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SNAP and SPAN. Barry Smith. http://ifomis.de. Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science Faculty of Medicine University of Leipzig. Reality. Reality. Reality. Reality. is complicated. What is the best language to describe this complexity?. Formal ontology.
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SNAP and SPAN Barry Smith
http://ifomis.de • Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science • Faculty of Medicine • University of Leipzig
Reality is complicated
Formal ontology • formalized + domain-independent
Formal Ontology • Examples of categories: • Substance, Process, Agent, Property, Relation, Location, Spatial Region • Part-of, Boundary-of
Material Ontology • = regional or domain-specific • e.g. GeO • Examples of categories: • River, Mountain, Country, Desert … • Resides-In, Is-to-the-West-of
Realist Perspectivalism There is a multiplicity of ontological perspectives on reality, all equally veridical i.e. transparent to reality vs. Eliminativism: “Only my preferred perspective on reality is veridical”
Need for different perspectives • Double counting: • 3 apples on the table • 7 x 1016 molecules at spatial locations L1, L2 and L3 • Not one ontology, but a multiplicity of complementary ontologies • Cf. Quantum mechanics: particle vs. wave ontologies
Cardinal Perspectives • Formal vs. Material • Micro- vs. Meso- vs. Macro • SNAP vs. SPAN
A Network of Domain Ontologies BFO = Basic Formal Ontology
AgrO • PsychO
Cardinal Perspectives Formal vs. Material Ontologies Granularity (Micro vs. Meso vs. Macro) SNAP vs. SPAN
medicine cell biology Ontological Zooming
Ontological Zooming both are transparent partitions of one and the same reality
Cardinal Perspectives Formal vs. Material Ontologies Granularity (Micro vs. Meso vs. Macro) Time: SNAP vs. SPAN
Ontology • seeks an INVENTORY OF REALITY • Relevance of ontology for information systems, e.g.: • terminology standardization • taxonomy standardization • supports reasoning about reality
Semantic Web • Ontoweb • OWL • DAML+OIL • … • these are standardized languages only – not themselves ontologies
Ontology research • marked by ad hoc-ism
IFOMIS Strategy • get real ontology right first • and then investigate ways in which this real ontology can be translated into computer-useable form later • DO NOT ALLOW ISSUES OF COMPUTER-TRACTABILITY TO DETERMINE THE CONTENT OF THE ONTOLOGY IN ADVANCE
a language to map these • Formal-ontological structures in reality
Property Object a directly depicting language • ‘John’ ‘( ) is red’ Frege
are pictures of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus • Propositions • States of affairs
The Oil-Painting Principle • in a directly depicting language • all well-formed parts of a true formula are also true A new sort of mereological inference rule – the key to the idea of a directly depicting language – presupposes that parthood is determinate
A directly depicting language • may contain an analogue of conjunction • p and q • _______ • p
but it can contain no negation • p • _______ • p
and also no disjunction • p or q • ______ • p
The idea of a directly depicting language • suggests a new method • of constituent ontology: • to study a domain ontologically • is to establish the parts of the domain • and the interrelations between them
BFO • Basic Formal Ontology • = a formal ontological theory, expressed in a directly depicting language, of all parts of reality • (a great mirror)
The Problem • John lived in Atlanta for 25 years
The Problem • John lived in Atlanta for 25 years • substances, things, objects • PARTHOOD NOT DETERMINATE
The Problem • John lived in Atlanta for 25 years • process • state
t i m e process Substances and processesexist in time in different ways substance
SNAP and SPAN • Substances and processes • Continuants and occurrents • In preparing an inventory of reality • we keep track of these two different categories of entities in two different ways
Fourdimensionalism • – time is just another dimension, analogous to the three spatial dimensions • – only processes exist • – substances are analyzed away as worms/fibers within the four-dimensional process plenum
a c b a a: scattered part b: temporal slice c: boundary Parts of processes (1)
a: sub-process b: phase a b Parts of processes (2)
There are no substances • Bill Clinton does not exist • Rather: there exists within the four-dimensional plenum a continuous succession of processes which are similar in Billclintonizing way