Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontologies and individuals

[Sandro Rama Fiorini <srfiorini@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Summing up the discussion, it seems that there is a general agreement that "ontologies can have individuals, but only in special cases". Guarino first pointed out that, if ontologies are to have facts about individuals, these facts must hold necessarily in the conceptualization. However, still that is not sufficient to qualify an individual as "special". My keyboard has keys necessarily, and that is not enough reason to include "Sandro's keyboard has keys" in an ontology about computers and computer parts.

It strikes me that, in most of the examples of cited in this thread, these special individuals are shared by the community. For instance, the Moon would be present in a ontology about climate because it is shared among all the community. This individual would be important to define concepts such as Moon Tide, Solar Eclipse, etc.  So, I would add that, besides been necessarily true, facts about specific individuals can be present in an (domain) ontology only if they are shared by the community. This is still no sufficient to qualify an individual as "special", but it seems to be a good heuristic to exclude some of those which are not.

Naturally, one can question the very idea of a shared individual, but we are already used to other versions of this question, aren't we? :)

cheers,
Sandro




Em 11/12/2012 20:10, joel luis carbonera escreveu:

Reading the answers, it seems to me that we are assuming some implicit preferences regarding to very general ontological choices (commitments?).

The most of ontologies that I know commits to the "ontological square", which provides a very basic distinction between types (universals) and tokens (particulars). I wonder if can we commit ourselves to an ontology that do not distinguish between types and tokens. Maybe I am wrong, but, without this very basic commitment, the question seems to vanish. Or is not the case?

Of course, we must evaluate the pragmatic value of this choice. Personally, I don't know if there are ontologies that incorporate this underlying assumption, in computer Science.

Considering that we are assuming this strong distinction, we can re-write the question, asking if "Considering the assumption of a strong distinction between types and instances, can ontologies contain individuals?"

Even in this scope, I wondering if some top/upper/foundational ontologies (supposing that we are developing ontologies commiting to one of them) do not impose constraints regarding the possible relationships between universals and particulars. Maybe, (I don't know) depending the foundational ontology that we are using, we could not relate universals and particular in other ways than through the "instanceOf" relation.

Finally, I confess that I always have doubts about classes as "US president" or "Brazilian river". Sometimes I wonder if these classes are within the competence of ontologies. It seems to me that in both classes are related to contingent properties of the individuals that belong to them.

If we accept "special individuals" in our ontologies, there is another question which raises: what makes these individuals special??

It seems strange to consider classes as "Paul's mother" in an ontology. So, maybe, we can think in conditions that allow consider these individuals in our ontology.

Best regards.

Joel.

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