Dear Karl, Christian-Emil,
My concern is that we may put in one pot things that may turn out later
as incompatibly distinct.
My concern is not to introduce too many relationships. I become
concerned when a single relationships is proposed without its
ontological substance been understood. Such a thing any application can
do on its
own account. I would be much more happy if we could analyse different
senses.
I'll give examples below>
On 7/2/2015 8:41 μμ, Karl Grossner wrote:
In CRM terms, a sub-class of P89 Propositional Object makes sense to me.
In a 'Spatial History Ontology' I developed a few years ago (and never wrote on
outside my dissertation), I developed six modeling patterns and extended DOLCE
to account for them, one is Groups and Membership.
I also studied CRM patterns closely at that time. One gap in both is what you
describe, and I called it a FunctionalGroup (FGRP). In DOLCE terms it
sub-classes Collective:
Endurant
- Social Object
-- Non-agentive social object
--- Collection
---- Collective
----- Functional Group
Examples I gave included 'central European farmers circa 1200 CE,‘ Bauhaus
artists, U.S. Presidents, French speakers. These groups are only together
incidentally or by fiat, in many cases distributed through time and not capable
of agency. There are some cases that strain this conception, for example the
people present in a square, who later became a (very agentive) mob.
This construct:
'central European farmers circa 1200 CE,‘, 'French Speakers'
reminds me situation logic as described by Aldo Gangemi in his "OIO"
ontology.
Basically it appears as a set in the mathematical sense, confining a
base class "Actor" to an arbitrary
set of constraints. To my opinion, these sets do not qualify as an
ontological category in their own right, because they do not have any
observable unity criteria as an individual.
I'd argue, that you only need Description Logic to create the group you
need by rule, as long as the
constraints are expressed in terms of the CRM. You can do it with OWL,
and it is CRM compatible.
People becoming an agentive mob would actually form a "superindividual",
one Actor.
The "Bauhaus Artists" actually acted together to my best knowledge. I'd
need to be convinced by
historical evidence that this was not the case. Note, that being member
of a Group does not mean that
you cannot do things that are outside the Group.
In CRM, we model US Presidents as a sort of pseudoperson, another kind
of "superindividual",
which has a unity criterion and identity criterion across its office
bearers. We regard them as a Group
with one member at a time. Members do not interact, they continue work
of previous members similar to an
individual continuing to act as long as living.
There are many more types...an excerpt from that work:
******
Functional groups are necessary to specify and discover meaningful aggregations
of persons without requiring declarations of identity. For example, set (group)
membership could be a function of:
- Legal or otherwise formalized membership in a role: citizens(country);
residents(place); employees(organization); members(organization);
registrants(conference); etc.
- Event participation: participants (event)
- Relationships: friends-of (person)
******
Citizen of a democratic country elect their representative. The citizenship is
a membership
document. It can be granted and withdrawn.
"friends of" is a different story. In a narrower sense, "Friends" do
reciprocal activities together. This is a
relationship mediated by a continued activity, such as "business
partners". May be this would be
a "functional Group" as you have designed?
My grand-grand father is a different issue. On one side, there are
"elementary" kinship relationships
which are either biologically motivated or by social contracts of
equivalent value, such as adoption and marriage.
These relationships have transitive interpretations which have different
social status according to
the culture. George Lakoff cites American cultures that do not layer
them by generations.
I do not know if you can adopt someone as second-degree uncle in any
culture.
Such kinship claims are normally regarded as fraud if not justified by
elementary ones. They may
be discovered by their members via elementary ones.
So, we could introduce a "kinship relation" or "family relation" based
on birth, parenthood, marriage
and any degree of transitivity. That would be clear and objective?
I agree with Christian-Emil that they are a social contstruct, similar
to legal constructs. Transitive closures of
binary relationships would not require n-ary relationships.
We could introduce an activity-mediated relationship, a sort of
"partnerhood" or so, clearly
distinct from the kinship?
As CRM-SIG, I think we should seek evidence from anthropology which
distinctions are persistent through cultures.
To be discussed!
Martin
Karl
----- Original Message -----
The SIG decide 8-10 years ago to use E74 Group to model relations between
persons. From a practical point of view this is very handy. A relation is
simply an instance of E74 group of E21 Persons where the persons in question
are members. The intention behind E74 Group is that the group as such can
act as one unit. As Martin pointed out :"I could quite well imagine having
a sort of more general Group describing a social bond that would not involve
members potentially "acting as one" or one speaking for them. In that case,
that Group would no more be "one Actor". (Martin Doerr 4/8/2014).
In prosopography (see for example http://snapdrgn.net/) and in social
anthropology one may be interested in relations between persons not
naturally acting as a single actor . For example, my great grandfather aunt
(born in the end of 18th century) and I may be related but do not have the
potential to acting as one actor.
The excerpt from ULAN below, shows besides family relationships a
student/teacher relationship. I would claim that it is not necessary so
that a student and a teacher should be seen as members of a E74 Group.
Still we need to be able to model such relations. It is of course possible to
extend CRM with new properties for each relevant relationship. One may also
extend CRM with a generic relationship property with a .1 E55 Type property
indicating the kind of the relationship. The one need one generic property
for binary relationships, one for trinary etc etc.
A solution may be to introduce a single relationship group which is not a
subclass of E39 Actor, but with the similar membership properties as E74.
One may argue that (social) relationships are abstract entities originating
in humans' minds. Therefore the class of such "relationship groups" should
be a subclass of E28 Conceptual Object. A relationship is not a type but has
a type. It is hardly a legal object(?) It could be a subclass of P89
Propositional Object?
We need some discussion here.
Chr-Emil
********************************
ULAN excerpts
Christian Krohg
Related People or Corporate Bodies:
parent of .... Krohg, Per
................ (Norwegian painter, costume designer, and scenographer,
1889-1965) [500009787]
spouse of .... Krohg, Oda
................ (Norwegian painter, 1860-1935) [500069715]
student of .... Gude, Hans Fredrik
.................. (Norwegian painter, 1825-1903) [500004718]
student of .... Gussow, Karl
.................. (German painter, 1843-1907) [500031129]
student of .... Middelthun, Julius Olavus 1870-1871
.................. (Norwegian sculptor, 1820-1886) [500122010]
teacher of .... Eiebakke, August 1886-1887
.................. (Norwegian painter, 1867-1938) [500093351]
Oda Krohg
Related People or Corporate Bodies:
spouse of .... Krohg, Christian
................ (Norwegian painter, draftsman, and author, 1852-1925)
[500011632]
Per Krohg
Related People or Corporate Bodies:
child of .... Krohg, Christian
.............. (Norwegian painter, draftsman, and author, 1852-1925)
[500011632]
teacher of .... Storstein, Aage
.................. (Norwegian painter, 1900-1983) [500091511]
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