Class State-Of-Affairs

• Defined in ontology: Enterprise-v0.1

Notes for State-Of-Affairs:

• Example: ((Hold-Authority joe-bloggs sign-checks)
  (Partner-Of Tom Ellen))
  

• Warning: There may be a level problem here mixing up the linguistic syntactical aspect with the semantics of the relations etc.

• Important: For the purpose of the Enterprise Ontology, a main use of the State-of-Affairs class is to restrict the types of arguments in relations.

  This definition is specifically crafted to make it convenient to limit such type restrictions to subclasses of State-Of-Affairs which only refer to certain Relations or Classes of Relations.

  E.g. For automatic planning applications it may be convenient to define a sub-class of State-Of-Affairs called World-State that only included Relations that expressed world state conditions. This could be done as follows:
  * Create a subclass of Relation called World-State-Relation and then make all world state relations instances of this Subclass.
  * Then define World-State as a subclass of State-Of-Affairs such that:

    
  (<
  
  
  => (World-State ?soa) 
       (Restricted-List-Of-Relsents ?soa
  
  
  				  (setofall ?r (World-State-Relation ?r))))
  
  
  

  Where the restriction applies to a small number of Relations, it may be more convenient to name each one individually. For example, the following defines a subclass of state-of-affairs to be restricted to a single relation:

    
  (define-frame Authority-Condition
  
  
    :own-slots
    ((Documentation "An State-Of-Affairs that expresses information using the 
  
  
  Hold-Authority relation.")
    (Subclass-Of State-Of-Affairs) (Instance-Of Class))
  
  
    :axioms
    (<
  
  
  => (Authority-Condition ?soa)
         (Restricted-List-Of-Relsents ?soa ('Hold-Authority) )
  
  
  

• Oops: In fact, this is not quite right. The restriction:

   (Restricted-List-Of-Relsents ?soa ('Hold-Authority))  
  

  precludes things like:

     (or (hold-authority joe sign-checks)
  	    (hold-authority jane sign-checks) )
  
  
  

  which ought to be allowed. So what is needed is a relation that restricts all R's to be a certain set; but also allows logical combinations of same. THis may involve re-defining things in a manner very similar to in Kif-Meta.

• See-Also: Relsent, defined in Kif-Meta

• We use the word 'Achieve' to refer to the realisation or bringing about of a State-Of-Affairs
• When the State-Of-Affairs is a Purpose, we might say it is `Accomplished' when achievement occurs.

Slots on class State-Of-Affairs:

Arity: 1

Documentation:

A situation. It is described by or consists of one or more statements asserting that a RELATIONSHIP holds between particular ENTITIES. Syntacticlly, a State-Of-Affairs is either
1. a Relational Sentence [Relsent@KIf-Meta] --or--
2. a non-empty list of Relational Sentences.

A Relsent is a list of the form: [R ?x1 ?x2 ... xn] where R is a relation [or function] constant; each xi is a term; and n>0

Domain-Of: Help-Achieve, Used-Or-Associated-With

Instance-Of: Class, Relation, Set

Range-Of: Assumed, Hold-Purpose, Intended-Purpose, Known-True, Perceived-Risk ...

Superclass-Of: Assumption, Influence-Factor, Purpose, Critical-Influence-Factor, Non-Critical-Influence-Factor ...

---

Slots on instances of State-Of-Affairs:

Equivalence Axioms for State-Of-Affairs:

(<=> (State-Of-Affairs ?Soa)
     (Restricted-List-Of-Relsents ?Soa (Setofall ?R (Relation ?R))))

Other Related Equivalence Axioms for State-Of-Affairs:

(<=> (Influence-Factor ?Influence-Factor)
     (And (State-Of-Affairs ?Influence-Factor)
          (Exists (?Actor)
                  (And (Known-True ?Actor ?Influence-Factor)
                       (In-Scope-Of-Interest ?Actor
                                             ?Influence-Factor)))))

(<=> (Assumption ?Assumption)
     (And (State-Of-Affairs ?Assumption)
          (Qua-Entity ?Assumption)
          (Exists (?Actor) (Assumed ?Actor ?Assumption))))

(<=> (Purpose ?Purpose)
     (And (State-Of-Affairs ?Purpose)
          (Qua-Entity ?Purpose)
          (Or (Exists (?Plan) (Intended-Purpose ?Plan ?Purpose))
              (Exists (?Actor) (Hold-Purpose ?Actor ?Purpose)))))

Other Related Axioms for State-Of-Affairs:

(Inherited-Facet-Value Slot-Value-Type
                       Plan
                       Intended-Purpose
                       State-Of-Affairs)

(Inherited-Facet-Value Slot-Value-Type
                       Effect
                       State-Description
                       State-Of-Affairs)

(Inherited-Facet-Value Slot-Value-Type
                       Pre-Condition
                       State-Description
                       State-Of-Affairs)

(Inherited-Facet-Value Slot-Value-Type
                       Planning-Constraint
                       State-Description
                       State-Of-Affairs)