[osis-core] Users Manual Bug List - 64. Person to human

[Chris Little]

Kirk Lowery wrote:

> Chris Little wrote:
> 
>>> 64. Person to human
> 
> 
> [snip]
> 
>> In other words, I think we could clear up the confusion with just 
>> prose and a few examples (and no schema changes).
> 
> 
> Do we want to distinguish between sentient/non-sentient and at the same 
> time human/non-human? I'm thinking about angels, demons and deities. In 
> the ancient near east religions an ordinary object can become a deity. 
> In Ugaritic (and also claimed by some scholars to be the same in the 
> Psalms) the word "yam" which ordinarily means "sea" is used as "Yam" the 
> Sea God (later in classical culture, Neptune).

I think angels, demons, & deities all come under the category 
"nonhuman".  Named non-human, non-sentients probably fall under 
categories like geographic, holiday, or ritual.

Maybe we just need to clarify, via the manual, that "nonhuman" indicates 
specifically animate, possibly sentient non-humans.

> The move from "person" to "human" loses the the ability to label 
> "nonhuman sentient", "nonsentient, nonhuman" (e.g., Job's Leviathan...). 
> What is Frodo? A hobbit, a nonhuman sentient. In the current schema, a 
> person.

I would put both Yam & Leviathan in the "nonhuman" category, counting 
animacy over sentience as the more salient feature.  (Hobbits are 
technically human in Tolkien's cosmology.  But then, we can deduce from 
the fact that elf/man hybrids are not sterile that those are also of the 
same species and therefore human.  So I would put them all in our 
current "person" category.  But if you want to place them in a 
"nonhuman" category, I think you're justified in making that judgment.)

--Chris