Re: [ontolog-forum] Event Ontology

Dan wrote:
I'm quite ok with the Allen & Fergusson quote in 
http://motools.sourceforge.net/event/event.html#intro ... with the
> aside that I wouldn't bother saying events don't exist
We have be more concerned with such an ontological alchemy, easily stating 
real things as unreal, and unreal entities as the real.
For an eventless world is a world without change, and a world without change 
is a world without time, with all the ensuing consequences (of imortality 
and eternity :).
No event, no change; no change, no time; no time, no human history, memory 
and experience, i.e., no both human life and mental life.
Both an eventless world of objects, and an objectless world of events are 
poor constructs. It's like constructing an eventless web of objects, and an 
objectless web of events. When somebody doubts if events exists, if there 
are any events, he actually doubts if anything in the world happens at all: 
the Olympics, festivities, sporting events, his birth, dates and marriage, 
and possible death.
Re. literature on Events. It is vast, 
http://books.google.com/books?q=Events. I recommend to start from an 
anthology on Event, studying its ontology, semantic, logics and NL 
descriptions, very useful to read for all the semwebers, 
http://books.google.com/books?id=PZ7WAAAAMAAJ&q=Events&dq=Events. The book 
consists of five Parts: Events in Semantics; The Nature of Events; Identity 
and Individuation; Cause, Space, and Time; Events and Processes.
An integrated ontological account of change (and event) is given in the 
Reality book, 
http://books.google.com/books?id=mmVjIylBWlEC&pg=PT156&dq=reality+and+universal+ontology#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Have also to mention, there is an emerging multi-billion business, called 
Event Management Industry: dealing with all sorts of international social 
events, festivals, ceremonies, sporting events, mass media events, summit 
meeting of all sorts and kinds.
Apropos, there are many festivals, arts, film, literary, music, religious, 
science, but an Internet/Web Festival :).
Thanks
Azamat
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Brickley" <danbri@danbri.org>
To: "AzamatAbdoullaev" <abdoul@cytanet.com.cy>
Cc: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@ontolog.cim3.net>; 
<semantic-web@w3.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 3:05 AM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Event Ontology


> On Wed, Sep 2, 2009 at 8:12 PM, AzamatAbdoullaev<abdoul@cytanet.com.cy> 
> wrote:
>> John Bottoms wrote:
>> "An interesting question might be: how do we migrate from detecting 
>> simple
>> events to more complex ones. Or, we might discuss how those events are
>> represented in an ontology so that they are anticipated and detected
>> correctly."
>>
>> Indeed. Being the universal and ubiquitous real world phenomena, events
>> deserve a full scale discussion. Events as happenings, occurrences and
>> occasions are the most familiar things, as being everywhere and every 
>> time
>> to everything. They are key elements in the very Nature, from subatomic 
>> to
>> cosmic scale, as well as in life, mental life, social life, in technology
>> and industry, mass media and computing, particularly. Natural events,
>> physical events, chemical events, biological events, mental events, 
>> social
>> events, political events, cultural events are just some types of generic
>> Event.
>>
>> Imo, most confusion could be avoided with its adequate defining as "a 
>> change
>> happening at a given place/time, followed and caused by some other events
>> (changes, acts, or actions)."
>>
>> I am inclined to think that the current downgrading of event as a real 
>> world
>> "nonevent" comes from its poor ontological study.
>
> I don't get to say this very often, but ... well I think you might
> enjoy reading "Events and their Names" by Jonathan Bennett, if you've
> not run into it already. Google seem to have the whole thing online
> for 'preview', see
> http://books.google.com/books?id=hH1eCoFxlWUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false
>
> Modelling things in terms of events is very seductive. Once you get
> into that style of thinking, everything can seem best modelled that
> way. Unlike the rest of the changing world, event descriptions don't
> go out of date. This appeals to metadata people.
>
> I don't find it productive to ask whether or not events are "real"
> (any more than whether eg. beliefs or desires are "real"...). But we
> can ask how useful the concept of an event is, how it works informally
> and under various attempts at formalisation.
>
> There are certainly costs involved when trying to make heavy use of
> the notion of event, in data systems if not in general. Firstly, in an
> open world where data may always be missing, partial, etc you don't
> easily go from a pile of event descriptions, to knowing anything about
> the current state of the world. If you tell me your car is blue, and
> that's true, ... great, I know the colour of your car. If you tell me
> you painted it blue yesterday, or last week, or last year, ... then I
> know about an event in the past. I can't jump from that to a good idea
> of your car's current colour without having a commonsense reasoning
> system. And most people aren't holding their breath waiting for such.
> So in practice, having a mountain of event descriptions might be less
> useful than having some state-of-the-world descriptions that you can
> treat as reliable.
>
> A more abstract consideration is event identity; how can we count,
> compare and cross-reference events? The Bennett book goes into this at
> great length...
>
> So I'm quite ok with the Allen & Fergusson quote in
> http://motools.sourceforge.net/event/event.html#intro ... with the
> aside that I wouldn't bother saying events don't exist, for reasons
> pretty much in line with Stephen Stich's in
> http://books.google.com/books?id=hbcsiGdZ0V0C&dq=stich+deconstructing&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=-wefSqW0Monp-QaA2d3WDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#v=onepage&q=&f=false
> ...
>
> cheers,
>
> Dan
>

Received on Thursday, 3 September 2009 14:05:26 UTC