Why wouldn't 'married man' be a universal? By most standard ontological
definitions, a universal is something that can be instantiated by more
than one thing (e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties/).
Even under Barry Smith and Pierre Grenon's definition (from
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo/SQU.pdf), a universal "is an entity with
a spatiotemporal existence which is yet distinct from its extension (the
set of its instances) at any given time." (page 1, 2nd paragraph). What
am I missing here? (01)
> BFO and OBO aim for representation that is faithful to reality, not for
> computational efficiency or "easyness" of reasoning.
> BFO for sure, and good OBO ontologies (there are not many yet) represent
> universals. The monohierarchy applies to universals. "married man" does not
> denote a universal, so would never be present in a good OBO ontology.
> If there are places in OBO ontologies where the priority of distinction is
> an issue, then that probably is a place where some mistake against the "only
> universals" rule is made. Better to correct such mistakes, than to relax the
> principles.
>
> If you want to have "married man" in some application ontology (in contrast
> to reference ontologies as BFO and what OBO ontologies ought to be), then it
> could go there as a defined class, defined on the basis of the universals
> "man" and "marriage".
>
> w
> (02)
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