Khái niệm cốt lõi
Supplementing the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) characterization of qualities, dispositions, and roles with grounding relations to clarify their ontological relationships and improve modeling of complex phenomena.
Tóm tắt
The authors identify gaps in the BFO treatment of qualities, dispositions, and roles, and propose introducing grounding relations to address these gaps.
Key highlights:
- BFO distinguishes dispositions as "internally grounded" and roles as "externally grounded", but the relationships between these entities are not fully specified.
- The authors introduce two types of grounding relations:
- Dependence grounding - a realizable entity depends on the qualities that inhere in its bearer.
- Mereological grounding - a realizable entity inhering in an aggregate depends on the mereological parts of that aggregate.
- These grounding relations help clarify the relationships between dispositions, roles, and qualities, and provide a more nuanced understanding of complex phenomena like host-pathogen interactions.
- The proposed grounding relations supplement the BFO treatment without fundamentally changing the existing ontological structure.
Thống kê
Dispositions are realizable entities that depend on the physical structure and qualities of their bearer.
Roles are realizable entities that depend on the relational qualities of their bearer and the external circumstances in which the bearer is situated.
Loss of mereological parts of an aggregate can result in the loss of realizable entities (dispositions or roles) inhering in that aggregate.
Trích dẫn
"Instances of realizable entity can be understood as underwriting connections between what has happened and what may happen."
"Roles may be borne by entities that do not have material matter as parts, i.e. immaterial entities, such as boundaries and sites."
"Sufficient loss of students, additionally, may even result in loss of realizable entities borne by the university itself, such as the role of a degree-granting institution."