Skip to main content
Department of Information Technology

On Mereologies in Computing Science

Speaker

Dines Bjørner

Date and Time

Thursday, November 11th, 2010 at 10:30

Location

Polacksbacken, room 2245

Abstract

In this talk we solve the following problems: we give a formal model of a large class of mereologies, with simple entities modelled as parts and their relations by connectors; we show that that class applies to a wide variety of societal infrastructure component domains; we show that there is a class of {CSP} channel and process structures that correspond to the class of mereologies where mereology parts become {CSP} processes and connectors become channels; and where simple entity attributes become process states. We have yet to prove to what extent the models satisfy the axiom systems for mereologies of, for example, {CasatiVarzi1999 and a calculus of individuals {BowmanLClarke81}.

Mereology is the study, knowledge and practice of part-hood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole. By parts we shall here understand simple entities --- of the kind illustrated in this talk.

Manifest simple entities of domains are either continuous (fluid, gaseous) or discrete (solid, fixed), and if the latter, then either atomic or composite. It is how the sub-entities of a composite entity are ``put together that ``makes up a mereology of that composite entity --- at least such as we shall study the mereology concept. In this talk we shall study some ways of modelling the mereology of composite entities. One way of modelling mereologies sorts, observer functions and axioms (McCarthy style), another is using {CSP}.

» Take a peek at his slides

Back to the seminar page

Updated  2010-11-02 11:42:29 by Frédéric Haziza.