Dear Franco,
I agree in all points.
The problem with an ontology as the CRM is of course not to create any
prejudice for or against a doctrine or ethical position.
As we agree, the CRM has to do with things that are identified in
historical documentation practice. The amount of matter present in a
human body over time and the eternal soul, by rebirth or after
conception, free will or determined by context etc. allows for many
definitions of what a person is. Therefore, in the CRM, we take from
this the *minimal commitment, *which is not in conflict with any wider
definitions. This (E21) is between birth and death, as an Actor and a
material body. It makes no statement whatsoever, if a person in social
or divine understanding extends to more.
Concluding, I do not see any conflict with the Catholic position, nor a
Buddhist one. We state that "end of pregnancy" may not result in an E21,
regardless what someone regards as a person.
In other terms, we do not make philosophies about exhaustive definitions
of categories of reality. We make *minimal commitments* in order to have
an agreement about identity of things we refer to by a mechanical
system, and which we can use for scholarly, non-mechanical,
non-mathematical exchange of things in relation to such identities (or not).
Would you agree?
All the best,
Martin
On 9/23/2019 5:38 PM, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
Dear Martin, I agree with you. I tried to suggest a solution with what we have,
of course introducing new entities/properties may be even better.
However, when stating that a birth event may not end in a new E21 Person we
must be very careful. According to the doctrine of Catholic Church, a Person
exists since the very first moment of conception, when the first cell comes
into existence and starts splitting. Such cell or assembly of cells is assumed,
for example, to have a soul since the very beginning of its existence. Maybe
also the Orthodox Church has the same belief.
I am just mentioning the above without taking part in favour or against, of
course.
Thus end of pregnancy should not be opposed to Birth unless we formulate the
scope note of the latter very carefully. I mean that what distinguishes a Birth
from an end of pregnancy which is not a Birth should be stated without
offending anybody.
On a different but related note, I think that a clear distinction among the
different cases of end of pregnancy where the baby is not born alive is
unlikely to be documented in historical documents, so a generic category would
probably suit better this particular case.
Best
Franco
Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNEplus - PARTHENOS
Editor-in-Chief
ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)
Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy
Il giorno 23 set 2019, alle ore 15:51, Martin Doerr <[email protected]> ha
scritto:
Dear Franco, All,
I agree, we have typically no coming into existence, or it is quite undefined.
This is a nice case to discuss the border cases we encounter with all concepts.
Typically, the biological process is that of birth or alike. The stillborn baby
may be buried without social identity given. We could have a type of Birth,
with all except the coming into existence. We could agree that ontologically,
there is some coming into existence, but a birth event does not necessarily end
in a new E21 Person.
The methodologically important question is which states of ignorance do we
encounter? Are the typical historical documents, in which the outcome of a
document birth may be unknown as it is in reality before it happens? Or are the
stillborn or miscarriage clearly distinct, because we normally describe birth
as secondary information about a Person?
I assume the typical document uncertainty is between abortion, miscarriage,
stillborn or dying at birth, but clearly separated if the baby lives. As an
independent event, it is alternative to Birth. That would rather suggest a
superclass of Birth, ending pregnancy.
Best,
Martin
On 9/23/2019 12:58 PM, Franco Niccolucci wrote:
As already explained I would better avoid Birth, and even Coming into existence.
Birth has two properties P96 by mother and P97 by father, the former being of
course more important. Using E5 Event does not allow this, so you can only use
P11 had participant. If I remember well there is no P11.1 in the role of, but
perhaps this may be harmlessly added. If not, a dirty solution is giving a Type
to the Actor involved like
P11 had participant E39 Actor ‘Mary Doe’ P2 has type “mother”
Maybe colleagues can find a more elegant solution; type in this case is a role,
not a property of the lady. But in my opinion only a *P11.1 in the role of
‘mother’ would work.
Best
Franco
Il giorno lun 23 set 2019 alle 11:34 athinak <[email protected]> ha scritto:
Dear Franco,
your comments are very useful and I think you are right, maybe this is
about a more general concept or we may miss something with the
definition of E67 Birth(?). And what about the parents? they are
participants in this biological event? Especially the mother who acts,
performs intentionally, especially in cases of stillborn, the procedure
is to start labour. I am concerned with the definition of the birth
event.
Thank you for the feedback
Athina
Στις 2019-09-23 11:45, Franco Niccolucci έγραψε:
My suggestion would be to avoid being involved in ethical and
religious discussions (when does the ‘person’ start to be such?)
and go one step up in the entity hierarchy so:
* instead of E21 Person use E20 Biological Object (superclass of E21)
qualified with P2 has type
* instead of E67 Birth use E5 Event qualified with P2 has type. In my
opinion using instead E63 Beginning of existence (superclass of E67)
is risky because applying the identity criteria to a fetus is
uncertain and subject to ethical discussion, so the only safe solution
is to record when it manifests to the world with a birth or
miscarriage.
Best
Franco
Il giorno lun 23 set 2019 alle 10:21 athinak <[email protected]> ha
scritto:
Dear all,
I am working on a project relating to historical information
(sources)
on Seafaring lives and Maritime Labour in 19th-20th century - we map
the
raw data to CIDOC CRM (or an extension of it). Historians collect
data
from various records, such as Civil Registers, which are records
documenting persons born or dead - basically, they register the
deaths.
So I have this case: they register as persons the miscarriages or
the
stillborn or the abortions, and they assign attributes such as the
number of registration, personal information (name,surname,etc. )of
the
parents, the place of residence (which is the parents address, of
course) and the sex of the aborted or still born (something they
knew
afterwards). I suppose this is a difficult ethical and biological
subject- my question is how would you model the miscarriage or the
still
born or the abortion? It is not exactly defined as E21 Person and if
it
is a case of still born, it can be a kind of a E67 Birth Event, but
if
it is a miscarriage, I believe it is not a birth event, it is a
different biological process, so what is it?
Any thoughts that would help?
thanks,
Athina Kritsotaki
_______________________________________________
Crm-sig mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
_______________________________________________
Crm-sig mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email:
[email protected]
Web-site:
http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
_______________________________________________
Crm-sig mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: [email protected]
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
