. I attach a writeup, for better or worse. It is 8 pages long, but you may just want to look at the diagram on p.7. I do _not_ suggest that all of these concepts be added to (or modified in) SBVR. This is my understanding of how they are, or could be, related. (And it isn't any of the models I had in my head before, either.) The most notable feature of this is that 'mental event', 'event concept', 'abstract event' are all different things, and none of them is explicitly in SBVR v1.0. They reflect the idea that different viewpoints display different concerns. And I don't know how this helps to resolve Issue 14849. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." [attachment "States of Affairs.pdf" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "States of Affairs.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" CC: "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: RE: Issue 14849, more or less Thread-Topic: Issue 14849, more or less Thread-Index: AQHMAHr7CitdvjG200u1v8NVcTxcaJRu3tingACfpQCAABiT4A== Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:23:35 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.36] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p3Q5Iopi009672 Something about Donald Davidson's mental events: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7355006/Davidson-Mental-Events I hope the SBVR discussion does not keep wandering too far into philosophy. I prefer that SBVR focus on meaning and stay limited to its minimal hook into things in a universe of discourse. In order to support objectification, SBVR has the concept 'state of affairs' and its indispensible more specific concept 'actuality'. The difference between Davidson's 'physical event' and 'mental event' is orthogonal to the difference between 'actuality' and 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. A mental event, such as a certain person's perceiving that his house is made of stone, can be an actuality. The physical event of his house being made of stone might not be an actuality. The mental event is an actuality if the certain person really does perceive that his house is made of stone, regardless of what the house is made of. The physical event of the house being made of stone is an actuality only if the house is made of stone. Whether actual or not, that physical event plays a role in the person's perceiving -- the physical event is involved in the mental event. Mental events often involve physical events that are not actualities. And of course, the same state of affairs can be an actuality in one possible world but not in another, at one time but not at another. In the early days of SBVR I proposed that a false proposition corresponds to nothing. Terry Halpin corrected me: it corresponds to a state of affairs that does not obtain. This idea seemed odd to me at first, but then I found the idea to be an important part of understanding how language works and I found it is widely used in mainstream computational linguistics. The same state of affairs can obtain today, but not tomorrow. We are not comparing apples to oranges. We are comparing light switches that are on and off. Wishing you the best of all possible worlds, Don Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 13:37:35 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3QHbevT000512 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1304444263.14931@BDOeMxiLhG8yH/9yeH0F8w X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: Something about Donald Davidson's mental events: http://www.scribd.com/doc/7355006/Davidson-Mental-Events I hope the SBVR discussion does not keep wandering too far into philosophy. Well, sir, your insistence on states of affairs that are not actualities and not concepts necessarily takes us there. I prefer that SBVR focus on meaning and stay limited to its minimal hook into things in a universe of discourse. In order to support objectification, SBVR has the concept 'state of affairs' and its indispensible more specific concept 'actuality'. In order to support 'objectification', SBVR needs 'event concept' -- a (possibly individual) concept that is represented by a statement and whose instances, if any, are events, states or situations involving things in the world of interest. That has the further happy aspect of returning to the original SBVR model in which concepts correspond to things in the world of interest, and propositions correspond to true/false (which matches the long-established notions of first-order logic). We objectify a proposition to a _concept of_ a state and have variables that range over that concept and refer to things in the world of interest. That is a very clear model, and it is consistent with the rest of SBVR. Further, it gives us the possibility that certain statements can represent concepts that have multiple instances over time. By comparison, if we insist that the objectification of a proposition is a single thing in the world of interest, we cannot talk about a planned event and its fulfillment, which are different things, and we cannot use an objectification to refer to a recurring event. The difference between Davidson's 'physical event' and 'mental event' is orthogonal to the difference between 'actuality' and 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. If you say so. But then you have not defined 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. So far, you have rejected every attempt to characterize what such a state IS. A mental event, such as a certain person's perceiving that his house is made of stone, can be an actuality. The physical event of his house being made of stone might not be an actuality. The mental event is an actuality if the certain person really does perceive that his house is made of stone, regardless of what the house is made of. The physical event of the house being made of stone is an actuality only if the house is made of stone. Whether actual or not, that physical event plays a role in the person's perceiving -- the physical event is involved in the mental event. What Don is saying is that 'person perceives situation' is a fact type that corresponds to actualities of perception. No one disputes this. The question is: what is the nature of the 'situation' that is being perceived? It need not be an actuality. It is a 'perceived situation'. It is my understanding of Davidson's writing that the 'perceived situation', not the act of perception, is the 'mental event'. But it is not necessary for us to agree on that. What is necessary is that we agree that 'perceived situation' is a specialization of 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. And whether we call that general category of states of affairs 'mental event' or 'Gedankenzustand' or 'affaire a souvenir' or 'Baisley state' is irrelevant. Mental events often involve physical events that are not actualities. And of course, the same state of affairs can be an actuality in one possible world but not in another, at one time but not at another. In the early days of SBVR I proposed that a false proposition corresponds to nothing. Terry Halpin corrected me: it corresponds to a state of affairs that does not obtain. This idea seemed odd to me at first, but then I found the idea to be an important part of understanding how language works and I found it is widely used in mainstream computational linguistics. The same state of affairs can obtain today, but not tomorrow. We are not comparing apples to oranges. We are comparing light switches that are on and off. Yes, these are the philosophical ideas. Now what is the logical model? The important concern that Don (and perhaps Terry) miss is that 'a state of affairs that does not obtain' is understood by many to be 'a concept of a state of affairs that has no instance'. And that too is an important part of understanding how computational linguists think. What Don and Terry have argued is that 'planned states of affairs' and 'perceived states of affairs' and 'proposed courses of action' are states of affairs that 'exist' but _may_ not obtain. Don mischaracterizes them as states of affairs that _do_ not obtain. That is, the existence of those states of affairs has nothing to do with whether the proposition is true or false -- they are conceptualized instances of the proposition (as a concept of states of affairs), and they have a life of their own. The existence of those states of affairs may or may not have any relationship to the existence of an actual state that is an instance of the same proposition. Thus, two or more distinct states of affairs can be described by the same proposition: e.g., a planned state and an actual state. So, the proposition alone is not a sufficient reference scheme for the state of affairs. A proposition of itself does not necessarily correspond to any thing; it is just an 'event concept', and it may correspond to actualities and to other non-actuality states of affairs. In general, the reference scheme for a state of affairs is the proposition that describes the state of affairs and the category to which the state of affairs thing is assigned: proposed, planned, feared, actual, etc. (In the UML model, that is the 'force' part of the 'mental event'.) A proposition alone _is_ a sufficient reference scheme for an actuality. That is, the characteristic 'is an actuality' together with the proposition is a reference scheme for actualities. Similarly, the characteristic 'is planned' together with the proposition is a reference scheme for 'planned states of affairs'. It is a requirement for an instance of 'actuality' that the proposition be true, and conversely, if the proposition is true then there exists an actuality to which it corresponds. But a true proposition can also correspond to a state of affairs that is feared or planned. A true proposition does not imply that every state of affairs that is an instance of it is an instance of 'actuality'; it only implies that there is one that is an instance of 'actuality'. There can also be a 'planned state', for example, that is an instance of the proposition (i.e., of the event concept). Similarly, a false proposition cannot correspond to an 'actuality', but it can correspond to a 'planned state' or a 'feared state' or a 'proposed course of action', or to one state of affairs in each category. SBVR v1.0 says about half of what is necessary to convey any of these ideas correctly, and the specification for the Reference Scheme for a 'state of affairs' is simply wrong. 'A proposition that describes the state of affairs' is a reference scheme for the 'event concept', not for its instances. That is why everyone, including Don, is confused. What part of this model are we going to formalize? Wishing you the best of all possible worlds Don As I recall, Candide avers that the present actuality is the best of all possible worlds. I, for one, think we can do better, in ever so many ways. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: RE: Issue 14849, more or less Thread-Topic: Issue 14849, more or less Thread-Index: AQHMAHr7CitdvjG200u1v8NVcTxcaJRu3tingACfpQCAABiT4IABTpSA//+QKEA= Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:22:38 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.75] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p3QIHrAB024086 If anyone is still trying to understand SBVR's concept of 'state of affairs', this article might be helpful. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/actualism/possible-worlds.html The article says that [possible] worlds are states of affairs, which is consistent with SBVR's definitions. The article identifies two verb concepts: 'state of affairs obtains' and 'state of affairs includes state of affairs'. The first one matches SBVR's noun concept 'actuality'. Note the important distinction between 'obtains' and 'exists'. Looking at the previous example, the state of affairs that a certain person perceives that his house is made of brick involves the state of affairs that his house if made of brick, but does not include the state of affairs that his house is made of brick. However, the state of affairs that a certain person CORRECTLY perceives that his house is made of brick involves and includes the state of affairs that his house is made of brick. May your best possible world obtain, Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2011 10:38 AM To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org; Stan@hendryxassoc.com Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less Don Baisley wrote: > Something about Donald Davidson's mental events: > http://www.scribd.com/doc/7355006/Davidson-Mental-Events > > I hope the SBVR discussion does not keep wandering too far into philosophy. Well, sir, your insistence on states of affairs that are not actualities and not concepts necessarily takes us there. > I prefer that SBVR focus on meaning and stay limited to its minimal hook into things in a universe of discourse. In order to support objectification, SBVR has the concept 'state of affairs' and its indispensible more specific concept 'actuality'. > In order to support 'objectification', SBVR needs 'event concept' -- a (possibly individual) concept that is represented by a statement and whose instances, if any, are events, states or situations involving things in the world of interest. That has the further happy aspect of returning to the original SBVR model in which concepts correspond to things in the world of interest, and propositions correspond to true/false (which matches the long-established notions of first-order logic). We objectify a proposition to a _concept of_ a state and have variables that range over that concept and refer to things in the world of interest. That is a very clear model, and it is consistent with the rest of SBVR. Further, it gives us the possibility that certain statements can represent concepts that have multiple instances over time. By comparison, if we insist that the objectification of a proposition is a single thing in the world of interest, we cannot talk about a planned event and its fulfillment, which are different things, and we cannot use an objectification to refer to a recurring event. > The difference between Davidson's 'physical event' and 'mental event' is orthogonal to the difference between 'actuality' and 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. If you say so. But then you have not defined 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. So far, you have rejected every attempt to characterize what such a state IS. > A mental event, such as a certain person's perceiving that his house is made of stone, can be an actuality. The physical event of his house being made of stone might not be an actuality. The mental event is an actuality if the certain person really does perceive that his house is made of stone, regardless of what the house is made of. The physical event of the house being made of stone is an actuality only if the house is made of stone. Whether actual or not, that physical event plays a role in the person's perceiving -- the physical event is involved in the mental event. > What Don is saying is that 'person perceives situation' is a fact type that corresponds to actualities of perception. No one disputes this. The question is: what is the nature of the 'situation' that is being perceived? It need not be an actuality. It is a 'perceived situation'. It is my understanding of Davidson's writing that the 'perceived situation', not the act of perception, is the 'mental event'. But it is not necessary for us to agree on that. What is necessary is that we agree that 'perceived situation' is a specialization of 'state of affairs that is not an actuality'. And whether we call that general category of states of affairs 'mental event' or 'Gedankenzustand' or 'affaire a souvenir' or 'Baisley state' is irrelevant. > Mental events often involve physical events that are not actualities. And of course, the same state of affairs can be an actuality in one possible world but not in another, at one time but not at another. > > In the early days of SBVR I proposed that a false proposition corresponds to nothing. Terry Halpin corrected me: it corresponds to a state of affairs that does not obtain. This idea seemed odd to me at first, but then I found the idea to be an important part of understanding how language works and I found it is widely used in mainstream computational linguistics. The same state of affairs can obtain today, but not tomorrow. We are not comparing apples to oranges. We are comparing light switches that are on and off. > Yes, these are the philosophical ideas. Now what is the logical model? The important concern that Don (and perhaps Terry) miss is that 'a state of affairs that does not obtain' is understood by many to be 'a concept of a state of affairs that has no instance'. And that too is an important part of understanding how computational linguists think. What Don and Terry have argued is that 'planned states of affairs' and 'perceived states of affairs' and 'proposed courses of action' are states of affairs that 'exist' but _may_ not obtain. Don mischaracterizes them as states of affairs that _do_ not obtain. That is, the existence of those states of affairs has nothing to do with whether the proposition is true or false -- they are conceptualized instances of the proposition (as a concept of states of affairs), and they have a life of their own. The existence of those states of affairs may or may not have any relationship to the existence of an actual state that is an instance of the same proposition. Thus, two or more distinct states of affairs can be described by the same proposition: e.g., a planned state and an actual state. So, the proposition alone is not a sufficient reference scheme for the state of affairs. A proposition of itself does not necessarily correspond to any thing; it is just an 'event concept', and it may correspond to actualities and to other non-actuality states of affairs. In general, the reference scheme for a state of affairs is the proposition that describes the state of affairs and the category to which the state of affairs thing is assigned: proposed, planned, feared, actual, etc. (In the UML model, that is the 'force' part of the 'mental event'.) A proposition alone _is_ a sufficient reference scheme for an actuality. That is, the characteristic 'is an actuality' together with the proposition is a reference scheme for actualities. Similarly, the characteristic 'is planned' together with the proposition is a reference scheme for 'planned states of affairs'. It is a requirement for an instance of 'actuality' that the proposition be true, and conversely, if the proposition is true then there exists an actuality to which it corresponds. But a true proposition can also correspond to a state of affairs that is feared or planned. A true proposition does not imply that every state of affairs that is an instance of it is an instance of 'actuality'; it only implies that there is one that is an instance of 'actuality'. There can also be a 'planned state', for example, that is an instance of the proposition (i.e., of the event concept). Similarly, a false proposition cannot correspond to an 'actuality', but it can correspond to a 'planned state' or a 'feared state' or a 'proposed course of action', or to one state of affairs in each category. SBVR v1.0 says about half of what is necessary to convey any of these ideas correctly, and the specification for the Reference Scheme for a 'state of affairs' is simply wrong. 'A proposition that describes the state of affairs' is a reference scheme for the 'event concept', not for its instances. That is why everyone, including Don, is confused. What part of this model are we going to formalize? > Wishing you the best of all possible worlds > > Don > As I recall, Candide avers that the present actuality is the best of all possible worlds. I, for one, think we can do better, in ever so many ways. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2011 18:10:00 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" , "Stan@hendryxassoc.com" Subject: Re: Issue 14849, more or less X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p3QMA4Al024738 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1304460606.9826@gZP9z2igSLYOy0fxTrASxA X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: If anyone is still trying to understand SBVR's concept of 'state of affairs', this article might be helpful. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/actualism/possible-worlds.html Having read Chris Menzel's article, I don't see that it helps us much. It is about the construction of a semantics for alethic logic (possibility, necessity, etc.) Yes, a possible world can be considered to be a giant state of affairs that 'includes' other states of affairs that obtain but not states of affairs that do not obtain. In the same way, a world of interest can be described by a giant conjunction that includes all facts in a fact model, and therefore implies each of them. The article identifies two verb concepts: 'state of affairs obtains' and 'state of affairs includes state of affairs'. The first one matches SBVR's noun concept 'actuality'. And the second one doesn't match any SBVR idea, even though it is the relationship between possible worlds and states of affairs that are actualities. Note the important distinction between 'obtains' and 'exists'. The article tells us that a state of affairs can exist without obtaining, just as a proposition can exist without being true. Note also the lack of any stated relationship between 'exists' and 'includes'. A possible world can only 'include' actualities. A thing T exists in a world W if and only if 'T exists' is an actuality in W. No surprise there. It implies, perhaps, that a state of affairs can be a thing that exists in a possible world, but it doesn't actually discuss that idea at all. Based on this article, the underlying formal semantic model could make 'state of affairs' the mention of a proposition and 'actuality' the mention of a fact, and 'includes' = 'implies'. The reason why that isn't sufficient for SBVR is that states of affairs are used as things in fact type roles that demand an 'event', not a meaning, and this article doesn't address any of those concepts. Further, it does not address the question of whether a 'state of affairs' thing is really different from a 'proposition' thing or from a 'concept' thing. In short, it doesn't answer any of the questions that John and Mark and Elisa and I have asked. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Subject: Re: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR X-KeepSent: FF760720:8461A221-8525789E:000D05E4; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 22:47:37 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1 ZX852FP1HF6|May 2, 2011) at 05/27/2011 22:47:48 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p4S2faDJ009289 Regarding Donald's proposed resolution for 14849: * I don't understand "state of affairs concept". (a) What's the need for this? (b) The Necessity "Each state of affairs concept specializes the concept âstate of affairsâ." seems to contradict the definition "concept that corresponds to states of affairs". (c ) In what sense are fact types and some noun concepts also "state of affairs concepts"? * "Occurrence state of affairs concept" seems to be what Date-Time calls "occurrence type". * Do we need "individual concept state of affairs"? What is the utility of it? How does a proposition "use" a "state of affairs concept"? Does this definition allow for propositions that use multiple fact types, with all the fact type roles filled in by individual concepts? * I think we should stay away from classifying types of states of affairs, as in 'state of being' states of affairs versus "activity state of affairs". But if you really want to classify them, then I suggest you review the debates in the linguistic community about such classifications. And you'd better have examples, but the definitions are not very clear. * The term "occurrence state of affairs" is not very useful, because in a temporal model all states of affairs occur throughout some time interval. So in a temporal model, there are no states of affairs that are not "occurrence states of affairs". Of course, in an open world model, the time interval of some states of affairs may not be known. And some states of affairs may occur throughout "forever". But they still have a time interval. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: Date: 05/27/2011 10:06 AM Subject: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR To SBVR RTF Participants ­ Attached is an updated proposed Issue 14849 Resolution containing the remaining items not covered in separate Issues, and including three new categories of âstate of affairsâ to enable talking unambiguously about âstates of affairs and occurrences both in SBVR and in the Date-Time Vocabulary. The second attached file is an extracted Clause 12.3 âOccurrenceâ from the latest version of the Date-Time Vocabulary submission that was submitted this past Monday showing the changes made to this subclause just before the specification was submitted -- plus some synonym substitution using two of the three new categories of âstate of affairsâ as proposed for SBVR in the attached Issue 14849 Issue resolution proposal. Please note: I took great care just to substitute signifiers in the attached Date-Time Clause 12.3 document and to leave meanings and structures as they were proposed in the most recent submission. I may not have done that perfectly, but that was my firm intention. I purposely avoided substituting terms in CLIF and OCL statements, as I am not qualified to do that, with one exception where âstate of affairsâ had already been substituted by âoccurrence.â Please note: Both of these documents are just strawman versions with a single purpose. That is to start a fresh conversation that will bring the SBVR and Date-Time teams to place where they can create enough co-existence between the two standards. What I have attached is certainly no finished piece of work. I apologize that these documents are arriving so late. I only learned about the changes to the Date-Time Vocabulary specification Wednesday morning and having been working full time since then, in conversation with the parties, to provide a foundation for finding common ground. Since itâs so close to todayâs telecon and people will not have had time to read these documents, Iâm happy to schedule an extra SBVR RTF telecon the first part of next week, say Tuesday. Letâs each of us make every effort to find common ground so that all the good work and investment of time and effort over the years can start to bring real business value to users organizations. Donald [attachment "SBVR 14849 - objectification + (Individual) State of Affairs Concept 2011-05-27-1430-BST.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "date-time 2011-05-23 Clause 12-3 'Occurences' Strawman Synchronization with Revised SBVR Clause 8-6 'State of Affairs' 2011-05-27-0900-BST WITH CHANGES.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] Subject: Re: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR X-KeepSent: EF1A9C58:2E7FB529-8525789E:000F933C; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 23:23:00 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1 ZX852FP1HF6|May 2, 2011) at 05/27/2011 23:23:03 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p4S3Gs92012885 I forgot to read the modified version of 12.3 before sending my previous comments on the proposed issue resolution. I must say that I find it very strange reading a set of text where the terms I know are replaced by terms that I don't understand. So I doubt that I read this the way Donald intended. I'm guessing that what Donald (and Don?) want to do is distinguish between temporal and atemporal statements or propositions, not between temporal and atemporal states of affairs. Maybe you want fact types like "temporal proposition corresponds to occurrence (or "occurrence state of affairs")" and "atemporal proposition corresponds to state of affairs". My point is that states of affairs do not come in temporal and atemporal subtypes because all states of affairs occur at some time. But it is true that we know the time of some states of affairs but not of others. Overall, I think it is not helpful to replace an existing set of terms with different terms without a good reason. And I don't understand the motivation behind this work. I would much prefer reading a document that explains why terms need to be divided or reorganized, rather than trying to understand the end result of such a change. Frankly, I think my time has been wasted by being asked to "backwards engineer" what Donald is trying to do. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: Date: 05/27/2011 10:06 AM Subject: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR To SBVR RTF Participants ­ Attached is an updated proposed Issue 14849 Resolution containing the remaining items not covered in separate Issues, and including three new categories of âstate of affairsâ to enable talking unambiguously about âstates of affairs and occurrences both in SBVR and in the Date-Time Vocabulary. The second attached file is an extracted Clause 12.3 âOccurrenceâ from the latest version of the Date-Time Vocabulary submission that was submitted this past Monday showing the changes made to this subclause just before the specification was submitted -- plus some synonym substitution using two of the three new categories of âstate of affairsâ as proposed for SBVR in the attached Issue 14849 Issue resolution proposal. Please note: I took great care just to substitute signifiers in the attached Date-Time Clause 12.3 document and to leave meanings and structures as they were proposed in the most recent submission. I may not have done that perfectly, but that was my firm intention. I purposely avoided substituting terms in CLIF and OCL statements, as I am not qualified to do that, with one exception where âstate of affairsâ had already been substituted by âoccurrence.â Please note: Both of these documents are just strawman versions with a single purpose. That is to start a fresh conversation that will bring the SBVR and Date-Time teams to place where they can create enough co-existence between the two standards. What I have attached is certainly no finished piece of work. I apologize that these documents are arriving so late. I only learned about the changes to the Date-Time Vocabulary specification Wednesday morning and having been working full time since then, in conversation with the parties, to provide a foundation for finding common ground. Since itâs so close to todayâs telecon and people will not have had time to read these documents, Iâm happy to schedule an extra SBVR RTF telecon the first part of next week, say Tuesday. Letâs each of us make every effort to find common ground so that all the good work and investment of time and effort over the years can start to bring real business value to users organizations. Donald [attachment "SBVR 14849 - objectification + (Individual) State of Affairs Concept 2011-05-27-1430-BST.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "date-time 2011-05-23 Clause 12-3 'Occurences' Strawman Synchronization with Revised SBVR Clause 8-6 'State of Affairs' 2011-05-27-0900-BST WITH CHANGES.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 314977.20041.bm@omp1025.access.mail.sp2.yahoo.com DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=yahoo.com; s=s1024; t=1306800582; bh=NiE9X331OqsZwgSiohEaJuqQZWYue6Gg9BJ4Sd1e1kY=; h=Message-ID:Received:X-Yahoo-SMTP:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:X-Mailer:Date:To:From:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type; b=O9GeAj1tT5RKtK92yG/n5Gh8iS/I44+xulRo7xRYyjp1lnBloG1vQxAzwSGwNXC5FYhC5UYmsEpFHsxuS76NtHZ8hAbwXTQN4X5Akpr3Dz/v2JT6J7CCEml5XX3j8gIJaZQVzvZPMoVsUCYOEiSfHw60sOrKnsrErbmMmgbLA+A= X-Yahoo-SMTP: MhfrpU2swBDLgYiYhNQDHBu0cE4o.vu2We1FRN9o X-YMail-OSG: tCrH3BoVM1nBRozwb4MILs_ImJ8qHzkaB615PWhP1vFr3_t 4SxPI00f1acyB5xHprgO.5YvpjPStmUQIlT1wDsAzk1gIzsTOQXtmrPfGylj omuiZnzov32wwzQvVDz_NOi3QxRJnKWA1ry5MFQG0MfAJIn5PLsHhMzpAfY4 zQDA9txQ8Kfjsy7kEGpwTz7g4FkDvzdu2xwvQD8.6WuEJquMj8LbujcMQHhu GWGxFCjo9Gy1jAZFlv8cxA2bpLtSALUM3Vlp5JJzhMm0SeHlzxvhXmHdSxLt dgvINf4mWUU2JW0ao2N8NJzbczkq0NIGITK9LrJpulayL3WYt9sTyhQgZb0M - X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Mon, 30 May 2011 19:09:23 -0500 To: "Donald Chapin" , From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution All, I've been following this discussion with an eye toward implications for business rules (actually, the implications of business rules for resolution of the issue). Here is where I am on the issue *at present*: * Consider the business rule "A hard hat must be worn by each person in a construction site". * Let's say the business does not care about the history of violations by any given person, or overall, and never will. * The only state of affairs they are interested in is "a given person in a given construction site is not wearing some hard hat." * The only time they are interested in this state of affairs is *now* (because the business needs to react immediately to keep its insurance). * For this business, associating any time with the state of affairs is unnecessary. * In fact, it's undesirable because it raises the issue of granularity of time. The time they are interested in is simply *now* ... as if time didn't exist at all. (I called that sense or reference point for time the 'perpetual now' in Don's M1.) * A great many, perhaps the majority, of business rules are like this (i.e., no specific timing is intended other than perpetually 'now', so specifying anything about timing would simply be extra baggage). The best (most simplifying) assumption for business rules is "at all times". * I don't see what it could hurt to allow this kind of timeless state of affairs. I think we should stay away very carefully from arguments about the true nature of time 'out there' in reality. (Even physicists are still in the dark on that one.) The issue should be resolved in favor of what approach gives us the best model for addressing business concerns. At the moment, I can't see why that isn't Don's M3. Ron Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 13:40:23 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + ... X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p4VHeSFd026999 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1307468433.85111@fPv+KHVB7i6dWjZNhU4a4A X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov First observation: Looking at item 1 of the proposed resolution, I would conclude that the RTF missed the question. The issue is not about 'objectifications', which is about the formal representation of states as operands, the issue is about what the instances of a fact type are. As the issue clearly says, if the instances of fact types are restricted to actualities, then a planned situation is not an instance of the fact type that is used to describe it. Why not? The Note suggests that the intent of the resolution is to address an irrelevant technical issue, so as to avoid the issue that was raised and the very real possibility that the definition of 'fact type' is inconsistent with the definition of 'state of affairs'. Don's solution appears to be: don't ever use a variable that ranges over a fact type. Good choice! The whole idea of fact types is to distinguish instances by the players of the roles. But that has nothing to do with the definition of 'fact type'. The instances are situations in which there are things that play the described roles. The question is: do those situations have to be actual? So let us please write a resolution that clearly addresses that issue. Second observation. If Donald's revision is the 'simplified' resolution, I would hate to see the complex one. Mark H Linehan wrote: Regarding Donald's proposed resolution for 14849: * I don't understand "state of affairs concept". (a) What's the need for this? I think 'state of affairs concept' is what some rev of Date/time 12.3 called a 'state type', which I have since deleted. (b) The Necessity "Each state of affairs concept specializes the concept âstate of affairsâ." seems to contradict the definition "concept that corresponds to states of affairs". No. This is what one would expect. If each instance of 'state of affairs concept' is a concept that corresponds to states of affairs, then each instance is a subtype of 'state of affairs'. If each 'car model' is a concept that corresponds to actual vehicles, then each instance of 'car model' is a subtype of 'vehicle'. (c ) In what sense are fact types and some noun concepts also "state of affairs concepts"? In that their instances are things that are 'states of affairs'. * "Occurrence state of affairs concept" seems to be what Date-Time calls "occurrence type". Yes. But Donald's definition is much harder to understand. * Do we need "individual concept state of affairs"? What is the utility of it? How does a proposition "use" a "state of affairs concept"? Does this definition allow for propositions that use multiple fact types, with all the fact type roles filled in by individual concepts? I'm not sure what an 'individual concept state of affairs' might be. It seems it would have to exist throughout the entire time span of every possible world -- the state mandated by a structural rule. Is it common to refer to such states? * I think we should stay away from classifying types of states of affairs, as in 'state of being' states of affairs versus "activity state of affairs". But if you really want to classify them, then I suggest you review the debates in the linguistic community about such classifications. And you'd better have examples, but the definitions are not very clear. I strongly agree with this. This is a taxonomy without clear delimiting characteristics. There are published formal models of state, event and activity that distinguish these ideas in terms of concepts SBVR does not have, notably time and effect. I also don't understand how a 'state of being that is defined independent of any reference to time' can be a 'state of affairs'. A state of affair is a thing, not a concept, according to SBVR, and things are not "defined"; concepts are defined. SBVR does not (and IMO should not) have 'thing has definition'. So the entries called 'state of being state of affairs' and 'activity state of affairs' are by definition concept types. * The term "occurrence state of affairs" is not very useful, because in a temporal model all states of affairs occur throughout some time interval. So in a temporal model, there are no states of affairs that are not "occurrence states of affairs". Of course, in an open world model, the time interval of some states of affairs may not be known. And some states of affairs may occur throughout "forever". But they still have a time interval. I strongly agree, not surprisingly, since this is the foundation we agreed on for Date/Time. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: Date: 05/27/2011 10:06 AM Subject: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR To SBVR RTF Participants ­ > Attached is an updated proposed Issue 14849 Resolution containing the remaining items not covered in separate Issues, and including three new categories of âstate of affairsâ to enable talking unambiguously about âstates of affairs and occurrences both in SBVR and in the Date-Time Vocabulary. The second attached file is an extracted Clause 12.3 âOccurrenceâ from the latest version of the Date-Time Vocabulary submission that was submitted this past Monday showing the changes made to this subclause just before the specification was submitted -- plus some synonym substitution using two of the three new categories of âstate of affairsâ as proposed for SBVR in the attached Issue 14849 Issue resolution proposal. Please note: I took great care just to substitute signifiers in the attached Date-Time Clause 12.3 document and to leave meanings and structures as they were proposed in the most recent submission. I may not have done that perfectly, but that was my firm intention. I purposely avoided substituting terms in CLIF and OCL statements, as I am not qualified to do that, with one exception where âstate of affairsâ had already been substituted by âoccurrence.â Please note: Both of these documents are just strawman versions with a single purpose. That is to start a fresh conversation that will bring the SBVR and Date-Time teams to place where they can create enough co-existence between the two standards. What I have attached is certainly no finished piece of work. I apologize that these documents are arriving so late. I only learned about the changes to the Date-Time Vocabulary specification Wednesday morning and having been working full time since then, in conversation with the parties, to provide a foundation for finding common ground. Since itâs so close to todayâs telecon and people will not have had time to read these documents, Iâm happy to schedule an extra SBVR RTF telecon the first part of next week, say Tuesday. Letâs each of us make every effort to find common ground so that all the good work and investment of time and effort over the years can start to bring real business value to users organizations. Donald [attachment "SBVR 14849 - objectification + (Individual) State of Affairs Concept 2011-05-27-1430-BST.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "date-time 2011-05-23 Clause 12-3 'Occurences' Strawman Synchronization with Revised SBVR Clause 8-6 'State of Affairs' 2011-05-27-0900-BST WITH CHANGES.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 07:34:32 -0400 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysGgP1gOQ X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Neutral-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0303.4DECBB4B.0069, actions=TAG X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.6.6.102714:17:9.975, ip=184.74.140.210, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, DATE_TZ_NA, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, DOC_ATTACHED, __ANY_URI, LINK_TO_IMAGE, __FRAUD_CONTACT_NUM, __CP_URI_IN_BODY, __SUBJECT_ENDING_IN_LATIN_OR_NUMERALS, __C230066_P5, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_BOLD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __IMGSPAM_BODY, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, __RATWARE_SIGNATURE_3_N1, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, IMGSPAM_BODY X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2bthomr07.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B020B.4DECBBED.0067,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=184.74.140.210, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 13:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution for Discussion 2011-06-06.doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: 1. Add entries for state of affairs concept, occurrence state of affairs concepts and individual state of affairs concept to be able to talk about states of affairs and not just actualities. 2. Clarify the definition of .state of affairs. and add clarifying notes. 3. .Add three categories of .state of affairs. to be able to talk about states of affairs and time unambiguously. 4. .(points to be added) Revised Text: On page 21 after the entry for .fact type. ADD these three entries: state of affairs concept Definition: concept that corresponds to states of affairs Definition: concept that is the meaning of a sentence clause that involves one or more noun concepts in roles as subject, direct object, or indirect object(s) where at least one of them is un-quantified, and therefore an .open,. role; and whose instances are all states of affairs Concept Type: concept type Necessity: Each state of affairs concept specializes the concept .state of affairs.. Necessity: Each fact type is a state of affairs concept. Possibility: A noun concept may be a state of affairs concept. Synonym: clause pattern individual state of affairs conceptproposition Definition: proposition that uses exactly one state of affairs concept in which each role is filled with an individual (noun) concept On page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs. REPLACE this definition: state of affairs Definition: event, activity, situation, or circumstance WITH: Definition: thing that is an event, activity, situation, or circumstance that is taken into account in the universe of discourse. Note: States of affairs may be imagined and expressed in some form (e.g. a unicorn); planned and set forth in some way (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan); orhave come into being in the material (physical) domain (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond) in the universe of discourse Note: States of affairs are occuring or are not occurring in the domain that is the subject of the SBVR model, i.e. the universe of discourse, for which the SBVR Model provides meanings, representations and expressions. .States of affairs., which are a kind of .thing. in the universe of discourse, correspond to .propositions., which are a kind of SBVR .meaning.. Note: While the possibility of .occurring. over time is inherent in state of affairs, in practice the time during which the state of affairs is occuring may be so short that it is viewed by the semantic community as occurring only at a point in time. Necessity: A state of affairs is actual only if the state of affairs is actual for some time interval. Necessity: Each state of affairs that is actual for all time is actual. Necessity: Each state of affairs that is always actual is actual for all time. Necessity: Each temporal occurrence is actual for all time. Possibility: It is possible that some state of affairs that is actual is not actual for some time interval. On page 39 following the entry for .state of affairs. ADD three categories of .state of affairs.: occurrence state of affairsevent Definition: .state of being. state of affairs or activity state of affairs that occurs throughout at least one time interval in the world of interest Definition: state of affairs that is an event Synonym: temporal state of affairs, event .state of being. state of affairsstate Definition: state of affairs that is defined by one or more conditions independent of any reference to time Synonym: situation, circumstance, set of circumstances activity state of affairsavtivity Definition: state of affairs that is defined by the nature of an activity independent of any reference to the time of doing / executing the activity Synonym: activity Disposition: Resolved From: Don Baisley To: Donald Chapin , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Thread-Index: AQHMJD5Ry2xyAKNCAUumCzR1y84j/ZSwjsWA Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 17:17:22 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.73] Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs occurs over time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs occurs over time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. Regards, Don From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 13:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 X-KeepSent: 0D72D947:5BE7E414-852578A7:006C2FBC; type=4; name=$KeepSent To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.1FP5 SHF29 November 12, 2010 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 15:52:57 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.2FP1 ZX852FP1HF6|May 2, 2011) at 06/06/2011 15:53:03 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from base64 to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p56JkUwh006546 Maybe. If every instance of a fact type is an actuality, then this definition will not support planned or hypothetical occurrences. If instances of fact types can be states of affairs then this may work. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: Don Baisley To: Donald Chapin , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Date: 06/06/2011 01:25 PM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of âoccurrenceâ, there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs occurs over time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines âstate of affairs occurs over time intervalâ as a synonymous form of âstate of affairs occurs for time intervalâ, so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as âAlternative 2 (SBVR)â. Regards, Don From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various peopleâs input. From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 13:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk âActualityâ is a specialization of âstate of affairsâ. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2011 19:51:24 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p56NpTXr002879 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1308009092.87865@dO52qGp3hYQeyT1/bu7BkQ X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs occurs over time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs occurs over time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is not an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 13:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.65,332,1304319600"; d="scan'208,217";a="25070549" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2011 05:42:19 -0700 X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Thread-Index: AcwkpPTEsbIT0bA6Tv2jSahWCOErZgAaeLXw From: "Paul Vincent" To: , "Don Baisley" Cc: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 07 Jun 2011 12:42:21.0470 (UTC) FILETIME=[5819EBE0:01CC2510] X-TM-AS-Product-Ver: SMEX-10.0.0.1412-6.500.1024-18184.003 X-TM-AS-Result: No--34.330500-8.000000-31 X-TM-AS-User-Approved-Sender: No X-TM-AS-User-Blocked-Sender: No Ed, Don - I.m not going to attempt to contribute to this discussion (sighs of relief all-round, I.m sure J) but just to highlight its importance for the .business event. world (i.e. BPMN, and planned EMP, etc). Having such a definition of (business) event in, or at least compliant with SBVR + DateTimeVocabulary, could be very useful for SBVR adoption. By the way, in TIBCO we use conventional UML State Models as business models quite successfully. It might be interesting to compare SBVR::StateOfAffair with UML::State, as for sure the latter is re-entrant (ie multiple instances can occur over time, and multiple entities or concepts can have a .state. too). State transitions are events, and defined through state transition rules. They can also be predictive (ie not actualities). Possibly state models are too deterministic for all SBVR::StateOfAffair cases, but it would be interesting to see the delta nonetheless. Paul Vincent From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: 07 June 2011 00:51 To: Don Baisley Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs occurs over time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs occurs over time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is not an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] Sent: Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 13:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:49:57 -0400 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Paul Vincent CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Paul Vincent wrote: Ed, Don - I.m not going to attempt to contribute to this discussion (sighs of relief all-round, I.m sure J) but just to highlight its importance for the .business event. world (i.e. BPMN, and planned EMP, etc). Having such a definition of (business) event in, or at least compliant with SBVR + DateTimeVocabulary, could be very useful for SBVR adoption. By the way, in TIBCO we use conventional UML State Models as business models quite successfully. It might be interesting to compare SBVR::StateOfAffair with UML::State, as for sure the latter is re-entrant (ie multiple instances can occur over time, and multiple entities or concepts can have a .state. too). State transitions are events, and defined through state transition rules. They can also be predictive (ie not actualities). Possibly state models are too deterministic for all SBVR::StateOfAffair cases, but it would be interesting to see the delta nonetheless. This is the kind of thing SBVR doesn't even begin to support. First, it makes a clear distinction between 'event' and 'state'/'situation'. Second, it deals with these things entirely as types -- conceptual abstractions -- that have physical counterparts in actual business situations. Finally, it addresses the idea of deteminism and prediction -- that 'structural rules' govern some transitions of state. This is consistent with the way BPMN treats states of affairs, and with the formal model of 'event', 'state' and 'activity' in ISO 18629 PSL. But none of this is supported by any standard constructs in SBVR. The fundamental idea in all of these is that there are two very distinct kinds of things at work here: TYPES of events, states, and actions, and OCCURRENCES of events, states and actions. For all practical purposes, UML and BPMN and most CEP models do not deal with "occurrences" at all, but only with "types", because they prescribe PATTERNS of events that are expected to recur in business situations. In ISO PSL, an 'event' is a kind of change of state that can happen in business worlds; an 'event_occurrence' is an actual change of state in a specific business world. That is, the primary idea is the Type, which is called 'event'. If SBVR intends that a 'state of affairs' is a Type/Pattern for business situations, it needs only to say so, and everyone will understand. Put another way, every other standard that deals with this concept understands the type/occurrence distinction and makes the intent of their terms clear. The SBVR FTF and RTF have consistently refused to do so. Why? Paul has said (very tactfully, as is his wont) that the adoption of SBVR in business event communities is dependent on getting these concepts clarified. Mark and I believe that the success of Date/Time is also dependent on such a clarification. Can we please just agree to one clear definition of 'state of affairs'? -Ed Paul Vincent *From:* Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] *Sent:* 07 June 2011 00:51 *To:* Don Baisley *Cc:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is /not/ an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don *From:* Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] *Sent:* 23 December 2009 13:29 *To:* issues@omg.org ; sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org *[] -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:31:42 -0500 To: edbark@nist.gov, Paul Vincent From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Cc: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p57LPpRn005339 At 03:49 PM 6/7/2011, Edward Barkmeyer wrote: Paul Vincent wrote: Mark and I believe that the success of Date/Time is also dependent on such a clarification. Can we please just agree to one clear definition of 'state of affairs'? Ed, I have been going back and forth all morning with Mark about "state of affairs" and "actuality" and "date-time". I have been using the current SBVR definitions for the former concepts. I've given a whole new set of examples using my daughter's cars, I have to discover any problem with either definition. (More examples and clarifications in SBVR would certainly be helpful.) I am doing my best to understand the whole set of issues. But (and Mark please correct me if I'm wrong), I haven't yet seen a problem in the using the current two SBVR definitions for the various examples. There is clearly some SBVR concept(s) on the meaning side (I believe) missing, but we know that (I think). I'm not sure where you're going with all this(?). Perhaps you could jump in, take a look at the examples and discussion, and see where you think it goes awry. That would be useful and constructive, to me at least. It's worth a little effort to get on the same page ... isn't it? Ron -Ed Paul Vincent *From:* Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] *Sent:* 07 June 2011 00:51 *To:* Don Baisley *Cc:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is /not/ an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don *From:* Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] *Sent:* 23 December 2009 13:29 *To:* issues@omg.org ; sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org *[] -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:59:00 -0500 To: edbark@nist.gov, Paul Vincent From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Cc: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" At 03:49 PM 6/7/2011, Edward Barkmeyer wrote: Paul Vincent wrote: Ed, Don - I.m not going to attempt to contribute to this discussion (sighs of relief all-round, I.m sure J) but just to highlight its importance for the .business event. world (i.e. BPMN, and planned EMP, etc). Having such a definition of (business) event in, or at least compliant with SBVR + DateTimeVocabulary, could be very useful for SBVR adoption. By the way, in TIBCO we use conventional UML State Models as business models quite successfully. It might be interesting to compare SBVR::StateOfAffair with UML::State, as for sure the latter is re-entrant (ie multiple instances can occur over time, and multiple entities or concepts can have a .state. too). State transitions are events, and defined through state transition rules. They can also be predictive (ie not actualities). Possibly state models are too deterministic for all SBVR::StateOfAffair cases, but it would be interesting to see the delta nonetheless. This is the kind of thing SBVR doesn't even begin to support. First, it makes a clear distinction between 'event' and 'state'/'situation'. Second, it deals with these things entirely as types -- conceptual abstractions -- that have physical counterparts in actual business situations. Finally, it addresses the idea of deteminism and prediction -- that 'structural rules' govern some transitions of state. This is consistent with the way BPMN treats states of affairs, and with the formal model of 'event', 'state' and 'activity' in ISO 18629 PSL. But none of this is supported by any standard constructs in SBVR. The fundamental idea in all of these is that there are two very distinct kinds of things at work here: TYPES of events, states, and actions, and OCCURRENCES of events, states and actions. For all practical purposes, UML and BPMN and most CEP models do not deal with "occurrences" at all, but only with "types", because they prescribe PATTERNS of events that are expected to recur in business situations. In ISO PSL, an 'event' is a kind of change of state that can happen in business worlds; an 'event_occurrence' is an actual change of state in a specific business world. That is, the primary idea is the Type, which is called 'event'. If SBVR intends that a 'state of affairs' is a Type/Pattern for business situations, it needs only to say so, and everyone will understand. Put another way, every other standard that deals with this concept understands the type/occurrence distinction and makes the intent of their terms clear. The SBVR FTF and RTF have consistently refused to do so. Why? Paul has said (very tactfully, as is his wont) that the adoption of SBVR in business event communities is dependent on getting these concepts clarified. Mark and I believe that the success of Date/Time is also dependent on such a clarification. Can we please just agree to one clear definition of 'state of affairs'? Ed, You ask, can we agree to one clear definition of "state of affairs". With due respect to your background in these matters, I just don't get your point. I think perhaps it is mis-stated perhaps? A state-of-affairs is in the real world. It just is what it is ... as SBVR defines it, a event, activity, situation, or circumstance . Any business person in the world would get that. The pattern (vs. type) you want to assert is surely on the meaning side of the house. Any construct we put on the real world is a product of our heads. So the real target (term/concept) of your concern surely must be misplaced? What am I missing? Ron -Ed Paul Vincent *From:* Ed Barkmeyer [ mailto:edbark@nist.gov] *Sent:* 07 June 2011 00:51 *To:* Don Baisley *Cc:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is /not/ an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don *From:* Donald Chapin [ mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Juergen Boldt [ mailto:juergen@omg.org] < mailto:%5Bmailto:juergen@omg.org%5D> *Sent:* 23 December 2009 13:29 *To:* issues@omg.org < mailto:issues@omg.org>; sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk < mailto:john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk> .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org < mailto:juergen@omg.org> www.omg.org *[] < http://www.omg.org/signature.htm> -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov < mailto:edbark@nist.gov> National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:34:34 -0400 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: "Ronald G. Ross" CC: Paul Vincent , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Ronald G. Ross wrote: You ask, can we agree to one clear definition of "state of affairs". With due respect to your background in these matters, I just don't get your point. I think perhaps it is mis-stated perhaps? A state-of-affairs is in the real world. It just is what it is ... as SBVR defines it, a event, activity, situation, or circumstance . Any business person in the world would get that. That is what I thought. In Date/Time 12.3 we wrote: A 'state of affairs' is an "event, activity, situation, or circumstance" ([SBVR] clause 8.6). That is, a .state of affairs. is an individual continuous state or event. In any vocabulary that considers time, every state of affairs that occurs, either hypothetically or actually, occurs over some time interval, although the time interval may not be known. No state of affairs "recurs". A state of affairs is a happening. Happenings don't recur. If something 'happens again', that is a different 'happening'. The something that 'happens again' is some kind of abstraction of the two happenings. The pattern (vs. type) you want to assert is surely on the meaning side of the house. Any construct we put on the real world is a product of our heads. So the real target (term/concept) of your concern surely must be misplaced? What am I missing? Fully agree! The thing that 'happens again' is "on the meaning side of the house". That is what Mark and John Hall and I have been saying. If we all agree to that, then, as Mark pointed out, that concept is missing from SBVR, because a 'state of affairs' is the physical happening. We can decide what it should be called, but we need it to talk about recurrence. But wait. The happening in the world we are making our decision in is an 'actuality', right? And a state of affairs that isn't one of those must be a happening in some other possible world, right? So what do we do about 'states of affairs' that don't happen. John says those things are also "on the meaning side of the house". In fact, the thing that doesn't happen and the thing that happens more than once are the same kind of thing -- a meaning thing. That is John's point. And that is the second issue. And finally, there is the question of planned situations and future situations and hypothetical situations that are prevented, and so on. At least the planned ones and future ones are (considered to be) real things. They just aren't current things. Some people think 'actualities' have to be current, "what any business person means by 'actual'", i.e., when he is distinguishing it from planned or hoped for. And that is the third issue. It is pretty clear that the thing that happens again, and the thing that will happen in the future are the same kind of thing, while the actual happening in the future is something more like the current happenings. So we need the two basic categories, but we need to decide about 'actualities' versus 'occurrences' on the real happening side of the house. -Ed Ron -Ed Paul Vincent *From:* Ed Barkmeyer [ mailto:edbark@nist.gov] *Sent:* 07 June 2011 00:51 *To:* Don Baisley *Cc:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is /not/ an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don *From:* Donald Chapin [ mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Juergen Boldt [ mailto:juergen@omg.org] < mailto:%5Bmailto:juergen@omg.org%5D> *Sent:* 23 December 2009 13:29 *To:* issues@omg.org < mailto:issues@omg.org>; sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk < mailto:john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk> .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org < mailto:juergen@omg.org> www.omg.org *[] < http://www.omg.org/signature.htm> -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov < mailto:edbark@nist.gov> National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2011 17:41:14 -0500 To: edbark@nist.gov From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Cc: Paul Vincent , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Ed, This may be OBE. (Sometimes real work gets in the way of this important stuff. Darn!) Anyway, see below. I think the important points are toward the bottom, relating to rules. Ron At 06:34 PM 6/7/2011, Edward Barkmeyer wrote: Ronald G. Ross wrote: You ask, can we agree to one clear definition of "state of affairs". With due respect to your background in these matters, I just don't get your point. I think perhaps it is mis-stated perhaps? A state-of-affairs is in the real world. It just is what it is ... as SBVR defines it, a event, activity, situation, or circumstance . Any business person in the world would get that. That is what I thought. In Date/Time 12.3 we wrote: A 'state of affairs' is an "event, activity, situation, or circumstance" ([SBVR] clause 8.6). That is, a .state of affairs. is an individual continuous state or event. In any vocabulary that considers time, every state of affairs that occurs, either hypothetically or actually, occurs over some time interval, although the time interval may not be known. No state of affairs "recurs". A state of affairs is a happening. Happenings don't recur. If something 'happens again', that is a different 'happening'. The something that 'happens again' is some kind of abstraction of the two happenings. >>Agree. (But I wouldn't use the word "happening". Too loaded toward 'event" if you look at the definitions in MWUD.) The pattern (vs. type) you want to assert is surely on the meaning side of the house. Any construct we put on the real world is a product of our heads. So the real target (term/concept) of your concern surely must be misplaced? What am I missing? Fully agree! The thing that 'happens again' is "on the meaning side of the house". >>Any pattern you see is on the "meaning side of the house." That is what Mark and John Hall and I have been saying. If we all agree to that, then, as Mark pointed out, that concept is missing from SBVR, because a 'state of affairs' is the physical happening. >>I wouldn't say "physical" (and I wouldn't say "happening".) I think it's pointless to speculate whether things like God (gods), love (hmmm), lost airline reservations (!!), etc., etc. are "physical". They are simply circumstances, situations, etc. in the real world that we need to talk about, if only to disallow them. 'Water running uphill' is a situation that could be ascribed to the real world (a situation or circumstance), but we believe it's impossible (a rule) in the literal sense. We can decide what it should be called, but we need it to talk about recurrence. But wait. The happening in the world we are making our decision in is an 'actuality', right? >>Water doesn't run uphill in any possible world (because of the law of gravity), so even though it's a state of affairs we can ascribe to the real world, it's not an actuality in any possible world. And a state of affairs that isn't one of those must be a happening in some other possible world, right? So what do we do about 'states of affairs' that don't happen. >>They are still states of affairs, just not actualities. You have to ascribe to the real world things that you want to assert are impossible or prohibitted. I see no problem or contradiction in that. Suppose in the future you change your mind about a situation or circumstance you said was impossible. Now it's possible (either because you change definitional rules, or your science was bad.) Water in turns out *can* run uphill in some possible worlds. Seems strange it that it wasn't a state of affairs all along. I think you have to allow for that. And I'm not even considering behavioral rules. In those you *must* allow prohibited states of affairs being actualities. The state of affairs you are prohibiting is *not* just in your head ... it's really possible out there in the real world. The rule may not have been violated yet, but it very well could be. John says those things are also "on the meaning side of the house". >>I can't see a situation or circumstance that's possible, but that you want to try to prohibit, just being on the meaning side of things. It's out there all right ... just lurking waiting to (in your words) to happen. In fact, the thing that doesn't happen and the thing that happens more than once are the same kind of thing -- a meaning thing. That is John's point. And that is the second issue. And finally, there is the question of planned situations and future situations and hypothetical situations that are prevented, and so on. At least the planned ones and future ones are (considered to be) real things. They just aren't current things. Some people think 'actualities' have to be current, "what any business person means by 'actual'", i.e., when he is distinguishing it from planned or hoped for. And that is the third issue. >>I'm pretty sure *most* business people (not all) know the difference between a plan for something and the real something. It is pretty clear that the thing that happens again, and the thing that will happen in the future are the same kind of thing, while the actual happening in the future is something more like the current happenings. So we need the two basic categories, but we need to decide about 'actualities' versus 'occurrences' on the real happening side of the house. -Ed Ron -Ed Paul Vincent *From:* Ed Barkmeyer [ mailto:edbark@nist.gov] *Sent:* 07 June 2011 00:51 *To:* Don Baisley *Cc:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is /not/ an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don *From:* Donald Chapin [ mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Juergen Boldt [ mailto:juergen@omg.org] < mailto:%5Bmailto:juergen@omg.org%5D> *Sent:* 23 December 2009 13:29 *To:* issues@omg.org < mailto:issues@omg.org >; sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk < mailto:john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk> .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org < mailto:juergen@omg.org> www.omg.org *[] < http://www.omg.org/signature.htm> -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov < mailto:edbark@nist.gov> National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2011 23:04:50 -0500 To: edbark@nist.gov From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Cc: Paul Vincent , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" All, After writing this e-mail earlier (see below re:rules and states of affairs), I thought of an interesting example for definitional rules. Consider the case of Pluto. * Until recently, by definitional rules, Pluto was considered a planet. * Now by definitional rules, Pluto is not considered a planet. What changed in the real world? Nothing. Nada. Zilch. So what's in the mind and what's not? I would submit the either: * Both the circumstance of Pluto (possibly) being a planet and the actuality of its being a planet are in our heads. * Both the circumstance of Pluto (possibly) being a planet and the actuality of its being a planet are in the real world. To me it makes no sense to say the circumstance of Pluto not being a planet is simply in our heads, but the circumstance of it *actually* being a planet is in the real world. It's all just a matter of definition (definitional rules). The safe thing to do is to say the real world is outside our heads, even when we talk about impossible circumstances. (And definitely so when we talk about prohibited circumstances.) (Read on). At 05:41 PM 6/9/2011, Ronald G. Ross wrote: Ed, This may be OBE. (Sometimes real work gets in the way of this important stuff. Darn!) Anyway, see below. I think the important points are toward the bottom, relating to rules. Ron At 06:34 PM 6/7/2011, Edward Barkmeyer wrote: Ronald G. Ross wrote: You ask, can we agree to one clear definition of "state of affairs". With due respect to your background in these matters, I just don't get your point. I think perhaps it is mis-stated perhaps? A state-of-affairs is in the real world. It just is what it is ... as SBVR defines it, a event, activity, situation, or circumstance . Any business person in the world would get that. That is what I thought. In Date/Time 12.3 we wrote: A 'state of affairs' is an "event, activity, situation, or circumstance" ([SBVR] clause 8.6). That is, a .state of affairs. is an individual continuous state or event. In any vocabulary that considers time, every state of affairs that occurs, either hypothetically or actually, occurs over some time interval, although the time interval may not be known. No state of affairs "recurs". A state of affairs is a happening. Happenings don't recur. If something 'happens again', that is a different 'happening'. The something that 'happens again' is some kind of abstraction of the two happenings. >>Agree. (But I wouldn't use the word "happening". Too loaded toward 'event" if you look at the definitions in MWUD.) The pattern (vs. type) you want to assert is surely on the meaning side of the house. Any construct we put on the real world is a product of our heads. So the real target (term/concept) of your concern surely must be misplaced? What am I missing? Fully agree! The thing that 'happens again' is "on the meaning side of the house". >>Any pattern you see is on the "meaning side of the house." That is what Mark and John Hall and I have been saying. If we all agree to that, then, as Mark pointed out, that concept is missing from SBVR, because a 'state of affairs' is the physical happening. >>I wouldn't say "physical" (and I wouldn't say "happening".) I think it's pointless to speculate whether things like God (gods), love (hmmm), lost airline reservations (!!), etc., etc. are "physical". They are simply circumstances, situations, etc. in the real world that we need to talk about, if only to disallow them. 'Water running uphill' is a situation that could be ascribed to the real world (a situation or circumstance), but we believe it's impossible (a rule) in the literal sense. We can decide what it should be called, but we need it to talk about recurrence. But wait. The happening in the world we are making our decision in is an 'actuality', right? >>Water doesn't run uphill in any possible world (because of the law of gravity), so even though it's a state of affairs we can ascribe to the real world, it's not an actuality in any possible world. And a state of affairs that isn't one of those must be a happening in some other possible world, right? So what do we do about 'states of affairs' that don't happen. >>They are still states of affairs, just not actualities. You have to ascribe to the real world things that you want to assert are impossible or prohibitted. I see no problem or contradiction in that. Suppose in the future you change your mind about a situation or circumstance you said was impossible. Now it's possible (either because you change definitional rules, or your science was bad.) Water in turns out *can* run uphill in some possible worlds. Seems strange it that it wasn't a state of affairs all along. I think you have to allow for that. And I'm not even considering behavioral rules. In those you *must* allow prohibited states of affairs being actualities. The state of affairs you are prohibiting is *not* just in your head ... it's really possible out there in the real world. The rule may not have been violated yet, but it very well could be. John says those things are also "on the meaning side of the house". >>I can't see a situation or circumstance that's possible, but that you want to try to prohibit, just being on the meaning side of things. It's out there all right ... just lurking waiting to (in your words) to happen. In fact, the thing that doesn't happen and the thing that happens more than once are the same kind of thing -- a meaning thing. That is John's point. And that is the second issue. And finally, there is the question of planned situations and future situations and hypothetical situations that are prevented, and so on. At least the planned ones and future ones are (considered to be) real things. They just aren't current things. Some people think 'actualities' have to be current, "what any business person means by 'actual'", i.e., when he is distinguishing it from planned or hoped for. And that is the third issue. >>I'm pretty sure *most* business people (not all) know the difference between a plan for something and the real something. It is pretty clear that the thing that happens again, and the thing that will happen in the future are the same kind of thing, while the actual happening in the future is something more like the current happenings. So we need the two basic categories, but we need to decide about 'actualities' versus 'occurrences' on the real happening side of the house. -Ed Ron -Ed Paul Vincent *From:* Ed Barkmeyer [ mailto:edbark@nist.gov] *Sent:* 07 June 2011 00:51 *To:* Don Baisley *Cc:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org *Subject:* Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Don Baisley wrote: Hi Donald, Regarding your alternative definitions of .occurrence., there is a second one that can be taken from page 19 of the Date-Time submission where it says this: An instance of the fact type state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval is called an occurrence. A state of affairs can have one occurrence, multiple occurrences (a recurring state of affairs), or none, depending on the state of affairs. Note that the Date/Time vocabulary defines .state of affairs* *occurs over*/ /*time interval. as a synonymous form of .state of affairs occurs for time interval., so the statement above from Date-Time matches what you identified as .Alternative 2 (SBVR).. The text Don cites is erroneously left over from an earlier writeup. It is inconsistent with the text of clause 12, and it is not normative. It is more evidence of the fact that the team is divided and confused about the relationship to SBVR concepts. This text assumed that a 'state of affairs' is not an individual event, but rather a kind of event or a model for events. And Don told us that was false. Thank you, Don, for pointing this out. We need to rewrite this text when we come to some agreement on the meaning of the term 'state of affairs' and its relationship to Date/Time. The proposed model is the normative text in clause 12. Clause 12 assumes that 'state of affairs' is the general type whose instances are happenings in some possible world. The fact type: 'state of affairs occurs over time interval' is meant to be interpreted as a property of an individual happening. You will note that there is a Necessity that a state of affairs occurs over at most one time interval. Note please that 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor occurs over the time period June 1975 to March 1976' is /not/ an instance of 'state of affairs occurs over time interval', because 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' does not designate an individual event, situation or circumstance, and thus does not formulate a 'state of affairs' (as we understood the SBVR definition). 'Richard Burton is married to Liz Taylor' formulates an 'occurrence type' -- a category of 'occurrences', a very specific kind of situation that has actually occurred twice. The actual happening that is an event, situation or circumstance is an 'occurrence'. The presumption of date/time is that any actual happening happens for some time interval. It is possible that a state may be taken to happen/occur over all time of interest to anyone. This is the case for situations that are mathematical truths, but also for situations that are taken to be constant over all time relative to the business, e.g., France is a nation. Every occurrence satisfies 'thing occurs at some time', but it may also satisfy 'thing causes thing' and 'thing is instance of "Richard is married to Liz"' and 'Time magazine reports event'. Occurrences are things; they can instantiate many different meanings. A 'life form' is a thing that lives, but that doesn't mean that a life form can only be described by a proposition about living. In a similar way, an occurrence is a thing that occurs, but it can be partly described by other propositions. -Ed Regards, Don *From:* Donald Chapin [ mailto:Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com] *Sent:* Monday, June 06, 2011 4:35 AM *To:* sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue 2011-06-06 Updated draft resolution for Issue 14849 based for discussions based on various people.s input. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *From:* Juergen Boldt [ mailto:juergen@omg.org] < mailto:%5Bmailto:juergen@omg.org%5D> *Sent:* 23 December 2009 13:29 *To:* issues@omg.org < mailto:issues@omg.org >; sbvr-rtf@omg.org < mailto:sbvr-rtf@omg.org> *Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk < mailto:john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk> .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org < mailto:juergen@omg.org> www.omg.org *[] < http://www.omg.org/signature.htm> -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov < mailto:edbark@nist.gov> National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10432:5.2.15,1.0.148,0.0.0000 definitions=2011-05-09_06:2011-05-09,2011-05-09,1970-01-01 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 ipscore=0 suspectscore=0 phishscore=0 bulkscore=0 adultscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx engine=6.0.2-1012030000 definitions=main-1105090098 Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue From: keri Date: Mon, 09 May 2011 07:40:15 -1000 Cc: Donald Chapin , sbvr-rtf@omg.org To: John Hall X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1084) On May 6, 2011, at 7:12 PM, John Hall wrote: Keri, The fact type in SBVR is not 'thing is thing' it's 'thing1 is thing2' (where the '1' and '2' are subscripts - I can't do subscripts in my email). Understood. (I simply omitted the subscripts for the same reason.) When, in a fact type, we have two (subscripted) fact type roles for a given object type, we are saying that: Either, the fact type roles are played by different things of the given object type Or (not necessarily exclusive 'or') the fact type roles are different roles of the same thing I think that when we say 'thing1 is thing2' we mean that the fact type roles are different roles of the same thing. In instances of the fact type, the role designations are different ways of referring to the same object - in your example, different ways of referring to the same truck. That's what I thought Donald was trying to fix in his draft of the issue resolution. I disagreed with 'meaning1 is semantically equivalent to meaning2'. 'The big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday at noon' is not semantically equivalent to 'the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside'. But they are two individual concepts (in the model) that are co-extensive - two roles played by the same truck (in the real world). The '1' and '2' in 'truck1 is truck2' are differentiating the individual concepts, not two trucks. Compare your 'is' example with 'truck1 bumps truck2', in which - by the meaning of 'bumps' - we mean two different trucks. Exactly. And we need the verb "is" to be able to talk about things like this. And, in the case of your second example to place a restriction on the "bumps" fact type (if that's called for) -- something to the effect that: truck1 is not (must not be) truck 2. Or, I could state the proposition that "The truck with plate ABC-123 bumped the truck with plate ABC-123." and hopefully the jury would not take that to be a likely (true) proposition. In any case, my point was simply that we need to keep our "is" verb in the SBVR vocabulary. It's not necessarily there to "put" things into an SBVR model but to support using our SBVR vocabulary to communicate about things. Are you suggesting that the change Donald's seeking is to define this "is" fact type in terms of co-extensivity? Keri John On 06/05/2011 21:17, keri wrote: SBVR is not only about stuff that's "in" an SBVR model. There are also uses of SBVR vocabulary, say, to state propositions and to be able to determine whether or not some proposition is true. The "is" (defined via "thing is thing") plays a role there. Consider this statement: "The big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday at noon is the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside." Is this a true proposition? The way to determine that would be to: determine the correspondence between "the big truck that bumped me in the crosswalk yesterday" (concept) and some actual truck in the real world (thing) determine the correspondence between "the blue truck parked this morning at the corner of Kuhio and Seaside" (concept) and some actual truck in the real world (thing) determine that these "two" things are the one, single truck in the real world (thing is thing) I don't see this as the two concepts having "semantic equivalence" -- I am evaluating this to be a true proposition (or not) by testing the "is-ness" of the things in the UOD as being the same thing. ~ Keri On May 6, 2011, at 7:00 AM, keri wrote: On May 5, 2011, at 7:41 PM, Donald Chapin wrote: Regarding .thing is thing., ... Interesting discussion this morning. We use the SBVR definition of "is" (that comes from the fact type "thing is thing") in defining 'classification'. How would that be done if we no longer have "is" defined? Keri --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Text inserted by Panda GP 2011: This message has NOT been classified as spam. If it is unsolicited mail (spam), click on the following link to reclassify it: It is spam! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Don Baisley To: "'sbvr-rtf@omg.org'" Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQHKg/4ZupF51udjsE6LWJreGFk5J5RMrz5ggAEWqQCAAxXvwIAAACPAgAHAX4CAABVp0IA+8uRQ Date: Sun, 15 May 2011 23:33:08 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.32] I have attached a proposed resolution to SBVR issue 14849. In discussion of this issue, several topics have been raised. One, the difference between .exists. and .occurs. (or .is actual.), is now covered by issue 16172. The idea of having some special type of concepts that could be defined using objectification of propositions has also been discussed, but addressing that idea is beyond the scope of issue 14849 . a separate issue should be raised if it is still needed. Another notion regarding sameness of things vs. coextensivity of concepts has also been discussed. I urge that we resolve issue 14849 without being sidetracked with other topics. The heart of the issue is about the need to be able to objectify states of affairs that are not necessarily actual because such states of affairs are involved in plans or are considered in other ways. Best regards, Don SBVR 14849 - objectification.doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: Clarify that objectifications based on a fact type can refer not only to actualities, but more generally to states of affairs, regardless of whether they are actual. Fix examples of objectifications to include objectifications of states of affairs that are not necessarily actual. Also, for SBVR Structured English in the explanation of using the demonstrative .that. for objectification, refer more generally to .state of affairs. rather than to .actuality.. Note that this resolution does not change the meaning of .fact type.. Involvement of a state of affairs in a planning or in some other actuality does not require the state of affairs to be an instance of a fact type. Formulations regarding that involvement use objectification, so it is sufficient to be able to objectify a state of affairs regardless of whether it is actual. Revised Text: In 9.2.7 in the entry for .objectification., in the second example, REPLACE the line that says: . . . The second variable ranges over the fact type .company reviews account.. with this line: . . . The second variable ranges over the concept .state of affairs.. In 9.2.7 in the entry for .objectification., in the fourth example, REMOVE the second and third sentences and REPLACE .is private. at the end of the example with .occurs privately. so that the example looks like this: Example: .EU-Rent privately reviews each corporate account.. A formulation of the example statement is similar to that of the previous two examples, but uses the fact type .state of affairs occurs privately.. In 9.2.7 in the entry for .objectification., in the last sentence of the last example, replace both occurrences of .state of affairs. with .actuality. so that the examples looks like this: Example: .If a rental car is returned late because the car has a mechanical breakdown ... In a possible formulation of this example, objectifications of .the car has a mechanical breakdown. and .the rental car is returned late. respectively formulate something for each role of the fact type .actuality causes actuality.. In 9.3 in the last sentence of the first note in the entry for .closed projection means question., REPLACE .state of affairs. with .actuality. so that the sentence says: However, the concept .cause. is a role that ranges over the concept .actuality., so an answer to a .why. question is often formulated using objectification (the last example under objectification considers one actuality as a cause of another). In C.1.2, Other Keywords, at the end of the third point in the explanation of the keyword .that., REPLACE the words .an actuality. with .a state of affairs.. Editorial Correction: In C.1.5, for the two examples of operative rules statements having the "Necessity" caption, REMOVE the .Necessity. caption so that the statements are formatted just like the other example statements above them in that section. The two statements are these and should look like this (with NO .Necessity. caption in front): If a car is assigned to a rental then the rental report of the rental must specify that the car is assigned to the rental. The rental report of each rental must specify what car is assigned to the rental. Disposition: Resolved From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 14:55:54 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcwcdcUWMfNeP2c6T1eFbagiAYs7pw== X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Good-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0302.4DDFAD6C.000D, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.5.27.124820:17:9.975, ip=81.149.51.65, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, TO_IN_SUBJECT, DOC_ATTACHED, __STOCK_PHRASE_8, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_BOLD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, HTML_50_70, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, NO_URI_FOUND X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2beaomr08.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0208.4DDFAE7B.00CE,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false To SBVR RTF Participants . Attached is an updated proposed Issue 14849 Resolution containing the remaining items not covered in separate Issues, and including three new categories of .state of affairs. to enable talking unambiguously about .states of affairs and occurrences both in SBVR and in the Date-Time Vocabulary. The second attached file is an extracted Clause 12.3 .Occurrence. from the latest version of the Date-Time Vocabulary submission that was submitted this past Monday showing the changes made to this subclause just before the specification was submitted -- plus some synonym substitution using two of the three new categories of .state of affairs. as proposed for SBVR in the attached Issue 14849 Issue resolution proposal. Please note: I took great care just to substitute signifiers in the attached Date-Time Clause 12.3 document and to leave meanings and structures as they were proposed in the most recent submission. I may not have done that perfectly, but that was my firm intention. I purposely avoided substituting terms in CLIF and OCL statements, as I am not qualified to do that, with one exception where .state of affairs. had already been substituted by .occurrence.. Please note: Both of these documents are just strawman versions with a single purpose. That is to start a fresh conversation that will bring the SBVR and Date-Time teams to place where they can create enough co-existence between the two standards. What I have attached is certainly no finished piece of work. I apologize that these documents are arriving so late. I only learned about the changes to the Date-Time Vocabulary specification Wednesday morning and having been working full time since then, in conversation with the parties, to provide a foundation for finding common ground. Since it.s so close to today.s telecon and people will not have had time to read these documents, I.m happy to schedule an extra SBVR RTF telecon the first part of next week, say Tuesday. Let.s each of us make every effort to find common ground so that all the good work and investment of time and effort over the years can start to bring real business value to users organizations. Donald SBVR 14849 - objectification + (Individual) State of Affairs Concept 2011-05-27-1430-BST.doc date-time 2011-05-23 Clause 12-3 'Occurences' Strawman Synchronization with Revised SBVR Clause 8-6 'State of Affairs' 2011-05-27-0900-BST WITH CHANGES.doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Resolution: 1. Clarify that objectifications based on a fact type can refer not only to actualities, but more generally to states of affairs, regardless of whether they are actual. Fix examples of objectifications to include objectifications of states of affairs that are not necessarily actual. Also, for SBVR Structured English in the explanation of using the demonstrative .that. for objectification, refer more generally to .state of affairs. rather than to .actuality.. Note that this resolution does not change the meaning of .fact type.. Involvement of a state of affairs in a planning or in some other actuality does not require the state of affairs to be an instance of a fact type. Formulations regarding that involvement use objectification, so it is sufficient to be able to objectify a state of affairs regardless of whether it is actual. 2. Add entries for state of affairs concept, occurrence state of affairs concepts and individual state of affairs concept to be able to talk about states of affairs and not just actualities. 3. Clarify the definition of .state of affairs. and add clarifying notes. 4. .Add three categories of .state of affairs. to be able to talk about states of affairs and time unambiguously. Revised Text: On page 21 after the entry for .fact type. ADD these three entries: state of affairs concept Definition: concept that corresponds to states of affairs Definition: concept that is the meaning of a sentence clause that involves one or more noun concepts in roles as subject, direct object, or indirect object(s) where at least one of them is un-quantified, and therefore an .open,. role; and whose instances are all states of affairs Concept Type: concept type Necessity: Each state of affairs concept specializes the concept .state of affairs.. Necessity: Each fact type is a state of affairs concept. Possibility: A noun concept may be a state of affairs concept. Synonym: clause pattern occurrence state of affairs concept Definition: concept that is represented by a sentence and that corresponds to a .state of being. state of affairs and that has instances that are occurrence states of affairs Concept Type: concept type Synonym: unitary state of affairs concept Note: An occurrence state of affairs concept may be thought of as a .zero-ary fact type. . a fact type that has no roles and therefore looks like a fact. It corresponds to zero or more occurrences Example: .John is writing a book. represents an occurrence state of affairs concept that corresponds to each of the occurrences of John actually writing a book. Possibility: Each occurrence state of affairs may be an instance of more than one occurrence state of affairs concept. Possibility: Each occurrence state of affairs concept corresponds to exactly one .state of being. state of affairs and has zero or more instances that are occurrence states of affairs. individual state of affairs concept Definition: proposition that uses exactly one state of affairs concept in which each role is filled with an individual (noun) concept On page 39 under the entry for .state of affairs. REPLACE this definition: Definition: event, activity, situation, or circumstance WITH: Definition: thing that is an event, activity, situation, or circumstance that is taken into account in the universe of discourse. Note: States of affairs may be imagined and expressed in some form (e.g. a unicorn); planned and set forth in some way (e.g. conversion ratio, a project plan); orhave come into being in the material (physical) domain (e.g. an engine, a sheet of paper, a diamond) in the universe of discourse Note: States of affairs are occuring or are not occurring in the domain that is the subject of the SBVR model, i.e. the universe of discourse, for which the SBVR Model provides meanings, representations and expressions. .States of affairs., which are a kind of .thing. in the universe of discourse, correspond to .propositions., which are a kind of SBVR .meaning.. Note: While the possibility of .occurring. over time is inherent in state of affairs, in practice the time during which the state of affairs is occuring may be so short that it is viewed by the semantic community as occurring only at a point in time. On page 39 following the entry for .state of affairs. ADD three categories of .state of affairs.: occurrence state of affairs Definition: .state of being. state of affairs or activity state of affairs that occurs throughout at least one time interval in the world of interest Definition: state of affairs that is an event Synonym: temporal state of affairs, event .state of being. state of affairs Definition: state of affairs that is defined by one or more conditions independent of any reference to time Synonym: situation, circumstance activity state of affairs Definition: state of affairs that is defined by the nature of an activity independent of any reference to the time of doing / executing the activity Synonym: activity In 9.2.7 in the entry for .objectification., in the second example, REPLACE the line that says: . . . The second variable ranges over the fact type .company reviews account.. with this line: . . . The second variable ranges over the concept .state of affairs.. In 9.2.7 in the entry for .objectification., in the fourth example, REMOVE the second and third sentences and REPLACE .is private. at the end of the example with .occurs privately. so that the example looks like this: Example: .EU-Rent privately reviews each corporate account.. A formulation of the example statement is similar to that of the previous two examples, but uses the fact type .state of affairs occurs privately.. In 9.2.7 in the entry for .objectification., in the last sentence of the last example, replace both occurrences of .state of affairs. with .actuality. so that the examples looks like this: Example: .If a rental car is returned late because the car has a mechanical breakdown ... In a possible formulation of this example, objectifications of .the car has a mechanical breakdown. and .the rental car is returned late. respectively formulate something for each role of the fact type .actuality causes actuality.. In 9.3 in the last sentence of the first note in the entry for .closed projection means question., REPLACE .state of affairs. with .actuality. so that the sentence says: However, the concept .cause. is a role that ranges over the concept .actuality., so an answer to a .why. question is often formulated using objectification (the last example under objectification considers one actuality as a cause of another). In C.1.2, Other Keywords, at the end of the third point in the explanation of the keyword .that., REPLACE the words .an actuality. with .a state of affairs.. Editorial Correction: In C.1.5, for the two examples of operative rules statements having the "Necessity" caption, REMOVE the .Necessity. caption so that the statements are formatted just like the other example statements above them in that section. The two statements are these and should look like this (with NO .Necessity. caption in front): If a car is assigned to a rental then the rental report of the rental must specify that the car is assigned to the rental. The rental report of each rental must specify what car is assigned to the rental. Disposition: Resolved From: "Donald Chapin" To: "'Mark H Linehan'" , Subject: RE: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2011 09:17:05 -0400 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: Acwc5poUzjYoVoonRsq9ROTWrmWaCgHZJgZg X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Neutral-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4DECD352.009B, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=7/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.6.6.123022:17:7.586, ip=184.74.140.210, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, DATE_TZ_NA, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN, __CTE, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, __ANY_URI, __URI_NO_WWW, __URI_NO_PATH, __STOCK_PHRASE_8, BODY_SIZE_5000_5999, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, BODY_SIZE_7000_LESS X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2bthomr09.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0206.4DECD362.0198,ss=1,fgs=0, ip=184.74.140.210, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Mark, -----Original Message----- From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: 27 May 2011 23:23 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR I forgot to read the modified version of 12.3 before sending my previous comments on the proposed issue resolution. I must say that I find it very strange reading a set of text where the terms I know are replaced by terms that I don't understand. So I doubt that I read this the way Donald intended. [Donald] I ran out of time before last week's to create a separate short document comparing the key terminological entries on state of affairs and occurrence between the two specs. I should have stopped there and not tried to take the shortcut of showing a potential beginning of a harmonization by doing a replace of four signifiers. That was counter-productive and I'm really sorry for the time it wasted. I should not have tried to do quite so much that quickly. I will prepare that short comparison table as soon as I can, so each team can work with their respective specifications as it is, but still see the touch points and open questions regarding which we are looking for common ground. Donald I'm guessing that what Donald (and Don?) want to do is distinguish between temporal and atemporal statements or propositions, not between temporal and atemporal states of affairs. Maybe you want fact types like "temporal proposition corresponds to occurrence (or "occurrence state of affairs")" and "atemporal proposition corresponds to state of affairs". My point is that states of affairs do not come in temporal and atemporal subtypes because all states of affairs occur at some time. But it is true that we know the time of some states of affairs but not of others. Overall, I think it is not helpful to replace an existing set of terms with different terms without a good reason. And I don't understand the motivation behind this work. I would much prefer reading a document that explains why terms need to be divided or reorganized, rather than trying to understand the end result of such a change. Frankly, I think my time has been wasted by being asked to "backwards engineer" what Donald is trying to do. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, Model Driven Business Transformation IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: Date: 05/27/2011 10:06 AM Subject: [SBVR-RTF] Simplified Proposed Issue 14849 Resolution + Discussion Document for Common Concepts and Language that Work for Both the Date-Time Vocabulary and SBVR To SBVR RTF Participants - Attached is an updated proposed Issue 14849 Resolution containing the remaining items not covered in separate Issues, and including three new categories of 'state of affairs' to enable talking unambiguously about 'states of affairs and occurrences both in SBVR and in the Date-Time Vocabulary. The second attached file is an extracted Clause 12.3 "Occurrence" from the latest version of the Date-Time Vocabulary submission that was submitted this past Monday showing the changes made to this subclause just before the specification was submitted -- plus some synonym substitution using two of the three new categories of 'state of affairs' as proposed for SBVR in the attached Issue 14849 Issue resolution proposal. Please note: I took great care just to substitute signifiers in the attached Date-Time Clause 12.3 document and to leave meanings and structures as they were proposed in the most recent submission. I may not have done that perfectly, but that was my firm intention. I purposely avoided substituting terms in CLIF and OCL statements, as I am not qualified to do that, with one exception where "state of affairs" had already been substituted by "occurrence." Please note: Both of these documents are just strawman versions with a single purpose. That is to start a fresh conversation that will bring the SBVR and Date-Time teams to place where they can create enough co-existence between the two standards. What I have attached is certainly no finished piece of work. I apologize that these documents are arriving so late. I only learned about the changes to the Date-Time Vocabulary specification Wednesday morning and having been working full time since then, in conversation with the parties, to provide a foundation for finding common ground. Since it's so close to today's telecon and people will not have had time to read these documents, I'm happy to schedule an extra SBVR RTF telecon the first part of next week, say Tuesday. Let's each of us make every effort to find common ground so that all the good work and investment of time and effort over the years can start to bring real business value to users organizations. Donald [attachment "SBVR 14849 - objectification + (Individual) State of Affairs Concept 2011-05-27-1430-BST.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] [attachment "date-time 2011-05-23 Clause 12-3 'Occurences' Strawman Synchronization with Revised SBVR Clause 8-6 'State of Affairs' 2011-05-27-0900-BST WITH CHANGES.doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:19:34 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: SBVR RTF , "date-time@omg.org" Subject: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: p5TKJdEA016782 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1309983585.12802@csMV1duv5DViop5sM7N1cQ X-Spam-Status: No X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov I am a little slow, but I think I finally understand the problem that Date/Time is having with the SBVR RTF. We have importantly different philosophical models. Don Baisley wrote: *What States of Affairs Can Play the Role of WHAT HAPPENS* In practical usage only states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences play the ._state of affairs_. role (the .WHAT HAPPENS. role) in the fact type ._state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_.. This starts in the middle of the movie. Per SBVR, 'state of affairs' is 'event, situation or circumstance'. Per SBVR, 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that occurs (FL:obtains) in the world of interest. That is, it is 'included in' that world (which is itself a gigantic state of affairs, maybe). Per Don, 'temporal occurrence' is "an actuality that a given state of affairs occurs over a given time interval". Thus it is possible to talk about 'states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences', i.e., states of affairs that cannot be described using the fact type 'state of affairs occurs over time interval'. Whether or not an actual state of affairs is a temporal occurrence is determined by examining the statement of the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs for these criteria: 1. the statement identifies some particular state of affairs (what happens) 2. the statement identifies some particular time interval (when) 3. the meaning of the statement is that the state of affairs (what happens) occurs for that time interval (when). So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in relationship to propositions_. You have to start with a statement of a proposition, and this gives rise to a state of affairs. The state of affairs is determined entirely by the proposition used to describe it! This means that a particular proposition is a requirement for the existence of a state or event in the world of interest. That is one established metaphysical view -- reality is only what we perceive and describe. An alternative view is that the world exists, and human consciousness interacts with it. Propositions are created in the human consciousness to characterize what happens in the world. Thought is broader than the world; humans can also invent. We can create propositions to describe something that may happen or will happen, but is not a happening in the world of interest. But we are also smart enough to distinguish the relationship of characterizations to real events. We can also create propositions that describe more than one happening. Every thought is an abstraction, some are more abstract than others. Don uses the human-centric view, because it supports the idea that a world is only known by the fact model we use to describe it. The world does not contain anything whose existence cannot be deduced from the fact model. Reality is only what we describe. This is definitely a viable approach. It leads to the SBVR view: a 'state of affairs' is the thing that is described by a given proposition, nothing more and nothing less. And because we can distinguish reality from hypothesis, the thing that corresponds to a false proposition is a hypothetical thing and the thing that corresponds to a true proposition is an 'actuality'. A 'fact' is a true proposition, and the actuality is the thing in the world to which it corresponds. The only actualities are those that instantiate facts. In this model there cannot be a proposition that 'corresponds to' multiple event/state/activity things. If two event/state/activity things exist, each must instantiate a different proposition, because they cannot otherwise be distinguished. Two event/state/activity things may have some 'nature of the event' in common, e.g. the tree is struck by lightning on June 5, the tree is struck by lightning on June25. One may think that these two events in some way correspond to the proposition 'the tree is struck by lightning', but they don't! There is only one state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning' and these two distinguishable events are distinct states of affairs. In fact, a particular ('actualist') formal model says that the events on June 5 and June 25 are 'included in' the state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning'. (and 'included in' has many of the axioms of 'part of') So a state of affairs does not "recur", but it can have multiple _inclusions_ that are distinct states of affairs. It follows that if 'the tree is struck by lightning on June 5' is true and 'the tree is struck by lightning on June25 is true', then 'the tree is struck by lightning' must be true. The actuality that the tree is struck by lightning is in some sense the combination of the dated actualities. A temporal occurrence can be identified using the implicit reference scheme for any fact type: by identifying the things that fill the roles. A temporal occurrence can be identified by identifying what state of affairs happened and the time interval for which the state of affairs happened. According to SBVR, a state of affairs can be identified by the proposition that characterizes it. Don is just restating that in terms of the particular fact type that characterizes all 'temporal occurrences'. Note that the concepts .event. and .temporal occurrence. are different concepts, but they are not necessarily disjoint concepts. Both specialize the concept .state of affairs.. SBVR makes clear that not all states of affairs happen. Don doesn't tell us what he means by 'event' here. (And I no longer assume that we mean the same thing.) An actuality is a state of affairs that is actual. That is, an actuality is just a state of affairs that is in the state of being actual. Which just replaces one undefined symbol with another. The point is that an actuality is just the state of affairs that corresponds to a true proposition. In SBVR, the proposition is the horse and the state of affairs is the cart. Note also that the SBVR definition of 'proposition is true' is therefore circular. Because reality is the fact model, truth should be the primitive idea. A misconception held by some is that there are multiple actualities of a given state of affairs. But an actuality IS a state of affairs. If the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously at different times, then there are multiple temporal occurrences of that one state of affairs, each of which, being a temporal occurrence, is a separate, distinct state of affairs. That is, the idea that 'the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously' does not make sense. The thing these actualities have in common is a different state of affairs. According to Don, the commonality between them is that the same 'common state of affairs' plays the 'state of affairs' role in propositions that describe them, i.e., the 'state of affairs' role in 'state of affairs occurs over time'. According to the underlying philosophical model, they are both 'included in' the common state of affairs. Fact types such as ._state of affairs_ occurs hypothetically., ._state of affairs_ is planned. and ._state of affairs_ is anticipated., if wanted, should be considered separately from the concept of temporal occurrence. What makes a temporal occurrence is that a given state of affairs OCCURS for a given time interval. You don.t have a temporal occurrence if the state of affairs doesn.t occur for the time interval. Right. And this means there is no clear relationship between the proposition "'the Board of Governors meets' is planned" and "'the Board of Governors meets' will occur the week of 4 July", and thus no clear relationship between the two states of affairs. Neither of them is the meeting! They are two different models of the meeting -- the objectifications of different facts. They are both included in the state 'the Board of Governors meets', which also includes all past and future meetings that are in our world of interest. Many fact types have roles that range over the concept .state of affairs. or over specializations of that concept. These fact types include the meanings of numerous adverbs, adjunct clauses and verbs. This is how objectification is nearly as common in the structure of propositions as quantification. Yes. It is a common copout for natural language processing, but it is almost entirely absent in rules implementation systems. That is because rules rarely use adverbs or clauses that qualify the actions rather than the things involved. Unlike NLP vocabularies, business vocabularies have ternary and quaternary fact types that include the critical prepositional phrases in the verb concepts. And that makes the corresponding fact models much more tractable, by reducing the occurrences of 'states of affairs' to a few well-defined (special case) patterns, such as Don's temporal occurrence fact type. The fact type ._state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_. is in no way special in this regard. Quite the contrary, it is special, because we code systems to support that fact type with built-in intelligence. And it is very special to the OMG Date/time project, because we are defining it rigorously, while SBVR simply assumes the existence of a supporting semantics for its examples of use of 'state of affairs'. I now think I understand where Don is coming from: a 'state of affairs' is the objectification of a specific 'proposition'; there are no others. The idea is that these things exist because we model them. That is a very useful pragmatic model, and it is consistent. The Date/Time model is exactly the reverse at the philosophical base. It views events, states, situations, activities as happenings in the world of interest, and propositions as conceptualizations of those things. We assume that a given happening might satisfy multiple characterizations (propositions). And thus we think of the characterizations of events, states, situations, etc., as _concepts_, and the actual events, states, situations, etc., as _instances_ of those concepts. Further we insist that any of these real situations, past, present, or future has an intrinsic time interval that is the time span of the existence of the event. A situation that doesn't happen only exists as a concept. An occurrence concept is represented by a statement, but it is not necessarily a proposition. The statement is true in each of the situations that is an instance of the concept, but whether it is "true in the possible world" is something we have not been able to define. And occurrence concepts can be individual or general, and can specialize each other. If proposition p implies proposition q, then every instance of the occurrence concept p is an instance of the occurrence concept q. That said, we also admit that there are conceptualizations that are jointly satisfied by a combination of real events or states -- we might call them 'abstract states' -- and in that way we touch directly on the SBVR approach, because such abstract states only exist as the images of propositions. That is, we distinguish joint occurrence -- the state is a composite of other states (and is an SBVR 'state of affairs') -- and several occurrences -- each state is of itself an instance of a common description. (That is, we distinguish composition from generalization in relationships among occurrences.) Now, a proposition of the form 'state of affairs occurs over time' is one way of characterizing an 'occurrence', but the same occurrence may have other characterizations using different fact types. In particular, the 'state of affairs' that occurs over the time is also a characterization of the same occurrence -- it is just a more general concept. We believe that it is important to have this view, if we are to reason formally about events and times. The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a different proposition must be a different actuality.) Part of the date/time rationale for the view that 's..t happens and humans describe it' is that we often find it necessary to merge information from multiple sources and multiple business viewpoints. And that reflects a difference in the goal of Date/Time. It is not about capturing unified business vocabularies and rules; it is about providing a particular business vocabulary, together with a formal semantics that supports business integration and systems engineering and decision support systems across an enterprise. An event, state, etc., is what it proves to be, not what individuals thought it was. So, I think we can say that we have a major philosophical conflict between the SBVR 'state of affairs' concept and the Date/Time concepts, even though they are both closely related to propositions. It seems to me that 1) every instance of Don's 'temporal occurrence' concept (which does not exist in SBVR) is an instance of Date/Time 'occurrence', 2) every instance of 'occurrence' in Date/Time could be a 'temporal occurrence', that is, it could have one or more such formulations (along with others). 3) SBVR 'state of affairs' does not correspond to any concept in the Date/Time model 4) Date/time 'occurrence type' does not correspond to any concept in SBVR 5) we still have to work out 'actuality'. I would point out that SBVR does not actually have the 'temporal occurrence' model, and it does not actually state the 'included in' fact type (from philosophical actualism) that explains Don's distinctions. And I did not read SBVR to say that 'state of affairs' means the result of an objectification. So, the above summary of the divergence of the two models is based on what Don wrote here, not on reading the text OMG adopted. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: Don Baisley To: "edbark@nist.gov" , SBVR RTF , "date-time@omg.org" Subject: RE: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences Thread-Topic: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences Thread-Index: AQHMNpo9g9R5D6fxjUaol6yC6Q5glZTW+g8A Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 07:40:09 +0000 Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: x-originating-ip: [157.54.51.37] X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by amethyst.omg.org id p617WSxP019974 Ed, You wrote: > I am a little slow, .... But you are not slow to jump to the wrong conclusion. > So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in > relationship to propositions_. False. A proposition identifies a state of affairs. I don't say that all states of affairs are identified. I don't say states of affairs exist only in relation to propositions. Ed, you made that up. Donald asked that I describe in terms of the statement of a proposition that corresponds to a state of affairs how to tell whether the state of affairs was a temporal occurrence. He took notes. I included the answer in the document we shared. There is no basis in what was written or in SBVR for concluding that no state of affairs exists without a proposition. > The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. > (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described > by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a > different proposition must be a different actuality.) More made up nonsense. There is no such rule in SBVR. SBVR would have a serious problem if what you said was true. And then you could have quoted something from SBVR to support your claim. But you can't, Ed, because you made this up. SBVR provides a good foundation for the Date-Time submission. I know of only five people that have been contributing to Date-Time over the last few months. At least three of five find SBVR to be a good foundation. The Date-Time submission defines many temporal concepts that can be useful to many businesses. Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 1:20 PM To: SBVR RTF; date-time@omg.org Subject: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences I am a little slow, but I think I finally understand the problem that Date/Time is having with the SBVR RTF. We have importantly different philosophical models. Don Baisley wrote: > *What States of Affairs Can Play the Role of WHAT HAPPENS* > > In practical usage only states of affairs that are not temporal > occurrences play the '_state of affairs_' role (the "WHAT HAPPENS" > role) in the fact type '_state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_'. > This starts in the middle of the movie. Per SBVR, 'state of affairs' is 'event, situation or circumstance'. Per SBVR, 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that occurs (FL:obtains) in the world of interest. That is, it is 'included in' that world (which is itself a gigantic state of affairs, maybe). Per Don, 'temporal occurrence' is "an actuality that a given state of affairs occurs over a given time interval". Thus it is possible to talk about 'states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences', i.e., states of affairs that cannot be described using the fact type 'state of affairs occurs over time interval'. > Whether or not an actual state of affairs is a temporal occurrence is > determined by examining the statement of the proposition that > corresponds to the state of affairs for these criteria: > > 1. the statement identifies some particular state of affairs (what > happens) > > 2. the statement identifies some particular time interval (when) > > 3. the meaning of the statement is that the state of affairs (what > happens) occurs for that time interval (when). > So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in relationship to propositions_. You have to start with a statement of a proposition, and this gives rise to a state of affairs. The state of affairs is determined entirely by the proposition used to describe it! This means that a particular proposition is a requirement for the existence of a state or event in the world of interest. That is one established metaphysical view -- reality is only what we perceive and describe. An alternative view is that the world exists, and human consciousness interacts with it. Propositions are created in the human consciousness to characterize what happens in the world. Thought is broader than the world; humans can also invent. We can create propositions to describe something that may happen or will happen, but is not a happening in the world of interest. But we are also smart enough to distinguish the relationship of characterizations to real events. We can also create propositions that describe more than one happening. Every thought is an abstraction, some are more abstract than others. Don uses the human-centric view, because it supports the idea that a world is only known by the fact model we use to describe it. The world does not contain anything whose existence cannot be deduced from the fact model. Reality is only what we describe. This is definitely a viable approach. It leads to the SBVR view: a 'state of affairs' is the thing that is described by a given proposition, nothing more and nothing less. And because we can distinguish reality from hypothesis, the thing that corresponds to a false proposition is a hypothetical thing and the thing that corresponds to a true proposition is an 'actuality'. A 'fact' is a true proposition, and the actuality is the thing in the world to which it corresponds. The only actualities are those that instantiate facts. In this model there cannot be a proposition that 'corresponds to' multiple event/state/activity things. If two event/state/activity things exist, each must instantiate a different proposition, because they cannot otherwise be distinguished. Two event/state/activity things may have some 'nature of the event' in common, e.g. the tree is struck by lightning on June 5, the tree is struck by lightning on June25. One may think that these two events in some way correspond to the proposition 'the tree is struck by lightning', but they don't! There is only one state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning' and these two distinguishable events are distinct states of affairs. In fact, a particular ('actualist') formal model says that the events on June 5 and June 25 are 'included in' the state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning'. (and 'included in' has many of the axioms of 'part of') So a state of affairs does not "recur", but it can have multiple _inclusions_ that are distinct states of affairs. It follows that if 'the tree is struck by lightning on June 5' is true and 'the tree is struck by lightning on June25 is true', then 'the tree is struck by lightning' must be true. The actuality that the tree is struck by lightning is in some sense the combination of the dated actualities. > A temporal occurrence can be identified using the implicit reference > scheme for any fact type: by identifying the things that fill the > roles. A temporal occurrence can be identified by identifying what > state of affairs happened and the time interval for which the state of > affairs happened. > According to SBVR, a state of affairs can be identified by the proposition that characterizes it. Don is just restating that in terms of the particular fact type that characterizes all 'temporal occurrences'. > Note that the concepts 'event' and 'temporal occurrence' are different > concepts, but they are not necessarily disjoint concepts. Both > specialize the concept 'state of affairs'. SBVR makes clear that not > all states of affairs happen. > Don doesn't tell us what he means by 'event' here. (And I no longer assume that we mean the same thing.) > An actuality is a state of affairs that is actual. That is, an > actuality is just a state of affairs that is in the state of being > actual. > Which just replaces one undefined symbol with another. The point is that an actuality is just the state of affairs that corresponds to a true proposition. In SBVR, the proposition is the horse and the state of affairs is the cart. Note also that the SBVR definition of 'proposition is true' is therefore circular. Because reality is the fact model, truth should be the primitive idea. > A misconception held by some is that there are multiple actualities of > a given state of affairs. But an actuality IS a state of affairs. If > the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously at different > times, then there are multiple temporal occurrences of that one state > of affairs, each of which, being a temporal occurrence, is a separate, > distinct state of affairs. > That is, the idea that 'the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously' does not make sense. The thing these actualities have in common is a different state of affairs. According to Don, the commonality between them is that the same 'common state of affairs' plays the 'state of affairs' role in propositions that describe them, i.e., the 'state of affairs' role in 'state of affairs occurs over time'. According to the underlying philosophical model, they are both 'included in' the common state of affairs. > Fact types such as '_state of affairs_ occurs hypothetically', '_state > of affairs_ is planned' and '_state of affairs_ is anticipated', if > wanted, should be considered separately from the concept of temporal > occurrence. What makes a temporal occurrence is that a given state of > affairs OCCURS for a given time interval. You don't have a temporal > occurrence if the state of affairs doesn't occur for the time interval. > Right. And this means there is no clear relationship between the proposition "'the Board of Governors meets' is planned" and "'the Board of Governors meets' will occur the week of 4 July", and thus no clear relationship between the two states of affairs. Neither of them is the meeting! They are two different models of the meeting -- the objectifications of different facts. They are both included in the state 'the Board of Governors meets', which also includes all past and future meetings that are in our world of interest. > Many fact types have roles that range over the concept 'state of > affairs' or over specializations of that concept. These fact types > include the meanings of numerous adverbs, adjunct clauses and verbs. > This is how objectification is nearly as common in the structure of > propositions as quantification. > Yes. It is a common copout for natural language processing, but it is almost entirely absent in rules implementation systems. That is because rules rarely use adverbs or clauses that qualify the actions rather than the things involved. Unlike NLP vocabularies, business vocabularies have ternary and quaternary fact types that include the critical prepositional phrases in the verb concepts. And that makes the corresponding fact models much more tractable, by reducing the occurrences of 'states of affairs' to a few well-defined (special case) patterns, such as Don's temporal occurrence fact type. > The fact type '_state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_' is in no > way special in this regard. > Quite the contrary, it is special, because we code systems to support that fact type with built-in intelligence. And it is very special to the OMG Date/time project, because we are defining it rigorously, while SBVR simply assumes the existence of a supporting semantics for its examples of use of 'state of affairs'. I now think I understand where Don is coming from: a 'state of affairs' is the objectification of a specific 'proposition'; there are no others. The idea is that these things exist because we model them. That is a very useful pragmatic model, and it is consistent. The Date/Time model is exactly the reverse at the philosophical base. It views events, states, situations, activities as happenings in the world of interest, and propositions as conceptualizations of those things. We assume that a given happening might satisfy multiple characterizations (propositions). And thus we think of the characterizations of events, states, situations, etc., as _concepts_, and the actual events, states, situations, etc., as _instances_ of those concepts. Further we insist that any of these real situations, past, present, or future has an intrinsic time interval that is the time span of the existence of the event. A situation that doesn't happen only exists as a concept. An occurrence concept is represented by a statement, but it is not necessarily a proposition. The statement is true in each of the situations that is an instance of the concept, but whether it is "true in the possible world" is something we have not been able to define. And occurrence concepts can be individual or general, and can specialize each other. If proposition p implies proposition q, then every instance of the occurrence concept p is an instance of the occurrence concept q. That said, we also admit that there are conceptualizations that are jointly satisfied by a combination of real events or states -- we might call them 'abstract states' -- and in that way we touch directly on the SBVR approach, because such abstract states only exist as the images of propositions. That is, we distinguish joint occurrence -- the state is a composite of other states (and is an SBVR 'state of affairs') -- and several occurrences -- each state is of itself an instance of a common description. (That is, we distinguish composition from generalization in relationships among occurrences.) Now, a proposition of the form 'state of affairs occurs over time' is one way of characterizing an 'occurrence', but the same occurrence may have other characterizations using different fact types. In particular, the 'state of affairs' that occurs over the time is also a characterization of the same occurrence -- it is just a more general concept. We believe that it is important to have this view, if we are to reason formally about events and times. The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a different proposition must be a different actuality.) Part of the date/time rationale for the view that 's..t happens and humans describe it' is that we often find it necessary to merge information from multiple sources and multiple business viewpoints. And that reflects a difference in the goal of Date/Time. It is not about capturing unified business vocabularies and rules; it is about providing a particular business vocabulary, together with a formal semantics that supports business integration and systems engineering and decision support systems across an enterprise. An event, state, etc., is what it proves to be, not what individuals thought it was. So, I think we can say that we have a major philosophical conflict between the SBVR 'state of affairs' concept and the Date/Time concepts, even though they are both closely related to propositions. It seems to me that 1) every instance of Don's 'temporal occurrence' concept (which does not exist in SBVR) is an instance of Date/Time 'occurrence', 2) every instance of 'occurrence' in Date/Time could be a 'temporal occurrence', that is, it could have one or more such formulations (along with others). 3) SBVR 'state of affairs' does not correspond to any concept in the Date/Time model 4) Date/time 'occurrence type' does not correspond to any concept in SBVR 5) we still have to work out 'actuality'. I would point out that SBVR does not actually have the 'temporal occurrence' model, and it does not actually state the 'included in' fact type (from philosophical actualism) that explains Don's distinctions. And I did not read SBVR to say that 'state of affairs' means the result of an objectification. So, the above summary of the divergence of the two models is based on what Don wrote here, not on reading the text OMG adopted. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:11:50 -0400 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Don Baisley CC: SBVR RTF , "date-time@omg.org" Subject: Re: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Don Baisley wrote: Ed, You wrote: I am a little slow, .... But you are not slow to jump to the wrong conclusion. So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in relationship to propositions_. False. A proposition identifies a state of affairs. I don't say that all states of affairs are identified. I don't say states of affairs exist only in relation to propositions. Ed, you made that up. Oh. I apologize. I assumed that the following sentence, which Don wrote, was meaningful: Whether or not an actual state of affairs is a temporal occurrence is determined by examining the statement of the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs for these criteria: So "the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs" doesn't necessarily exist, and may not be unique. Therefore, in general, it is not possible to determine whether a state of affairs is a temporal occurrence using the criteria Don states, which makes the whole paragraph completely worthless. And this from the same man who thinks that an occurrence of 'visiting Don at 1:00 A.M.' is not an occurrence of 'visiting Don'. I apparently wasted my time reading what Don wrote, and trying to make sense of it. I apologize to the RTF for wasting everyone's time. -Ed Donald asked that I describe in terms of the statement of a proposition that corresponds to a state of affairs how to tell whether the state of affairs was a temporal occurrence. He took notes. I included the answer in the document we shared. There is no basis in what was written or in SBVR for concluding that no state of affairs exists without a proposition. The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a different proposition must be a different actuality.) More made up nonsense. There is no such rule in SBVR. SBVR would have a serious problem if what you said was true. And then you could have quoted something from SBVR to support your claim. But you can't, Ed, because you made this up. SBVR provides a good foundation for the Date-Time submission. I know of only five people that have been contributing to Date-Time over the last few months. At least three of five find SBVR to be a good foundation. The Date-Time submission defines many temporal concepts that can be useful to many businesses. Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 1:20 PM To: SBVR RTF; date-time@omg.org Subject: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences I am a little slow, but I think I finally understand the problem that Date/Time is having with the SBVR RTF. We have importantly different philosophical models. Don Baisley wrote: *What States of Affairs Can Play the Role of WHAT HAPPENS* In practical usage only states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences play the '_state of affairs_' role (the "WHAT HAPPENS" role) in the fact type '_state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_'. This starts in the middle of the movie. Per SBVR, 'state of affairs' is 'event, situation or circumstance'. Per SBVR, 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that occurs (FL:obtains) in the world of interest. That is, it is 'included in' that world (which is itself a gigantic state of affairs, maybe). Per Don, 'temporal occurrence' is "an actuality that a given state of affairs occurs over a given time interval". Thus it is possible to talk about 'states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences', i.e., states of affairs that cannot be described using the fact type 'state of affairs occurs over time interval'. Whether or not an actual state of affairs is a temporal occurrence is determined by examining the statement of the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs for these criteria: 1. the statement identifies some particular state of affairs (what happens) 2. the statement identifies some particular time interval (when) 3. the meaning of the statement is that the state of affairs (what happens) occurs for that time interval (when). So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in relationship to propositions_. You have to start with a statement of a proposition, and this gives rise to a state of affairs. The state of affairs is determined entirely by the proposition used to describe it! This means that a particular proposition is a requirement for the existence of a state or event in the world of interest. That is one established metaphysical view -- reality is only what we perceive and describe. An alternative view is that the world exists, and human consciousness interacts with it. Propositions are created in the human consciousness to characterize what happens in the world. Thought is broader than the world; humans can also invent. We can create propositions to describe something that may happen or will happen, but is not a happening in the world of interest. But we are also smart enough to distinguish the relationship of characterizations to real events. We can also create propositions that describe more than one happening. Every thought is an abstraction, some are more abstract than others. Don uses the human-centric view, because it supports the idea that a world is only known by the fact model we use to describe it. The world does not contain anything whose existence cannot be deduced from the fact model. Reality is only what we describe. This is definitely a viable approach. It leads to the SBVR view: a 'state of affairs' is the thing that is described by a given proposition, nothing more and nothing less. And because we can distinguish reality from hypothesis, the thing that corresponds to a false proposition is a hypothetical thing and the thing that corresponds to a true proposition is an 'actuality'. A 'fact' is a true proposition, and the actuality is the thing in the world to which it corresponds. The only actualities are those that instantiate facts. In this model there cannot be a proposition that 'corresponds to' multiple event/state/activity things. If two event/state/activity things exist, each must instantiate a different proposition, because they cannot otherwise be distinguished. Two event/state/activity things may have some 'nature of the event' in common, e.g. the tree is struck by lightning on June 5, the tree is struck by lightning on June25. One may think that these two events in some way correspond to the proposition 'the tree is struck by lightning', but they don't! There is only one state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning' and these two distinguishable events are distinct states of affairs. In fact, a particular ('actualist') formal model says that the events on June 5 and June 25 are 'included in' the state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning'. (and 'included in' has many of the axioms of 'part of') So a state of affairs does not "recur", but it can have multiple _inclusions_ that are distinct states of affairs. It follows that if 'the tree is struck by lightning on June 5' is true and 'the tree is struck by lightning on June25 is true', then 'the tree is struck by lightning' must be true. The actuality that the tree is struck by lightning is in some sense the combination of the dated actualities. A temporal occurrence can be identified using the implicit reference scheme for any fact type: by identifying the things that fill the roles. A temporal occurrence can be identified by identifying what state of affairs happened and the time interval for which the state of affairs happened. According to SBVR, a state of affairs can be identified by the proposition that characterizes it. Don is just restating that in terms of the particular fact type that characterizes all 'temporal occurrences'. Note that the concepts 'event' and 'temporal occurrence' are different concepts, but they are not necessarily disjoint concepts. Both specialize the concept 'state of affairs'. SBVR makes clear that not all states of affairs happen. Don doesn't tell us what he means by 'event' here. (And I no longer assume that we mean the same thing.) An actuality is a state of affairs that is actual. That is, an actuality is just a state of affairs that is in the state of being actual. Which just replaces one undefined symbol with another. The point is that an actuality is just the state of affairs that corresponds to a true proposition. In SBVR, the proposition is the horse and the state of affairs is the cart. Note also that the SBVR definition of 'proposition is true' is therefore circular. Because reality is the fact model, truth should be the primitive idea. A misconception held by some is that there are multiple actualities of a given state of affairs. But an actuality IS a state of affairs. If the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously at different times, then there are multiple temporal occurrences of that one state of affairs, each of which, being a temporal occurrence, is a separate, distinct state of affairs. That is, the idea that 'the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously' does not make sense. The thing these actualities have in common is a different state of affairs. According to Don, the commonality between them is that the same 'common state of affairs' plays the 'state of affairs' role in propositions that describe them, i.e., the 'state of affairs' role in 'state of affairs occurs over time'. According to the underlying philosophical model, they are both 'included in' the common state of affairs. Fact types such as '_state of affairs_ occurs hypothetically', '_state of affairs_ is planned' and '_state of affairs_ is anticipated', if wanted, should be considered separately from the concept of temporal occurrence. What makes a temporal occurrence is that a given state of affairs OCCURS for a given time interval. You don't have a temporal occurrence if the state of affairs doesn't occur for the time interval. Right. And this means there is no clear relationship between the proposition "'the Board of Governors meets' is planned" and "'the Board of Governors meets' will occur the week of 4 July", and thus no clear relationship between the two states of affairs. Neither of them is the meeting! They are two different models of the meeting -- the objectifications of different facts. They are both included in the state 'the Board of Governors meets', which also includes all past and future meetings that are in our world of interest. Many fact types have roles that range over the concept 'state of affairs' or over specializations of that concept. These fact types include the meanings of numerous adverbs, adjunct clauses and verbs. This is how objectification is nearly as common in the structure of propositions as quantification. Yes. It is a common copout for natural language processing, but it is almost entirely absent in rules implementation systems. That is because rules rarely use adverbs or clauses that qualify the actions rather than the things involved. Unlike NLP vocabularies, business vocabularies have ternary and quaternary fact types that include the critical prepositional phrases in the verb concepts. And that makes the corresponding fact models much more tractable, by reducing the occurrences of 'states of affairs' to a few well-defined (special case) patterns, such as Don's temporal occurrence fact type. The fact type '_state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_' is in no way special in this regard. Quite the contrary, it is special, because we code systems to support that fact type with built-in intelligence. And it is very special to the OMG Date/time project, because we are defining it rigorously, while SBVR simply assumes the existence of a supporting semantics for its examples of use of 'state of affairs'. I now think I understand where Don is coming from: a 'state of affairs' is the objectification of a specific 'proposition'; there are no others. The idea is that these things exist because we model them. That is a very useful pragmatic model, and it is consistent. The Date/Time model is exactly the reverse at the philosophical base. It views events, states, situations, activities as happenings in the world of interest, and propositions as conceptualizations of those things. We assume that a given happening might satisfy multiple characterizations (propositions). And thus we think of the characterizations of events, states, situations, etc., as _concepts_, and the actual events, states, situations, etc., as _instances_ of those concepts. Further we insist that any of these real situations, past, present, or future has an intrinsic time interval that is the time span of the existence of the event. A situation that doesn't happen only exists as a concept. An occurrence concept is represented by a statement, but it is not necessarily a proposition. The statement is true in each of the situations that is an instance of the concept, but whether it is "true in the possible world" is something we have not been able to define. And occurrence concepts can be individual or general, and can specialize each other. If proposition p implies proposition q, then every instance of the occurrence concept p is an instance of the occurrence concept q. That said, we also admit that there are conceptualizations that are jointly satisfied by a combination of real events or states -- we might call them 'abstract states' -- and in that way we touch directly on the SBVR approach, because such abstract states only exist as the images of propositions. That is, we distinguish joint occurrence -- the state is a composite of other states (and is an SBVR 'state of affairs') -- and several occurrences -- each state is of itself an instance of a common description. (That is, we distinguish composition from generalization in relationships among occurrences.) Now, a proposition of the form 'state of affairs occurs over time' is one way of characterizing an 'occurrence', but the same occurrence may have other characterizations using different fact types. In particular, the 'state of affairs' that occurs over the time is also a characterization of the same occurrence -- it is just a more general concept. We believe that it is important to have this view, if we are to reason formally about events and times. The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a different proposition must be a different actuality.) Part of the date/time rationale for the view that 's..t happens and humans describe it' is that we often find it necessary to merge information from multiple sources and multiple business viewpoints. And that reflects a difference in the goal of Date/Time. It is not about capturing unified business vocabularies and rules; it is about providing a particular business vocabulary, together with a formal semantics that supports business integration and systems engineering and decision support systems across an enterprise. An event, state, etc., is what it proves to be, not what individuals thought it was. So, I think we can say that we have a major philosophical conflict between the SBVR 'state of affairs' concept and the Date/Time concepts, even though they are both closely related to propositions. It seems to me that 1) every instance of Don's 'temporal occurrence' concept (which does not exist in SBVR) is an instance of Date/Time 'occurrence', 2) every instance of 'occurrence' in Date/Time could be a 'temporal occurrence', that is, it could have one or more such formulations (along with others). 3) SBVR 'state of affairs' does not correspond to any concept in the Date/Time model 4) Date/time 'occurrence type' does not correspond to any concept in SBVR 5) we still have to work out 'actuality'. I would point out that SBVR does not actually have the 'temporal occurrence' model, and it does not actually state the 'included in' fact type (from philosophical actualism) that explains Don's distinctions. And I did not read SBVR to say that 'state of affairs' means the result of an objectification. So, the above summary of the divergence of the two models is based on what Don wrote here, not on reading the text OMG adopted. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 49315.30035.bm@omp1004.access.mail.mud.yahoo.com DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=yahoo.com; s=s1024; t=1309531287; bh=IygNFMCoWZAz6jL57HDap8PhRVMAmFLTUoADu1A2nas=; h=Message-ID:Received:X-Yahoo-SMTP:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:X-Mailer:Date:To:From:Subject:Cc:In-Reply-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type; b=IFYueG3Nn47O2QKGOLTQCnECvuM99b89D7znwNWHVuJoT4y4xFZpjESk1g5ZYiTpoHkil+ALSqzZDgKAyYzv1UI5YZaPSBwiPNlr7CJSOgHO7QBJhsjF/zRsb0wrl71rtVkXg6bo3ZX0+ZOAAdi0hHSDbmracqBjmEacRylTAGc= X-Yahoo-SMTP: MhfrpU2swBDLgYiYhNQDHBu0cE4o.vu2We1FRN9o X-YMail-OSG: PN8yY6UVM1k19loXib8LLq9OgokpQRBL4MXA32voouc_28Q yiKaOxwWFiW9An.1eeFZViuNa_PjtRaZvbZLW0Wxyq3wy2nW1XjXIKzmKS8n _g.9QH28iQY1EywWTdLglVdSY7UTLPKSHDqdiLwMYssQ7azkulCwrCAY6qEO A3Idj1euu7kGs1_rXikda_4k.OKDZEqKI2VmEiusYCctNa3PA8862KmOOStI FKC_E42H2GRWBrX9xaoPyGT9IEONtM4TVUH6YKvnHOTfcOOlYZ743p6zPqUI ZQTrhE921OFCLVPqe.elDHxOvednKb6DECxDqgd1iPrpQSpHaZOL9MB12MWy KAmzTVEcvNbliSrEmLbSDpA-- X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:41:21 -0500 To: edbark@nist.gov, Don Baisley From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences Cc: SBVR RTF , "date-time@omg.org" Ed, a question for you ... At 09:11 AM 7/1/2011, Edward Barkmeyer wrote: Don Baisley wrote: Ed, You wrote: I am a little slow, .... But you are not slow to jump to the wrong conclusion. So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in relationship to propositions_. False. A proposition identifies a state of affairs. I don't say that all states of affairs are identified. I don't say states of affairs exist only in relation to propositions. Ed, you made that up. Oh. I apologize. I assumed that the following sentence, which Don wrote, was meaningful: Whether or not an actual state of affairs is a temporal occurrence is determined by examining the statement of the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs for these criteria: So "the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs" doesn't necessarily exist, and may not be unique. Therefore, in general, it is not possible to determine whether a state of affairs is a temporal occurrence using the criteria Don states, which makes the whole paragraph completely worthless. >>What else do you have do go by except the propositions(?). I have to say I think what Don wrote is quite clear, meaningful and probably correct. Sorry, your response to what he specifically wrote doesn't make sense to me. And this from the same man who thinks that an occurrence of 'visiting Don at 1:00 A.M.' is not an occurrence of 'visiting Don'. I apparently wasted my time reading what Don wrote, and trying to make sense of it. I apologize to the RTF for wasting everyone's time. -Ed Donald asked that I describe in terms of the statement of a proposition that corresponds to a state of affairs how to tell whether the state of affairs was a temporal occurrence. He took notes. I included the answer in the document we shared. There is no basis in what was written or in SBVR for concluding that no state of affairs exists without a proposition. The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a different proposition must be a different actuality.) More made up nonsense. There is no such rule in SBVR. SBVR would have a serious problem if what you said was true. And then you could have quoted something from SBVR to support your claim. But you can't, Ed, because you made this up. SBVR provides a good foundation for the Date-Time submission. I know of only five people that have been contributing to Date-Time over the last few months. At least three of five find SBVR to be a good foundation. The Date-Time submission defines many temporal concepts that can be useful to many businesses. Don -----Original Message----- From: Ed Barkmeyer [ mailto:edbark@nist.gov] Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2011 1:20 PM To: SBVR RTF; date-time@omg.org Subject: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences I am a little slow, but I think I finally understand the problem that Date/Time is having with the SBVR RTF. We have importantly different philosophical models. Don Baisley wrote: *What States of Affairs Can Play the Role of WHAT HAPPENS* In practical usage only states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences play the '_state of affairs_' role (the "WHAT HAPPENS" role) in the fact type '_state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_'. This starts in the middle of the movie. Per SBVR, 'state of affairs' is 'event, situation or circumstance'. Per SBVR, 'actuality' is a 'state of affairs' that occurs (FL:obtains) in the world of interest. That is, it is 'included in' that world (which is itself a gigantic state of affairs, maybe). Per Don, 'temporal occurrence' is "an actuality that a given state of affairs occurs over a given time interval". Thus it is possible to talk about 'states of affairs that are not temporal occurrences', i.e., states of affairs that cannot be described using the fact type 'state of affairs occurs over time interval'. Whether or not an actual state of affairs is a temporal occurrence is determined by examining the statement of the proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs for these criteria: 1. the statement identifies some particular state of affairs (what happens) 2. the statement identifies some particular time interval (when) 3. the meaning of the statement is that the state of affairs (what happens) occurs for that time interval (when). So, according to Don, 'states of affairs' _only exist in relationship to propositions_. You have to start with a statement of a proposition, and this gives rise to a state of affairs. The state of affairs is determined entirely by the proposition used to describe it! This means that a particular proposition is a requirement for the existence of a state or event in the world of interest. That is one established metaphysical view -- reality is only what we perceive and describe. An alternative view is that the world exists, and human consciousness interacts with it. Propositions are created in the human consciousness to characterize what happens in the world. Thought is broader than the world; humans can also invent. We can create propositions to describe something that may happen or will happen, but is not a happening in the world of interest. But we are also smart enough to distinguish the relationship of characterizations to real events. We can also create propositions that describe more than one happening. Every thought is an abstraction, some are more abstract than others. Don uses the human-centric view, because it supports the idea that a world is only known by the fact model we use to describe it. The world does not contain anything whose existence cannot be deduced from the fact model. Reality is only what we describe. This is definitely a viable approach. It leads to the SBVR view: a 'state of affairs' is the thing that is described by a given proposition, nothing more and nothing less. And because we can distinguish reality from hypothesis, the thing that corresponds to a false proposition is a hypothetical thing and the thing that corresponds to a true proposition is an 'actuality'. A 'fact' is a true proposition, and the actuality is the thing in the world to which it corresponds. The only actualities are those that instantiate facts. In this model there cannot be a proposition that 'corresponds to' multiple event/state/activity things. If two event/state/activity things exist, each must instantiate a different proposition, because they cannot otherwise be distinguished. Two event/state/activity things may have some 'nature of the event' in common, e.g. the tree is struck by lightning on June 5, the tree is struck by lightning on June25. One may think that these two events in some way correspond to the proposition 'the tree is struck by lightning', but they don't! There is only one state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning' and these two distinguishable events are distinct states of affairs. In fact, a particular ('actualist') formal model says that the events on June 5 and June 25 are 'included in' the state of affairs 'the tree is struck by lightning'. (and 'included in' has many of the axioms of 'part of') So a state of affairs does not "recur", but it can have multiple _inclusions_ that are distinct states of affairs. It follows that if 'the tree is struck by lightning on June 5' is true and 'the tree is struck by lightning on June25 is true', then 'the tree is struck by lightning' must be true. The actuality that the tree is struck by lightning is in some sense the combination of the dated actualities. A temporal occurrence can be identified using the implicit reference scheme for any fact type: by identifying the things that fill the roles. A temporal occurrence can be identified by identifying what state of affairs happened and the time interval for which the state of affairs happened. According to SBVR, a state of affairs can be identified by the proposition that characterizes it. Don is just restating that in terms of the particular fact type that characterizes all 'temporal occurrences'. Note that the concepts 'event' and 'temporal occurrence' are different concepts, but they are not necessarily disjoint concepts. Both specialize the concept 'state of affairs'. SBVR makes clear that not all states of affairs happen. Don doesn't tell us what he means by 'event' here. (And I no longer assume that we mean the same thing.) An actuality is a state of affairs that is actual. That is, an actuality is just a state of affairs that is in the state of being actual. Which just replaces one undefined symbol with another. The point is that an actuality is just the state of affairs that corresponds to a true proposition. In SBVR, the proposition is the horse and the state of affairs is the cart. Note also that the SBVR definition of 'proposition is true' is therefore circular. Because reality is the fact model, truth should be the primitive idea. A misconception held by some is that there are multiple actualities of a given state of affairs. But an actuality IS a state of affairs. If the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously at different times, then there are multiple temporal occurrences of that one state of affairs, each of which, being a temporal occurrence, is a separate, distinct state of affairs. That is, the idea that 'the same state of affairs is actual discontinuously' does not make sense. The thing these actualities have in common is a different state of affairs. According to Don, the commonality between them is that the same 'common state of affairs' plays the 'state of affairs' role in propositions that describe them, i.e., the 'state of affairs' role in 'state of affairs occurs over time'. According to the underlying philosophical model, they are both 'included in' the common state of affairs. Fact types such as '_state of affairs_ occurs hypothetically', '_state of affairs_ is planned' and '_state of affairs_ is anticipated', if wanted, should be considered separately from the concept of temporal occurrence. What makes a temporal occurrence is that a given state of affairs OCCURS for a given time interval. You don't have a temporal occurrence if the state of affairs doesn't occur for the time interval. Right. And this means there is no clear relationship between the proposition "'the Board of Governors meets' is planned" and "'the Board of Governors meets' will occur the week of 4 July", and thus no clear relationship between the two states of affairs. Neither of them is the meeting! They are two different models of the meeting -- the objectifications of different facts. They are both included in the state 'the Board of Governors meets', which also includes all past and future meetings that are in our world of interest. Many fact types have roles that range over the concept 'state of affairs' or over specializations of that concept. These fact types include the meanings of numerous adverbs, adjunct clauses and verbs. This is how objectification is nearly as common in the structure of propositions as quantification. Yes. It is a common copout for natural language processing, but it is almost entirely absent in rules implementation systems. That is because rules rarely use adverbs or clauses that qualify the actions rather than the things involved. Unlike NLP vocabularies, business vocabularies have ternary and quaternary fact types that include the critical prepositional phrases in the verb concepts. And that makes the corresponding fact models much more tractable, by reducing the occurrences of 'states of affairs' to a few well-defined (special case) patterns, such as Don's temporal occurrence fact type. The fact type '_state of affairs_ occurs for _time interval_' is in no way special in this regard. Quite the contrary, it is special, because we code systems to support that fact type with built-in intelligence. And it is very special to the OMG Date/time project, because we are defining it rigorously, while SBVR simply assumes the existence of a supporting semantics for its examples of use of 'state of affairs'. I now think I understand where Don is coming from: a 'state of affairs' is the objectification of a specific 'proposition'; there are no others. The idea is that these things exist because we model them. That is a very useful pragmatic model, and it is consistent. The Date/Time model is exactly the reverse at the philosophical base. It views events, states, situations, activities as happenings in the world of interest, and propositions as conceptualizations of those things. We assume that a given happening might satisfy multiple characterizations (propositions). And thus we think of the characterizations of events, states, situations, etc., as _concepts_, and the actual events, states, situations, etc., as _instances_ of those concepts. Further we insist that any of these real situations, past, present, or future has an intrinsic time interval that is the time span of the existence of the event. A situation that doesn't happen only exists as a concept. An occurrence concept is represented by a statement, but it is not necessarily a proposition. The statement is true in each of the situations that is an instance of the concept, but whether it is "true in the possible world" is something we have not been able to define. And occurrence concepts can be individual or general, and can specialize each other. If proposition p implies proposition q, then every instance of the occurrence concept p is an instance of the occurrence concept q. That said, we also admit that there are conceptualizations that are jointly satisfied by a combination of real events or states -- we might call them 'abstract states' -- and in that way we touch directly on the SBVR approach, because such abstract states only exist as the images of propositions. That is, we distinguish joint occurrence -- the state is a composite of other states (and is an SBVR 'state of affairs') -- and several occurrences -- each state is of itself an instance of a common description. (That is, we distinguish composition from generalization in relationships among occurrences.) Now, a proposition of the form 'state of affairs occurs over time' is one way of characterizing an 'occurrence', but the same occurrence may have other characterizations using different fact types. In particular, the 'state of affairs' that occurs over the time is also a characterization of the same occurrence -- it is just a more general concept. We believe that it is important to have this view, if we are to reason formally about events and times. The same actual event may have more than one characterizing proposition. (In the SBVR model, that is not possible: no actuality can be described by two different propositions, because the reference scheme says that a different proposition must be a different actuality.) Part of the date/time rationale for the view that 's..t happens and humans describe it' is that we often find it necessary to merge information from multiple sources and multiple business viewpoints. And that reflects a difference in the goal of Date/Time. It is not about capturing unified business vocabularies and rules; it is about providing a particular business vocabulary, together with a formal semantics that supports business integration and systems engineering and decision support systems across an enterprise. An event, state, etc., is what it proves to be, not what individuals thought it was. So, I think we can say that we have a major philosophical conflict between the SBVR 'state of affairs' concept and the Date/Time concepts, even though they are both closely related to propositions. It seems to me that 1) every instance of Don's 'temporal occurrence' concept (which does not exist in SBVR) is an instance of Date/Time 'occurrence', 2) every instance of 'occurrence' in Date/Time could be a 'temporal occurrence', that is, it could have one or more such formulations (along with others). 3) SBVR 'state of affairs' does not correspond to any concept in the Date/Time model 4) Date/time 'occurrence type' does not correspond to any concept in SBVR 5) we still have to work out 'actuality'. I would point out that SBVR does not actually have the 'temporal occurrence' model, and it does not actually state the 'included in' fact type (from philosophical actualism) that explains Don's distinctions. And I did not read SBVR to say that 'state of affairs' means the result of an objectification. So, the above summary of the divergence of the two models is based on what Don wrote here, not on reading the text OMG adopted. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:38:11 -0400 From: Edward Barkmeyer Reply-To: edbark@nist.gov Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: "Ronald G. Ross" CC: SBVR RTF , "date-time@omg.org" Subject: Re: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences X-NIST-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NIST-MailScanner-From: edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov Ronald G. Ross wrote: >>What else do you have do go by except the propositions(?). I have to say I think what Don wrote is quite clear, meaningful and probably correct. Sorry, your response to what he specifically wrote doesn't make sense to me. I have a piece of furniture in my office. It is called a 'chair'. Is what it is called the only thing I have to go by? What if it is also called 'category B office furniture' in someone's account book? Does it become a different thing? Why should it be any different with 'states of affairs'? The point is that it is what it is, and it may have multiple descriptions by different persons, some more accurate and some less accurate. In particular, it may have some temporal characterization and some atemporal characterization. Putative states are not there to be examined, but even they can conform (by intent) to more and less general characterizations. An SBVR Telecon on 8 July is still an SBVR Telecon and Donald Chapin will lead it. And when I wrote that Don's model assumes that every state of affairs of interest is the objectification of a unique proposition, he insisted that I was jumping to unintended conclusions. Every time I am able to construct a consistent semantic model from what Don says, it has limitations, and Don insists that the interpretation I made is wrong. After 3 years, we, NIST (Neuhaus -- ISO Common Logic, Wallace -- OWLv2, Bock -- UML/BPMN/PSL process semantics, Barkmeyer), STILL do not know what Don's model is! I am glad you and the many SBVR toolsmiths (count 'em) all understand it. NIST has given up trying. Mene, tekel, uparsim. NIST suggests that SBVR discard Don's incomprehensible model and use something that is parallel to the ISO 18629 PSL model, like the UML and BPMN models of states and happenings, i.e., like the Date/Time model. We would be interested in working jointly on that. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: 127939.83890.bm@omp1002.access.mail.sp2.yahoo.com DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=yahoo.com; s=s1024; t=1309540101; bh=1RFs4oC0XxHe455i+BRqr7zYfDY/u83fZWj9oZMj61Q=; h=Message-ID:Received:X-Yahoo-SMTP:X-YMail-OSG:X-Yahoo-Newman-Property:X-Mailer:Date:To:From:Subject:Cc:In-Reply-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type; b=HaUic6flIDjCbegMg6KySvZeS6/CJaTytmXPzDVIqRBPUlC2HbFycfQGjy69iNVyLSN0tQAyQqlg6mBOoSkLVvOfg5QVvvLc48WE4WH034xJ4zOlrbPlV6y2DybsZhTnYHvPLcns6JulqSmvnTHGStrwTdtk9I+b67QhGwHNpJk= X-Yahoo-SMTP: MhfrpU2swBDLgYiYhNQDHBu0cE4o.vu2We1FRN9o X-YMail-OSG: Ciu1Sm0VM1nz_r2VvQjR3idx6sSXNrtdAWVCchw1pLj6Csc PnihFKmqLnlLYHDaw8mT0ylsRZHC7gNc.CreSpp6vijOg6a2ifQr16GF3FOc FoN2tXYQgCr2e7N1EX10NnnJZTdJk0Noe8KorS21.dY5t4nPK39Tup_XHhSp BIgGbYyf_MSPx0vYGyTwKdBPzJlLzf5A9RHoFT3_kniJCzKd7ehKD73r.m7E NdaVMxYOHya9ch_e82O7JyqI3oAzOWdcaruc7xldkI5QCTsQlJOS5t5f1TXO 9qOthpZdmuVH3ie__pJiOrhuIY2O3wmIloMIKVAldf_ezFiUM2wb4VtDF79M l4qR5iEdVawK516KvEVrW4OE_lgkfydmwcMg- X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 Date: Fri, 01 Jul 2011 12:08:14 -0500 To: edbark@nist.gov From: "Ronald G. Ross" Subject: Re: SBVR Issue 14849: states of affairs v. temporal occurrences Cc: SBVR RTF , "date-time@omg.org" Ed, I asked for a status update on the on-going discussions today because I want to make sure I understand all the issues. With due respect, as far as I know the date-time group has yet to put out an agreed set of firm definitions. Please correct me if I am wrong. In today's SBVR RTF meeting, I confirmed that SBVR hasn't done so with respect to date-time either (not originally within scope). I understand from Mark Linehan today that there is in-depth work being undertaken at present to provide a clear and comprehensive comparison between the thinking by each group. It's not quite complete yet(?), but it's exactly what's needed. My sense is that without this patient work, nobody is really going to understand what anybody is saying. I look forward to a constructive review of this material, as I would think you would too. Ron At 11:38 AM 7/1/2011, Edward Barkmeyer wrote: Ronald G. Ross wrote: >>What else do you have do go by except the propositions(?). I have to say I think what Don wrote is quite clear, meaningful and probably correct. Sorry, your response to what he specifically wrote doesn't make sense to me. I have a piece of furniture in my office. It is called a 'chair'. Is what it is called the only thing I have to go by? What if it is also called 'category B office furniture' in someone's account book? Does it become a different thing? Why should it be any different with 'states of affairs'? The point is that it is what it is, and it may have multiple descriptions by different persons, some more accurate and some less accurate. In particular, it may have some temporal characterization and some atemporal characterization. Putative states are not there to be examined, but even they can conform (by intent) to more and less general characterizations. An SBVR Telecon on 8 July is still an SBVR Telecon and Donald Chapin will lead it. And when I wrote that Don's model assumes that every state of affairs of interest is the objectification of a unique proposition, he insisted that I was jumping to unintended conclusions. Every time I am able to construct a consistent semantic model from what Don says, it has limitations, and Don insists that the interpretation I made is wrong. After 3 years, we, NIST (Neuhaus -- ISO Common Logic, Wallace -- OWLv2, Bock -- UML/BPMN/PSL process semantics, Barkmeyer), STILL do not know what Don's model is! I am glad you and the many SBVR toolsmiths (count 'em) all understand it. NIST has given up trying. Mene, tekel, uparsim. NIST suggests that SBVR discard Don's incomprehensible model and use something that is parallel to the ISO 18629 PSL model, like the UML and BPMN models of states and happenings, i.e., like the Date/Time model. We would be interested in working jointly on that. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -- For Discussion on June 23rd Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:47:22 -0600 X-Mailer: Microsoft Office Outlook 11 Thread-Index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysGtFox1Q X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Fair-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4E0246CA.00DF, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.6.22.190015:17:9.975, ip=63.226.120.240, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, __SUBJ_ALPHA_END, DATE_TZ_NA, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, INVALID_MSGID_NO_FQDN, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, DOC_ATTACHED, __ANY_URI, LINK_TO_IMAGE, __FRAUD_CONTACT_NUM, __CP_URI_IN_BODY, __C230066_P5, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_BOLD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __IMGSPAM_BODY, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, __RATWARE_SIGNATURE_3_N1, RDNS_NXDOMAIN, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, IMGSPAM_BODY X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2beaomr09.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0203.4E0246D9.0077,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=63.226.120.240, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Updated, focused draft resolution for Issue 14849 for discussion and hopefully agreement in tomorrow.s SBVR RTF meeting. This resolution focuses on .state of affairs.. Open questions about actuality and occurrence are more appropriately handled under a separate Issue. Donald -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 11:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org SBVR Issue 14849 Draft Resolution for Discussion 2011-06-22-1300.doc From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 & 10803 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:02:01 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Thread-Index: AcyPfETw+GjGsIE5SBKoD+AO7F6Haw== X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Good-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0301.4EA0A86C.0064, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2011.10.20.213916:17:9.975, ip=81.149.51.65, rules=__TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, __SUBJ_ALPHA_END, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, DOC_ATTACHED, __ANY_URI, LINK_TO_IMAGE, __FRAUD_CONTACT_NUM, __CP_URI_IN_BODY, __C230066_P5, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __IMGSPAM_BODY, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, IMGSPAM_BODY X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2bthomr10.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0207.4EA0A86E.00AA,ss=1,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2010-07-22 22:03:31, dmn=2009-09-10 00:05:08, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false Attached is an updated draft resolution for Issues 14849 and 10803 for discussion in tomorrow.s SBVR RTF telecon. From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org From: "Donald Chapin" To: Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:07:34 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Thread-Index: AcqD/eStzZn80Vg2QXiEvk6BducysIXOpXAw X-Mirapoint-IP-Reputation: reputation=Good-1, source=Queried, refid=tid=0001.0A0B0303.50117959.0023, actions=tag X-Junkmail-Premium-Raw: score=9/50, refid=2.7.2:2012.7.26.161522:17:9.975, ip=81.149.51.65, rules=__HAS_FROM, __TO_MALFORMED_2, __TO_NO_NAME, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ, __BOUNCE_NDR_SUBJ_EXEMPT, __SUBJ_ALPHA_END, __HAS_MSGID, __SANE_MSGID, __MIME_VERSION, __CT, __CTYPE_HAS_BOUNDARY, __CTYPE_MULTIPART, __CTYPE_MULTIPART_MIXED, __HAS_X_MAILER, __OUTLOOK_MUA_1, __USER_AGENT_MS_GENERIC, DOC_ATTACHED, __ANY_URI, LINK_TO_IMAGE, URI_ENDS_IN_HTML, __FRAUD_CONTACT_NUM, __CP_URI_IN_BODY, __C230066_P5, __HTML_MSWORD, __HTML_FONT_BLUE, __HAS_HTML, BODY_SIZE_10000_PLUS, BODYTEXTP_SIZE_3000_LESS, BODYTEXTH_SIZE_10000_LESS, __MIME_HTML, __IMGSPAM_BODY, __TAG_EXISTS_HTML, __STYLE_RATWARE_2, RDNS_GENERIC_POOLED, HTML_70_90, RDNS_SUSP_GENERIC, __OUTLOOK_MUA, RDNS_SUSP, FORGED_MUA_OUTLOOK, IMGSPAM_BODY X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/50, host=c2bthomr13.btconnect.com X-Junkmail-Signature-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A0B0202.5011795A.0150,ss=1,re=0.000,vtr=str,vl=0,fgs=0, ip=0.0.0.0, so=2011-07-25 19:15:43, dmn=2011-05-27 18:58:46, mode=multiengine X-Junkmail-IWF: false All . Attached is an updated draft resolution of Issue 14849 to accompany the updated resolutions of Issues 17439 and 17527. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org sposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Discussion: The rationale for this change is: . Noun concepts have extensions that are things in the universe of discourse, and these things may be conceivable or perceivable. . This change would bring symmetry for verb concepts. The extension of a verb concept would be states of affairs (conceivable), of which some may be actual (perceivable). Resolution: Clause 8 .fact type. has been renamed .verb concept. 1. Change the definition of .verb concept. to specialize the concept .state of affairs. to make it possible to structure propositions that are not known to correspond to actualities without having to use objectifications. 2. Separate the concept of verb concept as a structure of roles and a verb phrase from the more specific concpet of a verb concept with at least one open role (how it has always been understood in SBVR) to clarify ambiguity and support the addition of Unitary Verb Concept and Individual Verb Concept. 3. Add a Note to explain how states of affairs that are not actual can be referred to by using objectifications (Clause 9). 4. Add .objectifying noun concept. as a synonym for .verb concept objectification. and make it the preferred term. Revised Text: NOTE: If it is agreed in the resolution to Issue 10803 that the signifier .state of affairs. will be replaced by .propositional subject., that substitution will be made in these editing instructions. Replace the current entry for .verb concept. in Clause 8.1.1 on printed page 21: verb concept Definition: concept that specializes the concept .actuality. and that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more roles Note: Each instance of a verb concept is an actuality. For each instance, each role of the verb concept is one point of involvement of something in that actuality. Note: Two verb concept definitions define the same verb concept if they reveal the same incorporated characteristics and the same verb concept roles. Concept Type: concept type Necessity: Each verb concept has at least one role. Necessity: Each verb concept is a concept that specializes the concept .actuality.. Reference Scheme: a verb concept wording of the verb concept Reference Scheme: a closed projection that defines the verb concept WITH two entries: verb concept Definition: concept that specializes the concept .state of affairs. and that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more roles Note: Each instance of a verb concept is a state of affairs. For each instance, each role of the verb concept is one point of involvement of something in that state of affairs. Note: Two verb concept definitions define the same verb concept if they reveal the same incorporated characteristics and the same verb concept roles. Necessity: Each verb concept has at least one role. Reference Scheme: a closed projection that defines the verb concept general verb concept Definition: verb concept that has at least one open, unquantified verb concept role Concept Type: concept type Necessity: The definition that represents each verb concept is consistent with and defines exactly the complete set of propositions that can be created by quantifying each verb concept role of the verb concept Reference Scheme: a verb concept wording of the verb concept ADD two synonyms at the end of the entry for concept .verb concept objectification. in Clause 11.1.5.3. on printed page no. 155: Synonym: objectifying noun concept Synonym: propositional subject concept REPLACE all occurrences of the signifier .verb concept. with .general verb concept.. Disposition: Resolved To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-KeepSent: F654A19D:3EDB970E-85257A48:001A170B; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.3 September 15, 2011 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 01:01:52 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.3 ZX853HP5|January 12, 2012) at 07/27/2012 01:01:54, Serialize complete at 07/27/2012 01:01:54 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER x-cbid: 12072705-3534-0000-0000-00000AD1FAB5 This proposal seems to go even further in confusing propositions with verb concepts. The proposed definition of 'general verb concept' is "verb concept that has at least one open, unquantified verb concept role". But roles are not quantified in the verb concepts themselves. Roles are placeholders. Quantified variables are bound to the roles in propositions -- specifically in atomic formulations. There is no such thing as a "quantified verb concept role". There are quantified variables that are BOUND TO the roles. The quantification does not happen in the verb concepts. The quantification happens in propositions. The proposed Necessity "The definition that represents each verb concept is consistent with and defines exactly the complete set of propositions that can be created by quantifying each verb concept role of the verb concept" ignores the fact that propositions are often created from multiple verb concepts, via 'and', 'or', etc. The resolution of this issue is intimately linked to the overall 'state of affairs' discussion. Why are you proposing a resolution when that discussion is still going on? In particular, it assumes the current SBVR definition of 'state of affairs' and the current subtype relationship between "state of affairs" and "actuality" -- neither of which make sense to the Date-Time team. -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: , Date: 07/26/2012 01:11 PM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is an updated draft resolution of Issue 14849 to accompany the updated resolutions of Issues 17439 and 17527. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk âActualityâ is a specialization of âstate of affairsâ. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Draft Resolution for Discussion (2012-07-26-1800-BST).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2012 12:09:12 -0400 From: Ed Barkmeyer Reply-To: Organization: NIST User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (Windows/20090812) To: Mark H Linehan CC: "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Information: Please contact postmaster@mel.nist.gov for more information X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-ID: q6RG9I9v010571 X-NISTMEL-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-SpamCheck: X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-From: edbark@nist.gov X-NISTMEL-MailScanner-Watermark: 1344010163.60239@gZvGtxaLPK7BOAwBptjIGg X-Spam-Status: No I think Mark and John are on different wavelengths here. Mark H Linehan wrote: This proposal seems to go even further in confusing propositions with verb concepts. The proposed definition of 'general verb concept' is "_verb concept_ that /has /at least one open, unquantified _verb concept role_". But roles are not quantified in the verb concepts themselves. Roles are placeholders. Quantified variables are bound to the roles in propositions -- specifically in atomic formulations. There is no such thing as a "quantified verb concept role". There are quantified variables that are BOUND TO the roles. The quantification does not happen in the verb concepts. The quantification happens in propositions. What John means is that "_EU-Rent_ /reviews/ _corporate account_//", for example, is general verb concept, because it has one open role, while "_EU-Rent_ /reviews/ the _corporate account_ /of/ _ABC Company_" and "_EU-Rent_ /reviews/ all _corporate accounts_//__" are individual verb concepts, because they have no open roles. The fact that "_EU-Rent_ /reviews/ all _corporate accounts_//__" involves a role that ranges over _corporate accounts_ does not make it open, because that role (variable) is quantified within "_EU-Rent_ /reviews/ all _corporate accounts_//__" by all. The concern I have is that an 'individual verb concept' means a verb concept that has no free variables, not a verb concept that corresponds to at most one and the same actuality in all possible worlds. A verb concept that has no free variables corresponds to at most one actuality if the verb concept somehow includes every characteristic in the vocabulary that might be used to distinguish actualities of the verb concept, e.g., place and time, but perhaps also purpose or cause. It is exactly the same idea as individual noun concepts -- you have to have all the characteristics needed to make it unique. Consider: the person whose name is "John Smith". Is that an individual concept? Maybe. It depends on the universe of discourse for "all possible worlds", i.e., all the ones you care about. The proposed Necessity "The _definition_ that /represents/ each _verb concept_ is consistent with and defines exactly the complete _set_ /of/ _propositions_ that can be created by quantifying each _verb concept role_ /of/ the _verb concept_" ignores the fact that propositions are often created from multiple verb concepts, via 'and', 'or', etc. But those more complex propositions are not in the intended set. There is a set of (simple) propositions that can be created by quantifying each role of verb concept. And that is the set he means, because that is the set the definition corresponds to. The verb concept does not correspond to actualities of more complex propositions, and neither does the definition. (I might argue that the verb concept corresponds to actualities of conjunctions in which one of the conjugends is a simple sentence based on the verb concept, because by definition, the set of actualities that instantiate the compound proposition must be a subset of the actualities that instantiate the verb concept. But that does not change the set of actualities John means.) The resolution of this issue is intimately linked to the overall 'state of affairs' discussion. Why are you proposing a resolution when that discussion is still going on? In particular, it assumes the current SBVR definition of 'state of affairs' and the current subtype relationship between "state of affairs" and "actuality" -- neither of which make sense to the Date-Time team. Well, I agree we don't want to vote on this until we have resolved the "state of affairs" issue(s), but only because it may affect the wording. The question is whether we can all agree that this conceptualization is useful and helpful in understanding the relationship between SBVR verb concepts and SBVR propositions, as types of 'meaning'. I think John is trying to separate this issue from the question of what a state of affairs is. -Ed -- Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@nist.gov National Institute of Standards & Technology Manufacturing Systems Integration Division 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528 Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 Cel: +1 240-672-5800 "The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST, and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." -------------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: "Donald Chapin" To: , Date: 07/26/2012 01:11 PM Subject: RE: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue ------------------------------------------------------------------------ All ­ > Attached is an updated draft resolution of Issue 14849 to accompany the updated resolutions of Issues 17439 and 17527. Donald *From:* Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] * Sent:* 23 December 2009 18:29* To:* issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org* Subject:* issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: _john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk_ âActualityâ is a specialization of âstate of affairsâ. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. * Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: **_juergen@omg.org_* *_ _**_www.omg.org _* _ _[] Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2012 18:10:26 +0100 From: John Hall User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20110902 Thunderbird/6.0.2 To: Donald Chapin , SBVR RTF Subject: [SBVR] Updated drafts of Issues 14849 and 17527 for Jacksonville teleconference X-Mailcore-Auth: 4600872 X-Mailcore-Domain: 13170 Hello all, Attached are updated drafts of Issues 14849, 17527, taking account of feedback from earlier meetings (in case we have time to get to them today). I apologize that I have deleted the change-tracked versions, but can recreate them if necessary. I intended also to send a new draft of 17439 but, on re-reading the feedback, I had some second thoughts. I'll get it done over the next day or two. Regards, John SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2012-09-13-1500-BST).doc Content-Type: application/msword; name="SBVR issue 17527 Ambiguities in definitions of noun concepts [20120913 1500" BST].doc" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename*0="SBVR issue 17527 Ambiguities in definitions of noun concepts"; filename*1=" [20120913 1500 BST].doc" SBVR issue 17527 Ambiguities in definitions of noun concepts [20120913 1500.doc Disposition: Resolved OMG Issue No: 14849 Title: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs Source: Inferware, John Hall, (john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk) Summary: .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: . states of affairs that are planned to become actualities . states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Discussion: The rationale for this change is: . Noun concepts have extensions that are things in the universe of discourse, and these things may be conceivable or perceivable. . This change would bring symmetry for verb concepts. The extension of a verb concept would be states of affairs (conceivable), of which some may be actual (perceivable). Resolution: Clause 8 .fact type. has been renamed .verb concept. 1. Change the definition of .verb concept. to specialize the concept .state of affairs. to make it possible to structure propositions that are not known to correspond to actualities without having to use objectifications. 2. Add a Note to explain how states of affairs that are not actual can be referred to by using objectifications (Clause 9). 3. Add .objectifying noun concept. as a synonym for .verb concept objectification. and make it the preferred term. Revised Text: Replace the current entry for .verb concept. in Clause 8.1.1 on printed page 21: verb concept Definition: concept that specializes the concept .actuality. and that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more roles Note: Each instance of a verb concept is an actuality. For each instance, each role of the verb concept is one point of involvement of something in that actuality. Note: Two verb concept definitions define the same verb concept if they reveal the same incorporated characteristics and the same verb concept roles. Concept Type: concept type Necessity: Each verb concept has at least one role. Necessity: Each verb concept is a concept that specializes the concept .actuality.. Reference Scheme: a verb concept wording of the verb concept Reference Scheme: a closed projection that defines the verb concept WITH: verb concept Definition: concept that specializes the concept .state of affairs. and that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more roles Note: Each instance of a verb concept is a state of affairs. For each instance, each role of the verb concept is one point of involvement of something in that state of affairs. Note: Two verb concept definitions define the same verb concept if they reveal the same incorporated characteristics and the same verb concept roles. Concept Type: concept type Necessity: Each verb concept has at least one verb concept role. Necessity: Each proposition that is created by binding all the verb concept roles of a given verb concept means what the definition of the verb concept defines it to mean. Note: A verb concept role is played by a thing in the domain of discourse . the world of interest. A verb concept is 'bound' by specifying the thing(s) that play the verb concept role. Linguistically those things can be specified by a quantified noun phrase or by an individual concept or by a pronoun that refers to a specific thing. Reference Scheme: a verb concept wording of the verb concept Reference Scheme: a closed projection that defines the verb concept ADD two synonyms at the end of the entry for concept .verb concept objectification. in Clause 11.1.5.3. on printed page no. 155: Synonym: objectifying noun concept Synonym: propositional subject concept Disposition: Resolved To: Donald.Chapin@btinternet.com Cc: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Status of issues 14849 and "Each proposition corresponds to at most one state of affairs" X-KeepSent: 950E8932:A1076E02-85257AA5:0083508E; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.3 September 15, 2011 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2012 20:10:17 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.3FP2 ZX853FP2HF2|October 8, 2012) at 10/28/2012 20:10:07, Serialize complete at 10/28/2012 20:10:07 X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER x-cbid: 12102900-1976-0000-0000-000012CC9FA3 Donald, I'm writing to ask what the SBVR-RTF plans to do about this issue: Issue 14849: Instances of Clause 8 fact type should be states of affairs (sbvr-rtf) I seem to remember that there is a proposal to change the clause 8.5.2 Necessity "Each proposition corresponds to at most one state of affairs" to be "... exactly one state of affairs", but I can't find the issue for it. Is there such a change pending? I'm asking because I want to make sure that text in the Date-Time Vocabulary ends up being consistent with the resolutions of these two topics. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research X-Forefront-Antispam-Report: CIP:157.56.250.181;KIP:(null);UIP:(null);IPV:NLI;H:AMSPRD0711HT004.eurprd07.prod.outlook.com;RD:none;EFVD:NLI X-SpamScore: -11 X-BigFish: PS-11(z21cR551biz936eIdbeehc85dh62a3Izz1f42h1fc6h1ee6h1de0h1fdah1202h1e76h1d1ah1d2ahzz1b1984h17326ah18c673h18602eh186068h8275bh1b9c21h8275dhz2dh47h2a8h668h839hd24he5bhf0ah10d2h1249h1288h12a5h12bdh137ah139eh1441h1537h162dh1631h1758h17f1h1898h18e1h1946h19b5h19ceh1ad9h1b0ah1bceh1d0ch1d2eh1d3fh34h1155h) Reply-To: From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Thu, 2 May 2013 15:53:29 +0100 Organization: Business Semantics Ltd X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Thread-Index: AQJOD2B2VvLx5D2LrOToK4yQHwWsuZfyaZsg X-Originating-IP: [157.56.253.53] X-FOPE-CRA-SourceIpAddress: 157.56.250.181 X-FOPE-CRA-DRYRUN: 1207119;1 X-FOPE-BFA-SENDER: donald.chapin@btconnect.com X-FOPE-BFA-RECEIVER: sbvr-rtf@omg.org X-OriginatorOrg: btconnect.com X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAR15Gmw= X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [] Content-Type: application/msword; name="SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb" concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of" verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of.doc SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of.doc X-Forefront-Antispam-Report: CIP:157.56.249.197;KIP:(null);UIP:(null);IPV:NLI;H:AM2PRD0210HT005.eurprd02.prod.outlook.com;RD:none;EFVD:NLI X-SpamScore: -12 X-BigFish: PS-12(z21cR551bizbb2dI9371I936eIdbeehc85dhzz1f42h1fc6h1ee6h1de0h1fdah1202h1e76h1d1ah1d2ahzz1b1984h17326ah18c673h18602eh186068h8275bh1b9c21h8275dhz2dh47h2a8h668h839hd24he5bhf0ah1249h1288h12a5h12bdh137ah139eh1441h1504h1537h162dh1631h1758h17f1h1898h18e1h1946h19b5h19ceh1ad9h1b0ah1bceh1d0ch1d2eh1d3fh34h1155h) From: Donald Chapin To: "'Mark H Linehan'" , Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 12:20:01 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Thread-Index: AQJOD2B2VvLx5D2LrOToK4yQHwWsuQK5Bt8fAagyjceX1W0zkA== X-Originating-IP: [157.56.253.165] X-OriginatorOrg: businesssemantics.com X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAh15GpodeRps X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Mark, Thank you for spotting that the third and fourth points need to be deleted as they do not directly address the Issue. I.ve attached an updated resolution for SBVR Issue 14849 with those two points deleted and the styling fix made. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: 05 May 2013 02:33 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Typo in the 3rd Necessity: the word "given" should use "keyword" style rather than "term" style. The third and fourth points in the resolution text do not seem to be addressed in the revised text. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " , Date: 05/02/2013 11:05 AM Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [][attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] Content-Type: application/msword; name="SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb" concept should be states of affairs (2013-05-06).doc" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of" verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-05-06).doc" SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of1.doc SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of1.doc To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-KeepSent: 24DDE3E1:A84BADE1-85257B62:00084B5C; type=4; name=$KeepSent X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 8.5.3FP3 November 16, 2012 From: Mark H Linehan Date: Sat, 4 May 2013 21:33:04 -0400 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01MC604/01/M/IBM(Release 8.5.3FP2 ZX853FP2HF5|February, 2013) at 05/04/2013 21:33:11, Serialize complete at 05/04/2013 21:33:11 X-TM-AS-MML: No X-Content-Scanned: Fidelis XPS MAILER x-cbid: 13050501-9360-0000-0000-000012080B6C X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAR15Gpo= X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Typo in the 3rd Necessity: the word "given" should use "keyword" style rather than "term" style. The third and fourth points in the resolution text do not seem to be addressed in the revised text. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " , Date: 05/02/2013 11:05 AM Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [] [attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] From: "Barkmeyer, Edward J" To: Donald Chapin , "'Mark H Linehan'" , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 11:21:43 -0400 Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: AQJOD2B2VvLx5D2LrOToK4yQHwWsuQK5Bt8fAagyjceX1W0zkIAAOXgQ Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: acceptlanguage: en-US X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAh15GpodeRps X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== In the proposed resolution to 14849, the proposed Necessity: Necessity: Each given instance of a verb concept is actual only if the thing that is involved in each role of the verb concept is actual. Is false! Consider .Jane prevents an accident.. If the accident has to be actual, the prevention surely is not! Negative states of affairs are semantically tricky. Further, the idea .thing is actual. is not defined, and for good reason . it opens the door to the misbegotten .PossibleIndividual. idea in ontologies like EPISTLE. I wonder also why .given.? How is an instance of a verb concept .given.? The term .given. is almost always related to definitions of roles. Surely what is meant here is .each instance.. All in all, this seems like something that should be discussed in the Notes. Whatever you are trying to say cannot be formalized anyway. In short, this is a bad idea. Don.t try to fix it! -Ed From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@businesssemantics.com] Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 7:20 AM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Mark, Thank you for spotting that the third and fourth points need to be deleted as they do not directly address the Issue. I.ve attached an updated resolution for SBVR Issue 14849 with those two points deleted and the styling fix made. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: 05 May 2013 02:33 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Typo in the 3rd Necessity: the word "given" should use "keyword" style rather than "term" style. The third and fourth points in the resolution text do not seem to be addressed in the revised text. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " , Date: 05/02/2013 11:05 AM Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [][attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] X-Forefront-Antispam-Report: CIP:157.56.253.69;KIP:(null);UIP:(null);IPV:NLI;H:DB3PRD0210HT005.eurprd02.prod.outlook.com;RD:none;EFVD:NLI X-SpamScore: -12 X-BigFish: PS-12(z21cR551bizbb2dI9371I936eIdbeehc85dhzz1f42h1fc6h1ee6h1de0h1fdah1202h1e76h1d1ah1d2ahzz1b1984h17326ah18c673h18602eh186068h8275bh1b9c21h8275dhz2dh47h2a8h668h839hd24he5bhf0ah1249h1288h12a5h12bdh137ah139eh1441h1504h1537h162dh1631h1758h17f1h1898h18e1h1946h19b5h19ceh1ad9h1b0ah1bceh1d0ch1d2eh1d3fh34h1155h) From: Donald Chapin To: "'Barkmeyer, Edward J'" , "'Mark H Linehan'" , Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Date: Mon, 6 May 2013 17:17:02 +0100 X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 14.0 Thread-Index: AQJOD2B2VvLx5D2LrOToK4yQHwWsuQK5Bt8fAagyjccC4YVmtAH7pvFtl67V2zA= X-Originating-IP: [81.149.51.65] X-OriginatorOrg: businesssemantics.com X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Ed, This Necessity was added as a clarification in an SBVR RTF telecon this past February. Clearly it needs more discussion before it can be included in SBVR. Since this Necessity is not needed to resolve this Issue as stated, I have removed it from the attached updated resolution to SBVR Issue 14849. An Issue on this point could be raised in the SBVR 1.3 RTF. Donald From: Barkmeyer, Edward J [mailto:edward.barkmeyer@nist.gov] Sent: 06 May 2013 16:22 To: Donald Chapin; 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue In the proposed resolution to 14849, the proposed Necessity: Necessity: Each given instance of a verb concept is actual only if the thing that is involved in each role of the verb concept is actual. Is false! Consider .Jane prevents an accident.. If the accident has to be actual, the prevention surely is not! Negative states of affairs are semantically tricky. Further, the idea .thing is actual. is not defined, and for good reason . it opens the door to the misbegotten .PossibleIndividual. idea in ontologies like EPISTLE. I wonder also why .given.? How is an instance of a verb concept .given.? The term .given. is almost always related to definitions of roles. Surely what is meant here is .each instance.. All in all, this seems like something that should be discussed in the Notes. Whatever you are trying to say cannot be formalized anyway. In short, this is a bad idea. Don.t try to fix it! -Ed From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@businesssemantics.com] Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 7:20 AM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Mark, Thank you for spotting that the third and fourth points need to be deleted as they do not directly address the Issue. I.ve attached an updated resolution for SBVR Issue 14849 with those two points deleted and the styling fix made. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: 05 May 2013 02:33 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Typo in the 3rd Necessity: the word "given" should use "keyword" style rather than "term" style. The third and fourth points in the resolution text do not seem to be addressed in the revised text. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " , Date: 05/02/2013 11:05 AM Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [][attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] Content-Type: application/msword; name="SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb" concept should be states of affairs (2013-05-06-1700-GMT).doc" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of" verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-05-06-1700-GMT).doc" SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of2.doc SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of2.doc Date: Sat, 11 May 2013 17:06:19 +0100 From: John Hall User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130328 Thunderbird/17.0.5 To: "Barkmeyer, Edward J" CC: Donald Chapin , "'Mark H Linehan'" , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue X-Mailcore-Auth: 4600872 X-Mailcore-Domain: 13170 X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAh15GpodeRps X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== Ed, .Jane prevents an accident. is an interesting example. Is it an instance of 'person prevents accident'? If so, what individual concept would fill the 'accident' role? If it didn't happen, how would you reference it? Regards, John On 06/05/2013 16:21, Barkmeyer, Edward J wrote: In the proposed resolution to 14849, the proposed Necessity: Necessity: Each given instance of a verb concept is actual only if the thing that is involved in each role of the verb concept is actual. Is false! Consider .Jane prevents an accident.. If the accident has to be actual, the prevention surely is not! Negative states of affairs are semantically tricky. Further, the idea .thing is actual. is not defined, and for good reason . it opens the door to the misbegotten .PossibleIndividual. idea in ontologies like EPISTLE. I wonder also why .given.? How is an instance of a verb concept .given.? The term .given. is almost always related to definitions of roles. Surely what is meant here is .each instance.. All in all, this seems like something that should be discussed in the Notes. Whatever you are trying to say cannot be formalized anyway. In short, this is a bad idea. Don.t try to fix it! -Ed From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@businesssemantics.com] Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 7:20 AM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Mark, Thank you for spotting that the third and fourth points need to be deleted as they do not directly address the Issue. I.ve attached an updated resolution for SBVR Issue 14849 with those two points deleted and the styling fix made. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: 05 May 2013 02:33 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Typo in the 3rd Necessity: the word "given" should use "keyword" style rather than "term" style. The third and fourth points in the resolution text do not seem to be addressed in the revised text. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " , Date: 05/02/2013 11:05 AM Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [][attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM] From: "Barkmeyer, Edward J" To: John Hall CC: Donald Chapin , "'Mark H Linehan'" , "sbvr-rtf@omg.org" Date: Mon, 13 May 2013 12:01:00 -0400 Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Topic: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Thread-Index: Ac5OYYUMi8ixz7/JRbWRTwMnsJSVvQBh75mQ Accept-Language: en-US X-MS-Has-Attach: yes X-MS-TNEF-Correlator: acceptlanguage: en-US X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at omg.org X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAh15GpodeRps X-Brightmail-Tracker: AAAAAA== In all cases, .Jane prevents an accident. is a proposition that corresponds to a state of affairs that is a possible prevention of some accident by Jane. If Jane is successful in preventing an accident, then the proposition is true and that state of affairs . the prevention -- .is actual. (in that world). According to SBVR, there are states of affairs that are not actual. So presumably the accident that Jane prevents is one of those. If Billy is about to fall down the stairs and Jane prevents it, then .Billy falls down the stairs. is a false proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs that Jane prevents. So, .the situation where Billy almost fell down the stairs. would be a reference to that state of affairs. Of course, Jane did not prevent Billy.s .almost falling.; she prevented his .falling., but we are now talking about how business people would phrase the individual concept of a state of affairs that isn.t actual. The proper proposition that refers to the state of affairs is .Billy falls down the stairs.. As I read SBVR, no .individual concept. could ever .fill the accident role.; only the thing that it denotes can do that. According to SBVR, a state of affairs is a res, so it can fill the .accident. role, but it cannot be an .individual concept.. That doesn.t mean you can.t construct an individual concept for that accident, if you need one. There are certainly individual concepts for states of affairs that are not actual, e.g., .the arrival of the Titanic in New York.. But in most cases, we use the false proposition that corresponds to the state of affairs, and we don.t need an .individual concept.. Unless I missed another SBVR venture into possibilia, .thing is actual. isn.t defined. So the proposed Necessity is meaningless in the general case. I just proposed a counterexample for the one case that SBVR tells me what .is actual. means. -Ed Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." -- C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), Alice in Wonderland From: John Hall [mailto:john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk] Sent: Saturday, May 11, 2013 12:06 PM To: Barkmeyer, Edward J Cc: Donald Chapin; 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Ed, .Jane prevents an accident. is an interesting example. Is it an instance of 'person prevents accident'? If so, what individual concept would fill the 'accident' role? If it didn't happen, how would you reference it? Regards, John On 06/05/2013 16:21, Barkmeyer, Edward J wrote: In the proposed resolution to 14849, the proposed Necessity: Necessity: Each given instance of a verb concept is actual only if the thing that is involved in each role of the verb concept is actual. Is false! Consider .Jane prevents an accident.. If the accident has to be actual, the prevention surely is not! Negative states of affairs are semantically tricky. Further, the idea .thing is actual. is not defined, and for good reason . it opens the door to the misbegotten .PossibleIndividual. idea in ontologies like EPISTLE. I wonder also why .given.? How is an instance of a verb concept .given.? The term .given. is almost always related to definitions of roles. Surely what is meant here is .each instance.. All in all, this seems like something that should be discussed in the Notes. Whatever you are trying to say cannot be formalized anyway. In short, this is a bad idea. Don.t try to fix it! -Ed From: Donald Chapin [mailto:Donald.Chapin@businesssemantics.com] Sent: Monday, May 06, 2013 7:20 AM To: 'Mark H Linehan'; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: RE: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Mark, Thank you for spotting that the third and fourth points need to be deleted as they do not directly address the Issue. I.ve attached an updated resolution for SBVR Issue 14849 with those two points deleted and the styling fix made. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Mark H Linehan [mailto:mlinehan@us.ibm.com] Sent: 05 May 2013 02:33 To: sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: Re: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue Typo in the 3rd Necessity: the word "given" should use "keyword" style rather than "term" style. The third and fourth points in the resolution text do not seem to be addressed in the revised text. ----------------------------- Mark H. Linehan STSM, IBM Research From: Donald Chapin To: "sbvr-rtf " , Date: 05/02/2013 11:05 AM Subject: FW: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All . Attached is the SBVR Issue 14849 Resolution released to ballot on November 30, 2012 and updated with one necessity in the SBVR RTF telecon on February 8, 2013. This Issue Resolution is ready for ballot. Donald From: Juergen Boldt [mailto:juergen@omg.org] Sent: 23 December 2009 18:29 To: issues@omg.org; sbvr-rtf@omg.org Subject: issue 14849 -- SBVR RTF issue this is issue # 14849 From: john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk .Actuality. is a specialization of .state of affairs.. Clause 8 says: fact type (synonym: verb concept): concept that is the meaning of a verb phrase that involves one or more noun concepts and whose instances are all actualities There are other instances of fact type that need to be accommodated, such as: § states of affairs that are planned to become actualities § states of affairs that might be actualities, but the semantic community does not yet know for sure Instances of a fact type should be states of affairs. Juergen Boldt Director, Member Services Object Management Group 140 Kendrick St Building A Suite 300 Needham, MA 02494 USA tel: +1 781 444 0404 x 132 fax: +1 781 444 0320 email: juergen@omg.org www.omg.org [][attachment "SBVR Issues 14849 Instances of verb concept should be states of affairs (2013-02-08).doc" deleted by Mark H Linehan/Watson/IBM]