SBVR16 — SBVR Issue: representations of propositions by name

Many business rules, laws of nature, etc., are given ‘names’ that are representations of those rules/laws as ‘individual concepts’.

For example, “Murphy’s Law” represents the proposition: Anything that can go wrong will. Similarly, “Newton’s First Law of Motion” represents the proposition: A body at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. (Laws like “Sarbanes-Oxley” are not just propositions, they are actually bodies of guidance.)

What is the SBVR relationship between these signifier expressions and the propositions? The expressions are very like designations, there are different expressions in different languages, and a few such ‘laws’ are known by different names in different subject areas. But it does not appear that they can be contained in Vocabularies or terminological dictionaries.

These representations cannot be ‘designations’. Propositions cannot be (individual) concepts, unless the dichotomy of ‘meaning’ (= concept xor proposition) is not valid. And they are clearly not ‘statements’.