COSMO ontology, Version 0.52-713. Last edit 20080804 by Patrick Cassidy Has 21 top-level classes under 'Thing' Uses elements of the OpenCyc OWL version 0.78, SUMO, BFO and DOLCE ontologies, as well as elements created specifically for COSMO. Parts of COSMO are adopted or closely aligned with elements of other public ontologies such as OpenCyc, SUMO, and BFO. From the documentation of those ontologies, they are freely usable by the public, though they remain copyrighted by their originators (more detail below). No copyright restrictions are attached to materials added in the COSMO project, therefore the only copyright restrictions for use of this ontology are those placed by the developers of the OpenCyc, SUMO, and BFO on elements derived directly from those works. Relation of COSMO to other ontologies: The COSMO ontology has a structure and basic viewpoint that differs in some significant parts from that of the ontologies from which it has adopted materials, and the main parts of the hierarchical structure and relations are not significantly derived from any of the referenced ontologies. Most basically, the representations were intended to adhere as closely as popssible to linguistic intuitions about the meaning and usage of English terms, while specifying the meanings in a logically precise manner. Every element added to COSMO is individually evaluated for its utility and validity within the conceptual structure of the COSMO ontology, and is not derived or adopted solely or mainly on the basis of the appearance of a similar concept in another ontology. Certain individual subtype relations are similar to those in OpenCyc or SUMO; but because the basic hierarchical structure of COSMO differs from the other ontologies, logical inference using these relations will arrive at conclusions that cannot be aligned directly with either OpenCyc or SUMO. No mapping between COSMO and these other ontologies is likely to enable accurate inference. The documentation derived from OpenCyc and SUMO is provided as a means to reference similar concepts in those other ontologies, and to explain similarities and differences, for the convenience of those who are familiar with those ontologies. Contents derived from OpenCyc and SUMO are copyrighted and made freely available for public use under the terms found in the documentation for those works (see below). Materials added specifically for the COSMO project are not copyrighted. The contents derived from SUMO are copyrighted by the IEEE and made freely available for public use. For more detail see: see http://www.ontologyportal.org A description of the SUMO project can be found in: Niles, I., and Pease, A. 2001. Towards a Standard Upper Ontology. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS-2001), Chris Welty and Barry Smith, eds, Ogunquit, Maine, October 17-19, 2001. The Contents of the OpenCyc OWL version used in this project are found at: http://www.cyc.com/2004/06/04/cyc OpenCyc materials are copyrighted and licensed for free public use under the GNU 'LGPL' license. The Opencyc documentation reads: ************ OpenCyc copyright notice ****************** Copyright Information OpenCyc Knowledge Base Copyright 2001-2004 Cycorp, Inc., Austin, TX, USA. All rights reserved. OpenCyc Knowledge Server Copyright 2001-2004 Cycorp, Inc., Austin, TX, USA. All rights reserved. Other copyrights may be found in various files. The OpenCyc Knowledge Base The OpenCyc Knowledge Base consists of code, written in the declarative language CycL, that represents or supports the representation of facts and rules pertaining to consensus reality. OpenCyc is licensed using the GNU Lesser General Public License, whose text can also be found on this volume. The OpenCyc CycL code base is the "library" referred to in the LGPL license. The terms of this license equally apply to renamings and other logically equivalent reformulations of the Knowledge Base (or portions thereof) in any natural or formal language. See http://www.opencyc.org for more information. ************ OpenCyc copyright notice ****************** Definitions described as coming from the 'Random House Webster' (RHW) refer to the Electronic Dictionary 'Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary' on CD (2002) from Random House, Inc. and Multimedia 2000 Inc.(a paperback version is still available at: http://www.randomhouse.com/category/reference/) Some of the entries have annotation references to WordNet ('wordnet' and 'wnsense' relations). The WordNet version referenced is WordNet 2.1 (see http://wordnet.princeton.edu/). Because the WordNet hierarchy differs from that of COSMO, these pointers are only informative, and may not be useful for accurate automatic conversion of WordNet sense tags to the corresponding senses in COSMO, but the utility of this mapping needs to be investigated.
InheritableType is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class which is used to identify those metatypes which, when specified as the parent Type for some class (Type) in the ontology, will also by implication be the parent Type for all subtypes of any Type explicitly designated as an instance of any subtype of 'InheritableType'. This is a primitive mechanism to permit translation of this ontology among various formats, while permitting the use of reasoning engines which require that arguments to relations, if restricted as to Type, be instances of some specified Type. There are some ontologies, such as SUMO, using first-order logic, which permit one to specify that an argument to a relation must be a *subtype* of some Type in the ontology, rather than an *instance* of some Type. OWL and some other reasoning engines do not permit that kind of restriction. For convenience, to allow this ontology to be used in multiple reasoning engines and to be automatically translated into multiple formats, this metatype is provided and so that one can avoid having to specify the metatype instance of every Type that is to be used as an argument to a relation. When using this ontology in an inference engine that requires explicit types, it will be necessary to add the InheritableType as a Type of each subtype of any Type that is specified to be an instance of such an inheritable type. That addition will have to be one in a preprocessing stage before using that inference engine. An axiom may be added to an ontology using FOL to specify that all subtypes of a Type ?T that is an instance of an InheritableType ?MT will also be instances of that InheritableType: (=> (and (isanInstanceOf ?T ?MT) (isaSubclassOf ?MT InheritableType)) (forall (?ST) (=> (isaSubclassOf ?ST ?T) (isanInstanceOf ?ST ?MT)))) This axiom will permit the ontologist to avoid specifying the metatype for every subtype of the root type of that Type tree, in those ontology implementations that can use FOL.
RoleType is a metaclass used as the Type restriction on certain relations that take subclasses of Role as their argument.
AttributeValueType is a metaclass used as the Type restriction on certain relations that take subclasses of AttributeValue as their argument.
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take a subtype of Context as one of their arguments. IT can also be used for types for which namespace prefixes would be convenient to label the instances, such as 'AtomicSymbol'..
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take a subtype of Scope as one of their arguments..
QualitativeAttributeType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for taste attributes and an argument restriction for some relations on QualitativeAttributes. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations.
IntensiveAttributeValueType is a metaclass used as the Type restriction on certain relations that take subclasses of IntensiveAttributeValue as their argument.
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take a subtype of Event as one of their arguments..
PhysicalObjectType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for physical objects and an argument restriction for various relations on Physical Object types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
PersonType is a metatype which allows specifying relations on ''Person'' as a Class.
AbstractObjectType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for physical objects and an argument restriction for various relations on 'AbstractObject' types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
''MentalObjectType'' is a metatype which is a specialization of 'AbstractObjectType' that can serve as type for ''MentalObject''s, i.e. ''AbstractObject''s created by an intelligent agent (usually a Person, but it could be a computer) that contains information in any form (text, graphical, propositions). Rules (laws, theories, documents, graphical images of which there are physical representations) and an argument restriction for various relations on such things. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
'PropositionType' is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for Propositions and an argument restriction for various relations on Propositions types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
BiologicalOrgan is a metaclass used as the Type restriction on certain relations that pertain to named parts of organisms at particular stages of their life cycle. It is not necessarily an animal body part type - it may be part of a plant.
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take an instance of Location as one of their arguments..
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take an instance of Feature as one of their arguments..
A collection of specializations of #$AnimalBodyRegion. Each instance of #$AnimalBodyPartType is a collection of body parts, where the parts in question are differentiated from other body parts according to structure or function. Instances of #$AnimalBodyPartType include #$SpinalColumn, #$Eyelash, #$NervousSystem, #$Urethra, #$Wing-AnimalBodyPart, and #$HeelOfPalm.
'ProductType' is a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take an instance of Product (i.e. something for sale) as one of their arguments..
GroupType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for physical objects and an argument restriction for various relations on types of Groups (not just People, but any type of Group). This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
SubstanceType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for physical substances and an argument restriction for the hasComponentSubstance relation. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments. The restriction on hasGrainDiameter for SubstanceTypes should require subclasses rather than instances of LengthMeasure - instances may have to be created as a workaround.
FoodType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for different kinds of Food (a Substance). This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
FoodType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for different kinds of FoodObject (a PhysicalObject). This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
ObjectType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for objects, whether abstract or physical, and an argument restriction for various relations on Object types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
COSMO note: used for both substances and Objects. @ToDo (v0.50) Probably should be distinguished. Cyc: A collection of collections, and a specialization of #$ManufacturedGoodsType. Instances of this collection are types of pharmaceutical products that may be prescribed by a medical professional. Note that this includes drugs -- specializations of #$DrugSubstance -- as well as pharmaceutical devices such as #$TestStrip or #$HearingAid-Prescription. #$PrescriptionDrugType and #$OverTheCounterDrugType are among the specializations of this collection.
A pointer to the word in the LDOCE (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English) defining vocabulary which the given element represents. Since the LDOCE words can be polysemous, and the nominalized forms of verbs in the COSMO will not be identical to verb meanings, this is not intended as a one-to one mapping, but in many cases the occurrence of a word in a text will be related to the COSMO concept representation by a more or less complex transformation.
A pointer to the synset in WordNet 2.1 which the given element represents. The pointer will in fact be to one of the words in the synset, and the sense number of that word in that synset will be found with the 'wnsense' relation. This pointer does not include the offset number. This can be used with a SPARQL query to find all of the ontology elements that correspond to senses for a given word.
A pointer to the sense number (and POS, if needed) in WordNet 2.1 which the given element represents. This is only needed if there is more than one WordNet sense for the word labeled by the 'wordnet' relation. The sense number should include the word whose sense number is referenced, since more than one Wordnet word may be used to label a particular concept. The usage is exemplified by these relations on 'Ordering': wordnet - order - /wordnet wordnet - command - /wordnet wnsense - order1v /wnsense wnsense - command2v - /wnsense
Objects can be Physical or Abstract or Mental only PhysicalObjects have mass, and that is the defining characteristic of a PhysicalObject in COSMO. All Objects have at least one relation other than the type (isa) relation to some other entity that is not an Object. Almost all objects have an Attribute or AttributeValue. But the relation may be some other relation (e.g. to have a location, a composition, or to have proper parts). Thus a point can have Dimensionality (zero-dimensional), and will have a location, though the location may be in a poorly defined abstract space. For example, a character in an alphabet is an abstract object, which has at least one representation as a shaped physical object, and is an element of an Alphabet. This requirement for an Object to have some relation is not presently (v0.48) formalized in COSMO, as it is not needed for performance, only to clarify the meaning for the human users. 'Object' is a very primitive concept that cannot be defined, but can be comprehended only by the way this concept interacts with other concepts, and by its subclasses and instances. This Type is useful as an umbrella Type for various purposes,including relations on Events. NOTE that in COSMO an 'Object' is not necessarily 3D (as in an endurantist perspective) nor 4D (as in a perdurantist perspective. It can be use in syntactic constructions that appear to be 3D (such as when they are explicitly time-indexed), but when an object is also an instance of TimeSlice,it can be used in syntactic constructions that are typical of the 4D perspective, in which the time of a relation is not explicitly indexed.
COSMO: SetOrType is the union of theTypes Set and Type. 'Type' in COSMO is used to refer to those intensionally-defined groupings called: Class in Ontolingua and Protege; Class in RDF and OWL; Class in SUMO; Collection in OpenCyc; Universal in DOLCE; Property in Ontology Works' IODE system * The Class 'Type' in COSMO is intended to be equivalent to the classes by those names in those other ontologies. * (isaSubtypeOf A B) means that Type A is a subtype of Type B and that all instance of Type A are also instances of Type B.
Each PhysicalSubstance is an abstraction representing the properties of aggregates composed of multiple small objects of a common type; the notion of a PhysicalSubstance includes any of the common 'substances' we encounter every day: water, air, sugar, salt, coffee (ground or as a drink), beer, meat, steel, plastic, etc., as well as less common substanes such as ion plasma and groups of elementary particles. Every PhysicalSubstance has some basic unit which is the smallest object that can be considered as composed of that substance. For chemical elements the basic unit is an atom; for chemical compounds, the molecule; for sand, one grain of sand, etc. For PhysicalSubstances that are composed of mixtures (e.g. concrete), the formal notion of a 'grain' is used, the 'grain' being the size of the smallest object composed of a substance, that can be subdivided so that the pieces are still objects composed of the same substance. The 'grain' will in general be eight times the size of the 'unit' (allowing division in any of three planes) , but for mixtures the 'unit' may be difficult to identify, and the 'grain' will be the only object identifed as characterizing the PhysicalSubstance. For mixtures, the size of the grain will depend on the sizes and proportions of the constituent objects. Thus in concrete, the grain will have to be at least several times as large as the largest pebble of gravel used in the mixture. The commonly understood properties of substances such as water are characteristic only of aggregates of the basic units (atoms, molecules, grains). To approximate the commonly measured properties (boiling point, melting point, density, etc.) the number of basic units may need to be fairly large; this will also vary with the substance. As of v0.52 this issue is not addressed. This concept must not be construed as a physical object made of some substance (which is the way substances are represented in Cyc).. PhysicalObjects which are relatively homogeneous (the atmosphere, the ocean) can be construed as consisting of one or more PhysicalSubstances, but they are not substances per se, but specific quantities of a substance, which is one way to view a PhysicalObject. For generality in COSMO, a 'PhysicalSubstance' is the material of which anything with mass is composed, including quantities of subatomic particles that are contained in a certain region of space (such as a plasma in a Tokomak, or a group of electrons in a particle accelerator). However, the term is usually applied only to 'ordinary matter' (solid, liquid, gas); in those cases the unit is an atom or molecule, and the 'grain size' of any PhysicalSubstance that is 'ordinary matter' must contain at least 8 atoms or 8 molecules (so that it can be divided in two in any axis and still have multiple units in the resulting parts). IMPORTANT NOTE: PhysicalSubstances are categorized by the main consitutent. Therefore 'SeaWater' is considered as a subtype of 'Water'. The pure chemical substances can be represented when desirable by creating a 'Pure' category under the general heading (or, if functions are used, by using a '(Pure X)' function.) Thus we have a Type called 'PureWater'. Steel might be considered as a subtype of 'Iron', but some 'steels' may not have iron as the majority consitutent. COSMO note: Because substances are represented in COSMO as Types (classes) rather than instances, the specification of properties of substances gets involved, and the intended meanings cannot be specified fully without the use of FOL. As placeholders, some relations between substances are specified, and in OWL these will be interprted as applying only to those specific Substances (Type that are instances of SubstanceType), while the intended meaning is that the relation applies not only to the particular Type but to all subtypes as well. The translation of the OWL ontology to FOL should carefully handle these placeholder relations to be sure they are translated properly. . The restriction on hasGrainDiameter for SubstanceTypes (which see) should require subclasses rather than instances of LengthMeasure - instances may have to be created as a workaround. (still not decided, v0.43). NOTE that a substance at some particular concentration is a subtype of that substance. To expresss that an object contains a particular concentration of a substance, one can create a subclass of that substance having the appropriate concentration attribute, and relate the object to that concentration of substance by the relation 'hasConstituentSubstance'. This representation solves some logical problems, but creates implementation problems in restricted logics such as OWL. COSMO uses relations such as 'hasComponentSubstance', which takes PhysicalSubstance types (instances of the metatype 'SubtanceType') as the 'range' restriction. There are also relations which have subtypes of 'PhysicalSubstance' (instances of 'SubstanceType') as the domain restriction. This can be accommodated in OWL. However, in order to have restrictions apply to subtypes of types, the OWL restriction mechanism interprets the restriction as applying to instances of the type (OWL class). There are no instances of PhysicalSubstance types in COSMO, and the restriction is intended to apply to the subtypes, not to instances. Such restrictions on PhysicalSubstances will have to be interpreted by applications as meaning that the substance represented by the class has those properties. One way to solve the problem might be to create a metatype for each substance Type (i.e. for each of millions of substances), and have the restriction apply to the metatype - but this duplicates Types as metatypes, and is unworkable. COSMO leavee the proper implementation to the application, atl least until it is converted in to an FOL version, where the proper interpretations can be specified by rules. The senses 1 and 2 of 'matter' in Random House Webster are conceptually the same as this type, where COSMO interprets sense 2 is the most generic 'matter' of which the instances of sense 1 are subtypes: 1. the substance or substances of which any physical object consists or is composed: the matter of which the earth is made. 2. physical or corporeal substance in general, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, esp. as distinguished from incorporeal substance, as spirit or mind, or from qualities, actions, and the like. Corresponds to noun sense 2 of 'substance' and sense 1 of 'stuff' and sense 1 of 'matter' and sense 1 of 'material' in WordNet; however, 'substance' is not related to 'stuff' and 'stuff' is not related to 'matter' in WordNet, and 'matter' is not used typically as a synonym of 'substance' in ordinary speech. This difference in usage reflects a difference in the way 'substances' are conceived - as either some abstract stuff of which objects consist, or of the collections of all objects of that composition, as in Cyc. COSMO chooses the notion of an abstract 'stuff'. A noun like 'matter' which, if it were taken to have a collective reading as 'all physical objects, collectively' would thereby conform to the Cyc method of representing PhysicalSubstance, and would then consistently be reinterpreted in COSMO as the same concept as 'PhysicalSubstance'. WN 'substance': 2. (4) substance - (the stuff of which an object consists) WN 'stuff': 1. (6) material, stuff - (the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object; 'coal is a hard black material'; 'wheat is the stuff they use to make bread') WN material: 1. (448) material, stuff - (the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object; 'coal is a hard black material'; 'wheat is the stuff they use to make bread') WN 'matter': 1. (41) substance, matter - (that which has mass and occupies space; an atom is the smallest indivisible unit of matter')
hasUnitObject relates a PhysicalSubstance to the PhysicalObjects that are the characteristic objects that constitute the substance. For example, a ChemicalElement hasUnitObject Atom.
consistsOfMany relates a granular material consisting of multiple individual objects of the same type (e.g. sand), considered as a Substance, to the individual objects. This is similar to and a subproperty of 'hasUnitObject', but is restricted to granular materials, whereas the parent 'hasUnitObject' can be used to treat large quantities of any object as a substance.
In COSMO a 'ConceptualWork' (a MentalObject) is classified as an AbstractSymbolicObject, since such works are always created in symbols, though the symbols may have information content - the 'meaning'. COSMO differs somewhat from the Cyc description in that we consider Codes to be included, but have a different usage of the term 'Code'. Cyc: OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of abstract works which are the deliberate creations of one or more individuals working in concert, have instantiations [#$instantiationOfCW] which are #$InformationBearingThings, and associated #$AbstractInformationStructures. This is a specialization of #$DevisedPracticeOrWork [q.v.]. For works with propositional content see the more specific collection, #$PropositionalConceptualWork (PCW). Positive examples include: #$MobyDickNovel (as opposed to any instances of #$BookCopy such that (#$instantiationOfCW #$MobyDickNovel BOOK_COPY)), Beethoven's 9th Symphony (as opposed to any performance of this symphony or any copy of its score). Negative examples include: games (performances are not IBTs), awards (they do not have associated #$AbstractInformationStructures), paintings (not abstract), customs (not deliberate creations), natural languages (not a deliberate creation), and codes (their uses, not instantiations, are IBTs).
A AbstractSymbol is a unit mental object which is created to serve as a Symbol, and cannot be broken in parts without destroying much of the meaning of the symbol. Examples are single characters in some language or graphical icons representing ideas or objects. The more interesting Symbols are texts and images.
An AbstractCharacter is an AbstractSymbol that is one of the symbols contained in some linguistic alphabet, or any other symbol used in typography or in the control of format during electronic transmission of information. In information processing systems, any sequence of bits having the proper length for use in strings (e.g., seven bits or eight bits or sixteen bits) can count as an AbstractCharacter, the length depending on the computational context.
hasShape relates abstrct figures, substances, substance types, or individual objects to one or more shapes that describe the spatial form of that entity. When applied to substances, the shape description (e.g. 'lumpy') will be interpreted as a description of objects (quantities of substance) that are composed predominantly of that substance. For abstract geometric figures, the shape may be precise, with infinitely precise edges. For real-world objects, the shape will be only approximate, and in some cases very approximate.
isInList relates some symbol to a List that contains that symbol as an element. SUMO (named 'inList' in SUMO): The analog of 'element' and 'instance' for Lists. (inList ?OBJ ?LIST) means that ?OBJ is in the List ?LIST. For example, (inList Tuesday (ListFn Monday Tuesday Wednesday)) would be true.
An AbstractText is the abstract representation of some linguistic expressions. The text may have formatting, such as columns and rows, beyond simple linear text.
An AbstractString is a linear array (A List) of basic characters in some character set (not necessarily just an alphabet). It is the abstract representation of the characters, and the base string will not have any formatting, either of font or size or capitalization. Formatting can be represented as attributes of a String. Every defined instance of AbstractString should be represented by a datatype String using the relation 'hasStringRepresentation', unless it is a binary string, or has a number of bits that is not evenly divisible by 8 (in which case, a BinaryString should be used). The name of the AbstractString in the ontology can be very much shorter than the actual String represented; e.g. the string representation of AbstractString 'WarAndPeace' might be the full text of a long book..
description (from DOLCE-D_S) From DOLCE (Descriptions and Specifications): A description is a social object which represents a conceptualization (e.g. a mental object or state), hence it is generically dependent on some agent and communicable. Descriptions define or use concepts or figures, are expressed by an information object and can be satisfied by situations. The typology of descriptions is still preliminary. In COSMO, a Description is somewhat more specific: it is two or more assertions that all include the same entity as one of the arguments, and it is a MentalObject created to enable an Intelli"gentAgent to understand the nature of that entity.
wasCreatedBy relates an Artifact (concrete or abstract) to the Agent or Agents who created it. Knowing the identity of one creator (e.g. of an artifact) does not guarantee that one knows the identity of all creators. NOTE that the range includes an AbstractString, which is semantically nonsense, but is included as a pragmatic tactic to allow subrelations of this relation to be used in mapping database records to their creators. The creators will sometimes be represented in the database only as a string, and in such cases an implementing system, at its option, can avoid creating a new Person object (instead creating an AbstractString object), when the system cannot identify the 'creator' of the record. This tactic may change as the ontology is further developed, and experience with mapping databases increases..
COSMO: A Specification is a broad category of intentionally created abstract informational artifacts whose purpose is to describe the structure of a thing or a series of steps that may be taken to construct a thing or to accomplish a goal. It is a mental object having ordered components,the order of which is designed to accomplish a purpose. The steps may be abstract things like computational events or game rules, or physical things such as in industrial processes. The format of a formatted document is a specification,i.e. it specifies how a document of that type is to be constructed. Likewise a grammar or computer program is a specification. A specification does not necessarily require that the steps be in sequence. If they must be in sequence, it is a procedure. This differs somewhat from the Cyc 'Specification': Cyc comment: A specialization of #$ConceptualWork. Each instance of #$Specification is an abstract work that constitutes a description of the properties of a #$Situation or a #$SomethingExisting, and sometimes even entire collections of such things. Things are made, bought, and searched for according to specifications, which can be instantiated as printed instructions or as diagrams. This collection is modally neutral with regard to the descriptive character of its instances. Thus, it includes descriptions of how things are, were, should be, must be, etc.
This is the most general Type in which to collect patterns of different kinds - visual, sound patterns, numerical patterns, behavioral patterns, etc. In COSMO, a Pattern is a Specification, which means that it is a kind of MentalObject. That means that Patterns do not have existence unless created by IntelligentAgents. This will probably seem odd to some people, who would prefer to think that patterns have an independent existence - especially when geometric figures are subtypes of 'Pattern'. At this point, there is no reason to classify Patterns in any way other than as specifications that people create to classify some types of relations that obejcts within groups of things may have to each other. If some reason is presented to consider patterns as independent of the way people use them, that may be a different concept, or may warrant reclassification.
This is the most general Type in which to collect visual patterns - geometric designs, fingerprint patterns, artifact structural patterns, appearances, shapes, outlines, etc.. NOTE that an abstract image itself (e.g. an image of a fingerprint) can be a pattern.
An instance of #$GeometricShapeType and a specialization of #$GeometricallyDescribableThing-Intangible and #$HomogeneousExtendedSpaceRegion (qq.v.). This is the collection of geometrical figures, conceived of as bounded (one- or higher-dimensional) regions of space. Neither a single point (see #$GeometricalPoint), nor a sum of scattered points, is an instance of #$Figure-Geometrical. Note that this collection includes line segments, but not unbounded lines. An important specialization of this collection is #$PlaneFigure-Geometrical. The class of all geometric figures, i.e. the class of all abstract, spatial representations. Instance of GeometricFigure are abstract mathematical objects which can be considered as independent of anything in our material universe. They are therefore not MentalObjects, which must be created by people. The instances of this class are GeometricPoints, TwoDimensionalFigures or ThreeDimensionalFigures or any other Object that can be represented as being a distribution of points, lines, planes, volumes, or hypervolumes in some abstract space.
A CollectiveAgent is a human group or organization, acting as a unit or having some other agent acting in its behalf. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 (termed MultiIndividualAgent in Cyc) The collection of all #$Agent-Generics that each consist of other #$Agent-Generics operating together. Usually the constituent agents form some kind of #$Group that itself acts as an #$Agent-Generic. Examples: a #$LegalCorporation, a #$GeographicalAgent, a #$Neighborhood or an #$Industry-Localized. Although it would be a positive exemplar of (#$GroupFn #$Agent), the 'group of people whose first names all start with the letter 'B'' is a negative exemplar of #$MultiIndividualAgent. In almost all contexts, such a group will not act as an #$Agent in any way. It is less cohesive than some of the least cohesive kinds of #$MultiIndividualAgents such as #$CrowdOfPeople.
OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 This collection may be thought of as consisting of all the entities which are localizable within the context of a geography, in the sense that they might plausibly be represented on a map. This includes both #$PartiallyTangible entities like #$GeographicalRegions, and also entities that may be wholly #$Intangible, like territorial borders and boundaries, #$LatitudeLines and #$LongitudeLines, trajectories of missiles and courses of ships, and the #$Equator.
A specialization of both #$MultiIndividualAgent and #$GeographicalThing. Each instance of #$GeographicalAgent is a group of people and/or organizations cohesive enough to be treated as an agent (see the collection #$Agent, of which #$GeographicalAgent is a specialization), and which occupies a particular instance of #$GeographicalRegion. Important specializations of #$GeographicalAgent include #$GeopoliticalEntity, #$University, and #$Neighborhood. Note that instances of #$GeographicalAgent are viewed in two significantly different ways with respect to two different types of geography-related microtheories. In a 'physical' geography microtheory (i.e. #$PhysicalGeographyMt and its submicrotheories), geographical agents are clearly distinguished from the regions they occupy. (#$TerritoryFn GEO-AGENT) is used in these contexts to denote the land mass (an instance of #$GeographicalRegion) occupied by a given geographical agent GEO-AGENT. In a 'dualist' geography microtheory (i.e. #$DualistGeopoliticalMt and its submicrotheories), on the other hand, geographical agents are viewed as being _both_ agents _and_ land masses (instances of #$GeographicalRegion). Thus, there is little need for #$TerritoryFn in the latter sort of context. (Despite their somewhat paradoxical flavor, dualist microtheories arguably allow Cyc to mimic commonsense reasoning about geographical agents and regions more closely than do the stricter physical microtheories.) There are also some 'generic' geography microtheories (e.g. #$WorldGeographyMt and #$UnitedStatesGeographyMt) which are neutral with respect to the physical and dualist views. Also see the shared-note for this constant.
QuantitativeAttributeType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for QuantitativeAttributes (length, mass), and an argument restriction for various relations on AttributeType types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
A PhysicalQuantity is a measurable quantity that has a numerical value qualifying a UnitOfMeasure. In one notation, a mass of 25 grams could be expressed as '{25 grams}' where 'grams' is a function that returns a MassMeasure. PhysicalQuantities are measures of attributes of objects in our real world, and as such are subject to uncertainty, also called 'measurement error'. PhysicalQuantity has an attribute of 'MeasurementUncertainty', which is an optional attribute. When a MeasurementUncertainty is not explicitly provided with an instance of PhysicalQuantity, each implementing system has the option to designate default uncertainties, which may be general or specific to particular categories of measurement. COSMO note: PhysicalQuantities in COSMO are categorized both as quantities, and as AttributeValues. Conceptually, to be viewed as an attribute, some combination of AttributeType and AttributeValue would both be involved (e.g. 'a length of 30 cm'). But at this point (v0.3) it does not appear necessary to represent such quantitative attributes in that explicit manner. This issue remains open for possible future elaboration. SUMO: A PhysicalQuantity is a measure of some quantifiable aspect of the modeled world, such as 'the earth's diameter' (a constant length) and 'the stress in a loaded deformable solid' (a measure of stress, which is a function of three spatial coordinates). All PhysicalQuantities are either ConstantQuantities or FunctionQuantities. Instances of ConstantQuantity are dependent on a UnitOfMeasure, while instances of FunctionQuantity are Functions that map instances of ConstantQuantity to other instances of ConstantQuantity (e.g., TimeDependentQuantities are FunctionQuantities). Although the name and definition of PhysicalQuantity is borrowed from physics, PhysicalQuantities need not be material. Aside from the dimensions of length, time, velocity, etc., nonphysical dimensions such as currency are also possible. Accordingly, amounts of money would be instances of PhysicalQuantity. PhysicalQuantities are distinguished from Numbers by the fact that the former are associated with a dimension of measurement.
Every PluralThing is a Group consisting of at least two or more entities, considered as one entity, and is related to the component entities by the relation 'hasComponentElement' The name of subtypes of 'PluralThing' in COSMO may take the form of a plural of a count noun. But plurals of count nouns are also used to name 'CommodityProducts', so that usage is not a reliable indicator that a term represents a PluralThing. A 'PluralThing' is an Object, and a 'CommodityProduct' is a substance, so the two are disjoint concepts, in spite of the close relation. The 'CommodityProduct should only be used in the substance sense, and PluralThing for those things who individual members are the focus of representation. NOTE: in COSMO, Group is restricted to groupings of at least one entity, as in OpenCyc. In this manner PluralThing stays closer to the linguistic intuition of a plural. A more generic Group that is not a TemporalThing could be defined, but is left out at this point. NOTE: BFO has the notion of an 'ObjectAggregate' which is similar to a 'PluralThing'; but in BFO the requirements are more stringent than for COSMO 'Group', since a COSMO 'Group' can be composed of arbitarily defined components, whereas in BFO each 'Object' of the aggregate must be an object with perceptible boundaries. Since BFO 'Object' is disjoint from 'fiat object part' and from ObjectAggregate, we need to make 'ObjectAggregate' a subtype of 'PluralThing', and to specify that each component of an 'ObjectAggregate' is a 'WholeObject'.
LegalAgent is a Role played in the legal system by some entity - a Person, GroupOfPeople, Organization, or any legal entity recognized as an Agent by some legal system. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 A specialization of #$Agent. Each instance of #$LegalAgent is an agent who has some status in a particular legal system. At the very least, such an agent is recognized by some legal authority as having some kinds of rights and/or responsibilities as an agent (e.g., #$citizens of Germany), or as being subject to certain restrictions and penalties (e.g., a company that has been blacklisted by Iraq). Thus, instances of #$LegalAgent include agents that may have property rights, may be taxed, may have a government identification number, may be sued, may have an address, or may buy or sell. Note that membership in this collection is very much dependent upon context. In some societies, only adult males and various kinds of state-run organizations would be included in #$LegalAgent.
PhysicalSPaceRegion is a portion of the there-dimensional space of our real world space-time universe. This is considered equialent to\the BFO 'Volume' COSMO Note: SpaceRegion in OpenCyc is not an Object, but pure space. Objects may be located in space. This region is part our our Space-Time This concepts is roughly equivalent to the OpenCyc 'ChunkOfSpace-Empirical', but we allow space regions to be defined by their relation to physical objects - therefore they may not be 'immobile' as the Cyc documentation suggests for 'ChunkOfSpace-Empirical'. For simplicity, the Cyc concept 'SpaceRegion-Empirical' has been merged with this concept, as the distinctions did not seem to have sufficient importance to justify the complexity. BFO: the BFO Type 'SpatialRegion' appears to have the same intent as this Type. The BFo subtypes of Line and Surface appear to be isentical to the subtypes of this Type: SpaceLine-Empirical, SpaceSurface-Empirical, BFO Definition ('SpatialRegion'): A continuant at or in which other continuants can be located. BFO Examples ('SpatialRegion'): the space occupied by an appendix, the space that was occupied by an appendix prior to its removal Cyc comment for 'ChunkOfSpace-Empirical': A specialization of #$SpaceRegion-Empirical, #$ChunkOfSpace, and #$SpatialThing-Localized (qq.v.). Instances of #$ChunkOfSpace-Empirical are three-dimensional portions of the intangible space of the empirically-observable universe. This is the kind of space that physical objects occupy. Cyc comment for 'SpaceRegion-Empirical': A specialization of #$SpaceRegion, #$SpatialThing-Localized, and #$IntangibleExistingThing (qq.v.). Instances of #$SpaceRegion-Empirical are intangible regions of space located in the empirically observable universe. A space region might or might not be connected (see #$SpatiallyContinuousThing). It might be partially or completely filled with (occupied by) #$PartiallyTangibles, or it might be completely empty (but cf. #$EmptySpaceRegion). In any case, the space region itself is not to be confused with a physical object or other spatially localized (non-space-region) thing that might happen to be #$cospatial with it. A given space region can be characterized fully merely by specifying its location and dimensions. Thus (although this is not the case with spatial things in general), space regions are identical (#$equals) if and only if they are #$cospatial. #$SpaceRegion-Empirical is in a way the spatial analogue of #$TimeInterval, whose own instances can be fully characterized by specifying their temporal properties; these two collections can be used, respectively, to talk about space and time as dimensions . Specializations of #$SpaceRegion-Empirical include #$SpacePoint-Empirical, #$SpaceLine-Empirical, #$SpaceSurface-Empirical, and #$ChunkOfSpace-Empirical. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 A specialization of #$SpatialThing whose instances are regions of space that exclusively act as locations for other spatial objects, and thus are immobile. Instances of #$SpatialThing are said to occupy some region of space. Three dimensional regions of space [#$ChunkOfSpace] can be occupied by solid objects, see the specialization #$ChunkOfSpace-Empirical for the regions of space occupied by physical objects. Purely two-dimensional objects occupy a #$SpaceSurface, see also #$SpaceLine and #$SpacePoint-Empirical for objects of lower dimension. Note that an object of a given dimension cannot truly be located [#$exactlyLocatedAt-Spatial] at a region of space of lower dimension, but only partially or incidentally. For more information on location and occupancy, see #$AbsoluteLocationalPredicate and its instances that relate objects in space and their regions. An important specialization of #$SpaceRegion is #$SpaceRegion-Empirical, whose instances are pieces of the embedding space where spatio-temporal objects are empirically localizable [#$SpatialThing-Localized]. Note that SpaceRegion in SUMO is an object viewed as a location.
Cyc: A specialization of #$PartiallyIntangibleIndividual. Each instance of #$InformationStore is a tangible or intangible, concrete or abstract repository of information. The information stored in an information store is stored there as a consequence of the actions of one or more agents. Wholly intangible instances of #$InformationStore include instances of #$AspatialInformationStore and #$PropositionalInformationThing. Some instances of #$InformationStore - namely, instances of #$InformationBearingObject, such as copies of a newspaper at a newsstand - are only partially intangible.
List name: GenericSubstance_COSMO-added__not_an_object__includes_chemicals_ COSMO: GenericSubstance is an abstract notion of Substance as the stuff of which objects are composed. It is not an object, even though 'Substance' in OpenCyc and SUMO are actually objects of some particular (homogeneous) composition. In COSMO, we make this provision, among other reasons, to allow abstract 'substances' to compose abstract objects. In COSMO 'Subtance' is a concept that is analogous to the derivative of an object with respect to volume, i.e. it acts like an abstract density (of some substance type). For COSMO version 0.01 (COSMOtopOWL03: 2006-01-01) the required axioms for a proper definition have not been added. For more discussion see: http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/ontac/reference/DimensionsOfProcessAndEvent.doc
An OrderedGroup is a Group that has some ordering relation between component elements. It usually has more than one component element, but to allow generalization of certain concepts such as an ActionSeries, an OrderedGroup is allowed to have as few as one component element. The ordering may be of any kind: a simple linear order, or a complex multi-dimensional pattern. The most common kind of OrderedGroup is one that is linearly ordered, and each such Group is an instance of the subtype 'LinearlyOrderedGroup'. An OrderedGroup may be physical, whereas a List is an AbstractInformationStore. Therefore not all OrderedGroups are Lists. One may define an OrderedGroup that is a List, if one is careful that the OrderedGroup is also an AbstractInformationStore.
Some AttributeValue specific to Organisms. This is very general.
Each 'IntensiveAttributeValue' is an AttributeValue that may be qualitative or quantitative, and expresses an intensity of some AttributeType. This is very general. Certain IntensiveAttributeValues may take both verbal intensive values (high'. 'medium', 'low'. and numerical values 'the drug is only 25% effective at preventing cancer'.
A QualitativeAttributeValue is the value of some AttributeType which is not expressed in quantitative measures. It can be an attribute of an abstract thing or of a concrete physical object. NOTE that adjectives expressing qualities in English often have a nominalized form: 'Red-Redness' or 'Beautiful-Beauty'. When linguistically to 'have @Att-nom' (@Att-nom is the nominalized form of an attribute) is the same as 'to be @Att' where @Att is the adjectival form, the concept will be represented only once, usually in the adjectival form, and nominalized form needs to be referenced to the adjectival by the linguistic processor.
'Ordered' is an AttributeValue of Groups that have some kind of ordering. More specific orderings will be subtypes of this AttributeValue, such as 'LinearlyOrdered'
A transitive relation that allows the ordering of IntensiveAttributeValues, such as 'good' 'so-do' and 'Poor'.
Any AttributeType specific to Organisms.
'DegreeOfIntensity' is an AttributeType whose values express some 'IntensiveAttributeValue'.
'Ordered' is an AttributeValue of Groups that have some kind of ordering. More specific orderings will be subtypes of this Attributealue, such as 'LinearlyOrdered'
COSMO: A GeopoliticalEntity in COSMO differs from its representation in other ontologies, to stay closer to the linguistic intuitions. Specifically, we say 'government of France', implying that the entity 'France' is not identical to its government. To conform to those intuitions, 'France' and other countries will be GeopoliticalEntities. Therefore a GeopoliticalEntity is something distinct from the organization which forms the government. In COSMO, it is an unusual hybrid, being both a MentalObject and a GenericLocation. Itis neither a PhysicalObject nor an Organization. The Governmen of a GeopoliticalEntity is an Organization. A GeopoliticalEntity in COSMO is a composite Entity which (1) is an agent (2) claims control over some land area of the earth (3) has a government or other ruling organization, which is also an agent (4) is a MentalObject, meaning that it does not have mass and was created by an IntelligentAgent NOTE1: As a GenericLocation, one can say that something isLocatedAt a GeopoliticalEntity even though one means that an object isLocatedAt the region controlled by the GeopoliticalEntity. When an instance of a GeopoliticalEntity is used as an argument that should logically take a region, the implementation should, for consistency, coerce the argument into the corresponding GeopoliticalArea. At present (v0.48) there is no 'disjoint' relation that will cause a logical contradiction, but elaboration of the ontology might cause problems at some point for the use of an Agent as a Location. Alternatives may be worth exploring. NOTE2: if the government performs an action, it is unclear whether it is alway proper to say that a country (or city) performed that action. Therefore the GeopoliticalEntity and its government are treated as distinct agents, though it will probably be true in almost all cases that when one acts, the other can be said to act. NOTE3 that countries have four aspects: (1) the country itself, the GeopoliticalEntity (2) the government of the country (3) the spatial region controlled by the counry (4) the physical objects within the spatial region controlled by the country. (4.1) among the physical objects are those that are part of the land, including the vegetation, and those that are animals or artifactual structures. In normal speech, the distinctions among these are not made because the referents are clear from the context. For this ontology, the distinctions appear necessary. A GeopoliticalEntity usually has an Organization that claims control over the geographical region identified as the area of the GeopoliticalEntity. Usually this will be a government, but occasionally other Organizations such as occupying armies will claim control without claiming to be a formal government. This concept differs from the OpenCyc #$GeopoliticalEntity in that it is strictly an organization, whereas the Cyc concept includes some element of the geographical region itself. The Cyc documentation is reproduced here to clarify the difference: Cyc: A specialization of #$Organization and of #$LegalAgent and of #$GeographicalAgent; instances of this collection control #$GeographicalRegions. Each instance of #$GeopoliticalEntity includes a governing body, but is more than just that governing body. Important subcollections include #$Country, #$IndependentCountry, #$State-Geopolitical, #$City, and #$Province. Instances include #$CityOfTokyoJapan, #$BronxNY-Borough, #$Alaska-State, #$Rwanda, #$Singapore, #$InnerMongolia, #$Somerset-CountyEngland, and #$Taiwan-RepublicOfChina. A central feature of this collection is that geopolitical-entities (indeed, all #$GeographicalAgents) are viewed in two significantly different ways with respect to two different types of geography-related microtheories. In a physical geography microtheory (i.e. #$PhysicalGeographyMt and its submicrotheories), geopolitical-entities are clearly distinguished from the regions they control. (#$TerritoryFn GEO-POL) is used in these contexts to denote the land mass (a #$GeopoliticalRegion) of a given geopolitical-entity GEO-POL. In a dualist geography microtheory (i.e. #$DualistGeopoliticalMt and its submicrotheories), on the other hand, geopolitical-entities are viewed as being _both_ agents _and_ land masses (i.e. #$GeographicalRegions). Thus, there is little need for #$TerritoryFn in the latter sort of context. (Despite their somewhat paradoxical flavor, dualist microtheories arguably allow Cyc to mimic commonsense reasoning about geopolitical entities and regions more closely than do the stricter physicalist microtheories.) There are also some generic geography microtheories (e.g. #$WorldGeographyMt and #$UnitedStatesGeographyMt) which are neutral with respect to the physical and dualist views. Also see the shared-note for this constant.
A Quantitifier is some numerical or verbal value that specifies or restricts the numerical prefix for a QuantitativeAttributeValue. The simples arre numbers, suc as 3 in the distance measure {3 feet}. A quantifier can also be a range {2 to 4}, such has in{{2 to 4} feet}. A quantifier can also be a number with a variance {3 +- 1}, such has {{3 +- 1} feet}. A quantifier can be verbal, such as 'High', 'Medium' or 'Low' such as {High Intensity}. Quantifiers may have default variances. See: 'hasDefaultVariance' and 'ConfidenceInterval'.
A GenericAgent is an aggregate concept representing things that can be linguistically categorized as agents, that is they are the causative subject of an action. One difficulty comes when including Organizations as Agents; Organizations are not actual physical Objects, therefore cannot literally do things to change the physical world. Rather, people who belong to Organizations, or their 'agents' do the actual moving and lifting that are the causes of actions in the real world. Nevertheless we talk of organizations as though they were somehow objects that did the actions themselves. A second problem arises when inanimate objects take the linguistic form of agents: 'The rock broke the window' or 'The knife cut a deep gash in his arm'. By themseles, those sentences would have the rock or the knife as agents, and the window or arm as patients. If more detail were given: "Tom broke the window with a rock'; 'Tom cut a deep gash in Mike's arm with a knife', the agent now shows up as Tom, and the rock and knife are instruments. For that reason, an instrument (a Role) is categorized in COSMO as a subtype of GenericAgent, to accommodate the linguistic structures where instruments take on the synactic/semantic role of an agent. This category is here to provide a place for the linguistic notion of 'Agent' that can include 'social agents' such as organizations. In this classification we adopt a broad view of agents, allowing inanimate things like hurricanes and tornadoes to be classified as AgentiveObjects.
An Artifact-Generic was anything created by an Agent. More useful categories will be the more specific Types. Original COSMO Indented List name: Artifact-Generic_includes_conceptual_works__laws__information_objects_ OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 A collection of things created by #$Agents. These creations may be either tangible (like a hammer, a bowl, or a bridge) or intangible (like a set of laws, a #$KnowledgeBase, or Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Thus, the collection of #$Artifact-Generics is partitioned into #$Artifact and #$Artifact-Intangible (q.v.).
A MentalObject is an Object that does not have mass and was created by an IntelligentAgent (usually a Person.or Organization). This is a very broad and primitive category comprehensible mostly by inspection of a list of subtypes. Since this is not physical, instances of this Type are not observable, but physical representations of instances of this Type (such as a specific copy of 'Gone With the Wind') can be weighed and felt. Abstract texts, musical compositions, propositions, theories, plays, poems, speeches, rights - all are MentalObjects. They will invariably have a physical representation in some PhysicalObject (including brains, light waves and sound waves). But the MentalObject itself has no physical (material) component. This corresponds closely to what in some systems (e.g. the Ontology Works top ontology) is called an 'AbstractArtifact' - something created by a Person that is not a PhysicalObject. We adopt the convention that an individual MentalObject exists only so long as there is some PhysicalObject that represents it. That PhysicalObject could be the brain of a Person, some sound or electromagnetic waves encoding that MentalObject, or some piece of paper with markings on it. When the last physical object representing that MentalObject ceases to exist, that MentalObject also ceases to exist. A new MentalObject indistinguishable from a previously existing one can always be created (even by the original creator), but it would be a different individual with a different identity. NOTE that a MentalObject is a subtype of 'AbstractEntity', but we adopt the convention that it can hava a location in space-time, being the collection of locations where its physical representations are located. Thus a Belief or a Proposition may be located in the brain of one or more IntelligentAgents, or in physical documents describing the belief symbolically. This 'location' differs from the location of any individual physical object, because the location is the collection of all physical objects containing representations of the Mental Object. This notion of 'abstract' is not the same as the traditional 'abstract' which cannot be located in space-time. Other subtypes of 'AbstractEntity' such as MathematicalObjects will be more traditionally abstract in that way. An idiosyncratic 'location' for a MentalObject is the location of a GeopoliticalEntity, which is located in the region controlled by the GeopoliticalEntity. Equivalent to the Cyc #$Artifact-Intangible OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002: A specialization of both #$IntangibleIndividual and #$Artifact-Generic. Each instance of #$Artifact-Intangible is an intangible thing intentionally created by an agent or agents. Important specializations of #$Artifact-Intangible include #$ComputerLanguage, #$ConceptualWork, and #$Agreement.
COSMO: An InformationObject is a MentalObject created by an IntelligentAgent that contains Information in some form. The name 'Information-object' is from DOLCE. Comparable to the OpenCyc '#$AbstractInformationalThing'. This subsumes both the symbolic objects that people may create as well as the yet more abstract informational content ('propositional content') which may be viewed as existing independent of the symbols used to encode it. 'Information' has not been well defined yet, so this category does not have clear defining conditions of its own, but subsumes things like AbstractSymbolicObjects, Propositions, and Languages. Every Communication transfers some InformationObject. DOLCE; Information objects are social objects. They are realized by some entity. They are ordered (expressed according to) by some system for information encoding. Consequently, they are dependent from an encoding as well as from a concrete realization.They can express a description (the ontological equivalent of a meaning/conceptualization), can be about any entity, and can be interpreted by an agent.From a communication perspective, an information object can play the role of 'message'. From a semiotic perspective, it plays the role of 'expression'. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002\nA heterogeneous collection of abstract objects that pertain to information. Subsumes not only #$Proposition, but also the collections #$Sentence, #$CharacterString, #$AtomicSymbol-Abstract, #$Microtheory, #$PropositionalInformationThing, and #$ConceptualWork. Note that while all #$AbstractInformationalThings are abstract objects (this collection is disjoint with #$SpatialThing-Localized), most instances of this collection can have multiple concrete 'embodiments';. A single instance of #$Sentence can be written on several peices of paper (see #$instantiationOfAIS); a #$PropositionalInformationThing may be the content of several concrete documents, such as instances of #$BookCopy (see #$containsInfoPropositional-IBT); and several events, such as spoken utterances, may have a certain #$Proposition as their content (see #$containsInformation). Note that some instances of #$AbstractInformationalThing have temporal extent. Examples include all instances of #$Novel-CW and #$Movie-CW. Others specs are disjoint with #$TemporalThing. Examples include all instances of #$Character-Abstract and #$Proposition.
A Proposition is the abstract propositional content (i.e. the 'meaning') of some sentence, formula, or combination of sentences in any language. A Proposition is the actual meaning of a sentence or sentences in any language, and is independent of the language and of the symbol system used to encode the meaning. A related collection of Propositions is still considered as a Proposition; a prominent example is the body of accepted lore in some FieldOfStudy. Every Proposition has at least one topic related by the 'hasTopic' relation. There may be some temptation to use the subtypes of Proposition (Assertion, Axiom, Rule) as though they are symbolic objects - perhaps AbstractTexts. In casual conversation this will create no problems, and in fact it may not create problems in reasoning with the COSMO either, since both are abstract entities and not PhysicalObjects, and thus not disjoint. But it will be good practice to keep the propositional meanings separate from what are explicit though abstract linguistic representations of the meanings, wherever the distinction is clear. NOTE that this abstract notion of Proposition should not be conflated with an AbstractText that expresses that Proposition in symbols (usually linguistic symbols). An abstract 'Proposition' is related to such a symbolic representation by the relation 'hasAbstractRepresentation'. SUMO: Propositions are Abstract entities that express a complete thought or a set of such thoughts. As an example, the formula '(instance Yojo Cat)' expresses the Proposition that the entity named Yojo is an element of the Class of Cats. Note that propositions are not restricted to the content expressed by individual sentences of a Language. They may encompass the content expressed by theories, books, and even whole libraries. It is important to distinguish Propositions from the ContentBearingObjects that express them. A Proposition is a piece of information, e.g. that the cat is on the mat, but a ContentBearingObject is an Object that represents this information. A Proposition is an abstraction that may have multiple representations: strings, sounds, icons, etc. For example, the Proposition that the cat is on the mat is represented here as a string of graphical characters displayed on a monitor and/or printed on paper, but it can be represented by a sequence of sounds or by some non-latin alphabet or by some cryptographic form. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002\n A collection of intangible individuals. Each instance of #$Proposition is an abstract propositional thing that has some truth value in some context or world. A proposition is assumed to be representable (at least in principle) by a sentence in some formal or natural language. But it should _not_ be assumed that propositions are themselves intrinsically linguistic items in the way that sentences or formulae are. Indeed, propositions are often viewed as extra-linguistic, intensional entities that (while not sentences themselves) are represented or expressed by meaningful sentences (or, on some versions of this view, by concrete tokens of sentences). On such a view it is possible for distinct sentences (either from the same language or from different languages) to express the very same proposition; e.g. 'Snow is white', 'White is the color of snow', 'Schnee ist weiss'. (in German), and (arguably) '(#$relationAllInstance #$objectHasColor #$SnowMob #$WhiteColor)' (in CycL). Similarly, it is sometimes the case that a single sentence - when used in different contexts - will express distinct propositions; e.g. 'I am hungry.' said by you and said by me. Most formal languages (such as a first-order predicate calculus) and natural languages (such as English) include the resources for composing expressions that represent propositions from component expressions (that might or might not themselves represent other propositions).\n\nDOLCE: The abstract content of a proposition. Abstract content is purely combinatorial: from this viewpoint, any content that can be generated by means of combinatorial rules is assumed to exist in the domain of quantification (reified abstracts).
TopicType is a metaclass used as the Type restriction on fields of knowledge, whether formal or informal. This type allows assertions about a whole field, as in the relation 'isKnowledgeableAbout'.
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take a subtype of ValuableThing as one of their arguments.
From Cyc: OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002\nA specialization of #$AbstractInformationalThing. Each instance of #$Information-Content is an abstract object that can be the content, or meaning, of some token in some language. A pair of tokens of linguistic objects mean the same thing just in case each has the same content as the other. Instance of this collection can be used to represent the content of an instance of #$ConceptualWork.
A AbstractSymbolicObject is a mental object which is created to serve as a Symbol, i.e. to represent something other than itself. This is not a physical object, but more abstract, such as the letter 'a', which may have representations in billions of different physical objects, but retains its identity as the unique (Roman alphabet) letter 'a'. Every SymbolicObject is represented in at least one PhysicalObject, even if only the brain of the person who created it. The more interesting SymbolicObjects are texts and documents. This Type is approximately equal to,and merged with, the Cyc 'AbstractInformationStructure' From Cyc: OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002\ A subcollection of #$AbstractInformationalThing whose instances involve symbols standing in certain relations to one another. Important specializations include #$CharacterString and #$Sentence. #$AbstractInformationStructure also includes abstract diagrams, graphs, and bit strings. The collection can be more precisely defined as follows: Each #$AbstractInformationStructure is such that each of its physical instantiations (see #$instantiationOfAIS) consists of instantiations of instances of #$AtomicSymbol-Abstract, arranged in a certain way. For example, the abstract sentence 'The pig flies' is an #$AbstractInformationStructure. Each written instantiation of it consists of an instantiation of the words (symbols) 'The', 'pig' and 'flies', written in that order. (If the #$AbstractInformationStructure 'The pig flies' were spoken, the same words would appear in the same order, i.e. 'The' first, etc., but the sequence would be determined by the arrangement of the words in time, rather than space.) Likewise with abstract diagrams, graphs, etc. Each of these is such that their physical instantiations consist of arrangements of instantiations of instances of #$AtomicSymbol-Abstract. A hard copy of a wiring diagram consists of a group of concrete symbols representing various circuit components, in which these symbols are spatially arranged in a certain in way. The arrangement of the concrete symbols in an instantiation of an #$AbstractInformationStructure is not always a simple matter of arrangement in space or time. The sequence of symbols '0010010111011001' can be instantiated in written, spoken, or electronic forms. In the last case, the order of the symbols is determined by conventions concerning the electronic medium in which it is stored, rather than by any common criterion for precedence or subsequence in space or time.
Cyc term: 'AspatialInformationStore' Cyc: A specialization of #$AspatialThing, #$IntangibleIndividual, and #$InformationStore. #$AspatialInformationStore is the collection of all information stores that have no spatial location. Specializations of #$AspatialInformationStore include #$ConceptualWork, #$Microtheory, #$AbstractInformationStructure, and #$FieldOfStudy. Although no instance of #$AspatialInformationStore has a spatial location, some instances can have multiple spatio-temporal embodiments . For example, an instance of #$PropositionalInformationThing may be the content of several concrete documents, such as several instances of #$BookCopy (see #$containsInfoPropositional-IBT); and several distinct events, such as spoken utterances, may have a certain unique #$Proposition as their content (see #$containsInformation).
COSMO note: in COSMO this type is abstract and does not include physical objects. Cyc: A specialization of both #$InformationStore and #$PartiallyIntangibleIndividual. Each instance of #$StructuredInformationSource is an #$InformationStore in which bits of information are represented as related in a systematic way that is easily characterized by some type of formal structure, including spatial or architectural terms (used metaphorically). Examples include: a database organized in fields and values; a spreadsheet organized in rows and columns with entries; an organizational tree diagram with nodes and branches; a topographical map; a document written in HTML (hyper-text markup language). Negative examples include computer programs, poems, and novels.
AttributeTypeType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for AttributeTypes (length, mass), and an argument restriction for various relations on AttributeType types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take a subtype of Agent as one of their arguments. All Organisms, plant, animal, microorganism, are of AgentType.
MeasurableQuantityType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for MeasurableQuantities, whether abstract or physical, and an argument restriction for various relations on MeasurableQuantity types. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations on relation arguments.
ShapeType is a metatype which is a specialization of the Protege owl:Class that can serve as type for shape attributes and an argument restriction for the hasShape relation. This is a primitive mechanism to accommodate OWL limitations. NOTE: as of v0.50, both shape attributes and specifically shaped objects can be instances of ShapeType. @ToDo - this should probably be differentiated.
a metatype that can be used as an argument restriction for relations that take an instance of Pattern as one of their arguments.
A subcollection of #$SpatialThing. Each instance of #$GeometricallyDescribableThing is a spatially-connected spatial thing (of 0, 1, 2, or 3 dimensions) that either (i) has or approximates a simple geometric shape (e.g. it is a #$Line or a #$Hemisphere) or (ii) consists of a number of (connected) parts in a relatively stable geometric configuration, where each such part has or approximates a simple geometric shape (e.g. a table consisting of a 3-D-disc-shaped top and four cylindrical legs). A #$GeometricallyDescribableThing might be tangible (see #$PhysicalObject) or intangible (see #$GeometricallyDescribableThing-Intangible). Note that what counts as approximating a given simple geometric shape -- and thus what spatial things count as #$GeometricallyDescribableThings - varies with context. In a context that was so fine-grained shape-wise that even the shapes of the individual molecules on the surface of an object were considered relevant to the object's shape, perhaps nearly every (connected, solid) tangible object would be geometrically-describable. In more everyday contexts, on the other hand, an unopened can of soup would be geometrically-describable (as a cylinder), while a telephone or an animal's body would probably not.
A specialization of both #$GeometricallyDescribableThing and #$IntangibleIndividual (qq.v.). This is the collection of all intangible, geometrically-describable things, whether spatially localized or not. #$GeometricallyDescribableThing-Intangible is the intersection (see #$collectionIntersection) of #$GeometricallyDescribableThing and #$Intangible. Examples include any spatially-connected, intangible thing that has or approximates (or which consists entirely of parts that all have or approximate) a simple geometric shape, such as the intangible space determined by a particular Egyptian pyramid, an abstract Platonic sphere, or the center of mass of the solar system (a point) at the first instant of the Twentieth Century in Greenwich, England. Important specializations of this collection are #$GeometricThing-Localized (which includes all spatially localized instances) and #$GeometricThing-Abstract (which includes all instances not spatially located in the empirically-observable universe).
A specialization of #$TwoOrHigherDimensionalThing and #$SpaceRegionLimit. This is the collection of all surfaces, tangible or intangible (see #$Surface-Physical and #$Surface-Intangible), of spatial things. Each instance of #$Surface-Generic is a spatial thing that has extent in at least two dimensions, and either has no thickness (i.e. is a purely two-dimensional object) or has an insignificant thickness compared to its length and width. (If it is a closed surface, e.g. an apple skin, then any significant subregion of it must have insignificant thickness compared to that subregion's length and width.) Thus a surface might be two- or three-dimensional; tangible or intangible; spatially connected or not; it might be flat, curved, folded, or crumpled. Other examples of surfaces are the skin of a basketball, the face-up side of a table top, and a particular face of an abstract cube. Other specializations of #$Surface-Generic are #$FlatSurface, #$Surface-Closed, and #$Surface-Open.
A specialization of #$Surface-Generic (q.v.).This is the collection of open surfaces of (tangible or intangible) spatial objects. Each instance of #$Surface-Open has some boundary, such as an edge, perimeter, or hole. Examples include the top surface of a tabletop, the surface of a whiffle ball, a slightly cracked eggshell, and the skin of an apple with a bite taken from it. Non-examples are a basketball skin and an intact eggshell; cf. #$Surface-Closed. Note that 'hole' here is intended in its colloquial, human-scale sense, according to which (e.g.) a wiffle ball has holes but a baseball does not (even though at some fine-grained level the latter does have tiny holes).
GeographicalRegion_Cyc-includes_other_planets In COSMO, this type includes any region on or near the surface of a planet, including the region that contains its atmosphere. But the usage here differs from that in Cyc, and this category is not a physical object. For physical objects at the surface of a planet, see 'PlanetarySurfaceObject'. Cyc comment: A specialization of #$GeographicalThing and #$Surface-Physical. Each instance of #$GeographicalRegion is a tangible spatial region that includes some piece of the surface of a planet (usually #$PlanetEarth), and may be represented on a map of the planet. This includes purely topographical regions like mountains and underwater spaces, places defined by demographics (e.g., language areas) and territory otherwise demarcated (e.g. #$TimeZones). In dualist geopolitical contexts [see #$DualistGeopoliticalMt], instances of #$GeopoliticalEntity are also considered to be instances of #$GeographicalRegion. In all cases the region in question must contain some tangible component with which it is possible to make physical contact. The instances of #$GeographicalRegion contrast in this respect with the instances of #$GeographicalThing-Intangible, which are wholly intangible. Examples of #$GeographicalRegion include #$RockyMountainStates-USRegion, the #$ContinentOfAustralia, #$SinaiPeninsula, and - in dualist geopolitical contexts - #$YaleUniversity and #$CityOfPittsburghPA. Some important types of regions are represented by the sub-collections #$LanguageArea, #$TimeZone, #$PostalCodeRegion, #$EcologicalRegion, #$ConstructionSite, and - in dualist geopolitical contexts -- #$GeopoliticalEntity. No instances of #$GeographicalRegion are wholly indoor locations.
'Individual' is a Cyc concept used to distinguish abstract sets and collections (classes) from things that are individuals. Interestingly, groups of things can be individuals - if they are defined as distinct from sets (see 'Group'). This class may be superfluous, but in COSMO is a convenient catch-all for some aggregate Types that would merely serve to clutter the top level and obscure the structure of the ontology if exposed at the top level directly under 'Thing'. Conversely, Some of the subtypes of the Cyc 'individual' have also been subclassed directly to 'owl:Thing' to expose those common concepts at the highest level, to make the structure of the ontology easier to see. NOTE that some of the concepts mentioned in the Cyc documnentation differ significantly in COSMO from related concepts in Cyc. But the Cyc documentation is given here to describe how the similar Cyc notion of Group is described in that ontology. From OpenCyc: OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 #$Individual is the collection of all individuals: things that are _not_ sets or collections. Individuals might be concrete or abstract, and include (among other things) physical objects, events, numbers, relations, and groups. An instance of #$Individual might have parts or structure (including discontinuous parts); but _no_ individual has elements or subsets (see #$elementOf and #$subsetOf). Thus, an individual that has parts (e.g. #$physicalParts or #$groupMembers) is _not_ the same thing as either the set or the collection containing those same parts. For example, your car is an individual, but the collection of all the parts of your car is not an individual but an instance of #$Collection. This collection (unlike the car itself) is abstract: it doesn't have a location, mass, or a top speed; but it does have instances, subcollections, and supercollections. In partial contrast, the #$Group (q.v.) of parts of your car (while also not the same thing as the car itself) _is_ an individual that has location and mass. Another example: A given company, the group consisting of all the company's employees, the collection of those employees, and the set of those employees are four distinct things, and only the first two are individuals.
NOTE that OpenCyc spatialThing does not necessarily have to be in our Space-Time; it can be in an abstract space. So this is not identical to DOLCE 'spatio-temporal-particular', which is a subclass. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of all things that have a spatial extent or location relative to some other #$SpatialThing or in some embedding space. Note that to say that an entity is a member of this collection is to remain agnostic about two issues. First, a #$SpatialThing may be #$PartiallyTangible (e.g. #$Texas-State) or wholly #$Intangible (e.g. #$ArcticCircle or a line mentioned in a geometric theorem). Second, although we do insist on location relative to another spatial thing or in some embedding space, a #$SpatialThing might or might not be located in the actual physical universe. It is far from clear that all #$SpatialThings are so located: an ideal platonic circle or a trajectory through the phase space of some physical system (e.g.) might not be. If the intent is to imply location in the empirically observable cosmos, the user should employ this collection's specialization, #$SpatialThing-Localized.
A #$SpatialThingTypeByDimensionality and a specialization of #$SpatialThing, each instance of which is either a one- or two- or three- (or higher-) dimensional spatial object. Examples include tangible or intangible spatially-localized dimensional objects, such as the edge of a tabletop, the surface of the tabletop, and the table itself, as well as abstract geometrical objects that are at least one-dimensional, such as a Platonic circle or cube. Specializations of this collection include #$ExtendedSpaceRegion, #$ShapedThing, and #$TwoOrHigherDimensionalThing.
A #$SpatialThingTypeByDimensionality and a specialization of #$SpatialThing, each instance of which is either a two- or three- (or higher-) dimensional spatial object. Examples include tangible or intangible spatially-localized polydimensional objects, such as the flat surface of a tabletop and the table itself, as well as abstract geometrical objects that are at least two-dimensional, such as a Platonic cube. Specializations of this collection include #$PartiallyTangible, #$BilateralObject, and #$TwoDimensionalGeometricThing.
COSMO Note: note that Cyc SpatialThing does not have to be in our space-time, whereas DOLCE spatio-temporal-particular is. So the DOLCE class is a subclass of the Cyc class. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of all things that have a spatial extent or location relative to some other #$SpatialThing or in some embedding space. Note that to say that an entity is a member of this collection is to remain agnostic about two issues. First, a #$SpatialThing may be #$PartiallyTangible (e.g. #$Texas-State) or wholly #$Intangible (e.g. #$ArcticCircle or a line mentioned in a geometric theorem). Second, although we do insist on location relative to another spatial thing or in some embedding space, a #$SpatialThing might or might not be located in the actual physical universe. It is far from clear that all #$SpatialThings are so located: an ideal platonic circle or a trajectory through the phase space of some physical system (e.g.) might not be. If the intent is to imply location in the empirically observable cosmos, the user should employ this collection's specialization, #$SpatialThing-Localized. Note that most of the Cyc 'SpatialThings' are in our universe (though not necessarily), so most are also under DOLCE 'spatio-temporal-particular'. DOLCE: Dummy class for optimizing some property universes. It includes all entities that are not reifications of universals ('abstracts'), i.e. those entities that are in space-time.
Each GeographicalRegion is a connected one-,two- or three-dimensional region of space located on or near the surface of some astronomical body, not necessarily the Earth. For 3-dimensonal regions specifically on the Earth, use 'GeographicalArea'. It is understood that the regions defined are stationary with respect to some coordinate system in which the astronomical object itself is considered to be stationary. The astronomical object itself (most commonly the Earth) will of course be rotating and moving through space, and those motions are ignored when the relative locations defined by 'GeographicalRegion' are used. A GeographicalRegion will include some portion of the space above the solid material that defines the region, and below the surface; at this point (v 0.44) we have not precisely specified how much of the space above or below the surface is included. COSMO note: this Cyc category is reinterpreted as representing only spatial regions - points, areas, or volumes, on or near the surface of some planetary body (to clearly specify the Earth, use the subtype 'GeographicalArea'), but this does not represent any of the physical objects that might exist in that region. The discussion of 'tangible' in the Cyc documentation below suggests the inclusion of physical objects, but that is not the intent of this COSMO cateegory. Though this category does not include any physical objects, one may use 'GeographicalObject' to specify all of the objects in any GeographicalRegion, if desired. Cyc: A specialization of #$GeographicalThing and #$Surface-Physical. Each instance of #$GeographicalRegion is a tangible spatial region that includes some piece of the surface of a planet (usually #$PlanetEarth), and may be represented on a map of the planet. This includes purely topographical regions like mountains and underwater spaces, places defined by demographics (e.g., language areas) and territory otherwise demarcated (e.g. #$TimeZones). In dualist geopolitical contexts [see #$DualistGeopoliticalMt], instances of #$GeopoliticalEntity are also considered to be instances of #$GeographicalRegion. In all cases the region in question must contain some tangible component with which it is possible to make physical contact. The instances of #$GeographicalRegion contrast in this respect with the instances of #$GeographicalThing-Intangible, which are wholly intangible. Examples of #$GeographicalRegion include #$RockyMountainStates-USRegion, the #$ContinentOfAustralia, #$SinaiPeninsula, and - in dualist geopolitical contexts - #$YaleUniversity and #$CityOfPittsburghPA. Some important types of regions are represented by the sub-collections #$LanguageArea, #$TimeZone, #$PostalCodeRegion, #$EcologicalRegion, #$ConstructionSite, and - in dualist geopolitical contexts -- #$GeopoliticalEntity. No instances of #$GeographicalRegion are wholly indoor locations..
Role is a high-level concept that aggregates several primitive notions, and is difficult to describe analytically, but has a necessary property that, as a subtype of TemporalThing, every instance has a beginning time and an ending time. For Roles that are created by an Event and last forever, (The Father of PrinceWilliam), the ending time can be TheEndOfTime. For case roles in a specific Event, the Role lasts no longer than the duration of the Event (but may last for less than that time, for participants who participate only for part of an Event). The most common use of 'Role' is for concepts that exist in dependence on other concepts, such as 'Mother', which implies a child, or 'President' which implies some organization. But grammatical roles such as the cases of verb case frames will also fit under this broad category. When a phrase such as 'The ?X of ?Y' is encountered, almost invariably the ?X is a Role of some kind, which also includes parts. In COSMO 'Role' is broad enough to include Events; for example, 'Choice' is a Role, and some Events may fill the Role of 'Choice' - those thing a Person chooses to do. NOTE importantly: that HumanRole is a subtype of this category, and also a subtype of Person, so Person and Role are not disjoint. This allows HumanRoles (janitor, President) to serve in the same relations that people themselves would serve, but they are also recognizable as Roles because they will be subtypes of the Role category. The mathematical and logical 'equals' can be used to equate a unique Role with its filler, but only if the time interval during which that relation hodls is specified. In that case, the Role and its filler can be used interchangeably, but only in the base 'all-knowing' context NOTE that Roles may not be 'transparent' in referential contexts asserting beliefs or possible worlds. A person who does not know the filler of a Role may express opinions about the Role, which are inconsistent with their opinions about the filler of the Role. For example, a man who loves his wife may assert that he hates the murderer of a friend, not knowing that his wife is the murderer of his friend. If the Role and role filler were asserted to be mathematically identical in all contexts, this would entail a contradiction, assuming that love and hate are disjoint for this example. An individual assertion by a Person needs to be treated as a part of a belief system. NOTE also that when used as a pure OWL ontology, it will be necessary for every subclass of Role should to be an instance of RoleType, so that it can be used as an argument for the relation 'isServingInTheRoleOf'. If, in other formats, this condition is not explicit, the translation should add the Type when converting into OWL format. For Roles that are merged with other Types, such as HumanRoles, each should have its own explicit relation indicating when the role-filler started in that role and when (it/he/she) ended. If it is possible to fill a Role for multiple non-continguous periods of time, then the begin and end time of each continuous segment of 'Role' will define individual instances of that Role; as a reault, the relation 'isServingInTheRoleOf' cannot be functional. NOTE also that the use of 'Role" in the COSMO is still being developed, and is likely to be seen to be inconsistent in application (though not logically inconsistent) as of v 0.49. The issue not yet resolved is whether the subtypes of 'Role' as here used would be better categorized as 'playing a role' rather than 'being a role'. Although this quasi-philosophical issue is not yet clear, this vagueness does not appear to cause any logical inconsistencies in usage.
COSMO: a three-dimensional region of some space (not necessarily our real world space). This is the space itself, and does not include or immply that ther are any objects in it. However, each instance of this kind fo space will usually be interpreted relative to some defined cooridinate system, which, in the ral world, usually means that it is relative to some physical object (which could be the collecion of all object in the universe as a whole, to provide a universal frame of revernce). In Cyc called 'ChunkOfSpace'. Cyc: A specialization of both #$ExtendedSpaceRegion and #$TwoOrHigherDimensionalThing (qq.v.). Instances of #$ChunkOfSpace are three-dimensional portions of a three-dimensional space. This is the kind of place that solid (i.e. three-dimensional) objects occupy. It makes sense to speak of, or compute, the volume of such objects. An important specialization of this collection is #$ChunkOfSpace-Empirical, whose instances are pieces of space in the empirical universe - the kind of space that physical objects occupy.
COSMO note: Place can be a PhysicalObject or a Region. This category is very generic. Cyc: A specialization of #$EnduringThing-Localized. Each instance of #$Place is a spatial thing which has a relatively permanent location. Thus, in a given microtheory, each #$Place is stationary with respect to the frame of reference of that microtheory.
COSMO note: this type appears to be intended to represent humans and human groups, so it is placed as a subtype of 'IntelligentAgent'. DOLCE only: 'agentive-social-object' A social object that is assumed to internally represent a plan. Since social objects are dependent on physical ones, it is not trivial to interpret the local sense in which a social object 'internally represents' a plan. For example, an institution can have the plan to promote or regulate some activities, but this is possible by means of the powers conferred to it by some legal system, through its representatives, and that plan has to be executed by means of the physical agents that 'act for' the institution.
A SpatialRegion can be of any dimension, though the ones of most interest are three-dimensional in our real world. All Regions must have their location referenced to some definable object, whether abstract or physical. In theory, it may be possible to consider the whole universe as an Object and define 'absolute' regions based on locations in the whole universe, but that may not be useful for any practical purpose. The regions of greatest interest to people are regions defined relative to the Earth's surface, which forms a moving rotating frame of reference, which we treat as stationary for most purposes. NOTE: The BFO 'SpatialRegion' is closest to the COSMO 'PhysicalSpaceRegion' which is a subtype of this Type.
An Opinion is a Proposition that an IntelligentAgent considers more likely to be true than not to be true. An Opinion is not necessarily considered to be certain or to be strongly held by the agent. If strongly held, it would be a Belief (a subtype of Opinion). NOTE in WordNet 2.1, the relationship of Opinion (synset: opinion, sentiment, persuasion, view, thought) and Belief are inverted relative to COSMO, with Belief being more general.
A Belief is a Proposition that an IntelligentAgent considers to be so likely to be true that there is no value in doubting it, and no good reason to act as though it might be false. The degree of certainty which people attach to various statements of fact varies on a continuous scale, and it is probably not possible to distinguish some opinions that a person has some doubt about from what they 'believe'. Also, people may say they 'believe' one thing, but act as though they don't consider it true. One function of representing a Belief (as contrasted with an assertion that a person may make) is to allow representing a Lie (an assertion contrary to an Agent's belief), and to provide one componenent of motivation for an Agent to act. NOTE that although a Belief, like other MentalObjects, may have a location that is the sum of all physical representations, it must have had at least one active believer to be a Belief. That Believer may be a DeadPerson. The detailed axiomatization of 'belief' is postponed until COSMO is converted to FOL and some task that requires details of belief is at hand..
Information-Content that is represented in the mind of a CognitiveAgent. Formally in COSMO, Knowledge is a Belief (which can be a combination of Propositions) that is contained in the mind of an IntelligentAgent, and for which the Agent has good reason for Belief. Wordnet: the psychological result of perception and learning and reasoning. WN-N: sense 1 of 'knowledge', in synset 'cognition, knowledge, noesis'.
An EvaluativeAttribute is a QualitativeAttributeValue for some entity, concrete or abstract, that reflects the judgment of an IntelligentAgent regarding that entity. the judgment may be objective or subjective, but will be relative to some purpose.
The property of substances or objects that are considered (by their possesor or potential possessor) to have some positive value.
isTheOppositeOf relates one attribute to another attribute that would be commonly considered the opposite of the first attribute. There is a hub-and-spoke structure to certain core attributes and related attribute, and the notion of 'opposite' is in many cases more lexical than conceptual. This relation tries to capture the common cases of opposites.
The property of substances or objects that are considered (by their possesor) to have no positive value.
hasQualitativeAttribute relates individual Objects or substances to some qualitative attribute (a subclass of QualitativeAttributeValue) that the object has. The accurate use of this property for substances is difficult to express in OWL. Since Substances are classes, to describe a qualitative attribute of a substance, in OWL one would need a metatype specifically for each substance, which multiplies reified entities unnecessarily. A FOL rule would be easy to construct to correctly relate the substances to their properties, but for COSMO version 0.2 a work-around for such a rule is not yet on hand. The restrictions on substances should be interpreted as meaning necessary conditions on all subclasses of the substances.
Anything that has value to a cognitive agent. The value does not have to be monetary, it can be sentimental. The thing can be an object, a right, a substance, or something intangible such as friendship or knowledge. Anything that would cause distress to an agent if it were lost is a valuable thing. Anything that can be used to help an agent achieve desired goals (e.g. food) is also a valuable thing - see the subtype 'Resource'. Anything that an intelligent agent would pay money to obtain is a valuable thing; in this case, the 'value' is at least approximately quantifiable.
An Organism, of any kind. Dead Organisms are included.
An Animal, of any kind. Dead Animal are included.
A ''Person'' is a subtype of ''Animal''. Dead people are included.
A ''Person'' who is ''Dead'' but was once alive. The location can be dispersed (as ashes or decomposition products). Most characteristics of ''Person'' refer to living people.
Characteristic of An Organism no longer living.
A ''Person'' who has been 'Assassinated'' and is therefore ''Dead''.
A ''Person'' who has been killed and is now dead.
A ''Person'' who has been assassinated and is now dead.
COSMO note: this class was merged with the Cyc 'Artifact-HumanCreated' because little difference could be discerned. Most instances of Artifact will be created by humans - people, groups, organizations, or their automaton servants. Artifactual objects created by non-humans (e.g. animals) will also be instances of ArtifactObject (e.g. 'SpiderWeb').. Artifact( Cyc and SUMO); material-artifact(DOLCE) SUMO: A CorpuscularObject that is the product of a Making. Cyc comment for ;Artifact-HumanCreated': A collection of individual #$Artifacts. Each instance of #$Artifact-HumanCreated is a tangible thing made by an instance of #$HomoSapiens, or by a (#$GroupFn #$HomoSapiens). Examples include instances of #$Clothing-Generic, #$Automobile, #$DrainageCanal, and #$HydroelectricDam. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 A specialization of #$InanimateThing. Each instance of #$Artifact is an at least partially tangible thing which was intentionally created by an #$Agent (or a group of #$Agents working together) to serve some purpose or perform some function. In order to create an instance of #$Artifact, it is not necessary that an #$Agent create the matter out of which the #$Artifact is composed; rather, an #$Agent can create an instance of #$Artifact by assembling or modifying existing matter. Examples of #$Artifacts include a wooden flute that's been whittled from a tree branch, a sawhorse that's been put together out of boards and nails, and a coin that's been minted by embossing or by melting liquid silver into a mold. In addition to the obvious human artifacts (buildings, tools, textiles, power lines), the collection #$Artifact also includes certain sorts of things made by #$Animals, such as bird nests, termite mounds, and beaver dams. Artifacts without any tangible parts are excluded from the collection #$Artifact; they are included in the collection #$Artifact-Intangible. DOLCE: material-artifact: No easy definition of artifactual properties is possible, hence it is better to rely on alternative descriptions and roles: a physical object that shows or is known to have an artifactual origin that counts in the tasks an ontology is supposed to support, will be a material artifact. On the other hand, physical objects that do not show that origin, or that origin is unimportant for the task of the ontology, will be physical bodies. Formally, a restriction is provided here that requires that the collection whose members are (at least some of the) proper parts of a material artifact is *unified* by a plan or project.
An instance of #$ObjectType, and a specialization of #$Artifact-Generic. #$Artifact-NonAgentive is the collection of all artifacts that are _not_ agents (i.e., that are _not_ instances of #$Agent-Generic). Specializations of #$Artifact-NonAgentive include #$Bicycle, #$Pants, #$Canal, and #$FoodUtensil. COSMO note: Artifacts are not Agentive in the sense that they are not IntentionalAgents (they can't speak or fporm plans). However, in COSMO an Instrument is an instance of GenericAgent, so the name must not be interpreted as meaning that an Artifact-NonAgentive is not a GenericAgent.
An IntentionalAgent is an Agent that (typically) has the capacity to form a plan of action. Therefore an IntentionalAgent is an Agent to whom some purpose may be assigned - even if only the purpose of survival. The level of intentionality required to belong to this category is not as high as that required to belong to the more specific category of 'IntelligentAgent'. Therefore computer programs that do not approach human-level linguistic capacity, but have some level of intentionality (in this ontology 'SoftwareAgents') will fit in this category. But to belong to this category a comouter program must have a high degree of autonomy - it must be able to reason about situations and form plans that were not preprogrammed. As of 2008 it is uncertain whether any such programs exist. IntentionalAgent is disjoint from Artifact-NonAgentive. This category will also include some non-human animals that can be said to be able to form some plans, however primitive. As of COSMO version 0.3, we include only mammals under this class. If it is shown that other animals can form primitive plans, at that time they may also be added as subtypes of this category. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 #$Agent-Generic is the collection of all agents, or things (like #$Animals, #$Robots, #$DivineBeings, etc.) that have desires and intentions and the presumed ability to act on them. An instance of this collection may be an instance of #$AgentiveArtifact or #$Agent (but not both). In SUMO, 'CognitiveAgent' appears to be the approximate equivalent. SUMO: An Agent that has rights but may or may not have responsibilities and the ability to reason. If the latter are present, then the Agent is also an instance of CognitiveAgent. Domesticated animals are an example of SentientAgents that are not also CognitiveAgents. DOLCE: agent: A catch-all class used to join agentive objects (either physical or social). Agents are dispositionally so, in the sense that they internally represent descriptions, and in particular plans, goals and possible actions, but they do not necessarily act. In everyday language, agent is used in this sense, but also to tell that something has acted in a certain way, or to say that something has an initiator or leading role in some action. In DLP, the performs relation encodes these notions.
An IntelligentAgent is an agent (Person, Organization, GroupOfPeople, or possibly spirits or an intelligent machine) that can form plans, use knowledge in plans, and can communicate in language. Some activities, such as buying things, can only be performed by an IntelligentAgent. Among the natural animals, only people qualify for this status - in this respect, this category differs from the definition given by Cyc (below). Groups of people, or organizations whose acts are in fact carried out by people (or machines directed by people), can be considered as IntelligentAgents - by the convention that the acts carried out by people who are authorized to act in the name of an organization are acts of the organization. (see Organization). To some degree, existing or future computers may also have such a capacity, and would fit into this category, even if the range of linguistic inputs that would generate an appropriate response may be much more limited than for an adult human;'intelligence' is therefore a quantitative attribute, which has a range of values. NOTE that this category needs to be carefully axiomatized so that the system will recognize blocking conditions that may prevent the understanding of language in specific circumstances: for example, an individual person will only understand one or a small number of languages; a person will understand language only when conscious and awake, and able to perceive the input. A human baby will not understand language at birth, and will develop that capacity gradually; nevertheless a human baby is an instance of this Type. Implementing the use of such blocking conditions will be complex, but including any agent type that can normally understand some human or near-human language appears to be preferable to creating a subtype of human that can qualify absolutely as understanding language, without conditions. NOTE that a Person is an IntelligentAgent, and therefore a DeadPerson is also an IntelligentAgent. In most circumstances, one would not consider a DeadPerson as being able to understand language, unless one is within a belief system where spirits sruvive bodily death. Death is one of the potential blocking conditions for language understanding that will need to be interpreted in context. NOTE that as of 2008, there were no machines that acted on their own behalf, and any action taken by a machine is to be attributed to the agency of the person, organizaton, or GroupOfpeople who directed that machine to act. This is similar to the Cyc #$IntelligentAgent,but excludes non-human animals: From Cyc: A specialization of #$Agent-Generic (q.v.) whose instances are all agents capable of knowing and acting, and of employing their knowledge in their actions. An intelligent agent #$knowsAbout certain things, and having #$beliefs (and possibly #$goals) concerning those things may influence its actions. As with agents generally, an intelligent agent might be a single individual or might consist of a group of individual agents (see #$MultiIndividualAgent). Thus persons are intelligent agents, and so are certain social beings like business and government organizations. Some non-human instances of #$Vertebrate that seem to be sentient and somewhat intelligent, such as (arguably) dogs and horses, can also be considered intelligent agents.
BFO Definition: An occurrent at or in which processual entities can be located. COSMO note: this concept in COSMO is very generic,a nd can be used to specify a spatiotemporal region of any shape. To specify a spatiotemporal region of a more defined shape, use 'TimeAndPlace', for which the spatial shape of the region will depend on the 'location' component of the instance defined. BFO Examples: the spatiotemporal region occupied by a human life, the spatiotemporal region occupied by the development of a cancer tumor, the spatiotemporal context occupied by a process of cellular meiosis
A specialization of #$IntelligentAgent. Each instance of #$SocialBeing is an intelligent agent whose status as an agent is acknowledged within some social system, and who is capable of playing certain social roles within that system. Note that in many (but not all) cases, a #$SocialBeing will have certain rights and responsibilities associated with his/her/its status within the relevant social system. For agents who are granted rights and responsibilities under some legal system, see the specialization #$LegalAgent. Other notable specializations of #$SocialBeing are #$Person and #$Organization.
A #$Place or area with clustered or scattered buildings and a permanent human population, including cities, settlements, towns, and villages. It does not include #$Locales. NOTE that this is a subtype of PhysicalSpaceRegion and is disjoint with Agent. This is a synonym for 'Settlement': 'Settlement' is a very general concept of some area that has people residing in it, the people in it recognizing the area as having an identity distinct from that of other areas. It can be very small or very large. This is similar to the notion of "Populated Place" used in geographical Databases. OCM thesaurus: the topic of 'Settlements' is described: General statements covering several specific aspects of the physical configuration and material facilities of settlements ranging in size and complexity from a temporary camp to a great metropolis. To distinguish early-stage settlements from more established ones, the term 'Settlement' is reserved for this general concept, and 'EarlySettlement' for an early-stage settlement.
A synonym for 'PopulatedPlace' used in Geographical Information systems.
An Authority is an IntelligentAgent who has created a Rule. Usually, the Rule will be communicated to other Agents to follow (for some purpose), but in a special case an Authority (e.g. an individual person) may create a rule intended only for the Authority itself to follow e.g. a personal code of behavior). 'Authority' is a Role, and an individual Agent does not have to be classified as an Authority, unless the Agent particiates in some relation that requires and Authority.
The class of Synonyms has two uses: (1) When a synonymous term is included as a subtype of Synonym, it allows searching for a Type by more than one term, in the case where the alternative term(s) are also unique in the ontology. For example, where Cyc class names (but not meanings) have been changed, the Cyc term may also be included as a Synonym. We use the isaSynonymOf relation to relate Synonym classes to the class with the base name. (2) when used with the 'hasSynonym' relation, instances of Synonym can specify the context (such as namespace) in which the second term is a synonym of the first, and can indicate the overall frequency with which the term in that context actually has the same meaning as the base term. Since there can be multiple instances of the same synonymous term, it is represented as a datatype String entity. NOTE that instances of Synonym need to have unique id's as their identifiers in the ontology, so it is recommended that the unique ID's be generated by prefixing a namespace to the synonymous term that is pointed to by the 'hasSynonymousTerm' property of the Synonym instance. Thus if some term has the synonym 'process' in the PSL context, the instance of Synonym that specifies that relation can be named, e.g. 'PSL$process'. The general English contexts, where words may be ambiguous, is indicated by the namespace prefix 'engen'.
A collection of spatially-localized individuals, including various actions and events as well as physical objects. Each instance of #$InformationBearingThing (or IBT ) is an item that contains information (for an agent who knows how to interpret it). Examples: a copy of the novel Moby Dick; a signal buoy; a photograph; an elevator sign in Braille; a map; a US dollar bill; a resume; a musical score; copies of the #$CycProgram. For representations of the propositional content of information bearing things, see #$PropositionalInformationThing; but note that not all IBTs have a propositional content (cf. #$ArtObject). An important specialization of #$InformationBearingThing is #$InformationBearingObject, which comprises all of those IBTs that are also physical objects (i.e. #$PartiallyTangibles). Though often a subtle task in particular contexts, it is important to distinguish the various specializations of #$InformationBearingThing from those of #$AspatialInformationStore (whose instances are the chunks of information instantiated in particular IBTs; see #$instantiationOfAIT) and from those of #$ConceptualWork (whose instances are the conceptual or artistic creations that are instantiated in particular IBTs; see #$instantiationOfWork). For instance, #$TextString is a specialization of #$AspatialInformationStore, #$TextualMaterial is a specialization of #$InformationBearingThing, and #$TextualPCW is a specialization of #$ConceptualWork; to conflate any of these with another would be to make a category error . Also note that events in which information is transferred (see #$InformationTransferEvent) are not considered instances of #$InformationBearingThing. Rather, such transfer events have as one of their participants (see #$actors) some instance of #$InformationBearingThing; though in cases where IBTs are themselves events this will require distinguishing very finely between the event that encodes the information and the event that is the information transfer. See also the sense-modality-based specializations, #$SoundInformationBearingThing and #$VisualInformationBearingThing.
OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of wholly intangible individuals, a specialization of both #$Intangible and #$Individual. Instances of #$IntangibleIndividual are immaterial, and thus do not have mass, color, or other tangible qualities. Examples include mathematical objects (such as numbers, functions, and relations), attributes, time intervals, space regions, and events. Excluded are sets and collections because, although intangible, they are not individuals.
A connected part of any space, physical or abstract. A Region does not have to be empty, but can be occupied by solid objects. For an empty region of space see 'FreeSpaceRegion'. NOTE that Region is disjoint with PhysicalObject, but not disjoint with Object (which can be abstract). A Feature is classified as an Object though it may also be a Region. BFO (SpatialRegion): Definition: A continuant at or in which other continuants can be located. COSMO note: in BFO, a SpatialRegion is the union of: Line, Point, Surface, and Volume. This is close to the present concept of 'Region', but those terms in COSMO are more abstract.
A Feature is an Object or Region within the ConvexHull of an Object. The Object may be abstract.
existsInContext is most useful to relate fictional, nythical, or hypothetical characters to the contexts in which they appear. It can be used to refer to the 'Real World', but that may be in most cases the default context that needs no explicit reference.
A general 'overlap' relation for both regions and objects, abstract and physical. In COSMO Objects are distinct from the regions that they occupy, but for the purpose of this relation, the 'overlap' can be viewed as the spatial overlap of the regions occupied by objects, or of that region with some other region. Regions that are in any way adjacent, with no space between other than a point, line, or infinitesimally thick plane, are considered as 'touching' for this relation. This relation is used to express the relation between a Feature of an Object and the Objec tht has that Feature. The Feature can be part of the Object (a protrusion) or a region within the ConvexHull of the Object (e.g. the hole in a doughnut). Such a region overlapsOrTouches the Object it is parasitic upon. In Cyc a similar 'overlaps' relation is labeled 'overlaps-RCC' (for regional Connection Calulus). But that is for regions only, and differs from this COSMO relation. Cyc: (#$overlaps-RCC REG1 REG2) means that REG1 overlaps REG2, i.e., REG1 and REG2 have a common part. The three immediate specialization of #$overlaps-RCC are #$partiallyOverlaps-RCC, #$partOf-RCC and #$partOf-Inverse-RCC. Note that this relation is a #$negationPreds of #$externallyConnectsWith-RCC, compare also with #$discreteFrom-RCC.
Every Group consists of one or more entities considered as one unit, and is related to the component entities by the relation 'hasComponentElement'. A Group is not an abstract or mathematical concept - every group derives its properties solely from the entities that are its component elements. Thus a group of solid objects would be a solid object, and the mass of that object would be equal to the sum of the masses of the component objects. It has *some* similarity to the 'mereological sum' of mereologists. However, a Group may have component elements of very diverse kinds - there is no restriction on the membership of a Group, though one element can only count once in the cardinality of the group. A Group is somewhat similar to a Cyc 'Group', but is not restricted to physical things, and has relations to its members named differently than in Cyc. NOTE: A Group that has one component element is identical to that single element; in this respect it is similar to the mereological notion of a 'mereological sum'. The only group that can have itself as a component element is the group of one element. This latter property is the peculiar characteristic of this concept of 'Group', in contrast to other aggregates except, as noted, for 'mereological sum'. This concept of 'Group' makes certain representations covenient. In some cases, we want to define a function that may return one or more elements, but if there is one element, we also want that single element to be identical to the single element, and not encapsulated in an enveloping element. Returning a Group will allow that behavior. Note that a relation on a Group that can be applied to individuals (i.e. is not specifically defined on the type 'Group' or a subtype thereof) will be interpreted as meaning that the relation applies to each member of the Group individually. Therefore to say {(Every Dog) has (four Legs)} is to specify that each instance of Dog has four legs. The same effect can often be accomplished by an OWL restriction on the type. Cyc Documentation for 'Group' (NOTE some differences from COSMO 'Group'. In Cyc a Group must consist of Temporal Objects, but in COSMO it is more general. The Group membership relation also differs.) OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 A collection of temporal objects. Each instance of #$Group is a composite object made up of one or more individual objects or events. A group is related to each of its members by the predicate #$groupMembers (q.v.) [COSMO: 'hasComponentElement'] Note that instances of #$Group are _not_ collections. A group has temporal extent [COSMO: a Group may be abstract] and might have spatial location, while a collection is timeless and nonspatial. It is of course possible to define a collection parallel to any given group, so that the instances of the collection are exactly the group-members of that group; e.g. each toe on my left foot (and nothing else) is both an instance of the collection of my left toes and a member of the group of toes on my left foot. But that group (of my left toes) is a spatiotemporal thing while the correlated collection (of my left toes) is not. Similarly, if a certain flock of pigeons is considered as having a location, a spatial extent, and a time of existence, then the flock is being considered a _group_ and not a collection. Finally, unlike a collection, a group cannot be empty, but must have _at_least_one_ group-member. As a default, a group whose group-members all are instances of #$SomethingExisting is itself an instance of #$SomethingExisting, and a group whose group-members all are #$Events is itself an #$Event. Instances of #$Group include #$QueensGuard, #$ThreeWiseMen, #$SantasReindeer, and #$InternationalCommunity.
A CompositeConcept is a Group that consists of component elements of different basic types, such as a System (which see). The notion of a CompositeConcept provides a way to represent things like situations that have essential elements of different type (such as States and FunctionalProcesses).
An Entity that has a beginning point in time and an ending point in time. The usage of this term in COSMO differs from the usage in OpenCyc, in that it does **not** include PhysicalObject as a subtype, though the two categories are not disjoint. The purpose of the cyc concept appears to be to permit relating both PhysicalObjects and Events to their time location. In COSMO, that purpose is served by the relation 'hasTemporalLocation' (which see) which has as its domain the union of Events and PhysicalObjects.and 'wasCreatedDuring' and 'wasDestroyedDuring', There is, however, a subtle issue in that the beginning and ending time of a 'TemporalThing' may be the same time, i.e. the instance may be an instantaneous time slice of a time-extended entity. Since in COSMO zero-interval extended entities are indistinguishable from point entities, this means that a '3-D' endurantist object can be an instance of 'TemporalThing' just as a HumanRole, a '4-D' perdurantist object can be an instance of the typically '3-D' Person. In Opencyc a 'TemporalThing' is very generic, it is anything that has a beginning point in time (and presumably an ending point, though it may not be known for existing things). Thus physical objects, which must come into existence at some time (perhaps the beginning of time), as well as events, are 'TemporalThings'. In COSMO, TemporalThing is reserved for TimeIntervals and Events, and PhysicalObjects are not classified as subtypes of TemporalThing. The creation and destruction time of PhysicalObjects will use different relations. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of all things that have temporal extent or location, i.e. things about which one might sensibly ask When? . #$TemporalThing thus contains many kinds of things, including events, physical objects, agreements, and abstract pieces of time. Note that #$TimePoint is a specialization of #$TemporalThing, since time points have temporal location, although they arguably lack temporal extent. Abstract things that are timeless - such as mathematical sets, attributes, and numbers - are of course _not_ instances of #$TemporalThing. NOTE that although every TemporalThing must have a starting and ending TimePont, that notion is not represented as an existential restriction so that it will not be necessary to explicitly represent the starting and ending times of intervals whose starting and ending times can be calculated from the name. This is a pragmatic and implementational, not a theoretical consideration.
A Pair is a Group containing exactly two elements.
A LinearlyOrderedGroup is a Group that has a linear ordering, which is a mapping from the natural numbers to elements of the Group. It will usually have more than one element, but may have only one.
A OrderedPair is a Tuple containing two elements.
hasQuantifier relates a QuantitativeAttributeValue to the quantifier that indicates how many units large the value is.
A Number is both a Quantity and an Object. This contrasts with PhysicalQuantity, which is a Quantity and an AttributeValue. Pure numbers and physical quantities (numbers plus units of measure) are disjoint entities.
Any Number that can be expressed as a (possibly infinite) decimal, i.e. any Number that has a position on the number line.
Any RealNumber that is not also a RationalNumber.
A RealNumber that is greater than or equal to zero.
Any RealNumber that is the product of dividing two Integers. To represent a fraction in the name of a RationalNumber, the prefix 'N_' should be used, and to separate the two integers, an underscore can be used (to stay within the OWL naming conventions). Thus three-halves would be named 'N_3_2',and two-thirds would be 'N_2_3'. However, percents, which are also rational numbers, will have a different naming scheme.
A RationalNumber that expresses a ratio of one quantity to another, multiplied by one hundred. This is a pure number. For its use to express distributions, see 'Percentage'.
An Integer that is greater than or equal to zero.
'isWithinAnOrderOfMagnitudeOf' relates one numerical quantity (dimensionless number or ConstantQuantity) to another and asserts that the ratio r of the numerical values of the two fall in the range 10 > r > 0.1 Thus: {{3 meters} isWithinAnOrderOfMagnitudeOf {10 meters}}.
'isWithinaFactorOfTwoOf' relates one numerical quantity (dimensionless Number or ConstantQuantity) to another and asserts that the ratio r of the numerical values of the two fall in the range 2 > r > 0.5 Thus: {{3 meters} isWithinaFactorOfTwoOf {2 meters}}.
'isApproximatelyEqualTo' relates one numerical quantity (dimensionless Number or ConstantQuantity) to another and asserts that the ratio r of the numerical values of the two fall in the range 1.5 > r > 0.6667. Thus: {{4 meters} isApproximatelyEqualTo {3 meters}}.
'isAlmostTheSameAs' relates one numerical quantity (dimensionless Number or ConstantQuantity) to another and asserts that the ratio r of the numerical values of the two fall in the range 1.11111 > r > 0.9. Thus: {{10 meters} isApproximatelyEqualTo 11 meters}}.
A #$NumericComparisonPredicate that is a generalization of the mathematical less-than ( < ) relation to #$ScalarIntervals (q.v.) of all sorts, including quantitative intervals as well as point values (see #$ScalarPointValue). (#$lessThan VALUE1 VALUE2) means that VALUE1 is less than VALUE2 with respect to some scale that they are both on. More precisely, there is some #$TotallyOrderedScalarIntervalType SCALE that both VALUE1 and VALUE2 are instances of and either (i) SCALE is a specialization of #$NumericValue (e.g. #$RealNumber) and the maximum (see #$maxQuantValue) of VALUE1 is less than the minimum (see #$minQuantValue) of VALUE2 or (ii) (#$followingValueOnScale VALUE1 VALUE2 SCALE) holds. Note that #$lessThan is an #$ELRelation (q.v.), and the above sentence would actually canonicalize to (#$greaterThan VALUE2 VALUE1).
A #$NumericComparisonPredicate that is a generalization of the mathematical less-than-or-equal-to ( <= ) relation to #$ScalarIntervals (q.v.) of all sorts, including quantitative intervals as well as point values (see #$ScalarPointValue). (#$lessThanOrEqualTo VALUE1 VALUE2) means that VALUE1 is less than or equal to VALUE2 with respect to some scale that they are both on. More precisely, there is some #$TotallyOrderedScalarIntervalType SCALE that both VALUE1 and VALUE2 are instances of and either (i) SCALE is a specialization of #$NumericValue (e.g. #$RealNumber) and the maximum (see #$maxQuantValue) of VALUE1 is less than or equal to the minimum (see #$minQuantValue) of VALUE2, (ii) (#$followingValueOnScale VALUE1 VALUE2 SCALE) holds, or (iii) (#$equals VALUE1 VALUE2) holds. Note that #$lessThanOrEqualTo is an #$ELRelation (q.v.), and the above sentence would actually canonicalize to (#$greaterThanOrEqualTo VALUE2 VALUE1).
A #$NumericComparisonPredicate (q.v.) that is a generalization of the mathematical greater-than-or equal-to (>=;) relation to #$ScalarIntervals (q.v.) of all sorts, including quantitative intervals (see #$NumericInterval and #$Quantity) as well as point values (see #$ScalarPointValue). (#$greaterThanOrEqualTo VALUE1 VALUE2) means that VALUE1 is greater than or equal to VALUE2 with respect to some scale that they are both on. More precisely, there is some #$TotallyOrderedScalarIntervalType SCALE; that both VALUE1; and VALUE2; are instances of and either (i) SCALE; is a specialization of #$NumericInterval (e.g. #$RealNumber) and the minimum (see #$minQuantValue) of VALUE1; is greater than or equal to the maximum (see #$maxQuantValue) of VALUE2;, (ii) (#$followingValueOnScale VALUE2 VALUE1 SCALE); holds, or (iii) (#$equals VALUE1 VALUE2); holds. See also #$greaterThan and #$lessThanOrEqualTo.
A #$NumericComparisonPredicate that is a generalization of the mathematical greater-than ( > ) relation to #$ScalarIntervals (q.v.) of all sorts, including quantitative intervals (see #$NumericInterval and #$MeasurableQuantity) as well as point values (see #$ScalarPointValue). (#$greaterThan VALUE1 VALUE2); means that VALUE1; is greater than VALUE2; with respect to some scale that they are both on. More precisely, there is some #$TotallyOrderedScalarIntervalType SCALE that both VALUE1; and VALUE2; are instances of and either (i) SCALE; is a specialization of #$NumericInterval (e.g. #$RealNumber) and the minimum (see #$minQuantValue) of VALUE1; is greater than the maximum (see #$maxQuantValue) of VALUE2; or (ii) (#$followingValueOnScale VALUE2 VALUE1 SCALE); holds.
A standard of measurement for some dimension. For example, the Meter is a UnitOfMeasure for the dimension of length, as is the Inch. There is no intrinsic property of a UnitOfMeasure that makes it primitive or fundamental; rather, a system of units (e.g. SystemeInternationalUnit) defines a set of orthogonal dimensions and assigns units for each. NOTE that each UnitOfMeasure is represented as a 'QuantitativeAttributeValue' which means that it has a Quantifier and a UnitOfMeasure. This convention means that a unit of measure is just *some* instance of measure that is chosen as the 'unit'. This requires that the Quantifier be the number 1, and the UnitOfmeasure be the unit itself. This may seem a bit peculiar, and might be changed if it seems desirable. Cyc: A specialization of #$ScalarDenotingFunction (q.v.). Each instance of #$UnitOfMeasure is a function that takes one or two numbers or other #$NumericIntervals as arguments, and returns as value a #$MeasurableQuantity (q.v.), such as a #$Distance or a #$Speed or a #$Volume. If a unit of measure is applied to one number (see #$Number-General) the result is a precise quantity that is a #$ScalarPointValue; if applied to two (different) numbers -- or to one (or two) #$ProperIntervalOnNumberLine(s) -- the result is a closed-interval quantity that is a #$ScalarProperInterval. For example, (#$Meter 5) is the distance five meters and (#$Meter 5 10) is the distance five to ten meters (inclusive) . (A partial exception to the above is the unit-of-measure #$Unity (q.v.), which always returns a #$NumericInterval rather than a #$MeasurableQuantity.) Specializations of #$UnitOfMeasure grouped by what they measure include #$UnitOfTime, #$UnitOfSpeed, and #$UnitOfVolume. Other specializations are #$OneDimensionalUnitOfMeasure, #$MultiDimensionalUnitOfMeasure, #$UnitOfMeasureWithPrefix and #$UnitOfMeasureNoPrefix.
A Measurement is an OrderedPair representing the result of a MeasurementEvent. It is an abstract representation of a MeasurableQuantity. Each instance of Measurement is an OrderedPair in which the first element is a UnitOfMeasure or other Quantifiable AttributeValue, and the second element is a quantity expressing some kind of magnitude associated with that UnitOfMeasure. The magnitude will typically be a number indicating, for example, how many individuals have that attribute, or a percentage indicating what fraction of a group have that Attribute. A Prevalence will typically be one element of a Distribution. NOTE that a Measurement does not have to use actual numbers in the 'Quantifier' field - a Measurement may be approximate, using quantities like 'High', 'Low', etc. qualifying an AttributeValue, but it does have to modify a unit of measure.
COSMO: SituationProcessEventOrState is a broad category that includes Events, FunctionalProcesses, and PersistentStates,all of which are different aspects of the same fundamental conceptual entity, commonly called an 'Event'. Each instance of 'SituationProcessEventOrState' in COSMO is a Group of TimeIndexedAssertion, in aggregate representing the changes (if any) to the properties (attributes and relations) of one or more objects over some interval of time, An InstantaneousState may have only one TimeIndexedAssertion, but Events and FunctionalProcesses will have at least two. Event is a Group of 'TimeIndexedAssertion's containing the component elements: (1) InstantaneousState at the starting time (2) InstantaneousState at the Ending time (3) The FunctionalProcess that describes the intermediate states between the starting and ending times. **Informally**, a state,process, or event is interpreted as the set of *values* of some 'fluents' (attributes or relations that may change over time), but the actual *formal* representation is a Group in which the group elements are the *LinguisticAssertions* specifying the values of the fluents pertaining to some Group of Objects. Each LinguisticAssertion specifies the value at some time point (or time interval). The differences in State, Process,and Event are: State: The Group of Assertions that hold at one time point (InstantaneousState), or persist without change of value over some contiguous interval of time (PersistentState). No value can chage within a State. FunctionalProcess: The full set of LinguisticAssertions specifying the values of fluents at each time point or smaller TimeInterval within a TimeInterval in which the Process is defined. The set of LinguisticAssertions relate times to values,and in that respect is analogous to a mathematical function. In analogy to a mathematical function, one can derive a 'rate' for a Process (in cases where the values are quantified) by taking the ratio of (difference in value) to (difference in time) for any TimeInterval in which a change of value is specified. This rate may change from time to time during a FunctionalProcess. Event: focuses on the values of the fluents at the beginning and ending of some TimeInterval, but also includes the FunctionalProcess that specifies the fluent values at times between the beginning and ending. Since the focus of an Event is on the change from one time point to the next, one cannot specify a 'rate' in the same sense as for a FunctionalProcess, where the rate may change many times during the FunctionalProcess. For an Event, one can derive a single 'rate' value that specifies the overall ratio of change of fluent value to time, between the beginning and ending points, and for an Event, only one such 'rate' can be defined. NOTE: In COSMO a Situation is classified as a CompositeConcept because it is considered as a composite of the InstantaneousStates at the beginning and ending times of the Situation (which can be the same time), plus the FunctionalProcess that describes the states intermediate between the beginning and ending times. Called: Situation-Temporal(Cyc) perdurant(DOLCE) ***** Special COSMO NOTE on BFO 'ProcessualEntity' ***************************** In BFO the Type 'ProcessualEntity' appears to be most closely similar to COSMO 'SituationProcessEventOrState'. However, the division of the BFO Type into 'FiatProcessPart' and 'Process' has no corresponding division in Cyc or SUMO. In COSMO we include a FiatProcessPart for compatibility, but do not use it (no subtypes), and do not use the BFO partition of 'ProcessualEntity'. BFO Definition: An occurrent that exists in time by occurring or happening, has temporal parts and always involves and depends on some SNAP entity. Examples: the life of an organism, the process of meiosis, the course of a disease, the flight of a bird ***** End Special NOTE on BFO 'ProcessualEntity' ***************************** Cyc 'Situation' is indistinguishable from 'Situation-Temporal' except for the possible inclusion in 'Situation' of abstract situations not enclosed in a time interval. The term 'Situation' has been interpreted in COSMO as strictly temporal, and the more abstract things that resenble situations have been aggregated under 'AbstractEvent'. Cyc ('Situtation') A subcollection of both #$IntangibleIndividual and #$TemporalThing. #$Situation subsumes #$Event and #$StaticSituation. Each instance of #$Situation is a state or event consisting of one or more objects having certain properties, or bearing certain relations to each other. OPENCYC 1: (Situation-Temporal) MAY 23, 2002 A subcollection of both #$Situation and #$TemporalThing. #$Situation-Temporal is the collection of all instances of #$Situation that have duration or other temporal properties . Thus, #$Situation-Temporal subsumes #$Event and #$StaticSituation, as well as some other specializations of #$Situation. It does _not_ subsume any specializations of #$Situation that have atemporal instances. DOLCE: Perdurants (AKA occurrences) comprise what are variously called events, processes, phenomena, activities and states. They can have temporal parts or spatial parts. For instance, the first movement of (an execution of) a symphony is a temporal part of the symphony. On the other hand, the play performed by the left side of the orchestra is a spatial part. In both cases, these parts are occurrences themselves. We assume that objects cannot be parts of occurrences, but rather they participate in them. Perdurants extend in time by accumulating different temporal parts, so that, at any time they are present, they are only partially present, in the sense that some of their proper temporal parts (e.g., their previous or future phases) may be not present. E.g., the piece of paper you are reading now is wholly present, while some temporal parts of your reading are not present yet, or any more. Philosophers say that endurants are entities that are in time, while lacking temporal parts (so to speak, all their parts flow with them in time). Perdurants, on the contrary, are entities that happen in time, and can have temporal parts (all their parts are fixed in time).
Each Event in COSMO is a Group of 'TimeIndexedAssertion's, in aggregate representing the changes to the properties (attributes and relations) of one or more objects over some interval of time, and containing the component elements: (1) InstantaneousState at the starting time (2) InstantaneousState at the Ending time (3) The FunctionalProcess that describes the intermediate states between the starting and ending times. **Informally**, a state,process, or event in COSMO is interpreted as the set of *values* of some 'fluents' (attributes or relations that may change over time), but the actual *formal* representation is a Group in which the group elements are the *TimeIndexedAssertions* specifying the values of the fluents pertaining to some Group of Objects, at some TimePoint or TimerInterval. he differences between State, Process,and Event are: State: The Group of Assertions that hold at one time point (InstantaneousState), or persist without change of value over some contiguous interval of time (PersistentState). No value can chage within a State. NOTE that one can represent the state of an individual relation or attribute for some Object, without specifying how other attributes may or may not change. Therfore one can, for example, represent a Feeling as a PersistentState that continues without change in value over somme interval of time, while other attributes or relatikons on the same Person change dramatically. Each attribute of each Object represented in a State can be represented as a State separately from the states of other Objects. FunctionalProcess: The full set of LinguisticAssertions specifying the values of fluents at each time point or smaller TimeInterval within a TimeInterval in which the Process is defined. The set of LinguisticAssertions relate times to values,and in that respect is analogous to a mathematical function. In analogy to a mathematical function, one can derive a 'rate' for a Process (in cases where the values are quantified) by taking the ratio of (difference in value) to (difference in time) for any TimeInterval in which a change of value is specified. This rate may change from time to time during a FunctionalProcess. **NOTE** A FunctionalProcess may also be defined, not by specifying the individual values of the fluents at points in time, but by specifying the manner in which a fluent can change over time. One specific example of this is a **differential equation** which can be used to take the value of a fluent at some starting point in time, and calculate the values at subsequent points in time. Thus a FunctionalProcess can have, as its TimeIndexedAssertion, a differential equation. @ToDo: the specifics of how a differential equation are to be represented have not been elaborated as of v0.50. Event: focuses on the values of the fluents at the beginning and ending of some TimeInterval, but also includes the FunctionalProcess that specifies the fluent values at times between the beginning and ending. Since the focus of an Event is on the change from one time point to the next, one cannot specify a 'rate' in the same sense as for a FunctionalProcess, where the rate may change many times during the FunctionalProcess. For an Event, one can derive a single 'rate' value that specifies the overall ratio of change of fluent value to time, between the beginning and ending points, and for any instance of Event, only one such 'rate' can be defined. Although logically included in each Event are the starting and ending times, (see relations hasStartingTimePoint and hasEndingTimePoint), these may not be known, and creating an instance of Event does not require specifying those times if not known. NOTE that the FunctionalProcess which is a component of the Event *contains* all of the elements contained in the Event, in that it contains itself, and also contains the states at the beginning and end. While *containing* all of those elements, however, it is nevertheless a distinctly different concept, since the 'Event' specifically selects out of the FunctionalProcess the beginning and ending states as characteristic of the Event. The Event is not a FunctionalProcess, but *contains* a FunctionalProcess as a component element. A FunctionalProcess can be derived from an Event, and an Event can be derived from a FunctionalProcess that is defined over some interval of time. A 'FunctionalProcess' that has only one time point in it also represents a special kind of Event, the limiting case of an InstantaneousState. NOTE also that an instance of FunctionalProcess that is defined by a mathematical function relating properties to time must have associated with it some time interval during which it is asserted to be valid, in order to be an instance. NOTE also that this representation of Event does not resemble a perdurantist 'history' which focuses on some region of space-time. Regions of space-time are represented as 'SpatiotemporalRegion' in COSMO, but the only spatial regions of relevance to an Event are those that can be derived from the locations of the Objects that participate in an Event. The significant conceptual components of an Event are the properties ('fluents') of the Objects that participate in the Event, and insofar as the locations of the Objects may be, but are not necessarily, represented in the Event, those locations may be significant, but except in Events solely depicting motion, the locations are incidental rather than central to the changes represented by the Event. Each Event represents one or more changes that occur to the attributes or relations ('fluents') of one or more objects during some defined interval of time (or for abstract Events, within some interval on the dimension of causality); the net changes are represented by the state at the beginning of the event and the state at the end of the Event. In the physical world, real Events typically have multiple intermediate stages, and nothing occurs instantaneously, but some non-physical Events such as a change of title for a Person may occur at a precise moment by prior arrangement. The representation of intermediate stages of an Event can be explicit, with the included events related to the whole event by the 'hasSubEvent' relation or 'hasTemporalPart' relation. The first can be more specific about one of serveral fluents that vary during an event. The temporal part relation between Events must relate a subevent that includes alll of the fluents represented in the whole Event. Each Event includes implicitly a Process that specifies the course of each fluent between the start and end times. At this point (v0.39) there is no explicit representation of the included Process, but each FunctionalProcess will, if represented explicitly, have an associate time granularity indicating the minimal intervals over which the change in the fluents are represented. The ize of the granularity intervals during which FunctionalProcess states are represented will depends on the discretion of the ontologist for the pruposes of the representation. COSMO note: note that in some ontologies (and situation logics) , 'Event' is used to refer to a change in state that is considered instantaneous. In COSMO, suchan 'Event' is a subtype of the more general event, which is a change in state that occurs over some interval of time (which, for instantaneous changes would be a zero-length time interval). NOTE also that for some Events, such as cyclic Events, merely representing the starting and ending states - which may be identical - loses the whole meaning of the Event; so intermediate states must also be represented in some manner to provide meaning to the Event. Called: Event(Cyc); Process(SUMO); event(DOLCE); Processual(SPAN-BFO) ************ NOTE on BFO 'Process' ****************************** COSMO: BFO the Type most closely representing COSMO 'Event' is 'Process', so that BFO type is made synonymous with ''Event'. BFO makes teh distinction between 'Fiat' events (FiatProcessPart = parts of events) and complete events. This Type represents the complete Event with well-defined beginnings and ends. The FiatProcessPart event is included for compatibility, though not yet used. BFO ('Process') Definition: A processual entity that is a maximally connected spatio-temporal whole and has bona fide beginnings and endings corresponding to real discontinuities. BFO Examples: the life of an organism, the process of sleeping, the process of cell-division ************ NOTE on BFO 'Process' ****************************** Cyc comment: An important specialization of #$Situation and thus also of #$IntangibleIndividual and #$TemporallyExistingThing (qq.v). Each instance of #$Event is a dynamic situation in which the state of the world changes; each instance is something one would say happens . Events are intangible because they are changes per se, not tangible objects that effect and undergo changes. Notable specializations of #$Event include #$Event-Localized, #$PhysicalEvent, #$Action, and #$GeneralizedTransfer. #$Events should not be confused with #$TimeIntervals (q.v.). The temporal bounds of events are delineated by time intervals, but in contrast to many events time intervals have no spatial location or extent. COSMO note: 'Event' was merged with Cyc 'PhysicalEvent' and Cyc 'Event-Localized' The Cyc 'StrictlyMentalEvent' is classified as a PhysicalEvent in COSMO. Cyc: (PhysicalEvent') A specialization of #$Event-Localized. Each instance of #$PhysicalEvent is a spatially localized event involving one or more physical objects or stuffs. #$PhysicalEvents typically involve interaction among #$PartiallyTangibles. But note that a physical event might consist in the creation, destruction, movement, or a change in some physical feature of a single salient physical object. (See #$PhysicalCreationEvent, #$PhysicalDestructionEvent, #$MovementEvent, and #$IntrinsicStateChangeEvent.) For a contrasting (though not necessarily disjoint) collection, see #$StrictlyMentalEvent. For events that have both physical and mental components, see the collection #$CompositePhysicalAndMentalEvent. Cyc ('Event-Localized'): A specialization of #$Event. #$Event-Localized is the collection of all events that occur at a specific location in space. Notable specializations of #$Event-Localized include #$PhysicalEvent and #$AnimalActivity.
'hasSubjectOfState' points from some 'PersistentState' to the entity (of any type) that is 'in' that state. The Entity is not necessarily a location, so this is not a subproperty of 'occurredAt': for persistent states referencing the state of some location, both 'hasSubjectOfState' and 'occurredAt' will be required role fillers.
hasParticipant relates an Event to the things (Objects, Substances) that participate in the Event in some role, as causative agents, or as instruments, or as products or in other roles (e.g. as witnesses). This is the most general 'case' relation that is conceptual rather than strictly grammatical. It can be used to express a relation between types or instances. It will usually be used to refer to past Events, but may refer to future or hypothetical Events.. The range should just be #Thing Participants include the inputs and outputs of Events that are creation or destruction events. See, for example, 'produced'. NOTE: @ToDo REv 1303: if a relation is needed specifically to refer to voluntary particiants, see ''participatedInAction'' which has been commented out. Needed?? COSMO note: Objects may 'participate' in an Event without being a 'patient', for example in a ''Believing'' the Belief involved is a participant in the Event, but the properties of the belief involved are not among the fluents that are affected by the Event. Rather, in that case, the relationship between the Agent and the belief is the fluent. The object of this relation is a 'participant' and, when a person may also be called a 'party' to an action. NOTE: 'TopicType is added to the domain so that 'hasSubjectOfStudy' can be a subrelation of this relation. @ToDo: needs rethinking. - probably should be no restrictions on the type of participant. The Object, when it is a Person, Corresponds to noun sense 1 of 'participant' and in some cases is labeled as a 'party' (includes but is broader than the legal sense 5 of 'party') in WordNet: 1. (1) participant - (someone who takes part in an activity) WN noun 'party': 5. (31) party - (a person involved in legal proceedings; 'the party of the first part')
'hadChangedEntity' is a specialized relation to express the meaning of 'change', indicating what has changed in a 'BecomingEvent'. The range can include any type of thing, object, substance, abstract, whatever.
A 'BecomingEvent' is an Event in which some Object or Process changes its type or state or *changes* some *internal* attribute that is of noticeable significance. This captures the general sense of 'change' other than change of location. NOTE that this type is disjoint with 'PersistentState' . If some form of stasis occurs at the same time as a change, representing both of those types of Events would require that the staticEvent be a subevent, or that they both be subevents of some larger event. This is broad and intentionally vague so as to encompass any Event that could be referred to by a statement such as 'the object became . . .'. A change of color could suffice: 'the apple became red after three days'; 'the bananas turned yellow overnight'. Longer time intervals would also qualify: 'This little baby became a fearsome warrior'. Subtypes such as 'ChangeOfStatusEvent' and 'CreationOrDestructionEvent' are included. Changes in behavioral or psychological attributes of people or animals are included. NOTE: to specify the result of a change, use 'subjectBecomes' relation. To specify the entity changed, use the 'hadThingAffected' relation. NOTE: all Events involve a change of some attribute or relation, but this type of Event should be used for those changes that change something significant about the properties of the Object itself; mere change of location or of possession would not qualify as a 'BecomingEvent'. The number of subtypes is likely to expand as more and more specific events are found to be referred to by a phrase meaning 'become', such as 'turned' or 'turned into' or 'changed into' or 'was transformed'. It may be hard to exclude any Event other than a PersistentState, or Motion not invlolving internal changes, but the usage will have to be determined by its applicability in language processing, and kept as narrow as possible while accommodating common usage. This is a general sense including the intransitive and transitive sense of 'change' in WordNet, verb senses 1 to 3: in WordNet: 1. (69) change - (undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature; 'She changed completely as she grew older'; 'The weather changed last night') 2. (67) change, alter, modify - (cause to change; make different; cause a transformation; 'The advent of the automobile may have altered the growth pattern of the city'; 'The discussion has changed my thinking about the issue') 3. (13) change, alter, vary - (make or become different in some particular way, without permanently losing one's or its former characteristics or essence; 'her mood changes in accordance with the weather'; 'The supermarket's selection of vegetables varies according to the season') WN noun sense 1 of 'change': 1. (76) change, alteration, modification - (an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another; 'the change was intended to increase sales'; 'this storm is certainly a change for the worse'; 'the neighborhood had undergone few modifications since his last visit years ago') WN WN Also Includes verb senses 1, 2, and 3 of 'become', verb sense 2 of 'turn' (especially as WN in 'turn into'), sense 4 of 'go' and WN noun senses 1, 2 and 3 of 'transition' and noun sense 1 of 'passage' in WN: WN noun 'transition' WN NOTE that the sense of 'get' is better expressed by 'turn into', but there is no WN Wordnet entry for that phrase. 1. (10) passage, transition - (the act of passing from one state or place to the next) 3. (1) transition - (a change from one place or state or subject or stage to another) WN 'become' 1. (333) become, go, get - (enter or assume a certain state or condition; 'He became annoyed when he heard the bad news'; 'It must be getting more serious'; 'her face went red with anger'; 'She went into ecstasy'; 'Get going!') 2. (222) become, turn - (undergo a change or development; 'The water turned into ice'; 'Her former friend became her worst enemy'; 'He turned traitor') 3. (5) become - (come into existence; 'What becomes has duration') WN verb 'turn': 2. (660) become, turn - (undergo a change or development; 'The water turned into ice'; 'Her former friend became her worst enemy'; 'He turned traitor') WN verb 'go': 4. (29) become, go, get - (enter or assume a certain state or condition; 'He became annoyed when he heard the bad news'; 'It must be getting more serious'; 'her face went red with anger'; 'She went into ecstasy'; 'Get going!' . . . 'go ballistic', 'go nuts', etc)
An attribute of Events (including repeating events and PersistentStates) that continue or repeat for some interval of time during which they appear not stop. Corresponds to adjective sense 1 of 'continued ' and seses 1 and 2 of 'contiual' and part of sense 2 of 'uninterrupted' (continuous in time but not in space) in WordNet: 1. (12) continued - (without stop or interruption; 'to insure the continued success of the war'; 'the continued existence of nationalism'; 'the continued popularity of Westerns') WN adjective 'uninterrupted': 2. continuous, uninterrupted - (continuing in time or space without interruption; 'a continuous rearrangement of electrons in the solar atoms results in the emission of light'- James Jeans; 'a continuous bout of illness lasting six months'; 'lived in continuous fear'; 'a continuous row of warehouses'; 'a continuous line has no gaps or breaks in it'; 'moving midweek holidays to the nearest Monday or Friday allows uninterrupted work weeks') WN adj 'continual': 1. (4) continual - (seemingly without interruption; chiefly restricted to what recurs regularly or frequently in a prolonged and closely spaced series; 'the continual banging of the shutters') 2. continual - (`continual' (meaning seemingly uninterrupted) is often used interchangeably with `continuous' (meaning without interruption))
A PersistentState is an Event in which all represented attributes or relations (any one or more 'fluents' in PSL) remains constant over some time interval. Representing this state does not imply that nothing is going on or changing over that time interval, but that the represented attributes remain constant over that timeinnterval. For example, a person can be represented as being in a 'sitting state' even though s/he may be doing many things in that interval of time. An agent can be doing things during a PersistentState, as long as the relevant attribute(s) that characterize the state remain constant (within some degree of tolerance) during all parts of the state, within some level of granularity. It is possible that there are events that are not themselves 'PersistentState''s and are subevents of a PersistentState. For example, a repetitive action may continue during the time the persistentState is in effect; an alternating current can be changing its voltage with any frequency, but as long as it can be said to be 'flowing' then it can be represented as a PersistentState. A Volcano can be 'in eruption' and lava be flowing, and that can be represented as a PersistentState. These *subevents* themselves can be represented as 'change'events (''BecomingEvent''s) that are disjoint with a ''PersistentState''. Thus a ''PersistentState'' can have necessarily included subEvents that are not themselves ''PersistentState''s. One commmon use of this concept in COSMO is to represent ''Feeling''s and the notion of 'having an attribute'. When relevant, the AtributeVales that are characteristic of a ''PersistentState'' can be pointed to by the relation: (PersistentState) isTheStateOfSomethingWithAttribute (AttributeValue) and wen relevant, the inverse can point from the Attribute to the state: (AttributeValue) isTheAttributeOfSomethingDoing (PersistentState) NOTE that the restriction requires that for any instance of such a 'PersistentState', the entity that is in that state be specified. A special limiting subtype would be an InstantaneousState, for which the time interval is of zero duration. A PersistentState can be represented even though some attributes of a system may be changing, if the knowledge enterer chooses to focus only on those attributes that are **not changing**, and does not represent the attributes that are changing. The salient thing that is not changing is pointed to by the relation ''hasSubjectOfState''. NOTE: This is an ''Event'' with no (significant or represented) intervals in which the Event with the relevant properties is *not* in progress. If a PersistentState has breaks in it, when the *necessary* properties asserted for the Event do not apply, then such an Event is represented by ''DiscontinuousEvent'' There are Many Events that have small pauses when nothing is happening, but are still considered intuitively as continuous. The ontologist then needs decide whether there would be a logical contradiction if such an Event were represented as 'Persistent'. NOTE That if an Object is specified as ''HavingAnAttribute'' during some interval of time, that is equivalent to specifying the existence of a PersistentState for that Object during that interval. This can be explicitly represented by relation ''hasObjectOfState'' NOTE also that representing a PersistentState in which some attribute(s) remain constant over some interval of time does *not* imply that there are no attributes that change. A person sitting in a chair can be represented as in the persistent state of sitting, while at the same time many internal biological proceses may be going on. The meaning a a PersistentState, as well as for Events generally, only extends to those attributes (or fluents) that are explicitly represented in (or logically inferred from) the represented description of the specific type or instance of Event/PersistentState. NOTE that the relation ''isTheStateOfSomethingWithAttribute'' is used to relate states to AttributeValues that (by definition) continue during that state. Such a subproperty can be created if enough need arises to distinguish that relation from the more generic The inverse relation already exists: ''isTheAttributeOfSomethingDoing'' Related concepts: Trait PersistentState(Feeling/HavingAnAttribute) AttributeValue Trait isTheTraitOfSomeoneWithAttribute AttributeValue AttributeValue isTheAttributeOfSomeoneWithTrait Trait AttributeValue isTheAttributeOfSomethingDoing PersistentState(any EventType) AttributeValue isTheAttributeOfSomeoneFeeling Feeling Feeling isaFeelingOfSomeoneWithAttribute AttributeValue COSMO note: linguistically, the existence of a PersistentState may be expressed by asserting a 'state', 'condition' or 'situation', or by using a verb or an adjective. One can say 'the airplane was flying for three hours'; 'the balloon stayed in the air several days'; 'Tom remained sitting during the party'; 'his face was red for five minutes'; 'He was angry for a week'; 'the motor ran continuously for a week'. COSMO note: DOLCE has a convoluted description of what a 'State' is. For COSMO, a PersistentState (what appears to be a 'State' in DOLCE) it is very simply an Event in which none of the represented attributes change over some interval of time - - i.e. nothing changes that the knowledge enterer considers significant for her/his purposes. This can be viewed as the limiting case of an Event, in which so little of significance happens that it is not worth mentioning. Or, it can be simply the representation of certain attributes of a system that are not changing, while ignoring other attributes that may be changing. DOLCE: Within stative occurrences, we distinguish between states and processes according to homeomericity: sitting is classified as a state but running is classified as a process, since there are (very short) temporal parts of a running that are not themselves runnings.In general, states differ from situations because they are not assumed to have a description from which they depend. They can be sequenced by some course, but they do not require a description as a unifying criterion.On the other hand, at any time, one can conceive a description that asserts the constraints by which a state of a certian type is such, and in this case, it becomes a situation.Since the decision of designing an explicit description that unifies a perdurant depends on context, task, interest, application, etc., when aligning an ontology to DLP, there can be indecision on where to align a state-oriented class. For example, in the WordNet alignment, we have decided to put only some physical states under 'state', e.g. 'turgor', in order to stress the social orientedness of DLP. But whereas we need to talk explicitly of the criteria by which we conceive turgor states, these will be put under 'situation'.Similar considerations are made for the other types of perdurants in DOLCE. A different notion of event (dealing with change) is currently investigated for further developments: being 'achievement', 'accomplishment', 'state', 'event', etc. can be also considered 'aspects' of processes or of parts of them. For example, the same process 'rock erosion in the Sinni valley' can be conceptualized as an accomplishment (what has brought the current state that e.g. we are trying to explain), as an achievement (the erosion process as the result of a previous accomplishment), as a state (if we collapse the time interval of the erosion into a time point), or as an event (what has changed our focus from a state to another).In the erosion case, we could have good motivations to shift from one aspect to another: a) causation focus, b) effectual focus, c) condensation d) transition (causality). If we want to consider all the aspects of a process together, we need to postulate a unifying descriptive set of criteria (i.e. a 'description'), according to which that process is circumstantiated in a 'situation'. The different aspects will arise as a parts of a same situation. Includes noun senses 4 of 'state', senses 1, 2, and 3 of 'situation' sense 1 of 'thing' and part of verb sense 1 of 'stay' and senses 1 and 2 of 'remain', in WordNet and includes verb sense 2 of 'stay' which is more specifically represented by the COSMO subtype 'RemainingInaLocation': in WordNet: 4. (142) state - (the way something is with respect to its main attributes; 'the current state of knowledge'; 'his state of health'; 'in a weak financial state') WN noun 'stay' : 1. (415) stay - (continuing or remaining in a place or state; 'they had a nice stay in Paris'; 'a lengthy hospital stay'; 'a four-month stay in bankruptcy court') WN verb 'stay': 1. (43) stay, remain, rest - (stay the same; remain in a certain state; 'The dress remained wet after repeated attempts to dry it'; 'rest assured'; 'stay alone'; 'He remained unmoved by her tears'; 'The bad weather continued for another week') 2. (32) stay, stick, stick around, stay put - (stay put (in a certain place); 'We are staying in Detroit; we are not moving to Cincinnati'; 'Stay put in the corner here!'; 'Stick around and you will learn something!') WN noun 'situation': 1. (65) situation, state of affairs - (the general state of things; the combination of circumstances at a given time; 'the present international situation is dangerous'; 'wondered how such a state of affairs had come about'; 'eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation'- Franklin D.Roosevelt) 2. (19) situation, position - (a condition or position in which you find yourself; 'the unpleasant situation (or position) of having to choose between two evils'; 'found herself in a very fortunate situation') 3. situation - (a complex or critical or unusual difficulty; 'the dangerous situation developed suddenly'; 'that's quite a situation'; 'no human situation is simple') WN noun 'thing': 1. (404) thing - (a special situation; 'this thing has got to end'; 'it is a remarkable thing')
The Tendency of an object or substance to continue without perceptible change for at least several hours, in the Earth's gravitational field, an normal temperatures (10-30 deg. C).. Longer degrees of persistence will have attributes or tendencies that are subtypes of this Type, representing the higher levels of stability. This Attribute is very general, modifying Objects or Processes; for the sense of 'stable' modifying attributes, use 'Static' See also 'Stationary' for things not moving. See also ''Unstable'' for further interpretation of the opposite tendency. @ToDo: subtypes (particularly for substances) may be recognizable, but the WordNet senses are otherwise difficult to differentiate logically. Includes adjective senses 1, 2, 3, and 4 of 'stable' in WordNet: 1. (6) stable - (resistant to change of position or condition; 'a stable ladder'; 'a stable peace'; 'a stable relationship'; 'stable prices') 2. (2) stable - (firm and dependable; subject to little fluctuation; 'the economy is stable') 3. stable - (not taking part readily in chemical change) 4. stable - (maintaining equilibrium)
A 'Scope' is a very vague concept, without any necessary conditions as of rev 987; it can be a physical area within which something operates or is effective, or a more abstract thing, such as a Context, as in the scope of some law. This is a broad and heterogeneous category use to represent the notions of 'range; or 'scope' or 'compass'. When possible, more specific types should be used. A 'scope' behaves in some ways like a ''QualitativeAttributeValue'' when it specifies an area (of applicability of a law. for example) but making that a formal type would create a contradiction. NOTE: Includes but is broader than noun sense 1 of 'range' and sense 1 of 'scope' in WordNet; note that this includes as a subtype 'Context' which is essentially semantically vacuous; therefore there are no necessary conditions attached to membership in this type - this may change in future versions (after rev987) if a more restricted meaning to 'scope' is adopted: In WordNet: 1. (47) scope, range, reach, orbit, compass, ambit - (an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control: 'the range of a supersonic jet'; 'the ambit of municipal legislation'; 'within the compass of this article'; 'within the scope of an investigation'; 'outside the reach of the law'; 'in the political orbit of a world power')
COSMO: Context is a very general class of entities that can affect the truth of a logical sentence; within any given Context, the factual assertions should all be logically consistent. A Context may be relevant to the internal states and processes of a computational system, or may more generally describe the broad situation in which an Agent finds itself when processing information for the purpose of making a decision. For the latter agent context, the subtype 'SituationalContextComponent' is relevant. A Context can be a time interval, location, belief system, fictional world, theory, hypothetical world, counterfactual situation, segment of text, DatabaseGroup, or the state of our own real world, among other things. Contexts can be nested, combined, or intersected. For example, a Context consisting of a TimeInterval can be intersected with a Context consisting of a GeographicalArea to make a Context within with assertions are explicitly true only in that time and place. That does not mean, of course that the assertion cannot be true elsewhere; it just doesn't guranteee truth elsewhere. Every assertion in the COSMO ontology is implicitly true only in the context of the COSMO ontology, which is itself a theory. But that implicit qualification does not appear directly in any asertion - it can be explicitly mentioned if and when COSMO assertions are referenced in other ontologies. The nesting of Contexts provides a mechanism to create a 'lattice' of theories. In a subcontext for any given Context, all the assertions of the parent Context will be true in the subcontext, and additional assertions may also be true. In this respect, a Context is similar to the 'Microtheories' of the Cyc ontology system; it also has some resemblance to the 'Environments' discussed by Ballim and Wilks ('Artifical Believers', Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991). One specialized example of Context is a 'DatabaseGroup'. In a particular Organization, its set of Databases, if intended to represent some consistent group of facts, can be viewed and represented as a Context within which reasoning may be performed.
The collection of all objects that are #$TemporalThings (beings, magical artifacts, spells, etc.) in fictional works but not extant in the world modeled by the KB in which something is asserted to be an instance of this. This collection should have no instances in #$BaseKB or other general microtheories, but be restricted to microtheories dealing with the real world or some fictional world. Note that instances of #$FictionalContext or stories about #$FictionalThings are not themselves #$FictionalThings, unless they are only defined as existing in some #$FictionalContext. COSMO note: In Cyc FictionalThing is a subtype of TemporalThing, but in COSMO TemporalThings is redefined not to include objects, so this category has been reassigned as a subtype of the mroe general category 'Individual'.
An AgentiveObject is a PhysicalObject that can cause changes to other objects. This class contains subclasses that have the capacity to act as agents, i.e. to cause changes in the real world; but this general class of agents do not have to have intentions or form plans.. People are the Agents that are typically of greatest interest. But Tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, volcanoes, etc. can behave a agents in that they cause external events due to their internal processes. All of these agentic objects are included in this category, but Organizations, which are classified as MentalObjects in this ontology, are in a separate agentive category.
This is the collection of instances of #$FictionalThing which are also instances of #$Agent. Thus #$FictionalCharacter excludes such instances of #$FictionalThing as Golden Mountains, which are instances of #$FictionalThing, but are not instances of #$Agent.
'Imaginary' is the AttributeValue of anything ( Object, Event, or other) that does not exist in the real world (is not 'real'), but only in the imagination of some person who believes in it. Imaginary things may or may not violate the known laws of Physica. A Hallucination is imaginary, as are fairies. However, plans, theories, and hypothetical things that are known not to exist by the person who creates them are not 'imaginary' in this sense - to be imaginary it must be believed by someone, not intentionally created as fiction or hypothesis or speculation.. There is a fuzzy borderline between Imaginary' and 'Fictional'. Things known to be Fictional are not imaginary, but if they come to be believed by someone, they can be described as Imaginary, at least with respect to that person's beliefs. 'Mythical' is a subtype of 'Imaginary'. Corresponds to adjective sense 1 of 'imaginary' in WordNet: 1. (8) fanciful, imaginary, imagined, notional - (not based on fact; dubious; 'the falsehood about some fanciful secret treaties'- F.D.Roosevelt; 'a small child's imaginary friends'; 'her imagined fame'; 'to create a notional world for oneself') .
'Fictional' is the attribute of anything that appears in a Fiction. The part of sense 1 of 'fictional' that means 'pertaining to fiction' is not included here. This is for entities that are created by the imagination, and portrayed in some fictional story. This corresponds to part of sense 1 and 2 of 'fictional' in WordNet: 1. (7) fictional - (related to or involving literary fiction; 'clever fictional devices'; 'a fictional treatment of the train robbery') 2. (3) fabricated, fancied, fictional, fictitious, invented, made-up - (formed or conceived by the imagination; 'a fabricated excuse for his absence'; 'a fancied wrong'; 'a fictional character'; 'used fictitious names'; 'a made-up story')
Each SituationalContextComponent is one of the components of the situation in which an IntelligentEntity finds itself, of which it must be aware in order to act or respond appropriately so as to fulfill its goals. Each SituationalContextComponent is defined relative to a particular CognitiveAgent whose actions are being represented in the ontology.
Quantities can be numbers (integer, real, imaginary) or number ranges or approximate numbers, or distributions, or restricted ranges (greater than or less than), or PhysicalQuantities, which are measures. Numbers may have different qualitative dimensions (scales), and quantitative comparisons will generally only be meaningful when two numbers are expressed on the same scale.
A QuantitativeAttributeValue is a value for some AttributeType which is expressed in quantitative measures, comnsisting of a quantifier and a unit of measure.. Examples (using the ESKIF format) are {10 feet} and {32 degreesF}. In formalisms such as OWL that do not have function terms or higher-arity relations, each such QuantitativeAttributeValue must be constructed as an instance that has relations pointing to the quantifier and the UnitOfMeasure. In OWL, where bare numbers are not allowed as labels for elements, the numbers may be represented using a NamespacePrefix in front of the number, such as N_10 (for 10) (for a range) R_29-30. Each instance of QuantitativeAttributeValue is an OrderedPair, the first element of which is a Quantifier and the second element a UnitOfMeasure. When an instance of QuantitativeAttributeValue is represented by creating a reified instance, the UnitOfMeasure and the quantifier are specified by using the relations 'hasUnit' and 'hasQuantifier' to specify , respectively. . If an implementation allows use of functions, a QuantitativeAttributeValue can be represented, without reification in the ontology, as a function term such as {25.6 feet} or {N_25.6 feet}, depending on whether the implementation allows bare numbers in expressions. The NamespacePrefix 'N_' can be used for numbers, and 'R_' can be used for NumberRanges.
A FunctionalProcess corresponds to the linguistic intuition of something happening at some point in time, rather than something that has happened in some interval of time, which is an Event. Intuitively, it may be considered as the time derivative of an Event: a Process occurring over some interval of time gives rise to an Event, which is a change (or series of changes) in the properties of some Objects during some interval of Time. Every FunctionalProcess is intimately associated with some Event as one of the components of that Event (see 'Event'). NOTE that this differs from the notion of 'process' used in Cyc, where a Process is a kind of Event that can be subdivided and still result in an Event of the same kind. In COSMO taking some temporal part of a FunctionalProcess does not necessarily result in a FunctionalProcess of the same kind. **NOTE** A FunctionalProcess may also be defined, not by specifying the individual values of the fluents at points in time, but by specifying the manner in which a fluent can change over time. One specific example of this is a **differential equation** which can be used to take the value of a fluent at some starting point in time, and calculate the values at subsequent points in time. Thus a FunctionalProcess can have, as its TimeIndexedAssertion, a differential equation. This is an important difference between Event and FunctionalProcess. @ToDo: the specifics of how a differential equation are to be represented have not been elaborated as of v0.50. Formally, a FunctionalProcess is a Group consisting of one or more TimeIndexedAssertions, where each TimeIndexedAssertion is an InstantaneousState or PersistentState. Each State contains a Group of assertions specifying the values of the fluents that hold at that TimePoint; if only one Object is a participant in the FunctionalProcess, thre may be only one TimeIndexedAssertion in each State. A TimeIndexedAssertion can be a differential equation relating a fluent to time. Thus if, at some point in time, someone is Running, one can say that a Running process exists at that point, and that person is a participant in the process. The 'existence' of an instance of Process at some time point implies that some Event has taken place (or is taking place) in the time interval including that time point, and vice-versa, each Event implies existence of some corresponding FunctionalProcess at every time point during the interval between the beginning and end of the Event (**but see next paragraph**). But for linguistic purposes, it may be more convenient to represent just the Event or just the FunctionalProcess, and not explicitly represent the corresponding entity, which is nevertheless implied. The list of States over time has some similarity to a ValueTimeEntry, though the former relates the state assertions themselves, rather than the values. **It is possible for a FunctionalProcess to be discontinuous, such as an 'eating' process during which one is not actually ingesting anything - perhaps reading a paper in the intervals between taking bites of a meal; or a 'going to school' process during which one sleeps, watches television, etc., other than actually being in the school or studying. One may formally say that the process continues int the intervals when the relevant fluents are not changing, but that the intervals between actual progression of the process each consists of a null process (PersistentState) which is part of the whole process, and give rise to null events which are parts of the whole event.** The term 'process' has been often used to refer to Procedures, (see 'Procedure') which are specifications for some sequence of actions that accomplish a goal. That is a distinct, though somewhat related concept. In some ontologies, (such as Cyc) a 'process' is a type of Event which has some uniform character throughout the Event. Because of the variant usage, the bare term 'process' is not used in this ontology to avoid confusion. Thus this base Type is called 'FunctionalProcess' to specifically refer to its similarity to a mathematical function. It resembles a mathematical function in certain respects: a FunctionalProcess can be said to describe the state of some system as a function of time. Like a function, a FunctionalProcess can have properties, and one important property will be the Rate at which the represented change is occurring. A characteristic of a FunctionalProcess is one can specify a Rate at some time point, or an average rate in some time interval. There is no corresponding Rate that can be specified for an Event, even though the two concepts are otherwise very similar. Most ontologies deal with Events, and ignore Processes of this type. For representing certain linguistic phrases, however, this type is better suited than the Event type. Most FunctionalProcesses are not represented explicitly in COSMO at version 0.3, but when needed may be generated by a function (not yet defined) that takes an Event and returns the Process that is operating to generate that Event. One issue not yet dealt with in COSMO v0.3 is whether a function that can generate a Process from the corresponding Event can handle Events whose definition specifies more than one Fluent as changing during the Event. In such cases, to have a clear relation, the multiple fluents must be ordered similarly in the representation of the Event and its corresponding FunctionalProcess.
A specialization of #$Situation. Each instance of #$Situation-Localized is a situation whose temporal extent occurs at a specific location in space. Notable specializations of #$Situation-Localized include #$PhysiologicalCondition and #$Event-Localized.
OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of all spatial things, tangible or intangible, that can be meaningfully said to have location or position in the empirically observable universe of the context in question. This includes all #$PartiallyTangible things, such as pyramids and ships, as well as certain #$Intangible spatial things, like the #$Equator. Also included are all #$Events that can be pinned down to specific places (see #$Event-Localized), and thus all #$PhysicalEvents. But note that many events are non-examples, such as the event of a certain law coming into effect and (presumably) purely mental events as well, at least in most contexts. Also excluded are #$SpatialThings that are _not_ localized, such as purely abstract geometrical figures (e.g. a Platonic sphere). All instances of #$SpatialThing-Localized are temporal things, and thus have finite lifespans (the upper bound of which is the lifespan of the universe itself). Finally, note that imaginary entities like Frodo, Captain Queeg, and #$HAL9000-TheComputer may be localized within the (imaginary) universes attaching to the fictitious contexts in which they are defined, and so would be instances of #$SpatialThing-Localized within those microtheoretic contexts. NOTE: because Cyc 'SpatialThing-Localized' includes intangible spatial things, this is not identical to the purely physical objects such as 'Oject' in SUMO. In COSMO,purely physical objects are categorized in the Type 'PhysicalObject', which is a subtype of this 'SpatialThing-Localized' category.
COSMO: this BFO Type is interpreted as an Event, but one that is specifically represented as not a complete Event (i.e. not a 'Process' in BFO). It is unclear under what circumstances designating an Event as 'Fiat' will be useful, but this is included for compatibility. BFO Definition: A processual entity that is part of a process but that does not have bona fide beginnings and endings corresponding to real discontinuities. Examples: chewing during a meal, the middle part of a rainstorm, the worst part of a heart-attack, the most interesting part of Van Gogh's life. COSMO note: In real physical Events, the precise boundaries can be fuzzy, but most Events of interest will have conceptually fairly well-defined beginnings and ends (periods duting which the fluents (attributes) of interest are static), even if those beginnings and ends stretch out over some period of time. We anticipate that most Events will be classified under 'Event' as subtypes of the BFO 'Pocess' which is intended to *not* be a Fiat Process (event). Thus this category may rarely if ever be used for classification.
BFO Definition: A processual entity that is the fiat or bona fide process boundary. BFO Examples: birth, death, the forming of a synapse, the onset of REM sleep, the detaching of a finger in an industrial accident, the final separation of two cells at the end of cell-division, the incision at the beginning of a surgery
An AttributeValue is the actual value of some AttributeType possessed by some object, such as six feet for a length, or red for a color. Individual AttributeValues are represented as Types (classes) in COSMO, not as instances. IMPORTANT NOTE: the values represented by each of these AttributeValue Types are here viewed as a region ('Quality Space') in which the actual particular value (see Type 'Quality') is located. Thus one may say an object has a 'Red' color, but later refine the description to say it has a 'Fire Red' color. The 'Fire Red' is also a color region, contained within the 'Red' color region. For quantitative measures, representing attributes as classes allows approximate measures to be built in to the ontology itself. One may specify a range for a measure, and any other measure within or overlapping that range can be considered as 'indistinguishable from' (not 'equal to') the other measure. NOTE: under consideration - the possibility of expressing the possession of an attribute for some interval of time by creating instances of AttributeValue or of Attribute that are also TimeSlices, with the time interval of the TimeSlice representing the time interval during which the Attribute was had. This has an advantage over using TimeSlice to create 4D TimeSlices of an object, and then attributing an Attribute to it - in that one need not create new instances of an Object, which may not be easily associated with the 3D object.
COSMO note: A MeasurableQuantity is some attribute of which a number (or other quantifier) is a part, and also has a unit of measure. This is disjoint from pure numbers. Cyc: A specialization of #$Quantity (q.v.). This is the collection of quantities that have a numeric component and could actually be used to measure something, as opposed to (say) merely ranking it on a scale. Arithmetic operations (such as addition and multiplication) can be performed on measurable quantities, as they can on purely numeric scalars (see #$NumericInterval). Specializations of #$MeasurableQuantity include #$Distance, #$Temperature, #$Mass, and #$Time-Quantity. Other, broader specializations are #$OneDimensionalQuantity, #$TwoDimensionalQuantity, and #$ThreeDimensionalQuantity. Any quantity (that at least in principle could be) returned by a #$UnitOfMeasure (q.v.) function is a measurable quantity. In CycL, particular measurable quantities are usually represented as the result of applying a unit-of-measure function to a real number or pair of reals. For example, (#$Meter 5) is the distance 5 meters.
A TemporalLocation is a location for something - usually an Event - in the universal time line of our real world, or some alternative reality. It may be a time interval or a point in time. Instances of TemporalLocation may be represented by a DateTimeString , without being reified as an actual instance of this Type. This category includes the conceptual 'Datetime' Entity that is pointed to by the common relations like 'CREATION_DATETIME' that occur in databases. This entity is often represented by a built-in dataype of 'DateTime' or something similar. In COSMO, a DateTime is represented by subtpyes of DateTimeString, an AbstractString. A location in time can serve as a Context, which is anything that can affect the truth of a statement. In the real world, virtually every statement about real-world objects is true only in some particular time interval. RELATIVITY: Time is assumed in COSMO to be measured by some clock, which by default is the NIST atomic clock set, but can be specified as some other clock. Thus a time slice of a spatiotemporal region will be unambiguous, and observers moving relative to that clock, or relative to each other, need to adjust their interpretation according to the equations of relativity. In COSMO there is a superfluous subtype link of this entity to the most general 'Thing' so that 'time' will be exposed to viewers of this ontology at the highest level in Protege, for perspicuity. ******** NOTE on BFO 'TemporalRegion' *********************** The BFO 'TemporalRegion' appears to be the closest BFO Type to the COSMO 'TemporalLocation'. BFO Definition ('TemporalRegion'): An occurrent that is part of time. BFO: Examples ('TemporalRegion'): the time it takes to run a marathon, the duration of a surgical procedure, the moment of death COOSMO note: this is not a *quantity* of time, as the BFO example might suggest, but a *location* in time. 'ten minutes' is not an instance of 'TemporalLocation'. ******** NOTE on BFO 'TemporalRegion' ***********************
TimeInterval is not a quantity of time (what is measured by a stopwatch), but a it is a specific region of the time line, what is measured by a calendar (in our real world or in some hypothetical world). Called: TimeInterval(Cyc); TimeInterval(SUMO - but SUMO requires contiguous intervals); time-interval(DOLCE) or period_in_time(ISO15926); the BFO equivalents of TimeInterval ('TemporalInterval') and TimePoint ('TemporalInstant') are disjoint in BFO, but a TimePoint is a subtype of TimeInterval in COSMO. For a quantity of time, use 'TimeDuration'. COSMO NOTE: as a convenience, a calendar time interval can be given a name that conforms to the conventions of one of the DateTime strings defined in COSMO, such as a 'DateTimeExtendedGroup', providing an opportunity for an interpreter to recognize the referenced time interval solely from the name of the instance. See the example used in defining the TimeAndPlace 'WorldTradeCenter20010911'. In Cyc, TimeInterval is not a measure. SUMO: An interval of time. Note that a TimeInterval has both an extent and a location on the universal timeline. Note too that a TimeInterval has no gaps, i.e. this class contains only convex time intervals. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 A specialization of #$TemporalThing. Each instance of #$TimeInterval is a temporal thing characterized fully by its temporal attributes. For example, the year A.D. 1967 is an instance of #$TimeInterval; although many interesting things happened during that year, the year itself is completely defined by its temporal extent. On the other hand, the event of Neil Armstrong's walking on the Moon is an #$Event and not a #$TimeInterval, since it is not fully characterized by its temporal extent or other temporal attributes. Specializations of #$TimeInterval include #$CalendarYear, #$CalendarMonth, and #$FiscalQuarter. DOLCE: a region - (Space and Time are special kinds of regions, i.e. AttributeValues or measures) A temporal region, measured according to a calendar. NOTE that a redundant subtype link to 'SituationProcessEventOrState' is included just to make it easier to find TimeInterval in a drill-down search.
GenericLocation is the Type representing the most general notion of location, which can be abstract or concrete, a region of space (including an abstract space, such as the Internet considered as a set of nodes and links, where the nodes can represent computers whose physical location may vary), a point in space, or a physical object (e.g. building, ship, room). NOTE that an Address is not a location, but a label for a location. See 'Address'. NOTE: although *almost* all GenericLocations are exclusively spatial in some way, there is one 'TimeAndPlace' that is spatiotemporal, being a region of space-time that specifies some region of space over some interval of time. Use of an instance of 'TimeAndPlace' as an argument of a location relation allows one to include the important time interval qualifier in location relations, even though one is using only binary relations. this would not be necessary in a representation with higher-arity relations. This is somewhat similar to the Cyc 'Location-Underspecified' Cyc comment: The collection of locations, tangible or otherwise, which are typically conceptualized by human beings for purposes of common-sense reasoning as 'locations'. This collection thus includes tangible Places such as #$Ireland-TheIsland, as well as metaphoric locations. For instance, many states-of-being are conceptualized as abstract locations, such as Trouble ('he saw trouble ahead'), Depression ('she fell into a ...'), #$Happiness ('they found bliss together').
An AttributeType is a general category of attribute, i.e. some property that adheres in an object, such as length or mass or color or shape for physical objects. More abstract objects such as sets or groups may have more abstract attributes such as cardinality. The distinction between attributes and relations between entities is not absolute. COSMO note: The use of two distinct trees of attribute-related types (AttributeType and AttributeValue) is intended to enable assertions with a linguistic form such as: {Jack has Height {6 feet}) where the second argument 'Height' specifies the general type of attribute, and the value '{6 feet}' specifies the specific attribute value, where 'feet' is a function returning a distance measure. This generic attribute assertion can then be used with other types of attributes, such as: {Jack has Weight {60 kilograms}) and {Car037 has Color RedColor).
OrganizationType is a metaclass used as the Type restriction on certain relations that take subclasses of Organization as their argument.
COSMO note: In COSMO, an Organization differs from its representation in some other ontologies. In COSMO, an Organization is not a group of people, it is a MentalObject, an artifact created by people. the essence of an Organization is that it is organized. It therefore must have an explicit set of organizing principles (a charter or constitution) whether that is written or, as in some small informal organizations, merely retained in the minds of its members. In addition to its charter, an Organization will have one or more lists of associated agents (people or other organizations). There may be more than one list, and the 'members' may not be called members. A complex organization like a corporation may have several lists, e.g. board members, stockholders, corporate officers, employees, even long-term contractors. The relationships of the agents on those lists to the organization and to each other is specified in the charter. Any or all of the lists of associated agents ('members' in simple organizations) may be empty. An Organization can exist without members, and this differs from the specification in SUMO (below). There are some bordeline cases where groups of people have some degree of organizing principle, but no charter (consitution) developed specifically for that group. In those cases, such groups wll be instances of 'GroupOfPeople'. An example is a jury, which is called together by the judicial system, not organized by its members for their own purposes. A pick-up team of basketball or baseball players playing one day and not remaining as a team is also a GroupOfPeople. But stable suborganizations of larger organizations, such as a company or platoon of soldiers, is an Organization and not just a GroupOfPeople. Because an Organization in COSMO is not a physical object, the parts of Cyc or other ontologies that consider Organization as a subtype of group of people (a physical object) will be inconsistent. Some effort will be needed to convert Organizations in other ontologies to its representation in COSMO. When an Organization is said to act as an 'Agent', there necessarily must be some physical agent (person or computer program) that in fact performs the action. Thus the 'agency' of an organization differs from that of physical agents, as it will be indirect. Every Organization is an 'Authority' because it creates rules, at least for its own members with respect to the organization. SUMO: An Organization is a corporate or similar institution. The members of an Organization typically have a common purpose or function. Note that this class also covers divisions, departments, etc. of organizations. For example, both the Shell Corporation and the accounting department at Shell would both be instances of Organization. Note too that the existence of an Organization is dependent on the existence of at least one member (since Organization is a subclass of Collection). Accordingly, in cases of purely legal organizations, a fictitious member should be assumed. OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of all organizations. Each instance of #$Organization is a group whose group-members are instances of #$IntelligentAgent. In each instance of #$Organization, certain relationships and obligations exist between the members of the organization, or between the organization and its members. Instances of #$Organization include both informal and legally constituted organizations. Each instance of #$Organization can undertake projects, enter into agreements, own property, and do other tasks characteristic of agents; consequently, #$Organization is a specialization of the collection #$Agent. Notable specializations of #$Organization include #$LegalGovernmentOrganization, #$CommercialOrganization, and #$GeopoliticalEntity. DOLCE: A socially-constructed person with a complex articulation of tasks, roles and figures. COSMO note: the superfluous parent Type 'Thing' was added so as to make this important Type easily visible by drill-down in the hierarchy.
A PhysicalObject is an Object that has mass. The mass is relativistic, i..e the Object does not have to have rest mass; so, a photon and other fundamental particles are 'PhysicalObject's, just as are the ordinary objects like rocks, baseballs, and automobiles. In COSMO some quantity of substance (e.g. the water in a glass of water) is also a PhysicalObject (more specifically, an instance of the subtype 'LiquidObject'). Quantities of gas are also PhysicalObjects (more specifically, 'GaseousObject's such as the 'EarthsAtmosphere'). NOTE that a PhysicalSubstance such as Air or Water is not a PhysicalObject, but is the material of which PhysicalObjects consist. See PhysicalSubstance for more detail. Because the determining characteristic of a PhysicalObject is that it has some mass, COSMO has a restirction that all instances of PhysicalObject must specify the mass, using the relation 'hasMassInGrams'. This can be a nuisance when the mass is unknown, and the convention is adopted that a mass of '-1' will be interpreted as an unknown mass. The mass figures can be very approximate - at the OWL phase, the value of the relation 'hasMassInGrams' should be interpreted as only an approximation within an order of magnitude. When more precise mass figures are needed, the relation 'hasMass' can be used (with an instance of MassMeasure as the value), and this relation allows specifying a variance for the mass value. NOTE on '3D' vs '4D' objects: Some ontologists prefer to represent PhysicalObjects as extended in time, thereby forming a '4-dimensional' object ('perdurantism'). Others prefer only 3D objects ('endurantism'), with the time explicitly specified when relations hold on an object. In COSMO this category of 'PhysicalObject' is indeterminate as between a Perdurant and and Endurant - that is, the instances are not necessarily zero-duration time slices, nor are they necessarily time slices of finite duration. An instance of 'PhysicalObject' can be used in relations where the valid time interval for the relation is expllicit, or an instance can also be specified to be an instance of 'TimeSlice', in which case that instance is a 4-dimensional TimeSlice of a PhysicalObject, and any relations defined on that 4D instance hold only during the TimeInterval of the TimeSlice. See 'TimeSlice' for more detail on that type and its use. As a result, Roles such as 'Student', which are TemporalThings with a beginning and end time, can be classified as subtypes of this category.
A TimePoint is a closed interval of time having zero length. The beginning TimePoint and Ending TimePoint are identical for any given TimePoint. The representation of a TimePoint as a zero-length time interval is only an alternate view of a TimePoint. (=> (isanInstanceOf ?TP TimePoint) (and (hasStartingTimePoint ?TP ?TP) (hasEndingTimePoint ?TP ?TP))) A TimePoint is classified here as a subclass of TimeInterval because we adopt the interpretation that a time interval of zero length duration is indistinguishable from a time point. We know from special relativity that time may proceed at different rates in objects that are moving relative to each other, so all time values must be relative to some clock. In the absence of any explicit clock designation, the NIST atomic clock signals transmitted from Boulder Colorado are considered as the clock of reference. A TimePoint may be represented by a limit expression, e.g. 'before Jan 1 2008', or by a range ('some time point between Jan 1 200 and Jan 1 2008'). This allows incomplete time information to be entered when not known exactly. This may be implemented by a functional expression, but is not yet formalized in COSMO version 0.44. ******* COSMO NOTE on BFO 'TimeInstant' ************ COSMO note: in COSMO, time points are subtypes of TimeInterval, so the 'disjoint' relation in BFO between TimePoint and TimeInterval was removed. BFO: owl:disjointWith rdf:resource='#TemporalInterval' BFO rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#ConnectedTemporalRegion" BFO Definition: A connected temporal region comprising a single moment of time. BFO Examples: right now, the moment at which a finger is detached in an industrial accident, the moment at which a child is born, the moment of death ******* COSMO NOTE on BFO 'TimeInstant' ************
A List is a MentalObject, i.e. an Object without mass created by an IntelligentAgent, with the distinctive character that it is a linearly ordered arrangement of AbstractSymbolicObjects. A List may be empty, and has its own properties in addition to the properties of the constituent elements, therefore it is not a Group. Note that AbstractStrings are subtype of List. A List is ordered, and it can have the same entity in different positions in the llist. It is not a type of Set. A List has a 'first' and 'rest' component. The 'rest' can be another list, or null. Therefore a list may have one element (or none) Cyc comment: A specialization of #$Tuple. Each instance of #$List is a finite sequence of things with a first and last member-position, with each member-position other than the last having a successor member-position. As with tuples generally, lists allow for repetition of their members, so that the same item can appear at multiple member-positions in the same list. A list can be represented formally as a function from a finite index set of counting numbers, beginning with one, into the domain of all #$Things (but note that #$Lists are _not_ explicitly represented as functions in the Cyc ontology). Unlike an instance of #$Series (q.v.), a list is purely abstract (i.e. both aspatial and atemporal), and the only implied relation between an item and its successor in a list is the successor relation of the list itself. Technically, #$List is more specific than #$Tuple only in that the index set (see #$tupleIndexSet) for a given list must be the counting numbers in their usual order (or some initial segment thereof), whereas the index set for a tuple, generally speaking, might be any set whatsoever.
The most general Type for Objects whose subtypes are abstract - intangible - things that do not have mass. Note that AbstractEntity is not a subtype of AbstractObject - the name 'Abstract' is retained for alignment with other ontologies. NOTE in particular that AbstractEntity is not disjoint from MentalObject, which may be created by people in space and time, and hae a location in space and time. The kind of abstract things that do not have a locaiton in space and time are under 'AbstrctObject' in COSMO. COSMO Note: the notion of 'Abstract' has historically been somewhat vague. It is often defined by saying that it represents things 'not located in space or time' - but then subclasses are defined which are clearly mental constructs with a defined creation time (e.g. musical compositions) - which means that they must indeed be located in time and space. In this ontology we distinguish 'Abstract' things from 'MentalObjects' - the latter are things created by IntelligentAgents (people) that have no mass, and therefore would traditionally be categorized as 'Abstract'. 'AbstractObject' here is used mostly to categorize mathematical things such as numbers, which arguably do not depend on intelligent entities for their existence. But 'AbstractEntities" and 'MentalObjects' are not considered disjoint here, so there is room for people to argue whether mathematical concepts are created or merely discovered by mathematicians - we take no position on that issue.
An AbstractObject is an entity which does not exist in space or time. This is more stringnent than merely not having mass, the criterion for belinging to 'AbstractEntity. This category is mostly for mathematical concepts. Under 'AbstractEntity' we also have 'MentalObjects', which do exist in space and time. COSMO Note: the notion of 'Abstract' has historically been somewhat vague. It is often defined by saying that it represents things 'not located in space or time' - but then subclasses are defined which are clearly mental constructs with a defined creation time (e.g. musical compositions) - which means that they must indeed be located in time and space. In this ontology we distinguish generically 'Abstract' things from 'MentalObjects' - the latter are things created by IntelligentAgents (people) that have no mass, and therefore would traditionally be categorized as 'Abstract'. 'AbstractObject' here is used mostly to categorize mathematical things such as numbers, which arguably do not depend on intelligent entities for their existence. But 'AbstractEntities" and 'MentalObjects' are not considered disjoint here, so there is room for people to argue whether mathematical concepts are created or merely discovered by mathematicians - we take no position on that issue. See the note under 'AbstractEntity' to see how 'Abstract' is used in this ontology. The current (20061027) arrangement here is provisional, keeping some of the terminology from Cyc and SUMO for alignment - but it may be changed slightly in the future in a way that will not affect inferencing. Intangible_Cyc__Abstract_SUMO__abstract_object_ISO15926 ISO15926 An Abstract-object is a thing that does not exist in space-time. (COSMO note - this is not the interpretation in COSMO - MentalObjects are abstract, but they do 'exist' in our ordinary space and time.) SUMO: Abstract : Properties or qualities as distinguished from any particular embodiment of the properties/qualities in a physical medium. Instances of Abstract can be said to exist in the same sense as mathematical objects such as sets and relations, but they cannot exist at a particular place and time without some physical encoding or embodiment. #$Intangible: OPENCYC 1: MAY 23, 2002 The collection of things that are not physical - are not made of, or encoded in, matter. Every #$Collection is an #$Intangible (even if its instances are tangible), and so are some #$Individuals. Caution: do not confuse 'tangibility' with 'perceivability' - humans can perceive light even though it's intangible--at least in a sense. For more on this issue, see the relevant #$cyclistNotes.
The collection of #$Intangible things that are intrinsically mathematical (see #$MathematicalThing) or computational (see #$ComputationalObject). Instances of #$MathematicalOrComputationalThing are abstract in the very strong sense of being nonspatial, atemporal, and massless. Examples include numbers, sets, collections, relations, algorithms, and abstract character strings.
A specialization of #$MathematicalOrComputationalThing. Each instance of #$MathematicalThing is an atemporal, nonspatial, purely mathematical thing. #$MathematicalThing is partitioned into two main specializations, #$MathematicalObject and #$SetOrCollection (qq.v).
A specialization of both #$MathematicalThing and #$IntangibleIndividual. Each instance of #$MathematicalObject is a purely abstract mathematical thing which is also an individual (see #$Individual). Specializations of #$MathematicalObject include #$Quantifier, #$RealNumber, #$Triangle, and #$TruthValue. Note that instances of #$SetOrCollection are not instances of #$MathematicalObject, since they are not instances of #$Individual.
A specialization of both #$MathematicalObject and #$StructuredInformationSource. Each instance of #$Tuple is a complex consisting of one or more indexed (and possibly ordered) components; it might be a single, a pair, a triple, or so on; and the components might be things of any sort whatsoever (see #$memberOfTuple). For example, a specialization of #$Tuple is #$NTupleOfIntervals (q.v.), whose instances are tuples consisting exclusively of #$ScalarIntervals (q.v.); e.g. complex numbers and physical vectors are n-tuple-intervals. Another specialization of #$Tuple is #$List (q.v.), whose instances are ordered. Each tuple has an associated index set : the set of things that serve (via an associated indexing function ) to index or individually represent the tuple's members (see #$tupleIndexSet and #$tupleMemberIndex). If the index set for a given tuple is the set of positive integers (or an initial segment thereof), then the integers' usual ordering serves to order the tuple's components, and the tuple is in fact an _ordered_n-tuple_, i.e. it is a #$List. But in general any set (e.g. the column names in a relational database) may be used to index the components of a tuple.
BFO Definition: A space time region that has temporal and spatial dimensions such that all points within the spatiotemporal region are mediately or immediately connected to all other points within the same space time region. Examples: the spatial and temporal location of an individual organism's life, the spatial and temporal location of the development of a fetus
BFO Definition: A space time region that has spatial and temporal dimensions and every spatial and temporal point of which is not connected with every other spatial and temporal point of which. Examples: the space and time occupied by the individual games of the World Cup, the space and time occupied by the individual liaisons in a romantic affair.
Definition: A connected space time region at a specific moment. Examples: the space time region occupied by a single instantaneous temporal slice (part) of a process. COSMO note: It is unclear why this is not identical to a region of space at some particular moment.
COSMO note: in COSMO instants are not disjoint from intervals, they are merely the limiting case of intervals of zero lenght. A 'proper interval' is a legitimate concept, but would just be superfluos in COSMO, so this Type will include proper intervals and instants. BFO Definition: A connected space time region that endures for more than a single moment of time. BFO Examples: the space time region occupied by a process or by a fiat processual part
A specialization of the 'starts' relation which points from a TemporalThing (TimeInterval or Event) to the TimePoint at which that TemporalThing started..
A specialization of the 'finishes' relation which points from a TemporalThing (TimeInterval or Event) to the TimePoint at which that TemporalThing ended.
takesValue relates an AttributeType to the AttributeValues that instantiate the AttributeType. For example, the AttribugeType Length will be instantiated by an the type 'LengthMeasure'. This relation is similar to the 'instance' relation, but is specific to the relationship between AttributeTypes and AttributeValues, used to implement the specfici method of representing attributes that is adopted for COSMO..
A pointer from a concept to another concept of which it is a synonym. This is a crude method to permit search in Protege for synonyms of terms in the class search window. In v0.3 these synonyms were confined to classes. For other synoyms, use 'hasSynonym'.
wasCreatedBySoleAgent relates an Artifact (concrete or abstract) to the individual Agent who created it. The Agent may be a Group, but there will be only one value for this relation, and to fill that value means that one knows the identity of all of the agents who participated enough in the creation to be called creators. This is not necessarily the same as an autor of record for a textual work, where ghost writers may get no credit. This is the real creator.
hasAttributeValue relates an Object or Substance to some AttributeValue which the Object may have. Each AttributeValue will be a value for at least one AttributeType, but this relation does not specify the AttributeType. For cases where an AttributeValue may measure more than one AttributeType (such as LengthMeasure, which can specify length, width, height, altitude, distance, etc.), using this relation may leave ambiguity as to its precise meaning. COSMO Note: AttributeValues may be either classes (instances of AttributeValueType), or instances of AttributeValue. This allows one to express an attribute as a region (e.g. colors will bw classes, not instances, to permit subclassing), or for quantitative measures as instances (e.g. '25 feet'). For quantitative measures, the representation of measurements as classes would be conceptually permissible (the class representing the set of possible values, determined by the measured value and possible error), or as instances of measure to which an uncertainty value has been attached. The specific subrelations (subproperties, in OWL) of 'hasAttributeValue' will in some cases have their range restricted to AttributeValueType of AttributeValue.
isAnAttributeValueOf is the inverse of 'hasAttributeValue'. This relation will be used explicitly only in special cases where particular AttributeValues are appropriately applied only to specific types of things.
isaPartOf is a very general 'part' relation applicable to spatial regions or objects in some space. This relation has no axioms associated with it because it is only an 'umbrella' relation that gathers together other relations having different meaning, so as to provide an anchor point for the ambiguous linguistic notion of 'part' It cannot be transitive, because it subsumes the relation of a member to the group, which is not transitive. But some of its subrelations are transitive. NOTE: this and its subproperties are usually instance-level relations, but types are included because they are used in some of the subrelations. To express that some physical object type is typically a part of another physical object type, use the type-level relation, 'isTypicallyaPhysicalPartOf'
the inverse of 'isaPartOf', a very general relation applicable to spatial regions, events, or objects in some space.
hasRepresentation is the most general relation that points from some concept or thing - of any type - to another thing (abstract or physical) that represents it in some way. This relation will be used, if at all, less frequently than the more specific 'representation' relations, and may be useful primarily to collect those more specific relations in one location to make the representation relations easier to understand. The related relation 'hasURL' points to a datatype string that is the address of some file relevant to the subject entity. As a datatype relation,
hasAbstractRepresentation relates some entity - concrete or abstract - to a MentalObject that represents - or contains a part that represents - that entity. The mental object is itself abstract in the sense of having no mass. A common example of an abstract representation is the word (string of characters) 'cat', representing a small furry animal. NOTE that an AbstractRepresentation (such as an AbstractImage) of a person will contain an abstract representation of that person, but may also contain (and thus be, in this sense) an abstract representation of the clothing or accessories that person is wearing, or of the chair s/he is sitting in, or of the cat next in his/her lap, or of anything else in that image. NOTE also that, just as the representation pointed to by this relation may only have a part that actually represents the subject matter (other parts may represent other subject matters), the subject of the inverse relation 'isanAbstractRepresentationOf' may only have a part that is the representation of the object of that relation.
points from an abstract representation (for example, an AbstractString or AbstractImage) of something to that thing it represents. The abstract string 'the cat' could point to a specific instance of a cat A DateTimeExtendedGroup string would point to a TimeInterval.
hasComponentElement relates a Group to the individual elements of which the group consists. Any entity can be aggregated with another entity to form a conceptual Group. NOTE: this 'element' is not the chemical 'element'! See also the specializations of this relation, for OrderedGroups, indicating the location in the OrderedGroup of a particular element. See 'hasFirstElement' and 'hasSecondElement'.
isaComponentElementOf relates some entity to a Group of which it is a member. It is the inverse of 'hasComponentElement'. Since Groups are not defined arbitrarily, and seldom defined automatically, this relation will typically be used only when it makes sense to do so. For example, one may define a Group of 'attendees' of some particular meeting. Then to say that a Person is a member of that Group would allow inference that that Person was in a particular place at a particular time..
hasFirstElement is a specialization of the relation 'hasComponentElement' applying to OrderedGroups or Lists, specifying the first component element of the OrderedGroup or List.
hasSecondElement is a specialization of the relation 'hasComponentElement' applying to OrderedGroups, specifying the Second component element of an OrderedGroup.
hasThirdElement is a specialization of the relation 'hasComponentElement' applying to OrderedGroups, specifying the Third component element of an OrderedGroup.
hasCardinalty relates a Group to an integer enumerating the number of direct component elements of which the group consists. Because an element of a Group may itself be a Group, the Cardinality does not indicate the number of things that ultimately are not Groups, only the number of things that are related by the 'hasComponentElement' relation. NOTE that AbstractString is included explicitly, not only as a subtype of Group, because zero-length (zero-cardinality, considered as though it were an ordered group) strings may exist but zero-cardinality Groups are not permitted.
hasMassInGrams relates an Object to its mass measured in grams. This is a shortcut to using more general functional mass measures, and is used here only for illustration, to permit some specifics in instances. The values given should be taken as crude estimates (order of magnitude estimates, possible error over 100%), particularly since no time interval is given by this relation. Relations expressing more exact values of mass have not yet (v0.45) been written in COSMO. This is mostly a placeholder for more meaningful relations. NOTE: for objects whose mass is unknown, a value of '-1' will serve as the code for 'unknown mass'. Since, as of v0.49, a mass value is required in COSMO for PhysicalObjects (mass is the characteristic property of PhysicalObjects), an explicit value must be provided even if it is unknown. If an approximate value can be guessed within +- 100% (as with human weights),a value should be entered so that the reasoner will have some information with which to make inferences. For example, a car mass of 1,000,000 grams (one ton) will allow the reasoner to infer 'too heavy for a person to lift'.
Globally unique identifier, fromOpenCyc 0.78. NOTE that this is a formatted string having 32 alphanumberic characters with embedded hyphesns, though it is represented (temporarily) as a simple string here. Another form of 'unique identifier' has 16 characters, and is represented in COSMO as an AbstractString which is a subtype of Identifier. See 'UniqueIdentifier16'
A person who travels to unfamiliar places, on Earth or off of it. Corresponds to sense 1 of 'explorer' in WordNet: 1. (3) explorer, adventurer - (someone who travels into little known regions (especially for some scientific purpose))
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet OBE (born 7 March 1944), commonly known as Ranulph "Ran" Fiennes, is an English explorer and holder of several endurance records. He is also a writer, poet and co-creator of 'Sir Ranulph Fiennes' Great British Rum'. Fiennes served in the British Army for eight years, including a period on counter-insurgency service while attached to the Army of the Sultanate of Oman. He later undertook numerous expeditions and was the first person to visit both the North and South Poles by surface means and the first to completely cross Antarctica on foot. In May 2009, at the age of 65, he climbed to the summit of Mount Everest. According to the Guinness Book of World Records in 1984, he was the world's greatest living explorer. Fiennes has written numerous books about his army service and his expeditions as well as a book defending Robert Falcon Scott from modern revisionists.
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet OBE
The collection of all persons who believe in (at least some of) the tenets of some type of Buddhism, or who practice Buddhist religious rituals, or both. Corresponds to noun sense 1 of 'buddhist' in WordNet: 1. (1) Buddhist - (one who follows the teachings of Buddha)
'hasBeliever' points from a Opinion or Belief (or BeliefSystem) to to some IntelligentAgent (or group) that holds that Belief. For more detail see comments in 'believes' relation.
The collection of all religions or equivalent sets of beliefs that answer the 'big questions' about creation, existence, etc. Some elements of this are: #$AnimistReligion, #$Catholicism, #$Buddhism, etc. NOTE: for the formal systematic statements of the accepted beliefs of some ''Religion'' use ''ReligiousDoctrine''. COSMO: various definitions of Religion have been proposed. For COSMO the esential core of a religion is a set of beliefs that attribute at least some of the events in this world to beings or forces other than physical processes that are susceptible at least in theory to reproducible experimental or observation confirmation. A belief system that considers people (or other living things) to have a soul that is more than the manifestation of physical processes in the body would be a religion by this definition. NOTE that a religion does not hae to believe in one or more gods. Other definitions: a system of beliefs usually involving the worship of supernatural forces or beings. a set of ideas, beliefs, practices, rituals, etc. through which a people relates to supernatural powers - whether those powers are impersonal 'forces', spirits, or 'gods.' a framework of beliefs relating to supernatural or superhuman beings or forces that transcend the everyday material world. the codification of values, beliefs and behaviors in a society with a transcendent element; Theology is 'ideology' with recourse to the supernatural. Religion can be manifested as a type of ideology, forms the basis of group identity, is associated with 'code' books, is practiced in localized populations, contributes to ideas of social justice, can be mobilized in support of political violence, and is useful in negotiation and peacemaking efforts. Corresponds to noun sense 1 of 'religion' and sense 1 'faith' in WordNet: 1. (18) religion, faith, religious belief - (a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny; 'he lost his faith but not his morality')
From Wikipedia: Buddhism is based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha, who was born in Ancient India, in the city of Lumbini, in what is now known as Nepal. It is thought that he was born in the fifth century BCE. While there is disagreement between denominations over the Buddha's teachings (the Buddha Dharma), nearly all Buddhists recognize some version of the Tipitaka ('Three Baskets'), though it plays a far more central role in Theravada than in Mahayana. Also, Mahayana Buddhists recognize a set of texts called the Mahayana Sutras which Theravadins do not accept. From WordNet: in WordNet: 1. Buddhism - (a religion represented by the many groups (especially in Asia) that profess various forms of the Buddhist doctrine and that venerate Buddha) 2. Buddhism - (the teaching of Buddha that life is permeated with suffering caused by desire, that suffering ceases when desire ceases, and that enlightenment obtained through right conduct and wisdom and meditation releases one from desire and suffering and rebirth)