Natural Process

[neilotte]

The present definition holds: "A Process existing in or produced by nature; rather than by the intent of human beings."

It is unclear how to interpret this class or its subclasses.

Taking either side of the semi-colon:

I don't know what 'A process existing in or produced by nature' means. Does this mean, for instance, that any type of event that would have instances regardless of whether or not humans exist would be a natural act? This would seem to make too many kinds of process fall under cco:NaturalProcess rather than cco:IntentionalAct. For instance: violence, nursing young, going to war, play, sex, tool use...

Taking the second part of the semi-colon:

Right now, 'rather than by the intent of human beings' reads to me as if every cco:NaturalProcess and its subprocesses must be unintentional. But some births, some deaths, some spinning motions, some propulsion processes, etc.... are intentional.

Thoughts?

[nklsbckmnn]

Not sure if that solves anything, but in the examples you give below (some births etc.) one could say that there exists some intentional act causally upstream from some natural process or mechanical process (if we are talking of spinning motions, propulsion processes of artifacts). So an "intentional birth" would be two processes. That would leave the question what the genus of that compound process should be… maybe just process. I wonder about "unintentional act" and "behavior“… those classes seem not to be distinct from natural processes. I agree that the part of the definition on the first side of the semi-colon taken by itself is too broad.

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Am 23.10.2020 um 02:34 schrieb J. Neil Otte ***@***.***>: The present definition holds: "A Process existing in or produced by nature; rather than by the intent of human beings." It is unclear how to interpret this class or its subclasses. Taking either side of the semi-colon: I don't know what 'A process existing in or produced by nature' means. Does this mean, for instance, that any type of event that would have instances regardless of whether or not humans exist would be a natural act? This would seem to make too many kinds of process fall under cco:NaturalProcess rather than cco:IntentionalAct. For instance: violence, nursing young, going to war, play, sex, tool use... Taking the second part of the semi-colon: Right now, 'rather than by the intent of human beings' reads to me as if every cco:NaturalProcess and its subprocesses must be unintentional. But some births, some deaths, some spinning motions, some propulsion processes, etc.... are intentional. Thoughts? — You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe.

[neilotte]

@eliasweatherfield That's a good thought regarding upstream causation, but I don't know if I buy it. This seems like another place where invoking causation is generally a bad idea, since it frequently requires an intransitive demarcation of causes and effects that can strike an audience as capricious (e.g. "Judge, I didn't cause that kid to be born. I'm was just the upstream dad. His birth was a natural process brought about by nature").

Also, while we're on the topic of birth, this leaves one without a good place for caesarean delivery. It seems one would have to say that during a caesarean, there are two co-occurring processes that involve exactly the same participants: the birth and the caesarean delivery--the former a natural process, the latter an intentional act.

[nklsbckmnn]

I would argue that a caesarean delivery is distinct from a natural birth. It is a birth only insofar as birth is a defined class the result of which is that a child has left the womb.

I opened an issue here some time ago about whether the agent in relation requires that an agent is causally active within a process or if causal activity upstream is sufficient. I personally came to the conclusion that the former interpretation is more useful. But your doubts about demarcation seem to apply to that question too, don't they?

But I admit there might be processes where it is not enough to say that there was an intentional act upstream because there seem to be intentional acts in the course of the "natural process" as well. It would be strange to regard multiple intentional acts of pushing by the mother during birth as seperate from that birth. I think that's what you were getting at, wasn't it?

[neilotte]

To the questions above, yes and yes. And if cco:Birth is being used only for 'natural births', then agreed caesarean delivery would be distinct (though, in practice, I believe its being used to anchor all birthdates, whether brought about by a mother's pushing, foreceps, ceasearean, or other agent-intended acts--could be wrong here).

To the larger point: Natural Process remains troublesome :)

[nklsbckmnn]

I guess a simple (probably too simple) solution would be to say that human intentionality in a natural process is not necessary.

[aellenhicks-jhuapl]

In a correspondence with @rorudn I asked about Explosion.

"(AH) Explosion - Some, but not all, explosions are produced by the intent of human beings. Should it be a subclass of Natural Process? - (RR) No. It should be a subclass of BFO Process."

[nklsbckmnn]

Allow me to try to make some progress on this issue.

It seems to me that if we understand a CCO:Natural Process as a Process that can have instances that are neither (a) caused by some Act nor (b) need to be sustained by some parallel/intermittent Act that would still allow us to represent the following:

(1) An Act or an Intentional Act is cause of a Natural Process.
(2) A Natural Process is process part of an Act or Intentional Act.
(3) An Act or Intentional Act is process part of a Natural Process.

A case exemplifying (1) and (2):

An explosion is intentionally caused by a person.

Intentional Explosion is an Intentional Act that has two process parts:
(a) Induction of Explosion which is an Intentional Act
(b) Explosion which is a Natural Process and caused by Induction of Explosion

I am aware this might look tedious. But it seems to me to be at the level of granularity required e. g. to represent cases in criminal law.

A case exemplifying (3):

An extrasolar object that is hurtling towards earth is successfully deflected by an Intentional Act.

The Motion of the extrasolar object through the solar system (from entering to leaving it) is a Natural Process.
The "Act of Deflection" in an Intentional Act that is process part of that Motion.

I would appreciate any comments.

[nklsbckmnn]

I just realized that because of the causative role that an Agent plays in the Motion of the extrasolar object, that Motion would also be an Act...

Can we accept that Natural Processes can also be Acts? Act would need to become a defined class to allow this.

[alanruttenberg]

In discussion in the MLO meeting I think it was @mark-jensen who said something to the effect that the terms was added for pragmatic reasons - to make it not be a huge list of sibling processes. Please correct me if I got this wrong.
My suspicion is that with some analysis we can introduce a hierarchy that addresses the pragmatic issue but with more defensible terms than "natural x"

[APCox]

@eliasweatherfield Your elucidation is in line with how I have been using the 'Natural Process' versus 'Act' distinction. The idea is that a combustion process, for example, is a combustion process regardless whether the proximate cause of the combustion was a lightning strike or an intentional act of striking a match. There is no ontological difference between the 2 fires (apart, perhaps, from the processes that caused them). Hence, in both cases the combustion process should be represented as "natural" -- it's chemistry in action. Nonetheless, in everyday parlance we say imprecise things such as, "Fires may be natural or man-made."

Causation is a complex and vastly overloaded topic. Beyond the basic fact that (almost?) no event has a single "cause", how we think about causation is typically closely tied to legal and moral issues (we always want to know who to blame or praise and will go to great lengths to do so -- for example, see Neil's comment above about "the upstream dad"). Differing understandings of causation are one way that things can go wrong here.

The CCO only addresses causation in generalities and care should be taken to not read too much into statements such as:
Act =def "A Process in which at least one Agent plays a **causative** role."
The definition is insufficient to handle all edge cases, but hopefully is good enough to provide sufficient guidance for its usage in most cases. The intent behind this definition is to pick out those processes that are clearly always agential (e.g., coughing, which could be intentional or unintentional) from those that are not (e.g, ice melting).

Of course, this does not prohibit me from causing an ice melting process to occur by performing one of a variety of acts. It is important to note, however, that the ice melting process I caused is still a natural process -- at least according to the intended sense of cco:NaturalProcess.

Another way that things can go wrong here is, as Elias notes, by approaching the same thing from different levels of granularity. For example, one person may represent 'Arson' as "Intentionally and unlawfully burning a building down." while another person represents it as "Intentionally and unlawfully starting a fire." The second person separates the burning process from the fire lighting process, whereas the first person combines them into a single process that must be placed under 'Intentional Act'.

The CCO attempts to enable representations at multiple levels of granularity and therefore needs to make these sorts of distinctions. This is one reason why, e.g., 'Birth' and 'Death' are under 'Natural Process'. @neilotte's example of a caesarean delivery is, I think, a good example of how an Act -- the caesarean delivery -- causes a Natural Process -- the birth. I fail to see an issue here. Both 'Caesarean Delivery' and 'Natural Birth' (in which it should be noted that the word 'natural' is used in a different sense than in cco:NaturalProcess) are "larger" or "thicker" processes than 'Birth' is. Hence, an instance of 'Birth' may be part of or caused by an instance of 'Caesarean Delivery', 'Natural Birth', or another process. Both 'Caesarean Delivery' and 'Natural Birth' reasonably belong under 'Intentional Act', but that does not necessitate 'Birth' to be there as well. I understand why someone might choose to build a hierarchy in which 'Caesarean Delivery' and 'Natural Birth' are subtypes of 'Birth'; however, it is worth considering the parallel case of death. If the same approach were taken with 'Death', then 'Murder' and 'Natural Death' would both be subtypes of 'Death'. But that would make 'Natural Death' an 'Intentional Act', which is surely wrong! It is better, I contend, to separate the cause of death (the act of murdering, the heart attack, the disease course, etc.) from the death itself, which is always a 'Natural Process'. The same reasoning holds for a great many other processes.

Now, with all of that being said, there is a LOT to be desired in the current definitions of 'Act' and 'Natural Process', more so for the latter. In the case of 'Act', the biggest challenge is properly defining the nature and limiting and scope of causation that makes a process an Act. This is not an insignificant task. Improving the definition of 'Natural Process' is, I think, more tractable; however, I suspect that doing so will also require a better account of the sort of causation involved.

@alanruttenberg I stated during the MLO call today that 'Natural Process' was added as a complimentary class to 'Act' at least in part for the pragmatic purpose of better organizing the subtypes of bfo:process. Perhaps the class is not strictly necessary and I'm happy to discuss alternative solutions. I suspect, however, that most people's concerns can be alleviated by improving the definition(s) and better documenting how the terms should be used.

[nklsbckmnn]

@APCox Thank you for your insights.

The intent behind this definition is to pick out those processes that are clearly always agential

If I understand correctly, this would enable me to not require the asserted instance of the Natural Process of Motion in my extrasolar object case to also be (inferred to be) an Act despite having an Intentional Act as part. And one could even have Natural Processes that have some Agent (CCO:Natural Process CCO:has agent some CCO:Agent).

I really like that solution.

[APCox]

@eliasweatherfield Yes, that is the idea.

[alanruttenberg]

I don't think you'll be able to define natural process , based on my prior experience with attempts to do that in OBO Foundry. It doesn't help much to appeal to causality, "thicker" or "thinner" processes, as those things don't have obvious meaning and so don't really help in understanding. Causality is really hard to work with as judgement of whether something is a cause is hard and subject to disagreement. So relying on people making such judgement will hurt interoperability.

I think there might be more luck in defining intentional act. One thing I don't see in the definition is whether the agent with the intention is necessarily participates in the process. That might help scope things some. I also note the language "plays a role" in the definition which isn't the sense in which BFO uses roles, There's no playing a role. There is realizing a role, and realizing a role requires participation of the bearer in the process.

I'm working on a more comprehensive comment that I hope will demonstrate more of the problems.