Abstract
The current chapter presents an overview about the current stage of the foundational ontology GFO. GFO (General Formal Ontology). GFO is a foundational ontology integrating objects and processes. It is being developed by the research group Onto-Med (Ontologies in Medicine) at the University of Leipzig. Unique selling properties of GFO are the following: it includes categories of objects (3D objects) as well as of processes (4D entities) and both are integrated into one coherent framework. GFO presents a multi-categorial approach by admitting universals, concepts, and symbol structures and their interrelations. GFO adopts categories pertaining to levels of reality, and it is designed to support interoperability by principles of ontological mapping and reduction. GFO contains several novel ontological modules, in particular, a module for functions and a module for roles. GFO is designed for applications, firstly in medical, biological, and biomedical areas, but also in the fields of economics and sociology.
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Notes
- 1.
A more detailed exposition of GFO is presented in Herre et al. (2006b).
- 2.
- 3.
The development of axiomatic systems for GFO is work in progress and will be published as Part II of the General Formal Ontology.
- 4.
These axiomatized ontologies of a domain are influenced by the assumed views and the classification principles from which different conceptualizations can be derived. Furthermore, there is no sufficiently founded criterion to establish the equivalence of two ontologies. Hence, the orthogonality criterion, as expounded in Smith et al. (2007), must be rejected.
- 5.
One of these ontologies, called BFO (Basic Formal Ontology) (Grenon, 2003), has its source in the GOL- project which started in 1999 as a common project of the department of formal concepts (Institute for Computer Science) and the Institute for Medical Informatics of the University of Leipzig. GOL was the scientific basis for a research programme related to a Wolfgang-Paul Prize advertised in 2001. Since June 2002 GFO and BFO were independently developed.
- 6.
Our approach to categories is inspired by the ideas of Jorge Gracia (1999). We consider Gracia’s approach as an important contribution to the philosophical foundation of conceptual modelling.
- 7.
The mental representation of a concept allows us to understand a linguistic expression. Concepts are outside of individual minds, but they are anchored, on the one hand, in individual minds by the concepts’ mental representation, and on the other hand, in society as a result of communication and usage of language.
- 8.
The ability to generate and use symbol structures seems to be the most basic assumption for complex communication. Here, an important aspect of the ability of humans to construct symbolic structures and to identify tokens as instances of symbols. The ultimate transmission of information must use spatio-temporal tokens as bearers.
- 9.
If the theory is sufficiently expressive then an absolute consistency proof, based on finitary methods, is impossible. Hence, consistency proofs have a relative character; they are based on the method of formally reducing the considered theory to another already established theory whose consistency has a higher degree of evidence.
- 10.
One must distinguish between symbols and tokens. Only tokens, being physical instances of symbols, can be perceived and transmitted through space and time.
- 11.
The study of mental representations of concepts is an important topic of cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics. The theory of prototypes is an influential approach in this area of research (Rosch, 1975).
- 12.
There is the general problem where the cut is made and defined between the subject and the independent real world. Several options are possible. Our approach can be justified by interpreting the phenomena as realization of dispositions of the objective independent world. These dispositions need a subject to come to appearance, more precisely, these appearances are realizations of dispositions within a subject. Hence, the phenomenal world is, on the one hand, anchored and founded in the objective reality, on the other hand it is realized in the subjective world. This connection is the basis for GFO’s integrative realism.
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
A perpetuant has - similar as a primitive universal - an implicit relation to time. The persistence of this kind of individual derives from its cognitive character. Persistence seems to be reasonable only for items that are invariant through a time-interval and at the same time are related at time-points of its duration to individuals which are immediately related to time and which may have different properties at different time-points. Such items are either special primitive universals or particular cognitive individuals. We do not apply the notion of persistance to abstract individuals, as to the number 100.
- 16.
GFO presents a solution to a problem which arises in Smith and Varzi (2000). GFO gives a new interpretation of bona-fide boundaries in terms of natural boundaries. The claim stated in Smith and Varzi (2000) that bona fide boundaries cannot touch is counter-intuitive and ontologically false. A similar critics is sated in Ridder (2002).
- 17.
We assume an eternal view on processes. If we are speaking about the future or the past then these are relative notions that are related to an observer.
- 18.
The representation of a change could additionally mention also two sub-processes p(1), p(2), where both processes meet, and e(1) is the right boundary of p(1), and e(2) is the left boundary of p(2).
- 19.
Recall that “coincident process boundaries” refers to the fact that the respective time-boundaries coincide. It does not mean that the presentials themselves should coincide.
- 20.
The categories of situations and situoids as discussed in this paper are a first attempt to account for this in a systematic manner.
- 21.
This resembles the idea of “indirect qualities” in Masolo et al. (2002).
- 22.
In earlier texts these were referred to as “properties” and “qualities”.
- 23.
Note that the term “property value ” here resembles Gärdenfors’ notion of “property”, our “property” his “quality dimension”
- 24.
A quality space consists of all “quales” (our property values) of some “quality” (our property).
- 25.
Note that “context” here is just an auxiliary notion for introducing roles, instead of being presented in a profound ontological analysis.
- 26.
The literature provides fills and hasRole as other common terms for the plays relation.
- 27.
- 28.
Processes, as other individuals, are not completely free of cognition. To clarify this situation we introduced in Section 14.2.4 layers between the subject and reality. The layer of perception connects the subject with reality and we stipulate that the phenomenal world, though cognitively biased, belongs to the reality outside the subject.
- 29.
Persistants apply to every process, whereas the construction of perpetuants is restricted to a particular class of material processes.
- 30.
A full elaboration of our approach to personal identity is much more complicated. It must consider the underlying process, the place of consciousness and will, and the dynamic interrelations between the persistant, the perpetuant, the presentials, and the process.
- 31.
This vagueness cannot be avoided because we assume that the specification of OntMod(P) exhibits a decidable set of conditions. By Gödel’s incompleteness theorems a complete specification of P cannot be, in general, achieved.
- 32.
The term “an execution of α approximates p” needs further explanation. This can be made precise by using the approaches of computable and constructive analysis (Weihrauch, 2000; Geuvers et al., 2007). The development of an ontological theory of computational simulation of natural processes is in progress and will be published elsewhere.
- 33.
It is an open problem whether every reasonable natural process is computable (Kreisel, 1974).
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to P. Burek, R. Hoehndorf, F. Loebe, H.Michalek who contributed significantly to the development of GFO. I am grateful to R. Poli and anonymous reviewers for their critical remarks that contribute to the quality of the paper. Thanks to M. West for fruitful discussions which lead to deeper insight into 4-dimensionalism. Finally, thanks to J. Gracia for inspiring discussions on the relations between different kinds of categories, and the proper interpretation of the notion of realism.
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Herre, H. (2010). General Formal Ontology (GFO): A Foundational Ontology for Conceptual Modelling. In: Poli, R., Healy, M., Kameas, A. (eds) Theory and Applications of Ontology: Computer Applications. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8847-5_14
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