Sunday, September 9, 2012

Event is a relative term

Following recent discussion with Jeff Adkins about the semantics of event,  one of the observations has been that event is a relative term.  First - different observers can describe the same event in different terms, and indeed different observers may not agree about - what really happened, or where it happened, or when it happened, or all the above, kind of "Rashhomon effect".    It may also be relative in the sense that different views may look at different properties of the event,  for example one view will only look at a customer enters the store, another view will also look at demographic properties of the customer -- age group, gender.
The relativism effect can mean that:  event meta-data may have different views with different structure, and event instance may have several corresponding instances according to the observers.  
The question is -- how to consolidate different observers?  this may involve modal  semantics.  I'll write about it at later phase.  

Jeff also recommended me to read a philosophy book called :"The ontology of mind: events, processes and states" by Helen Steward.  I have ordered this book and will write a review about it upon reading it.  

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