Re: vocabulary simplification: two proposals to vote on [deadline, Oct 26 midnight, GMT]

Hi Jim

Thanks for the concrete proposals.

Just to say the reason why we hadn't called for other names is that the model has used the term activity for the past 3 months and the proposal was to try and  make the language usage simpler within the model.

Paul





On Oct 27, 2011, at 3:04, Jim McCusker <mccusj@rpi.edu> wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 5:11 PM, Luc Moreau <l.moreau@ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>> ... does imply activity? you mean agency?
> 
> Yes, sorry.
> 
>> Well, so it's simple, we can quote definition 1 which does not.
> 
> Not as simple a that. Sense 1 is a mass noun, which applied across a
> composition of actors (an economy is made up of "rational" agents).
> It's an imprecise term to hang on to, especially when in most cases
> we're talking about sense 2, but without the guarantee of agency,
> known or not.
> 
> Of the terms discussed, I would prefer "Process" with the caveat that
> it needs to be strongly defined as the occurrent, not a continuent
> that specifies occurrents.
> 
> I'm not clear on why "activity" was settled on as the simplest term.
> The root "act" is far less ambiguous, even though it too suffers from
> implied agency. Shouldn't we be opening this up to other suggestions?
> 
> For instance, we can simplify the model by making Events either
> instantaneous or not (which aligns with the common definition of
> Event), and let Events be composites. Temporal events can be aligned
> with time.owl, but the temporal aspect shouldn't be required (as it's
> not required now).
> 
> Jim
> --
> Jim McCusker
> Programmer Analyst
> Krauthammer Lab, Pathology Informatics
> Yale School of Medicine
> james.mccusker@yale.edu | (203) 785-6330
> http://krauthammerlab.med.yale.edu
> 
> PhD Student
> Tetherless World Constellation
> Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
> mccusj@cs.rpi.edu
> http://tw.rpi.edu
>