SBVR_ — Section: 8.1.1

ISSUE TITLE: SBVR Does Not Make It Clear How to Tell Whether Two Concepts are Really the Same Concept or Two Different Ccncepts ISSUE DESCRIPTION: The definition of 'concept' and the concepts it references should together give two people or communities an objective basis for agreeing whether or not two concept entries are really the same concept or two different concepts. The only sound basis for defining (meaning, not representation) concepts is a set of essential (necessary & sufficient) characteristics. This is what creates the concept. If two sets of essential characteristics are equivalent, the two concepts they create are the same concept. - This requires (some binary/ternary form of): - "'characteristic' is essential to 'concept'" - 'essential characterisitc' - "'characterisitc set' sufficiently defines 'concept'" - 'essential characteristic set'. - these SBVR verb concepts must make it clear that it is the set (of essential characteristics) that 'creates' the concept, while necessary characteristics 'make up' a concept individually. - In addition there must be an unambiguous way to identify all the essential characteristics in a concept's essential characterisitc set from the concept's intensional definition and the intensional definitions of all its more general concepts using the more general concept and delimiting characteristics represented by the intensional definition. - In addition determining the equivalence of two essential characterisitc sets requires the ability to assert the equivalence between two characteristics and between a characteristic and a set of characteristics. This is provided in "Issue9613-v5.doc" by: - characteristic1 is equivalent to characteristic2 - characteristic is equivalent to characteristic set - essential characteristic set1 is equivalent to essential characteristic set2 - equivalent set of essential characteristic sets NOTE: There is nothing here that says a tool must be able to do this, but we must have the vocabulary and criteria so that people can do it. If tools do it, so much the better, but it does not need to be required as a tool function by SBVR.

Add explanatory notes to the definitions of 'noun concept' and 'fact type'.
A note added under 'concept incorporates characteristic' in the resolution to Issue 10571 explains what characteristics are incorporated by a concept and that two noun concept definitions define the same concept if they produce the same set of incorporated characteristics.
Note that because 'noun concept' and 'fact type' are defined to be mutually exclusive, there is no confusion about how to tell that two concepts are different if one is a noun concept and the other is a fact type. Note also that is it possible to assert that a concept A and a concept B are the same concept using SBVR's fact type 'thing1 is thing2'.