Re: PROV-ISSUE-29 (mutual-iVP-of): can two bobs be mutually "IVP of" each other [Conceptual Model]

Stian

Concretely, what are the answers to the question I raised, and the impact on transitivity?

Professor Luc Moreau
Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton 
Southampton SO17 1BJ
United Kingdom

On 2 Apr 2012, at 00:11, "Stian Soiland-Reyes" <soiland-reyes@cs.manchester.ac.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 1, 2012 at 21:52, Paul Groth <p.t.groth@vu.nl> wrote:
>> Your example is correct...but I the common thing were talking about is the
>> thing in the chair,
>> 
>> But maybe the gurus should step in
> 
> I'm not claiming to be a guru on the matter, but we've had this
> discussion ( a few times!) before.
> 
> If we assume every entity only maps to one thing in the world - and
> all those things are distinguishable, then we are enforcing a
> particular classification of things. (that there is some "real thing"
> in the end). How do we define a thing? What do you mean by "the car",
> do you include the petrol or not? Well, one way is to describe it as
> an entity.
> 
> Two entities could be describing the ''same thing" if the two
> interpretations overlap. The now famous "Customer in chair at 6pm"
> entity overlaps with the  "Woman in red dress" entity - they are
> alternates of the "same thing", as they are both specializations of
> the same woman, let's call her Julie. CustomerInChairAt6Pm is also a
> specialization of CustomerInChair, and alternate of
> CustomerInChairAt7Pm.
> 
> However they don't continue to be 'the same thing' as Julie gets up at
> 7pm to leave the cafe, and Bob sits down in her chair.
> CustomerInChairAt6pm disappears (is *consumed* by the Leaving
> activity, if you like), but Julie still wears her red dress;
> JulieInRedDress lives on. The CustomerInChairAt7pm has nothing to do
> with JulieInRedDress; they are not the same thing.
> 
> 
> In this case it was the passing of time that caused the
> same-thing-entities to transition to other entities which are not the
> same thing.
> 
> For conceptual things this can happen in other ways, for instance,
> imagine the genome sequence GATTACA is a specialization of "the human
> genome sequence", which is an specialization of the actual genome
> sequences from a selection of humans. However as the human genome is a
> kind of idealized average, some of those humans might not have GATTACA
> in their genome, and so here it would not be transitive. (I know this
> is pushing it a bit, as you could rather say that the idealized
> sequence is derived from the actual sequences - however you often find
> derivation and specialization go hand in hand).
> 
> My signature in the end of this email is a specialization of this
> email message, which is a specialization of my thoughts on this email
> thread. However the signature is not a specialization of those
> thoughts.
> 
> -- 
> Stian Soiland-Reyes, myGrid team
> School of Computer Science
> The University of Manchester

Received on Monday, 2 April 2012 05:05:27 UTC