RE: Wiki Page: Clarification of BFO Process Definition using a wide variety of use cases

Not sure who sent me this e-mail.

Boris/Barry,

Is it possible for you guys to post this to the wiki?
Please let me know if you are not able to post to the wiki.

These kinds of differences between various HCLS domains are crucial to identify
vis-à-vis use of the BFO and will likely form part of the final report
HCLSIG/OntologyTaskForce will submit to the W3C.

Cheers,

---Vipul

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Smith, Barry [mailto:phismith@buffalo.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2007 8:34 AM
> To: Kashyap, Vipul; William Bug; bfo-discuss@googlegroups.com; public-
> semweb-lifesci@w3.org; obo-relations@lists.sourceforge.net
> Cc: Alan March; Boris Hennig; Pierre Grenon; michael.f.uschold@boeing.com;
> Alan Ruttenberg; Holger Stenzhorn
> Subject: Re: Wiki Page: Clarification of BFO Process Definition using a
> wide variety of use cases
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I think Barry has added me to this thread because of the comments
> about my "Complex Procedures" paper. I hope you don't mind when I
> post some thoughts about the definitions in the wiki page on processes.
> 
> 1. Different stages of biological and clinical process can also be
> executed by different participants, for instance a nurse and a
> doctor, or a male and a female animal. So this should not be made a
> defining feature of "computational process" in contrast to the
> others two. It should be treated as a general option for all kinds
> of processes.
> 
> 2. It is important that "computational process" is defined as the
> execution of a program, and something like this is missing in the
> definition of "clinical care process." Not everything that is done
> by clinical staff in the context of health care is also a clinical
> care process (think of talking, breathing, humming, etc.). What
> distinguishes clinical care processes from other kinds of thing that
> nurses, doctors etc. do is that they have a point in the context of
> health care, and are in some stricter sense part of health care.
> 
> I think it should be the general form of all those processes
> which are realizations of realizable entities that they can involve
> one or more participants.
> 
> The differences among such process will then lie in:
> 
> (a) The kind of realizable. Some realizables are specifiable in
> detail by programs or algorithms, others are less strictly
> determined by scripts, rules, or norms (such as human actions or
> clinical procedures), and for some there may be no set of rules in
> any strict sense, but only a pattern they typically conform to. This
> distinction thus depends on the ontology of realizables.
> 
> (b) What the point is. This is how one can distinguish clinical
> tasks from other tasks, e.g. processes like medical treatment from
> other processes that may happen in the same context such as talking,
> breathing, humming. The purpose of talking is (usually) not to cure
> anyone.
> 
> I have no idea how a good definition of "biological" process should
> look like. The following is only an attempt:
> 
> "Biological Process: a realization of a realizable that is part of
> the life of some living being."
> 
> This is far from perfect, since (1) life might also be a biological
> process, which will make it circular - we would need an independent
> account of what life is; and (2) not every process in the life of a
> living being need be a biological process - we need to say more
> about what it is to be "part of the life" of a living being.
> 
> Boris
> 
> 






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Received on Wednesday, 6 June 2007 13:20:18 UTC