Faculty of Medicine Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS)

IFOMIS REPORTS
ISSN 1611-4019

05/2003

Pierre Grenon

Spatio-temporality in Basic Formal Ontology

SNAP and SPAN, Upper-Level Ontology, and Framework for Formalization PART I
Final Version, November 2003

Impressum
IFOMIS reports (ISSN 1611-4019) ist eine Reihe von internen technischen Berichten, welche vom Institut fr Formale Ontologie und Medizinische Informationswissenschaft an der Medizinischen Fakultt der Universitt Leipzig herausgegeben wird. Verantwortlich fr die Reihe ist Pierre Grenon. Die Publikationsrechte verbleiben bei den Autoren. IFOMIS reports (ISSN 1611-4019) is a series of internal technical reports published by the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Leipzig. The responsible editor is Pierre Grenon. All rights are reserved to the authors. Kontaktadresse / contact adress: Institut fr Formale Ontologie und Medizinische Informationswissenschaft Fakultt fr Medizin, Universitt Leipzig Hrtelstr. 16-18, 04107 Leipzig, Deutschland. Tel.: (0049) (0)341 97 16170 Fax: (0049) (0)341 97 16179

Spatio-temporality in Basic Formal Ontology

SNAP and SPAN, Upper-Level Ontology, and Framework for Formalization

Part I
Pierre Grenon pgrenon@ifomis.uni-leipzig.de

Technical Report Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science University of Leipzig

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Foreword This document reports on research done at IFOMIS with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung since April 2002. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a theory developed at IFOMIS. This report has no pretension as concerns definitive views on BFO. It presents my research on spatiotemporality and meta-ontology during the first year of IFOMIS, and only intends to lay out the main lines of a framework I find suitable for the exposition of BFO. It remains that BFO does not have to be committed to these suggestions. I made a conscious effort to identify open issues in my work as much as in BFO, to clarify possible points of departure from the institutional view of IFOMIS and limitations of the suggested framework. I hope however that this presentation will contribute to furthering the discussions and offer a broad basis for developing the theory in a consensual way. This report has a long history and has been the support for a number of presentations and publications and has benefited from the elaboration of these. As a result, its finalization has been delayed. Rather than holding it indefinitely, I choose to publish it in two parts. Part I presents methodological and doctrinal assumptions of BFO, exposes in all generality a framework for a formalization of BFO, and delves into some of the details of each of SNAP and SPAN. Part II essentially addresses relations between SNAP and SPAN. Appendices provide background or sketchy additional material. Summary The Basic Formal Ontology is an ontological theory. It is intended to account for the fundamental constituents of reality, the categories under which they fall, and the relations which obtain between them. An important feature of BFO is that it is a split framework. It comports two sub-theories or components which, roughly speaking, independently account for the specific modes of being in time of different kinds of particulars. This distinction is the principal object of the present report. I introduce to the underlying metaphysics and intuitions which direct the construction of BFO, and I put forward a framework for formalizing of the theory. This framework is to be understood as metaontological (articulating ontologies and entities therein). It is designed in the first place to account for the specificities of each stipulated component. More importantly, it aims at unifying the two fundamental types of ontology of spatio-temporal particulars. I describe each type of ontology categorially (these categorial structures I call ontology forms), and introduce an instrumental notion of ontology as a structure which accounts for a specific (maximal) state of affairs in which the world is found. This allows to describe and formalize at a very general level the spatio-temporal features of each type of entity recognized in the unified theory, and the relations between them. The framework presented comes across as a fragment of a more general meta-ontological theory developed independently. I limit its exposition to material which proves relevant when working in the context of BFO.

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Table of Contents Part I

1 Introduction 1.1 Basic Formal Ontology: Intuition and Methodology
Background. General methodology. Why BFO is Basic?

1 3

1.2 Some Informal Considerations on SNAP and SPAN

Structure of BFO. Spatio-temporality. Spatio-temporal entities. The SNAP and SPAN picture.

1.3 Remarks on the Proposed Framework and Formalism

Developing a formal framework. Granularity and why this report is not granularist Formalism.

2 Basic Formal Ontology 2.1 Ontology Forms

Categories. Taxonomies of Categories: SNAP and SPAN Forms:

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2.2 SNAP Ontology Form

2.2.1 Elementary SNAP entities. 2.2.2 Quasi entities. 2.2.3 Substantials. 2.2.4 Some kinds of tropes. 2.2.5 Spatial regions. 2.2.6 The role of mereology.

2.3 SPAN Ontology Form

2.3.1 Quasi entities in SPAN. 2.3.2 Processuals. 2.3.3 Regions.

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3 Ontological Structures 3.1 General Considerations

3.1.1 Ontologies and entities. 3.1.2 Relations. 3.1.3 Mereology. 3.1.4 Location. 3.1.5 Dependence. 3.1.6 Genindentity.

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3.2 SNAP Structures

3.2.1 SNAP ontologies. 3.2.2 SNAP entities. 3.2.3 Partitions of SNAP entities. 3.2.4 Existence. 3.2.5 SNAP Intra-ontology. 3.2.6 Mereology in SNAP. 3.2.7 Spatial locational relations. 3.2.8 Spatial relations. 3.2.9 Inherence. 3.2.10 Partial conclusion.

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3.3 SPAN Structures

3.3.1 SPAN ontologies. 3.3.2 SPAN entities. 3.3.3 Time. 3.3.4 Spacetime. 3.3.5 Partitions in SPAN. 3.3.6 Temporal order. 3.3.7 Temporal and spatiotemporal location of SPAN entities. 3.3.8 Temporal and spatiotemporal relations. 3.3.9 Mereology and mereotopology in SPAN ontologies. 3.3.10 Occurrence. 3.3.11 Salient parts of processes. 3.3.12 Digressive remarks and partial conclusion.

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References for Part I Annex: Diagrammatic Representations of BFO

72 74

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Part II
4 Trans-ontology 4.1 SNAP-SNAP Trans-ontology 4.2 SPAN-SPAN Trans-ontology 4.3 SNAP-SPAN Trans-ontology 5 Conclusive Remarks and Further Work Tables Part I
# 1 2 3 4 5 6 Description Examples of tropes Formal properties of high-level SNAP predicates Formal properties of concrete spatial predicates Meta-properties of predicates assuming cross-categorial sums Meta-properties of predicates in SPAN Signatures of trans-ontological relations Page 22 24 24 25 29 39

Figures Part I
# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Description Taxonomy of SNAP entities Taxonomy of SPAN entities Kinds of spatio-temporal parts of SPAN entities Some kinds of salient parts of a process SNAP 0.0004 SPAN 0.0004 SNAP 0.0005 SNAP 0.0005 SNAP 0.0006 SNAP 0.0006 Page 26 33 67 70 75 76 77 78 79 82

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1 Introduction
1.1 Basic Formal Ontology Philosophical ontology is a branch of philosophy which concerns itself with the question of what there is, i.e., which entities exist in the world and under which categories do they fall. The product of an ontological investigation is typically a taxonomy of categories. In addition, ontology will provide an account of the relations between entities and of the structure of the world at a very high level of generality. Husserl (1913/1931) has made popular the distinction between at least two kinds of ontological inquiries. On the one hand is formal ontology, which conducts analysis and produces theories at the highest and most domain-neutral level possible, the level of forms. On the other hand is material or regional ontology, which is the ontology of a specific domain or material region. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a theory developed at IFOMIS. It is a formal ontology in the sense of Husserl. IFOMIS has started to develop and will continue to develop an even larger number of material or regional ontologies, in particular: MedO (Medical Ontology), GeO (Geographical Ontology)1. Background The intuitive account of the rationale behind BFO runs as follows. There are both 3-D and 4-D entities: entities extended in the three dimensions of space, on the one hand, and entities extended in the four dimensions of space and time, on the other hand. Both metaphysical views on reality are legitimate and right. However, they are incompatible. To wit, the main argument rests on the differences between respective modes of being in time and the ontology of time which each view allegedly motivates. In order to do justice to the entities of each type, we need to have two distinct ontologies. The ontology adequate for 3-D entities is analogous to a snapshot of the world, it accounts for the entities as they are now. That adequate for 4-D entities is more analogous to a videoscopic view taken upon reality. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is the complete and adequate ontology of reality which is divided into the two aforementioned ontologies. More precisely, there is, on the one hand, a succession of ontologies for substances and like 3-D objects, namely, a series of snapshot ontologies of the world at any given instant
See http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo for diagrammatic representations of the latest recorded institutional BFO (unfortunately, there is yet no versioning management), compare with those given in annex. In this report I shall not discuss idiomatic features of Draft 0.0006 before the annex. The features I find controversial havent been given more than a label and a cursory gloss which does not always remove the obscurity of the notions (in particular structural parts) or are superseded by (Grenon and Smith, 2003) (e.g., treatment of substantival and concrete regions).
1

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of time. In a manner of imagery, these ontologies are called SNAP. There is one such ontology at each moment of time.2 The metaphysics of time which SNAP presupposes is presentism (to exist is to exist in the present). On the other hand, processes and like 4-D entities are answerable to a single all-time encompassing ontology. Such ontology is metaphorically akin to a videoscopic view of the world. Again, in a manner of imagery, as this ontology spans time, it is called the SPAN view on reality or SPAN ontology. And, in contradistinction with SNAP, the proper metaphysics of time is eternalism (all things exist on a par for all eternity). According to Barry Smith, these ontologies are multiplied in an additional dimension, the granularity dimension. Thus, there are ontologies of reality at any given level of granularity and each of them reproduces the relevant part of BFO, SNAP for 3-D entities and SPAN for 4-D ones. General Methodology These intuitions are consistent with a realist perspectivalist and adequatist methodology endorsing the maxim of scientific realism. I advocated this methodology in (Grenon, 2003b), its cardinal maxims are recollected in the following excerpt of this paper:
Realism is first and foremost a claim about the existence of the world and its constituents. It is also a claim that the world and the entities it contains exist independently of our (linguistic, conceptual, etc.) representations thereof. Although in a sense less rich than conceptualism, realism is actually more focused and restricted to the most valuable target of our endeavours, namely reality itself. I endorse scientific realism which asserts that knowledge of reality can be obtained through scientific inquiry. [] Realist perspectivalism maintains that there may be equally legitimate realist perspectives on reality. It is important to bear in mind in this connection that this does not amount to the thesis that any view of reality is legitimate. To establish which views are legitimate we must weigh them against each other and against their ability to survive critical tests when confronted with reality itself, for example in scientific experiments. Those concepts and conceptualizations which survive are then transparent to reality. More generally, we are concerned with those views that are veridical under a given perspective, in relation to a particular domain, and at a given level of granularity (microscopic, mesoscopic level of everyday objects, geographic, macroscopic and even cosmic levels).

The term SNAP thus ambiguously denotes an ontological theory and an ontological depiction of 3D reality taken at an instant of time (mutatis mutandis, the same for SPAN).

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Adequatism is the opposite of reductionism. The adequatist affirms that there are many views of reality all of which are transparent. Each legitimate view has to be regarded as genuinely relating to reality, and the depiction of reality under a given perspective may be veridical even if some reductionist explanation proposes to do away with them. To embrace scientific realism is to endorse the view that science can culminate in genuine knowledge of the world. Now, it is a fact that the sciences evolve and progress, and so does our mundane knowledge. It must be therefore that our theories and our understanding of the world can be subjected to trial, progress and revision.

The enterprise of building BFO is thus motivated by a desire to be truthful to reality, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to the possibility of having possibly many and possibly skewed perspectives taken upon reality. Why BFO is basic? There are two reasons for which BFO is called a basic ontology. The first reason that BFO is basic is that it is intended as a (realist) ontology of the basic constituents of reality. It does not contain any theoretical construct, in particular, no sets or classes, nor fictional entities. The other reason comes from its structure. There are major divisions among the perspectives which the theory is trying to do justice to, most importantly, the divide concerning modes of existence of entities, but also what is recollected under the heading of granularity, and which, in my understanding, is a mix of topical perspective and spatial granularity. In my opinion, granularity reflects distinctions of regional ontology. The spatio-temporal divide is conceived as domain unspecific. In this report I will be chiefly concerned with finding a proper treatment for the divide in BFO between SNAP and SPAN. 1.2 Some Informal Considerations on SNAP and SPAN The view is endorsed by BFO according to which, in the world, there are objects that have continuous existence and a capacity to endure through change. This is the root for building the SNAP part of BFO. There are several kinds of continuants in time (substance-like entities, their tropes3,4, and spatial regions), I will return to them in due course. Suffice it to say that this part of the ontology recognizes enduring entities, such as people, their smiles, tables and their colours or the regions of space they occupy.

3 4

This terminology is sinful according to Smith. With chance, it may become clear what kind of entities tropes are, at any rate, it should be clear that events are not tropes in the technical sense of the term intended here.

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In addition to continuants, there are processes in the world. Processes are normal occurrents, such as, for instance, the smiling of a person, the tarnishing of a table or the reaching the wall of the table which has been moved from the centre of the room next to the wall. Those which persist in time do so by perduring, and they have temporal parts. They occur at a time or throughout a period of time. I will call the former events (in the vain of Ingarden) and the latter processes. This distinction will be clarified later on, meanwhile I will refer to processual entities when the distinction is irrelevant. It might be useful to emphasize that the processual entities recognized by BFO are really those things which are called events on a day-to-day basis. They are the only occurrents, and to clarify even further, not only do continuants exist as enduring entities for BFO, but also that there is no occurrent by means of which it would be possible to reconstruct continuants analogously to the way so-called four-dimensionalists are keen of doing. Structure of BFO BFO is intended as a complete ontological theory of reality, even though BFO is divided into two components according to the distinctions between modes of existence of entities in reality. Endurance, on the one hand, is but one salient feature of the entities SNAP, and these entities are arranged according to additional ontological distinctions. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true for the other component. So, SNAP is a specific type of ontology of enduring entities (or continuant in time) and SPAN, one of occurrents. Not all ontologies of enduring entities would recognize the entities which BFO recognizes under this category, and some may recognize more (e.g., states of affairs), similarly with ontologies of perduring entities. This report will rather incidentally lay out some of the finer distinctions among SNAP and SPAN entities, however it retains its principal goal of accounting for their respective spatio-temporal feature. Spatio-temporality5 Continuants are grasped through their existence in the world as it is now, whereas processual entities unfold through time. Thus, while BFO holds that presentism is true, it recognizes that it is only truly adequate for continuants. Processual entities are embedded in a spatio-temporal manifold, and it seems that eternalism or a form of semi-eternalism is adequate. I will try to remain neutral with respect to this last point, namely, whether processual reality is given from and for all eternity or whether this reality is a growing manifold (some say block-universe) for which the now is but a boundary. Actually, my treatment of SPAN shall prove receptive to the use of presentism in relation to perduring entities, but that will be at a level which in the suggested framework is meta-ontological.
5

My approach to spatiotemporality was greatly influenced by (Ingarden, 1964) and (Zemach, 1970).

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That is, it seems to me that we will have to favour or make room for a form of presentism when accounting for the occurrence or the inscription of occurrents in the realm of continuants, and within the framework this is a matter of finding meta-ontological cement. Spatio-temporal Entities To my understanding, BFO intends for the moment to leave open whether any instantaneous entities are found in the realm of enduring objects. Of course, such instantaneous entities would not persist in time, the issue is whether some share similarities with other entities in this realm. In the realm of processes6, it is clear that there are some such entities, namely the temporal boundaries of processes, i.e., events. At a meta-ontological level, certain instantaneous entities on the side of processes, namely their time-slices, have a role to play when it comes to inscribing processes in the realm of endurants. The terminology for referring to entities in time is notoriously confused. On the one hand, I will take enduring entities, continuants in time (or simply continuants), and 3-D entities as synonymous terms. Indeed, the relation is truly that continuants in time which persist are endurants, and that continuants in time are 3-D entities, meaning that the three canonical spatial dimensions are locative dimensions for those entities, whereas time (the fourth dimension in the 3-D/4-D terminology) is not a locative dimension. On the other hand, perdurants, occurrents in time (or simply occurrents) and 4-D entities will be used interchangeably. Again, the truth of the matter so is my working assumption - is that occurrents in time which persist are perdurants, and that for them spatial dimensions and time are locative dimensions (they do not exist in these dimensions but are located therein). The relevant distinctions are brilliantly brought about by (Zemach, 1970)7 introducing space and time as dimensions and the notions of being continuant or bound in one dimension. In my view, space, time, and spacetime are all on the side of entities. I take in this report a substantivalist approach to those realities and moreover take them to be irreducible one to the other. This substantivalist view was partially rejected in the initial phases of the construction of BFO where, in my understanding, spatial regions were conceived in the context of a relational theory of space. The SPAN component of the ontology however seemed to be committed to substantivalism about time and spacetime. Substantivalism was not incorporated in BFO until (Grenon and Smith, 2003), which draws largely on an earlier draft of this report. With this report, I take for granted the
6 7

For eliminatist perdurantsist such as Quine (1960) of course this is the only realm. See also Lewis (1986) on perduring and enduring and (Lowe, 2002) for instance.

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substantivalist views while endeavoring to make room for speaking meaningfully (if not defining) their relational counter-parts. I will use the terminological distinction between substantival or pure regions of space, time and spacetime versus concrete regions of space, time or spacetime to reflect the dichotomy. This terminology which is still favored by me is not retained by (Grenon and Smith, 2003). The SNAP and SPAN Picture Although BFO does not endorse the four ontologies which (Zemach, 1970) describes, the SNAP and SPAN distinction can be formulated in similar terms. To rephrase BFOs approach in Zemachs terms, there are both entities which are continuants in time and entities which are bound with respect to time. The former are the SNAP entities, the latter the SPAN entities. In the formal part of this report, I choose to take the aforementioned notions of continuants, occurrents, endurants, and perdurants as primitive notions and rest content with the foregoing characterizations. In other words, I will not formally define these notions. Here, and for the purpose of presenting BFO, it is enough to single out the SNAP and SPAN entities, indicating in due course via a number of axioms how their modes of being are that of continuants in time and occurrents, respectively. I shall introduce in each respective ontology the relevant notions of existence and location. SNAP entities will be related to space by locational relations and to time by a relation of existence at a time. SPAN entities are subjected to spatio-temporal and temporal locational relations. In addition, I will introduce a form of projective location from SPAN entities onto spatial regions in SNAP.8 SPAN entities will not be conceived as existing properly in time, thus the relevant part of the formalism will be limited to those locational relations. More generally, existence will be handled in the framework relationally, with respect to an ontology (I use this term in a technical sense to be defined shortly). As far as SNAP entities are concerned, given the temporal indexation of the ontologies which depict them, there will be a clear sense in which such entities are said to exist at a time. Because of the eternalism endorsed by SPAN, such temporal indexation of existence is not available for SPAN entities. In a few words, existence of SPAN entities is atemporal, they exist for all times in the all-time encompassing SNAP ontology. Their relation to time is thus completely accounted by that of temporal location.

See Part II of this report.

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1.3 Remarks on the Proposed Framework and Formalism Starting with the observation that there are two kinds of entities which exist, continuants and occurrents in time, we observe that there are genuinely two modes of persistence through time. These two modes of persistence are unveiled by distinct perspectives that one takes upon reality. An adequate formal ontological framework has to do justice to both of these perspectives while respecting their peculiarities. Thus, BFO is seen here as having one component amenable to the treatment of enduring entities, and another amenable to the treatment of perduring ones. My interest is thus in exposing both ontological components, and providing their meta-ontological articulation in a way that insures a formal ontological grip on the whole of reality. I will develop a framework for understanding reality that enables in my sense to account for objects as they are at a time, in virtue of the changes they experience through time, and the processes in which they participate. Developing a Framework The motivation for such framework comes from my attempt at clarifying the intuitions behind the split ontology of BFO. Concerning SNAP, it was not clear to me whether the succession of ontologies ought to be understood as a belief in a succession of states of affairs founding ontological and metaphysical descriptions, or whether a mere schema for classification is allegedly super-imposable on reality at different times. We actually had trouble agreeing upon this. In other words, full fledged and axiomatic description of maximal states of affairs (reality) was not under the scope of the theory propounded by Barry Smith. This might still be true, and this would give my approach a somewhat heterodox flavor, until these views are absorbed in the event they be not rejected. My view that there are structures in reality which I call ontological structures or (token) ontologies and which may correspond to ontological theories (as cognitive artefacts), seems to survive so far as it is embeddable, I think, in the paradigm of cognitive partitions of (Smith and Brogaard, 2003). My work has consisted in taking both understandings as setting complementary goals for the construction of a complete framework. This motivated my introduction of ontological structures as specific depictions9 of reality to which is associated a theory for describing the truth captured by the structure on the one hand, and, on the other hand, ontology forms as categorial schemas instantiated by given ontological structures. This apparatus I could use as well for SPAN, and this leads me to slightly diverge from BFOs

My use of the term depiction from this point on is a somewhat conciliatory terminological move.

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institutional stance on the nature and number of SPAN ontologies (according to BFO, there is only one all time encompassing SPAN ontology in BFO, modulo granularity). In addition, my presentist leanings made it difficult for me to endorse eternalism, and partly motivated my approach in terms of structures.10 In my view, there should be a series of elementary SPAN ontologies each of which account for the totality of events or happenings which occur at a (moment of) time. I am sympathetic to the idea of conceiving events as boundaries of extended processes, but a little leery concerning the existential status of the latter. I can not think of such extended entities as fully existing (as is claimed by eternalism), but rather as existing with different modes instantiated by their parts (partly past, partly present, partly future). In fine, I could cope with a form of eternalism provided that some ontological apparatus allows speaking about restrictions of the all-time encompassing SPAN ontology, in particular temporal and moreover momentary restrictions. Granularity and why this report is not Granularist11 BFO is intended as an ontological mold which is reusable (with some specific additions and modifications in the detail) in constructing a material ontology in any domain. Not only is the structure an invariant through the variation of the topical dimension, but BFO is also intended to be applicable at any level of granularity, while each application is restricted to a given level of granularity (with the same reserve concerning variations in details). Granularity is here just a paradigmatic example of perspectives taken upon reality. My shallow understanding of what is at stake with this paradigm of granularity is that this is an attempt at rationalizing a non reductionist methodological maxim. In practice, the treatment of granularity amounts to restricting the domain of discourse of the theory or maybe the set of categories recognized by an ontology. Assume one begins with an allencompassing domain which does not discriminate granularity (say, it takes the cup on my desk and its molecules on a par). Ontologically speaking, the description of reality can be carved out in many ways which might possibly be inconsistent but moreover apparently redundant (is the cup an object or a bunch of molecules? does it has the same persistence conditions?) Splitting the domain into a mesoscopic level and say, a
10

I am aware to some extent of difficulties brought about by such positions. Both metaphysically (e.g. the problem of relations with non present entities) and concerning the formalism. In the latter case, although I believe that there ought to be an apparatus of a tense logical sort included in a proper spatiotemporal logic, this topic is completely left aside in the report. 11 One result of taking levels of granularity seriously is that of the relativization of the extension of the category (or pseudo-category) of aggregates and parts of substances or processes in BFO. I have tried to remain faithful to this view despite the qualms it gives me. The most problematic effect is that it demands a number of mereological relations to be trans-granular and therefore trans-ontological. See 3.3.11 and II.

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molecular level, is taken by granularists12 to allow consistent, because independent, and adequate, because multiple, reference to all entities in reality. It remains that in each limited domain, BFO might be applied adequately (so is the intention behind its construction). The issue of relating relatively sound ontological fragments, i.e., ontologies restricted to a domain, is in my opinion completely analogous to the issue of relating any two token ontologies, generating limited ontological depictions of reality. The framework I am proposing here makes use of an intuition according to which it is possible to make sense of a notion of an ontology as a structure specifically carving out a portion of reality. I give elements of an algebra of these structures which allow to refer to restrictions or abstraction over elementary structures. However, I will only give elements of this framework which I find adequate to account for the intuitions motivating BFO and for its categorical lay out. I reserve extended treatment of the underlying framework for future work and parallel researches. With respect to granularity, it is clear enough to me that since my framework allow theoretically such manipulations, it will be sufficient to stipulate that any putative granularity of the ontologies I describe can be taken as a fixed parameter. Granularity as handled by BFO will follow (Bittner and Smith, 2002). In the remainder, I will completely ignore the paradigm of granularity with the few exceptions when it will be relevant to situate BFOs stance on related issues. Formalism The formalism I will present suits my understanding and I believe allows in the meantime the exposition of the institutional views on BFO. The framework and formalism can be considered as essentially meta-ontological. I find convenient to be able to speak about ontologies as objects, to have a theory of these objects, and a language in which to describe specific ontologies and types of ontologies (although this terminology is not completely fortunate, I currently call them ontology forms). This meta-ontological approach to BFO is a bias of mine and does not pretend to fit the intuitions of all IFOMIS researchers. When using this report to gather an understanding of BFO, the formalism should thus be regarded as mostly instrumental (clothes on a naked body). Other approaches could be offered, they might prove more elegant or more efficient. I believe that the use of this peculiar formalism to present BFOs highlights and its treatment of spatio-temporality does not compromise the alleged soundness of the theory. I will shortly present the primitives of the complete framework. In doing so I will use a first-order language. The language contains the usual logical operators and symbols: ~ for negation, for conjunction, for disjunction, for material implication, for logical
12

I am thinking of (Smith and Brogaard, 2003) in particular.

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equivalence, = for equality ( will abbreviate its negation), (respectively ) for the universal (respectively existential) quantifier. In due course, I will introduce non logical symbols for the relevant predicates (for which I shall use strings of roman letters starting with an upper-case) and relations (for which I shall use special symbols or strings of lower-case roman letters). I shall use x, y, z as variables ranging over (spatio-temporally existing) entities, and a, b, c will be constants denoting such entities. I will use , , as variables ranging over ontologies, and , , will be constants denoting ontologies. These terms shall be defined shortly and if any addition to the language is needed, I shall indicate this in due course. I do not offer a full logic, in particular there will be no consideration on a deductive system. I simply assume all the tautologies of predicate calculus, the provable propositions are so in natural deduction. In the remainder, unbound variables are assumed to be within the scope of universal quantifiers. All formulas are given a number by order of appearance. This is convenient for the purpose of crossreference, but the number should not be given any specific signification (although, of course, new formulas are asserted in contexts which generally assume previously asserted formulas).

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2. Basic Formal Ontology

In this section, I sketch the taxonomic fragments for the SNAP (2.2) and SPAN (2.3) ontology forms. This material is introduced by a preliminary and informal discussion of categories and categorial taxonomies in the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). 2.1 Ontology Forms Categories In this presentation, I will take categories as theoretical objects and their logic of a metaontological kind (i.e. articulating ontologies in the technical sense of this report). Categories account for kinds of entities. However, they are not themselves entities in reality. In other words, they do not exist in the way the entities which fall under them do. This claim needs to be qualified as there is, of course, a variety of philosophical doctrines about kinds.13 For my purpose, it will suffice here to note that these doctrines have argued about the worldly existence of a fundament for kinship, and thus categorial membership. However, none prevents us from handling categories as theoretical or even structural objects. In this report, I will refer to categories in the meta-ontological language by using predicates of entities, symbolized with capitalized strings of Latin letters. It remains that predicates are linguistic constructs, and not all predicates reflect a genuine category, i.e., they may or may not correspond to ontological patterns in the world (when they do, I call them genuine categories).14 It should be clear that the adhesion to a predicate nominalist way of speaking about categories is only instrumental here. The motivation for using predicates in order to account for categorial membership is that it has a definitive syntactic advantage which allows for a simpler presentation. The disadvantage is that it traces over the somewhat implicit distinction between genuine and arbitrary categories. In my understanding of BFO, a definite account of categorial membership ought to rest on a form of Aristotelian realism about universals. Universals account for categorial patterns in the world. They exist in their instances, and not without their instances, while particulars do not exist without instantiating a universal. This report will in effect only deal with particulars. At this stage, introducing universals in the domain of discourse will
13 14

See the detailed account given by Armstrong (1978). The fundamental reason for this comes from BFOs sparse theory of universals, a theory embraced by realist ontologists from Aristotle to David Armstrong, who hold that which universals exist in reality is an empirical matter. While it is possible to build predicates by Boolean composition or union, the realm of universals is not structured in this Boolean fashion. There may be mountains and there may be oceans, but there is no universal mountain-or-ocean. Hence, despite the fact that there may be a predicate in the language, there is no genuine category in the ontology. Moreover, some languages may contain predicates which are not instantiated (such as golden mountain), and some which may not possibly be instantiated (such as round squares).

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just confuse the presentation, surcharge the formalism, and divert attention from issues of spatio-temporality.15 Nevertheless, the working assumption is that we can still go a long way and treat spatio-temporality in SNAP and SPAN without mobilizing universals. Taxonomies of Categories The categories in an ontology are ordered in a hierarchy. A set of propositions in the corresponding theory expresses the structure of this hierarchy. The taxonomic propositions (elements of the taxonomical fragment) are formed by relating two categories (taxa) via taxonomical relations. The elementary taxonomic relation is that of the subsumption of one category under another, sub-category. It holds when the members of its first arguments are members of its second. Moreover, sub-category is a partial ordering on the set of categories recognized by an ontology. This means that it is reflexive, transitive and antisymmetric. Other relations are used to assert, for instance, that two categories are disjoint. Although these relations are among types of entities, they are directly definable in terms of entities falling under categories.16 Indeed, it becomes less handy to have gotten rid of universals now. One of the motivations for considering universals as entities (and not as their proxy properties in the sense of predicate nominalism under the form of predicates) was to account ontologically and realistically for categorial membership. There is yet another reason, for universals shed some light on the sort of categorial
The problem of universals is a whole chapter of philosophy in itself. I originally intended to add an appendix discussing universals at the time, it was considered as an extension of BFO, or better an intuitive precisification of the underlying metaphysics. That appendix was a basis for a more extended treatment of the question of universals and grew into (Grenon and Johansson, 2003). Consequently, I felt it could be largely removed from the present report. The original material endorsed the view that universals have a spatio-temporal existence, and the somewhat strong claim that they exist as parts (of some sort) of their instances. More generally, the relation between universals and particulars is one of instantiation. (I do not distinguish between symbols for particulars and universals.) instantiation(a, u) stands for the particular a is an instance of the universal u. It is possible to introduce a canonical notation abbreviating these statements by forming a predicate U* such that an entity falls under U* if and only if it is an instance of u. These terms may also be put in correspondance with categories well founded ontologically and ad hoc ones. In the remaining, I systematically use this syntactic variant and leave completely out of consideration the introduction of terms denoting universals. Here, the meaning of a sparse theory of universals is that if it is possible to introduce a predicate corresponding to a universal, it is generally not the case that all predicates correspond to a universal in re. In other words, the categories for which stand the predicates are not all ontologically wellfounded. This is possible thanks to a distinction between universals and some corresponding extensions, conceivable as classes or sums of their instances. The latter would be particulars, the former are not even recognized by BFO. 16 Here, since I am using predicates to do the job of categories (or rather to ascribe membership in a category without mention of a term for the category), taxonomical relationships are mimicked in terms of material implication. This apparently does not do true justice to taxonomic relations but might do at least part of the trick on the account that BFOs ontologies are indexed (or indexable) to a number of parameters (time, granularity, and so on). In a domain ontology, at least, we would introduce constants for universals and disallow extensionality. As for the mereological (pseudo-)categories, it does not matter anyway since the mereology they are constructed from will be extensional.
15

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structures which BFO proclaims to acknowledge. There are no universals in the taxonomical trees which BFO provides.17 However, the claim is that these taxonomies may be read in two ways.18 The taxa in the hierarchy can be read either as universals or as directly gathering the entities which fall under the corresponding universals. Taxonomies are both taxonomies of universals and of particulars. The reason why universals can not appear in those taxonomies side by side with gatherings of particulars is that there are no higher-order universals19 - no universal universal, for instance. BFOs categorial taxonomies may technically be called partitioning trees. That they are trees means that any taxon has only one super-taxon in the hierarchy. The reason again is that these are entity oriented taxonomies, and not property oriented taxonomies (where property is not to be equated with universals, despite the strong legacy of predicate nominalist equating of these terms). Therefore, there are at any two levels in the taxonomy, as many entities in total in each level. This understanding has non trivial effects on categorial structures in BFO. In particular, it leads BFO to a notion of non extra entities (such as the sum of two entities, or some entitys fiat parts) which exist as soon as some other entities exist and add nothing to the ontology. This is the reason why in the present account there is no genuine category of sums or parts of entities. While it will be possible to refer to these entities, however, this will be done solely through the axiomatization of the theory.20 Incidentally, observe again, that these requirements make fully compliant the view that there has to be a granular carving of ontologies. There would be, for instance, no category of molecule where a category of cups is recognized (provided that the former ontology would be intended such as to account for cups as aggregates of molecules). In that case, the matter is to be conceived as an issue of relating two different granular ontologies. The second specificity of BFOs hierarchies of categories is indeed entailed by their tree structure and the requirement that levels in the hierarchies are number preserving, i.e., each taxon is partitioned into its subtaxa. There are inherent difficulties with partitioning trees. One is that property oriented categorization is not available for organizing the hierarchy. This is bypassed by following the perspectivalist methodology which affords having possibly many trees. Still, these trees need to be articulated. It also shows that whenever categorial distinctions are well founded, there will be a priori
17 18

See BFOs diagrams reproduced in annex. According to Barry Smith this is another case of alternation between views, analogous to that between granularity alternation. 19 Anecdotally, I tend not to receive this as a definitive answer, given the distinction that I believe exists between categories and universals. But the point is made as concerns the reading of BFOs taxonomies and there is no need to further debate the issue here. 20 This understanding is, of course, not reflected by diagrammatic representations, it is in this context that Smith talks about double-counting to explain away the artefact.

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possibly many variants of categorization for the same entities and these criteria. A solution which gives more bearing or importance to some criteria over others and imposes a canonical order still requires a method for deciding how to rank criteria. This will be illustrated shortly when discussing the SNAP form. A distinction may be applied to each subcategory next to the top level of the hierarchy or immediately following the top level. Arguably, the resulting structures are equivalent, although the former allows more specific pseudo-categorial accounts for some of the non extra entities in the theory. This illustrates however that categorial distinctions have to be applied universally at a level and only at one level (the contrary would result in non trees hierarchies). Definition and Notation. A category C associated with predicate P is said to be partitioned by a family of sub-categories {SCi}1in in a taxonomic system (where SCi is associated with Pi for a given i) when the three following conditions hold: 1) Pi(x) P(x), for all i 2) P(x) Pi(x), for at least one i 3) (Pi(x) Pj(x)) i=j I say that {SCi}1in forms an n-partition of C and I write partition(P, P1, P2, Pi, , Pn) in order to account for the fact that a category C (associated with the predicate P) is partitioned into the elements of {SCi} (respectively associated with some predicate Pi) by convention I use the same letter for a category and its associated predicate.21 SNAP and SPAN forms SNAP and SPAN are to be primarily understood as ontology forms. They provide a categorical taxonomy and some propositions which regulate the meaning of these categories (i.e., describe the properties of their putative instances). Nonetheless, in order to describe reality at a lesser degree of abstraction, i.e., by depiction, the framework I present has recourse to a number of ontological structures. As far as spatio-temporality is concerned these ontological structures are depictions of reality at a given time or over a given period of time.22 I use the modes of being of the entities in order to sort out their

This notation is a convenient shorthand, but in practice it will be of little use in this report. Indeed, the taxonomies reported on here are not very deep. In addition, even in these taxonomies the requirement of forming partitions will not be respected, for instance, I do not think that BFO has a partition of substantials nor of processuals to offer as it stands (see these notions infra). 22 There is an ambiguity here which I leave on purpose. These ontological structures are taken to be structures of reality not conceptual or theoretical for a bit. They correspond to conceptualizations (theoretical constructs) but are distinct from them. To my understanding, when Smith does partition theory, he manipulates conceptualizations. When these conceptualizations are transparent, when they depict the world truthfully, this is in my view because they carve out the world so as to make salient the ontological structures I propose to quantify over. The distinction is analogous to that between universals and categories

21

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relevant ontological constituents. These structures will therefore instantiate one of the two forms, SNAP or SPAN, according to the modes of being of the entities they depict (respectively, endurants or perdurants). In other words, they will add to the forms a set of recognized ontological constituents and facts about them (in the form of a set of proposition). In contradistinction, giving an account of the SNAP and SPAN forms amounts to providing a taxonomy of categories and some high level constraints on the relationships among their putative instances. It is this general layout that I now describe. I will turn to ontologies as structures in the following sections.

that I have taken for granted earlier. The fact that I preserve the ambiguity and use the term depiction for the structure of that which is depicted ought to be regarded mostly as a terminological compromise.

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2.2 SNAP Ontology Form This section presents the category of SNAP entities and its ramifications. I shall use the symbol SnapE for the predicate under which fall entities recognized by SNAP ontologies. SNAP entities are partitioned into three main categories: 1. substantials (substance-like entities): substances, their fiat parts, and aggregates thereof. I shall use the predicate Substantial. 2. dependent entities, which can be understood as tropes or moments of the former, their parts, and aggregates thereof. Tropes are commonly viewed as particularized properties23. I will use the predicate Trope. 3. spatial regions, their parts, and aggregates thereof. I shall use the predicate SR. The Variety of Predication. The three main categories introduced above reflect some very peculiar properties (in a sense which is non technical in BFO) of the entities which fall under them. Substantials are understood as substrates for change, they are independent for their existence on other particulars. They are more generally speaking the subjects of predication. There are several forms of predication in the light of which this comment may be interpreted. There is first categorial predication as when one says that Aristotle is a man, or that the color of the nose of Aristotle is red. The subjects of such categorial predications are Aristotle and the color of his nose. This is quite different than qualitative predication such as the nose of Aristotle is red. What this means is that the nose of Aristotle, a part of Aristotle, has a given quality, its own color. This color is an entity (a trope), it depends on Aristotles nose for its existence (it would not have existed if Aristotle did not have a nose). It is this color which is the subject of categorial predication in the category of redness, a determinate of the universal color. Substantials are the subjects of categorial and qualitative predication. Tropes are the subject of some categorial predication (the categories are such as color and its shade, shape, or temperature), and the mediating object of qualitative predication24.

23

Here, by principle, tropes are exlusively continuants, despite the fact that trope is also sometimes applied to events. In that respect, SNAP dependent entity might appear a better term, but then it is apparently misleading as people tend to assume that it indicates a sufficient condition for falling under the targeted category. 24 Universals instantiated by tropes (property universals) enter in determinable-determinate relations (Johansson, 2000).

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2.2.1 Elementary SNAP Entities Within the respective categories of substantials and tropes, there are entities which enjoy a more fundamental existence. These are elementary entities, they are such that other socalled extra entities are given as soon as the elementary entities are given. The nose of Aristotle is not elementary in this sense, it is a fiat part of Aristotle. As soon as we have Aristotle in existence, we have all of its parts and all the aggregates of independent entities it is a part of (of course, provided we have the other components of the aggregate in existence as well). Aristotle is a substance. And more generally, the elementary entities in the category of independent entities are called substances. They have in addition to the characteristic of being independent, the characteristic of being wholes with bona fide boundaries. BFO follows here (Smith, 1997). The color of the nose of Aristotle, in turn, is not an elementary dependent entity. It is the color of Aristotle which is elementary, because it is Aristotle who is elementary in the category of independent, and not his nose. Because of the dependency relation between entities like a color (a particular) and its bearer, we can straightforwardly rule out from the category of elementary tropes all tropes which do not depend directly on a substance. In addition, arbitrary aggregates of SNAP dependent entities may not be seen as elementary. The color of Aristotle added to that of Socrates does not make an elementary entity. These claims will orientate the construction of the formalism provided in section 3.2 (cf. infra, discussion of the variety of forms of inherence). What about regions of space? I find no need to delve into similar considerations. First of all, BFO is still unclear as to whether or not there is a specific dependence between spatial regions and their occupants and conversely. Let us assume that the theory is neutral. More generally, any part of a spatial region is a spatial region, and so are aggregates thereof. Indeed, we know that we can define self-connected regions, and a variety of topological types. But it does not seem so crucial, as soon as spatial substantivalism has been accepted, to wonder whether there are non extra spatial regions. What is given from the start is the spatial universe as an entity, and it may be carved out a volo. One stance could be taken to the effect that there is but one real (in the sense of elementary) spatial region, the spatial universe, and that all its parts are fiat, and, in other words, extra entities. (One complication is that this would make the notion of universe somewhat relative to an ontology if we were to introduce spatial restrictions of SNAP ontologies.) Remarks on the Categories of BFO. It is a subtle issue whether we should really claim that the above partition is categorial or whether the true categories in SNAP are that of substances and elementary dependent entities (leaving open or aside the status of space). -17-

To endorse the claim that parts and aggregates of elementary entities are not accounted categorially (a claim resting on the understanding that these are non extra entities, i.e., are there as soon as the elementary independent, dependent, or even spatial regions are there), would mean that an adequate account of these entities would have to be given (mereologically) via a set of axioms and definitions providing the language with means to refer to or describe these entities. In any event, genuine ontological categories or not, all of them are themselves partitionable into further sub-categories. I will come back to this in more details shortly. 2.2.2 Quasi Entities I address this topic somewhat for the sake of completion, but also because this will provide the opportunity to reflect on the categorial systems of BFO and the notion of an ontology. If we follow one of the pictures of BFO25, the most salient partition within the immediate sub-categories of SNAP entities at the formal ontological level is between entities and quasi-entities. The distinction aimed at is one analogous to the physical or natural versus social distinction. In a word, quasi entities are typically the product of social fiat and convention. In contradistinction, regular entities are concrete and objective entities in the physical realm. Entities of each type may enter into causal interactions modulo some peculiarities. It is not clear to me whether quasi independent entities can be obtained by adding a quasi dependent entity to a bona fide independent one. I will come back shortly to issues relating to such entities. Let us remark for the moment that these entities would not fall anywhere in the categorial schema presented but under the top level category of SPAN entities. Examples of quasi and regular entities are provided in the diagrammatic representation of BFO26. This distinction is applicable to the category of independents and of dependents. It is tentatively applicable to that of spatial regions as well. 2.3.3 Substantials This category includes substances, fiat parts and aggregates thereof. All have in common that they have a location in (substantival) space, are bearers of change, and also bearers of SNAP dependent entities. I adapt the term substantial from (Smith, 1997). The predicate Substantial is both dissective and cumulative.

25 26

See annex, BFO 0.0005. id.

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Substances. Substances are independent SNAP entities which are also mereotopological wholes. For instance, a ball is a substance. We treat substances in BFO along the lines drawn by Smith (1997). They have the following main features: Substances are not dependent for their existence upon other entities Substances are the elementary bearers of qualities and subject to change in their qualities (iii) Substances preserve their identity over time and through changes of various sorts (in other words, they are enduring entities) (iv) Substances are self connected mereotopological wholes with bona fide boundaries27. Material objects, and especially organisms, are therefore prototypical examples of substances: cups, bodies, planets. I use the symbol Substance for the predicate applying to substances. Parts of substances are generally not substances. Substance is neither dissective nor cumulative (recall this claim is relative to an ontology) in contradistinction to Substantial. The category of substantial entities is a generalization of that of substances in which the mereotopological nature of substances to be bona fide bounded and connected entities is abstracted away. Remark on (Pseudo-)Categories. Strictly speaking, the notions discussed in the remainder of this section do not yield categories, but what I have previously called pseudo-categories. Their sense will become somewhat clearer as the presentation goes on. But since they all share this feature, I will try to give a slightly abstract account of their nature. At first sight, it seems that in each case, the notions presented yield something which is closer to a role played by the entities described rather than a firm category under which these would fall. This stems from the fact that each of these entities is given as soon as a particular ontology has made its commitment as to the entities it recognizes as substances. The way they are thus given is through some relation which seems more salient than the alleged category: parthood for parts and aggregates, occupies site and place of for sites and places respectively (although the former seems to enjoy some ontological priority with respect to the two latter it seems to me that this has to do with a formal / material distinction). The reason why it is possible to turn them into categories is that all of these and the category of substance as well are relative to an ontology. SNAP ontologies are all given rather strict determinations, not the least that provided by their temporal indices: they are ontologies at a time. Consequently, the categories they recognize are de facto, and as far as the ontology is concerned, all firm. So, it is completely opaque to a given ontology
27

(i) (ii)

See also (Smith and Varzi, 2000).

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whether a given entity would fall under a different category in another ontology. If we abstract from this, we can see that entities which fall under a category A in an ontology may fall under a category B in an ontology (where alpha and beta have the same time index for instance but different granular indices). However, this is true for a number of categories (of substances, parts, aggregates, and so on) but not for those of substantials, tropes and spatial regions.28 Fiat Parts of a Substance. We might refer to some of these entities as fiat parts. For a theory of fiat parts we shall refer to (Smith and Varzi, 2000; Smith, 2001). The Earth has some definite boundaries. It is possible to carve out fiat parts of the Earth (undetached parts). This is what is done when property rights are given over a portion of land or the underground of a geographical region is delineated for mining exploitation. The whole atmosphere may be taken as a one block substance on an adequate level of granularity from which we may fiatly carve out portions, for instance: the masses of air whose movements correspond to winds. Boundaries of Substances. Boundaries are special parts of spatial entities. They are of a lower dimension. The boundary of an apple or the Earths surface is a closed twodimensional surface. Boundaries depend upon the entities they bound as parts depend on whole. 29 Aggregates of Substances. Aggregates of substances are mereological sums. Parts of aggregates of substances might be substances themselves, but not necessarily aggregates themselves.30 Concrete Spatial Regions. Concrete spatial regions are aggregates of substantials (whose parts are therefore of any of the kinds described previously). As such they are located in pure space, but in addition they are regarded here in their capacity of being occupied (in whole or part, internally or externally) by other substantials. This is a way of granting
Clearly, this recalls talks about essential / unessential properties or even Guarinos concept of rigid property and cognates (Guarino and Welty, 2000). The latter, however, has a modal interpretation of these phenomena which, to my understanding, is absent here. 29 On boundaries and surfaces, see (Stroll, 1988). 30 Substances, parts of substances, and aggregates of substances if these terms are to be taken literally do not form a partition of the category of substantials. In BFO, I take that the category of aggregates of substances includes those entities which maybe only as an option, are not substances but are aggregates of parts of aggregates of substances, aggregates of substances and parts of substances and so on and so forth. It is unclear to me wether to request that aggregates of parts of substances to falling under the category of parts of substances. To my understanding, the pseudo-category of aggregates is a grab bag in which falls all aggregates, including aggregates of fiat parts which are parts of different substances. The term aggregate of substances is certainly confusing. This state of affairs is seemingly partly why there is talk about double counting in BFOs taxonomies. An alternative solution which would require additional categories to fill the gaps in the putative partition might prove as exhausting as exhaustive.
28

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permission to the common way of referring metonymically to spatial regions via their occupants. Many concrete spatial regions will comport some portions of so-called empty space. Empty space should not be conflated with vacuum (such as conceived by physics). Vacuum is properly speaking a pure spatial region at which no entity is located. Empty (concrete) space is, however, always filled with a medium of some sort which present a certain fluidity (air and other gases, or in some context even water) this medium is its sole occupant. Concrete spatial regions are a mix of material structure surrounding an empty space. I apply the predicate CSR to concrete regions. Free and physically bounded concrete regions. Some concrete regions are a mixture of rigid surroundings and fluid medium. Depending on the nature of its boundaries: physical or fiat, we may place the region in a specific category. Regions which have no solid boundaries (fiat parts of the atmospheres such as air traffic corridors for instance) BFO calls free portions of (concrete) space and I apply to them the predicate FCSR. Regions of which a part of their boundaries is solid, BFO calls them physically bound region and I apply to them the predicate PCSR. All holes and cavities (Casati and Varzi, 1994), and most niches (Smith and Varzi, 1999; 2002) with physical surrounding boundaries are such as we shall see now. Places. A place is for each substantial entity the minimal site which that entity currently occupies. For an object to be in its place, in this sense, is for it to exclude other objects from occupying that same site (or maybe only a part of it). If you want to put your book on the table in the place where the cup is, you have to move the cup. If you want to build a monument in the place where the building sits, then you have to move or destroy the building. This brings about the issue of collocation of material object, among other things, and to my understanding, BFO denies that two substantials may be in the same place at the same time although perhaps the issue is merely left open. 2.2.4 Some Kinds of Tropes In addition to being divided between quasi and regular entities, the category of tropes is divided along two axes. These divisions are reproduced both in the bona fide and quasi hierarchies. i) monadicity and polyadicity of tropes: A first division among dependent entities is that between entities that depend upon a single (substantial) entity, such as the color or the temperature of Aristotle, or a plurality of entities, such as love or promises.

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ii) kinds of trope: Tropes are partitioned into several sub-categories, both of regular and quasi types: status-trope, power, quality, roles, dispositions, functions31, but also plans, debts. Table 1 gives a series of examples. The precise number of categories of dependents and their nature is still the object of work in progress. Here, I will not attempt to provide any definitive criterion for differentiation among them. Besides the generalities expounded here, it is not clear to me what has to be said about these. I will present some examples which I hope have the ability to reflect some of the salient features of the intended notions.

SNAP Dependent Function Quality Power Role Status Plan

Example Heart = to pump blood Pen = to write Redness of the ball Warmth of the blood Stone can crush (power to be given a function) Stone crushes nuts (relational) At rest Seated n/a
Table 1. Examples of tropes.

Example of Quasi President = to govern ID = prove identity Degree of corruption Monetary value Ability to read Power to enact law Give order Follows order President in charge Marital status Plan to enact law

2.2.5 Spatial Regions Preliminary Remark about Spatial Regions (This section is somewhat obsolete.32) The notion of quasi entity may be put to work in the domain of spatial regions. But first a distinction has to be made between pure regions of space and what I call concrete regions of space. My ground view with respect to space may be called substantivalist. I consider that space has an existence of its own, independent of its occupants. Now, in BFOs schematic presentation33 there are a couple of subcategories in which spatial regions are partitioned. The category of spatial regions is divided into free portions of space (FCSR) and physically bound portions of space (PBCSR).

31 32

Work on functions, esp. biological functions, is done at IFOMIS primarily by Ingvar Johansson. It originally was intended to offer a rationale for adopting a substantivalist view of space, the suggestion is that what an earlier version of BFO (0.0005) regarded as spatial regions were spatial regions under a relational interpretation and ought to be confined in the category of substantials as more or less complex aggregates of substantials. In the main line, this strategy was endorsed by Grenon and Smith (2003) and lead to the relevant changes in BFO. What I call concrete spatial regions here became in the main line what BFO now calls sites. 33 The reference is to an older schema part of Draft 0.0005. Another schema is part of Draft 0.0006, but (Grenon and Smith, 2003) is more reliable as an institutional stance concerning the topic at hand.

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The immediate way in which I can make sense of this relationist way of speaking about spatial regions is to take it that these are secondary definitions of types of region. In other words, these regions are taken in their capacity to be occupied by or to be actually occupied by substantials which have a number of topological features (being bounded, for instance). A free portion of space, for instance, would be the region of pure space occupied by the ground of planet Earth and the mass of air above it. Physically bounded portions would be occupied by a substance which acts as an enclosure for other substantials. Alternatively, concrete spatial regions could be seen as mere substantials taken in their capacity of being places for the location of other objects. Then, we would end up with a clearly relationist view of space. A third possibility, slightly more contorted could be to take these concrete regions as the sums of a pure spatial region and its occupants. What makes this solution uneasy is that it becomes unclear where these sums belong categorially speaking. They are not pure regions of space, nor are they substantials. They are mere SNAP entities. Should this suggest that SR should actually be taken as a broader category including both substantival space and the entities which are composed of such regions and some substantial? Maybe not, if we want to make something out of the notion of non extra entity. The distinctive feature for these regions would be to be substrate for location of some sort. But even then, it remains that there would be prima facie two sorts of location. One with respect to pure regions, one with respect to concrete regions. The latter might be suitable to be given a mereological treatment (if I am in the room, the concrete region I define is a part of the concrete region defined by the room). Spatial Regions Taking a substantivalist view on space is to hold that there are (pure) spatial regions as particulars with an independent existence (from the entities located at them). They are the substrata for location of other entities in the spatial dimension. There is one distinguished spatial region, namely space or spatial universe. All spatial regions are parts of space. SR is the predicate under which spatial regions fall. Since space is an endurant, so are all spatial regions. SR is trivially dissective and cumulative. Space may be given a plurality of topology and geometry and offer a definite advantage when relating the worldly so-called concrete space to more mathematical models of its structure. It allows rich qualitative reasoning.34 We may extend the taxonomy of spatial

34

I advise drawing upon (Cohn and Hazarika, 2001) and related publications from these authors and from other members of the QSR group in Leeds. One issue for BFO will be the fact that this work usually tends to avoid, if not reject, lower dimensional regions which for us are crucial. It would be valuable to compare with Smiths mereotopology which remains a dedicated tool for BFO.

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regions in a variety of ways including categories of self-connected, convex, holed regions, and so on. 2.2.6 The Role of Mereology I shall assume here all the mereology that might be needed, and introduce material in due course. Parts of substances are generally not substances. Parts of aggregates of substances might be substances themselves. We might refer in some cases to fiat parts. As far as spatial regions are concerned, BFO intuitively holds that parthood is dissective and cumulative35. Notice, however, that this leaves aside considerations of dimensionality. These issues are too fine grained to be discussed here. Remarkably, each category might be augmented (and to some extent this involves double-counting) by adding all the fiat parts (including boundaries for independent entities and spatial regions) of entities in the main category. Similarly, each category might be augmented (and to some extent this involves double-counting) by adding all the aggregates of entities in the main category.
SNAP categories Dissective S-Cumulative SnapE yes yes Substantial yes yes Trope yes yes SR yes yes

Table 2. Formal properties of high-level SNAP predicates.

Kinds of Concrete Spatial Region Dissective Cumulative Strongly Cumulative

Physically Bound No Yes No

Free yes yes no

Table 3. Formal properties of concrete spatial predicates.

Should BFO allow cross-categorial sums? What for? The idea of cross-categorial sums may play a role in BFO. For instance, Jacques Chirac is entitled to playing different roles, having different powers, and liability with or without his presidentship of France (status-trope of being president of France, not to be confused with Chiracs presidency which is an occurrent, a process I apologize to the sensitive reader if my terminology is at odd with common English practice). In order to make the relevant distinction, could BFO sum Chirac and its presidentship? This would not give rise to an additional entity properly speaking. The status-trope of Chirac is an extra entity,
35

A predicate is dissective if it applies to any part of any of its instances. It is cumulative if it applies to the sum of two of its instances. It is strongly cumulative if it applies to any entity any of its instances is a part of. The two first notions are discussed in (Simons, 1987), I called the third cumulative in (Grenon, 2003a) where I didnt use the wearker notion. (See 3.1.3 below for formal definitions of the first two ones.)

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despite the fact that it is existentially dependent on Chirac. But, the sum (Chirac and presidentship) is given as soon as both constituents are given. In addition, Chirac, in which currently inheres a trope of presidentship of France, could lose his status (lose his trope). He would no longer possess a number of powers that this status confers on him, yet he would gain on the other hand new powers, in particular that of participating in various process which his presidentship prevents, say, participating in judiciary processes which his presidential immunity allows him to escape. So, Chirac, with or without his status-trope, may enter in different relationships with other entities, be given different roles and power. It is crucial to understand that, in BFO, this does not amount to two different entities, ontologically speaking. It is only logically speaking that Chirac and President Chirac differ.36 This is best understood when reflecting on the fact that the sum discussed in the foregoing is given as soon as Chirac during his presidency is given. To make sense of the constraint, it seems that we have to appeal to processes, or time. In other words, it appears that Chiracs presidentship is essential to Chirac at the time at which he is president, not otherwise. This seems to make the issue rather difficult, as it seems now that tropes may be essential to their bearer at the time of inherence. Although, they are not essential to them at other times, which seems paradoxical. Counterfactual Scenario. Suppose we would go nonetheless with cross-categorial summation, as it was suggested for concrete spatial regions. The tropes inhering in Chirac are not parts of Chirac (they are trivially parts of the aforementioned sum however). So, on the one hand, it is genuinely true that parts of independents are independents (i.e., Substantial is dissective). But it is not so true that Substantial is strongly cumulative. However, on the other hand, there are no categorial accounts for the kind of (non extra) entities which come from cross categorial sums. That was the intuition behind the tentative tables (cf. supra). If we leave aside the strict categorial distinction for a moment, we can come up with a putative table accounting for cross-categorial sums:
SNAP categories Dissective Cumulative S-Cumulative SnapE yes yes yes Substantial yes yes no Trope yes yes no SR yes yes no, tentatively

Table 4. Meta-properties of predicates assuming cross-categorial sums.

36

Contrast with the multiplicativist metaphysics such as of DOLCE (Masolo et al., 2002), which would presumably make Chirac and President Chirac two different entities, not only logically but ontologically, i.e., President Chirac is an extra entity.

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I will come back to this later when discussing mereology in SNAP as this orientation seems to motivate introducing specific intra-categorial forms of mereological relations. Categorial Significance of this Scenario. The question remains open as to how to account categorially for cross categorial sums. Trivially they would fall under the categories of SNAP entities. But is that good enough? Is President Chirac (as a shorthand for Chirac summed with his presidentship) simply a SNAP entity? Isnt there something more to it than that? In my opinion, this putatively brings about some suspicion concerning the level in the taxonomy at which the distinction between quasi and non quasi entities is introduced in the SNAP form. Following institutional use, I have introduced the quasi / non quasi distinction after that between independent, dependent, and spatial regions. Chiracs presidentship is a case of quasi-trope. Chirac, if taken as a mere organism is arguably an instance of non quasi entities, it could be also taken as a father, this would already be a case of cross categorial sum. In any event, the sum I called President Chirac is a case of a substance summed with a quasi-trope. It is neither a trope nor a substance, but it surely is a quasi (non extra) entity. This suggests that the quasi/non-quasi distinction functions categorially at an higher level of generality than the other distinctions. Accounting categorially (but non specifically) for these entities might thus suggest a need for restructuring the taxonomy. In any event, we would end up with a similar set of leaves for the trees, only the next to the top level would be different. Alternatively, it could suggest that there may be more than one hierarchy needed when accounting for the SNAP form. I leave these issues open. __________________

SNAP Entities Substantials Substances Fiat parts Boundaries Aggregates Concrete Space Niches Places Dependent entities Qualities Fiat parts Aggregates Spatial regions - by dimension - by topological feature

Figure 1.37 Taxonomy of SNAP entities. Indentation reflects subsumption. The italicized items are for dissective and

37

To my understanding, only the first level forms a partition.

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cumulative categories. The non bold items are for categories of non extra entities. They do not correspond to a material universal.

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2.2 SPAN Ontology Form I shall use the predicate SpanE in order to refer to entities recognized by SPAN ontologies. I will return to these in 3.3. As in the previous section, I will only give categorical considerations here. SPAN entities are partitioned into three main kinds of entities: 1. processual entities: I shall use the predicate Processual. Processuals are concrete SPAN entities, proper occurrents and happenings. They may be divided into extended ones (processes) and momentary ones (events, boundaries of extended processuals). Since non extended processuals are parts of extended ones (because they are their boundaries), the latter are non extra SPAN entities in the sense of BFO. 2. spatiotemporal regions: I shall use the predicate STR. Spatiotemporal regions are mere parts of the SPAN substratum, spatio-temporal manifold. It is possible to make further distinctions within the spatiotemporal manifold, and in particular to single out the temporal continuum (time as conceived by BFO)38. 3. temporal regions: Temporal regions are (non concrete) occurrents (extended ones are perdurants). They are therefore in the SPAN ontology. I contend that there is a genuine distinction between time and spacetime which is sometimes traced over by BFO. They have appeared in some versions of BFO as parts of some sort of the spacetime manifold. To my understanding, they are not,39 but merely they delineate its temporal parts. I use TR and TI for regions of time and instantaneous regions of time respectively. 2.2.1 Quasi Entities in SPAN As in SNAP, BFO introduces a distinction between bona fide and quasi-entities. At this stage, the question is open as to whether there are quasi-spatiotemporal regions. Typically, quasi-processes are processes in which main participants are quasi-SNAP entities. More generally, quasi-processes are existentially dependent on quasi-SNAP entities. Here again, I list some mereological meta-properties of the top categories:

38 39

BFOs stance on time is in the spirit of (Brentano, 1976). Grenon and Smith (2003) endorsed this claim.

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SNAP categories Dissective S-Cumulative

SpanE yes yes

Processual STR yes yes yes yes

TR yes yes

Table 5. Meta-properties of predicates in SPAN.

The same considerations as with SNAP and more generally with BFOs categorial taxonomies hold for the SPAN form. Double counting is but an artefact of axiomatization, and non extra entities are not specifically accounted for by categories. Despite my presentation of quasi-entities as a secondary distinction, similar qualifications may hold as with the SNAP form. 2.2.2 Processuals Processuals are grounded SPAN entities; they are proper occurrents or happenings which involve participants of a SNAP kind. They will appear (trans-ontologically) as dependent on their participants.40 They occupy spatio-temporal regions (their locations in SPAN). It is typically thanks to their participants that we can carve them out of the concrete spatiotemporal universe (a birthing process is the birth of a person, a winning event is the winning of a race by a runner, and so on). I use the term processual in order to refer to processes, their parts, and aggregates all of these fall under a common predicate: Processual. This predicate is both dissective and cumulative. Processuals may have more or less complex structures. However, in contradistinction to substances, there are few clean joints in the realm of processes. Processes merge and fuse in order to make other larger processes-wholes. In an instance of SPAN ontology, that which is a process, part of a process or an aggregate of processes is dependent upon the granularity characterizing the ontology. Process. Processes are those extended processual entities which are self-connected wholes. On the one hand, they have beginnings and endings. On the other hand, they involve no temporal or spatiotemporal gaps in their interiors. In particular, a given process may not be occurring at two distinct times without occurring also at every time in the interval between them. Similarly a process may not occupy two spatiotemporal regions separated topologically along the spatial dimension without occupying also a continuous spatiotemporal bridging region which lies between them. If a given processual entity is affected by gaps of either of these sorts, then we are dealing not with one single process but rather with an aggregate of processes.

40

Part II.

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Part of a Process. All the proper parts of a process on the same level of granularity as the process itself are by definition fiat parts; for if processes are connected entities, then any division into parts must necessarily be a fiat division. Within the eternalist framework of SPAN, all the parts of a process are on a par with each other. Examples are: the first day of the Six Day war, the walk of a grocery shopper during a given 20 minute period. It might be possible to find clean criteria for carving out temporal and spatiotemporal parts of processes, e.g., based in their participants. I will not pursue this direction here but will focus on the most significant parts of a process, namely its temporal boundaries. Temporal Boundaries of Processes. Events are momentary entities in the realm of SPAN, typically the boundaries of processes (beginnings and endings). That there is an element of vagueness in pinpointing exact boundaries of processes need not bother us, as the distinction is of a metaphysical order. Examples include beginning of a conflict; ceasing to exist of a country (as a result of annexation, absorption); detaching of parts of rock as result of an erosion process (budding); Algerias gaining independence as the culmination of a process of separation from France; German re-unification on October 3rd, 1990; Czechoslovakias ceasing to exist through the becoming independent of the Czech Republic and Slovakia on January 1st,1993; end of migration process. Events will be defined as boundaries of processes: external or bona fide, such as beginning or ending or internal or fiat such as instantaneous transitions within processes. They are more generally bona fide and fiat instantaneous temporal parts of processes. From the presentist perspective of SNAP, at each moment of time, only one of these parts is actual - occurs, although it does not belong to a SNAP ontology. The idiomatic use of the terms process and event in this classification is inspired by Ingarden (1964). To some degree, however, how the instantaneity of events is to be understood in BFO (whether located at mathematical points on the time line or as short lived occurrents) is somewhat left open. In practice the mathematical interpretation seems to be solicited by BFOs intuitions. Aggregates of Processes. Examples of salient aggregates of processes are disease outbreaks, all the disease outbreaks that occurred in Central Africa over the past year, all the aggregates of all overnight troop transportation in the jungle last night, a battle or a military campaign (at another level of granularity some may be seen as processes themselves). Spatiotemporal Environments.41 As much as some aggregates of substances could be seen as environments for others, aggregates of processes may form spatiotemporal

41

Re-baptized settings in (Grenon and Smith, 2003).

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environments. These come in type and token. Types yield patterns whereas tokens yield more a role (in a logical sense) than a category. Typically the form of a description of a spatiotemporal environment will come up as <Substantial A> during or throughout <period B> (this is ultimately because processes are dependent upon their participants). For instance, France during the XIXth century. Rather than a period, one may mention an occurrent which extends during that period or which defines a given concrete period (a chunk of the history of the universe). England during the Tudor Dynasty, during the Napoleonic Wars and so on. Spatiotemporal environments are these very characterizing chunks of concrete spacetime, they may also be plain temporal parts of concrete spacetime (the Neolithic Age, i.e., whatever happened at that time). It is nevertheless possible to find named processuals which may act as spatiotemporal environments for other processuals, e.g., The Hundred Years War forms an environment for the burning of Joan of Arc. In SPAN, as an ontology of perduring entities, it seems that this environment for relation is a determinate of parthood. As for the types, this is what we would refer to if we were to say that European cartographers had a certain way of reproducing maps during the Thirteenth Century, we would mean that all the map drawing processes were embedded in were actually salient parts, components, of the aggregate of a series of map drawing which gave them essential features characterized by the time and location of their occurrence. More generally, we may speak about SPAN patterns as aggregates of processes whose constituents present some degree of similitude in some respect: all map drawings where done with special ink and took between two days and a week, for instance. Obviously one thing which makes this notion difficult is the intertwinement of SNAP and SPAN entities in the description of environments. It seems easier to explain away this artefact of expression when dealing with token spatiotemporal environments. 2.2.3 Regions Spatiotemporal environments are examples of what I call concrete regions of spacetime, analogously to concrete regions of space, processuals which act as locational medium. As with SNAP, SPAN also has a notion of pure or substantival regions. While concrete regions are more akin to a role, substantival regions are the definitive locational substrata, entities in their own right. There are two kinds of SPAN regions in that sense: spatiotemporal and temporal. Spatiotemporal Regions. Spatiotemporal regions are the spatiotemporal extensions of the SPAN entities (including themselves). These are regions at which processuals may be located (I emphasize that it is not necessary for such region to have a processual located at it). The relation of spatiotemporal regions to processuals in SPAN ontologies is -31-

analogous to the relations of substantials to spatial regions in SNAP ontologies. Spatiotemporal regions are entities which exist in their own right and independently of the processuals which occupy them. There is a spatiotemporal universe (Spacetime) whose parts are spatiotemporal regions all existing on a par with each other (in accordance to the eternalism of SPAN). STR is the predicate applying to spatiotemporal regions. The theory has to provide a mereotopology for spatiotemporal regions. Moreover, spatio-temporal regions delineate spatio-temporal parts of SPAN entities (the parts of these entities which exist over or at these spatio-temporal regions). Spatio-temporal regions have shapes in spacetime which may be used to characterize their processual occupants. Temporal Regions. Time is a perdurant, thus a SPAN entity. It is moreover a region of location for processuals. Also, indices for the existence of SNAP entities denote the temporal instants at which these entities exist (cf. supra). Processuals are located at an instant of time through one of their slices. (At such instants, the SNAP entities which participate in processes exist.) Extended processuals (processes) are likewise related to the time of their full period of occurrence. A temporal region is a part of time. Temporal regions are temporal extensions of SPAN entities and delineate their temporal parts (the parts of these entities which exist during or at these temporal regions). TR and TI will be the predicates under which fall temporal regions and instants of time, respectively. Remark. Instants of time delimitate cross-sections of Spacetime which are metaontologically super-imposable on Space, the spatial universe, which exist in a SNAP ontology indexed to that instant of time. The relation between the two is not one of identity, but rather of (spatio-temporal) co-incidence. At a given instant of time, we can gather according to the SPAN perspective all the events occurring at that time. Under the SNAP perspective, we can gather at that same time all the entities which participate in the processes these events are the boundaries of. In neither SNAP or SPAN can we capture any entity which belongs to the other perspective. In particular, Space is grasped only within a SNAP ontology. It is an endurant which persists in time self-identically. At that time and on the side of SPAN ontologies, we may only capture an instantaneous portion of Spacetime which exists on a par with other portions of Spacetime, all of which are different from the captured region. __________________

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SPAN Entities Processuals Processes Fiat parts of processes Events Aggregates of processes Environments Spatio-temporal regions by dimension by topological features Temporal regions Instants Periods by topological features

Figure 2. Taxonomy of SPAN entities.

Observe that the categorial lay out of the SPAN form is rather poor. Similarly to what is the case in SNAP, the sums, aggregates, parts, and boundaries of processes are not associated with a category. Once again, those non extra entities will be grasped axiomatically. While I do not introduce categories, it will be possible to use relations (say, boundary-of) and define predicates (say, Temporal-Boundary, which to follow the terminology could be named Event). An attempt at producing a categorial picture of the kind of entities (including non extra ones) in SPAN can not be done without the caveat of double counting and the emphasis on the extra/non-extra distinction. Mutatis mutandis, remarks given concerning the pseudo-categories of parts and aggregates of substances apply. What saves SPAN is here its eternalism, the same kind of granular restrictions as with SNAP ontologies and the extensionality of its mereologies.

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3 Ontological Structures
I have up until now discussed SNAP and SPAN as ontology forms, in other words for their categorial lay out. I now look more precisely at entities recognized by SNAP and SPAN ontologies, i.e., by BFO as it stands in the light of this report. I said earlier that I find it useful to introduce a notion of ontologies as objects within the domain of discourse of a properly speaking meta-ontological language. In the next sections I will give few preliminary accounts of the framework in which I intend to lay out the specificity of the ontologies at stake (3.1), and describe intra-ontologically SNAP (3.2) and SPAN (3.3) ontological structures. 3.1 General Considerations 3.1.1 Ontologies and Entities42 An ontology is grasped through a depiction of the world from the standpoint of existence. I shall note that ontologies are here conceived as meta-ontological objects, but nonetheless as first-order objects in the domain of discourse of the (meta-ontological) theory. I shall use the predicate in order to denote token ontologies, thus () is to be read is a ontology. From now on the distinction between ontologies and ontology forms should be borne in mind as a distinction between a depiction of the world and a categorial regimentation of existing entities (a categorical taxonomy).43 Ontologies are about entities, i.e., objects whose existence is recognized by the ontology. Everything which exists in the world is an entity. I shall use the predicate Entity in order to denote entities, thus Entity(x) is to be read x is an entity. I will use x, y, z as variables ranging over entities, and a, b, c will be constants denoting such entities. Emblematically, the first axiom is an existential one which asserts that there is at least one entity. (1) x Entity(x) Terminological remark. Since I am chiefly interested here in spatio-temporality, I could also have chosen to name the predicate in order to capture the intuition that all entities are persisting through time (with the obvious exception of instantaneous entities which can also be seen as degenerate cases). But the intuition here is precisely that what comes first about entities is that they exist, indiscriminately of the precise mode of their existence. More specifically, and in the context of BFO, the theory is not merely restricted to spatio42

Some early version of this material was first published in (Grenon, 2003a) and used in the formalization presented in (Grenon and Smith, 2003). 43 See footnote 19.

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temporality, i.e., many features of BFOs entities are not directly relevant to spatiotemporality. There is no real incentive for terminologically advantaging modes of being in time. Constituent. A constituent of a given ontology token is an entity whose existence is recognized by . I will write const(x, ) which is to be read x is a constituent of . The only constituents of an ontology token are existents and existents are constituents of ontologies only : const(x, ) (Entity(x) ()) (2)

Now, the following truths can be formulated. There is no empty ontology, that is there is no ontology of nothing.

() x (Entity(x) const(x, ))
In addition, any existent is a constituent of at least one ontology. Entity(x) (() const(x, )) From (A1) and (A9), it follows that there is at least one ontology. ()

(3)

(4)

(5)

An ontology is not the mereological sum total of the entities it depicts. In contradistinction to the sum of all the entities in the world, an ontology does not exist in the world, and thus is not an existent. Lets register the fact that existents and ontologies are different: ~ (() Entity(x) = x) (6)

Remark on Existence. According to BFO, entities are these things which exist objectively. The theory takes a strong stance here, and my formalism slightly departs from this stance. Theoretically, in the context of BFO, the domain of discourse is reduced to that of existing entities. Thus, we would not need to precise that axioms contain as necessary conditions the clause that variables and constants refer to existing entities. It would be assumed all the way, and apparently, there would be no need for a predicate either. However, it should be noted that Entity is not merely a predicate of existence in the language. It does not have the tautological character of a predicate E defined by: E(x) y (y = x) (7)

Rather, I emphasize that not all objects in the domain are entities, i.e., not all are such as to fall under Entity, whereas, all, including ontologies, will trivially fall under a putative E. In the formalism which I am putting forward here and which makes use of -35-

constants and variables denoting ontologies, this interpretation of Entity as E is somewhat untenable. Practically, it seems to me that that there are ontologies and objects whose existence is recognized by an ontology gives sufficient motivation for having a predicative form applying to entities. Observe another feature of the predicate Entity which makes it not precisely a predicate for existence. As in (6) above, it is apparently possible to refer to entities in the absolute, without requiring the existence of these entities in the context of reference. But this is properly speaking an abstraction from the context. Existence comes back in the picture through the backdoor of meta-ontology. It does this in virtue of specific relations such as that between an entity and an ontology which recognizes the existence of this entity (namely, constituent), or that between an entity and a time at which the entity exists (in a sense specific to its modes of being in time, cf. infra). Note in conclusion that although not adopting a multi-sorted logic, I am making syntactic distinctions between variables and constants for ontologies and for existents. These distinctions, however, are precisely only syntactic and should be taken primarily as devices facilitating the intuitive reading of the axioms. 3.1.2 Relations There are a number of relations and types of relations in the framework I am putting forward for BFO. In as much as this framework comports two ontology types, it recognizes two kinds of intra-ontological relations: those which obtain between SNAP entities which are constituents of the same SNAP ontology, and those which obtain between two SPAN entities which are constituents of the same SNAP ontology. I present preliminary material for the latter now, but shall postpone detailed discussion to section 4. In addition, I shall remark but give no further account of the fact that if we were to index ontologies with respect to their granularity level, we would have potentially as many variant relationships. In the following, I will take this putative parameter to be fixed and assume that all relations operate at a given level of granularity. I am basing my classification of relations on four distinctions. I will essentially discuss elementary relations, which could be used in order to define more complex ones. For the sake of simplicity, I take as paradigmatic the case of binary relations, the material presented generalizes more or less trivially to relations of higher arity (the language could contain sequence-variables for instance) .

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Internal and External Relations.44 Relations are all dependent for their obtaining on their relata (they imply the existence of their relata). Their being is like that of dependents. It is moreover possible to introduce a distinction between relations which solely depend on their relata and relations which in addition to their relata depend on additional, and possibly many, entities, called relator(s). For this purpose, I distinguish between internal and material relations. Internal relations are grounded in their relata, such that no extra entity is needed in order for them to obtain. The part-whole relation (cf. infra, this section) is one example. Material relations, however, require additional entities linking their relata. They are grounded in an extra relational entity. For instance, when John kisses Mary, both are related, and their relation is grounded in their kissing (interestingly, the kissing belongs to another category even another ontology, in BFO - than the kisser and kissee). In the remainder all the relations I will discuss are internal in the sense explained here.45 Distinction by Signature. I distinguish between three main types of relations in the framework: 1. intra-ontological: a relation between existents that are all constituents of a given ontology . For instance, the relation of part to whole is conceived as intra-ontological. BFO currently contains two types of ontology, and thus it recognizes two types of intra-ontological relation, namely, SNAP ones (cf. infra, 3.2) and SPAN ones (cf. infra, 3.3) . 2. trans-ontological: a relation which obtains between constituents of distinct ontologies. For instance, the relation of participation of an object in a process is trans-ontological. The number of types of trans-ontological relations we have to consider depends on the number of types of ontologies our theory will request relating. In BFO, there will be, in the binary case, up to four types of trans-ontological relations of respective

44

This distinction and terminology is borrowed from (Armstrong, 1978) and (Johansson, 1989). I give a minimal working account here. As far as BFOs full treatment of this distinction is concerned, this is work in progress. 45 I rest content with predicative notations for these relations. The question could be more pressing in the case of (thick) external relations (Mulligan, 1998), even short of a reductionist analysis la Mulligan. One formal approach similar to the case of universals of universals would consist in using the logical relation holds between a constant for a relation universal (corresponding to a nominalized polyadic predicate) and the relata. In some cases, trope-theoretic variants could be of use. At this stage, this is mere speculation as far as BFO is concerned.

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signature: (SNAP, SPAN), (SNAP, SNAP), (SPAN, SNAP), and (SPAN, SPAN).46 3. meta-ontological: a relation that obtains between ontologies or between an ontology and an existent (no matter the order of the relata), const is an example. Ontological Indices, Conventions. In as much as the recognition of some ontologys constituent is by definition dependent upon that ontology, relations will have to account for this parametrization. They will be parametrized or indexed in virtue of their relata recognition by an ontology in which obtains the relation. The indexing of relations is done by an ontology (for intra-ontological relations) or possibly many (trans-ontological polyadic relations), and not by any particular element characterizing these ontologies, such as a time for instance. There may indeed be other characteristics of an ontology that time alone does not take into account, for instance, granularity. Intra-ontological relations themselves will always have to be understood as dependent upon that ontology of which their relata are common constituents. Indexing intraontological relations will be done via the mention of only one ontology following the list of entity-relata in a term headed by the relation, for instance, r(a, b, )47. The ontology is such that it recognizes the entity-relata and such that the relation obtains. These relations have the following constraint: r(x, y, ) (const(x, ) const(x, )) (8)

When explicitly discussing a given intra-ontological relation I shall allow to drop the ontological index (cf. infra, this section, 3.2, and 3.3). In the case of trans-ontological relations, the basic rule is to assume as many mentions of an ontology as there are entity-relata. I will follow a convention according to which entity-relata are immediately followed by the ontology they are constituents of and which allows the relation to obtain. If two entities appear consecutively in the list and are constituents of the same ontology when the relation obtains, I will write the entities consecutively and mention only once the ontology (this of course is recursively applicable).48 So, for instance, r(a, , b, ), where , will be the typical notation for the obtaining of a relation between one entity a in an ontology and another in another ontology . These relations are constrained by:
Part II of this report is dedicated to these. Some of the material discussed there can be found summarized in (Smith and Grenon, 2003), although the view presented in the latter that formal relations are the transontological ones is somewhat foreign to this report. 47 r is a relation letter used to refer to a given relation. I will use this notation when writing axiom schemas for relations. 48 The convention for intra-ontological relations can be seen as a mere application of this rule.
46

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r(x, , y, ) (const(x, ) const(y, ))

(9)

Suppose r is a ternary relation such that its first two relata a and b are in a given ontology

and the third in , that the relation obtains between a, b, and c will be written r(a, b, ,
b, ) (abbreviating r(a, , b, , c, )). However, I will take the binary case as paradigmatic (in any event, n-ary relations can be rewritten using solely binary ones). I mentioned that in the current framework, there will be two types of intra-ontological relations, namely, when is a SNAP ontology or when it is a SNAP ontology. Accordingly, there will be up to four types of trans-ontological relations in the binary case of respective signature (table 6).
(SNAP, SNAP) (SPAN, SNAP) (SNAP, SPAN) (SPAN, SPAN)

Table 6. Signatures of trans-ontological relations in BFO.

Notice that the signatures in the bottom left and top right cells of the table are peculiar in that they combine not only different ontologies but also different ontology forms. I shall return to trans-ontological relations in section 4 (Part II). Meta-ontological relations are not ontologically indexed. Actually, const could be seen as a binary form of the monadic predicate Entity. Entity does not specify in which ontology its argument is recognized, it is equivalent to an existential claim on the second argument of const. If we applied the convention for indexing ontologically relations to monadic predicates, we would end up with a propositional term of the form Entity(a, ). Thus, Entity can be seen as a unary (intra-ontological) relation. I believe that a similar understanding follows as concerns ontological categories. For instance, SR(a, ) would form a nice syntactic sugar for accounting for the fact that in , a exists and is a spatial region. It is only apparently that this formulation suggests the possibility that an entity changes its category. The framework would still have to use const, in order to capture the existence of the entity in a given ontology. Rules could be asserted insuring that entities may not change categories, for instance, spatial regions are either spatial regions or are not (they do not exist) : (SR(x, ) const(x, )) SR(x, ) (10)

Alternatively, the non indexed forms of monadic predicates could be used conventionally to account for the fact that when an entity falls under the putative corresponding category, it does this essentially. Working on an entity basis in order to account for their essential characteristics, rather than at the level of the predicate could bring more flexibility. It is not clear however that we would gain much metaphysical -39-

insight. I tend to think that this second approach is adequate when manipulating predicates (conceived as arbitrary class, kind, let us say logical category constructors), yet not so much when manipulating ontological categories. I do not believe that the predicates Child, Teenager, Adult for instance correspond to ontological categories, but that human being or cat do. Finally, the other kind of meta-ontological relations are between two (or many) ontologies. These relations are purely logical and do not have ontological indices. There is no need to delve further into their nature here. Categorial Distinction. Intra-ontological and trans-ontological relations can be further classified into intra-categorial (the relata belong to a common category) or crosscategorial (the relata belong to two disjoint categories). To my understanding, there is nothing problematic claiming that parthood has two forms respectively in the domain of endurants and perdurants and both forms are intra-ontological and moreover intracategorial forms at these levels. In as much as the constituents of an ontology are by definition indexed to a given ontology, intra- and trans-ontological relations themselves will always have to be understood as dependent upon that ontology or these ontologies of which the relata are constituents. This yields further specific types of relations according to the types of their relata. Although this feature is essential to reasoning based on the framework developed, it is parasitic to its exposition. Often when explicitly discussing relations susceptible of an ontology-index, I shall drop this index. Formal and Basic Formal Relations. I distinguish between formal and basic formal relations. Formal relations are relations which belong to formal or domain-neutral ontology. They can be applied at the higher most level in a given ontological component. There are also formal relations that may be applied in more than one component (this makes salient the fact that the formal ontology given here is an ontology of the whole of reality, despite its respect of the divide in reality). I call these basic formal relations. Thus, const is a basic formal meta-ontological relation, and we see now that is an internal basic formal relation. 3.1.3 Mereology Mereology, the theory of the part-whole relationship (Simons, 1987), is a basic tool in BFO. In most cases, BFO has an extensional mereology in each of its categories. The relation of (proper) part-to-whole is a primitive relation which is used in order to define more mereological terms: relations (e.g., improper parthood, partial overlap), operators (e.g., sum, difference), and kinds or pseudo-categories (e.g., whole, part, aggregate), on -40-

the one hand, and, on the other hand, terms and relations which are composed of another primitive and a mereological primitive: for instance, mereotopological terms, in combination with topological primitives, such as detached part, interior part, boundaries, maximally connected component, scattered whole. Other examples of a general level include, for instance, partial or whole location or inherence (cf. infra). I use the symbol p for the relation of part to whole, and write p(a, b) for a is a (proper or improper) part of b. pp is the symbol for the proper part relation. Following are the basic axioms for p and the definition of pp. The parthood relation is reflexive, transitive, and antisymmetric: p(x, x) (p(x, y) p(y, z) p(x, z) (p(x, y) p(y, x)) x = y The proper parthood relation is an irreflexive form of parthood: pp(x, y) def (p(x, y) x y) (14) (11) (12) (13)

We may define the relation of overlap, o, which holds when two entities have a part in common: o(x, y) def z (p(z, y) p(z, y)) (15)

And with this, we may define the operator of binary sum which yields the sum of two entities a and b (noted sum(a, b)) and is defined as denoting the entity with which overlaps anything which overlaps either a or b: sum(x, y) =def zw ((o(w, x) o(w, y) o(w, z)) (16)

These relations and operator may be applied in all the ontologies discussed here and in each of their categories.49 However, some restrictions will be imposed on the categories discussed. In order to introduce those restrictions, let us use the following definitions taken from Simons 1987. Using the schematic letter P for a given predicate, we give the following definitions50: P is said to be dissective when all parts of an instance of P fall under P: (P(x) p(y, x)) P(y) . (17)

49

All of these assertions are in practive relative to an ontology, the notions involved however can be described in all generality. 50 I assume variants with ontological indices (implicitly given by proper intra-ontological constraints on p).

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P is said to be cumulative when the sum of any two instances of P falls under P: (sum(x, y) = z P(x) P(y)) P(z) .

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I will not need to delve further into mereology here. The reader is referred to (Simons, 1987) or (Casati and Varzi, 1999) for surveys of mereologies and to (Smith and Varzi, 2000) for an orientation of BFOs approach. 3.1.4 Location I shall only mention but not formally develop the general notion of location. Although my choice has been to treat location as a primitive relation51 in each ontology, rather than start here with a general concept, this is to some extent but an artefact of presentation. I discuss at more length the structure of location in the context of space, but in each dimension, and so in the general context, the same analysis holds. The whole treatment of location is borrowed from Casati and Varzi (1996) who discussed the spatial case in a great deal of sophisticated details. I will introduce the relevant variants in the temporal and spatiotemporal cases in analogy to the spatial case. (I will append subscript letters for distinguishing subforms: s for spatial, t for temporal, and st for spatiotemporal.) The intra-ontological character of these location relations is then de facto because of this methodological choice. 3.1.5 Dependence It is enough for my purpose to consider dependence as the relation between two entities a and b such that a is dependent upon b when as existence requires bs existence. This is sometimes called existential or ontological dependence. Dependence is sometimes defined modally and its definition goes along the following lines: a is dependent on b if and only if when a exists, then b exists necessarily. There are known troubles related to modal treatments of dependence, not the least to the de re modality involved. I will not enter into the details of the metaphysics of dependence nor give an axiomatization of the notions involved, mostly because this fell out of the scope of the work I am reporting on. I will handle dependence as I did throughout this work, that is as a primitive and general relation52, and as a prototypical case of basic relations with many forms and variants. For instance, we can sort out the following forms: 1. SNAP intra-ontological (between two SNAP entities of the same ontology)

51

Actually, exact location as relating an entity to its exact congruent location, a region, in a given dimension. 52 This approach will probably prevail in the axiomatization of BFO, at least during initial rounds.

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-intra-categorial relations (between two substances, between two dependents) -cross-categorial (between a dependent and an independent, e.g., inherence, cf. infra) 2. SPAN intra-ontological 3. cross SNAP-SPAN relations (SNAP-SPAN and SPAN-SNAP) 4. one-side and two-sided 5. direct and mediated. All these are cases of so-called specific dependence (the redness of the ball depends, specifically, on the ball). There is also a parent form of so-called generic dependence between an entity and entities of a given type (or the type itself, according to the reading). For instance, between me and air, as I am generically dependent on breathing some air, but not any air specifically. There is a somewhat large literature on dependence, including (Simons, 1987) and its references, and (Smith, 1997), for instance.53 3.1.6 Genidentity This relation is sometimes explained as the relationship in which one entity stands to another when the latter is such-as-to-have-come-forth-from the former (cut a chunk of matter in two, the sum of the separated pieces is genidentical to the chunk before the cutting). I hold from (Smith and Mulligan, 1982) that this is yet another basic relation in the technical sense this term has here. There are genidentical relations between substances, but also, possibly, between processessuals54. In the case of substances, and more generally entities of the SNAP kind, such relation is trans-ontological. It relates an entity which exists in a given ontology to another entity whose existence is recognized only in a later ontology. In the case of processes this relation is to be seen as (SPAN) intra-ontological, unless taking an algebraic view on ontologies (and conceiving of fragments of a universal SPAN ontology as ontologies themselves), or unless some other criterion for indexing SPAN ontologies is given (I am thinking of definitions of SPAN ontologies as bounded by the now, but tentatively also, of granularity).

53

I am making an instrumental use of the notion of dependence and, clearly, do not claim to hold any rigorous nor even well founded insight, for that kind of quality, see (Correia, 2003). 54 See pages 70-74 of (Smith and Mulligan, 1982) and note 171.

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3.2 SNAP Structures I would like to deal here with the realm of continuants in time. A maximally adequate framework for these entities is one which relies on presentism as its fundamental assumption. Presentism is the doctrine according to which all entities which exist, exist at the present time. We should make clear that this is a meta-ontological claim and thus will have to be handled by features that in an adequate framework are meta-ontological. Accordingly an ontology of continuants will always have to be temporally indexed. From the privileged standpoint of the now, all there is exists really now and thus the ontology accounts for things that there are as they are now. From there, it becomes possible to define a number of relations among entities of a given SNAP ontology, i.e., SNAP intraontological relations. Given the temporal index of SNAP ontologies, these relations appear as co-temporal relations. This again is a meta-ontological claim since time does not belong to the SNAP form (and a fortiori the indexing times do not belong to the SNAP ontologies they index). In this section, I will present preliminary notions and terminology for dealing with SNAP entities, and some definitional axioms for a restricted number of elementary formal SNAP intra-ontological relations. 3.2.1 SNAP Ontology An ontology of enduring entities is grasped through a picture of the world as it is at a given time from the perspective of enduring entities. These ontologies instantiate the SNAP form presented in 2.2. I shall thus use the predicate Snap in order to denote these ontologies, and Snap(x) is to be read x is an ontology of enduring entities or, to use our imagery, x is a SNAP ontology. Of course, the following holds: Snap() () (19)

Temporal Index . A SNAP ontology is always given at a time t. I will write index(, t) which is to be read t is the time-index of . I will discuss time for itself in the next section and here use only the predicate TI applying to instants of time. index(, x) (Snap() TI(x)) (20)

So, here x is to be taken as a time-point. Indeed, I rely on a presentist intuition from which it follows that real existence is at a moment, although nothing forbids (indeed many things would seem to suggest, as (Ingarden, 1964) shows) having extended but atomic momentary times (such as now). For the sake of explanation, it is just as convenient here to treat instantaneous times as mathematical points (an extended moment would contain many such points). In addition to a presentist motivation, it is necessary

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that at least elementary e-ontologies be instantaneous in order to prevent the co-temporal obtaining of two contradictory propositions about a given existent. 3.2.2 SNAP Entities A constituent of a SNAP ontology is no more and no less than having its existence recognized by such a token ontology of enduring entities. It might be worth emphasizing for the sake of clarity that endurants are those objects which are constituent of some SNAP ontology. Although in this wording, the claim might sound trivial, it accounts for the dissectivity and strong cumulativity of SNAP-Entity. Thus, SNAP ontologies are ontologies of SNAP entities, and only of these entities. const(x, ) (SnapE(x) Span()) (21)

Spatial Regions. Space the universal spatial region - is a designated individual, named Space. Space is an endurant, a SNAP entity. SnapE(Space) I define SR in terms of Space as spatial regions are parts of the latter.55 SR(x) def p(x, Space) Thus, as a corollary, spatial regions are SNAP entities: SR(x) SpanE(x) (24) (23) (22)

By default, it seems to me that BFO holds that Space is a constituent of all SNAP ontologies: Snap() const(Space, )) At any rate, the following weaker ought to hold:56 Snap() x (SR(x) const(x, )) 3.2.3 Partitions of SNAP Entities Summarizing the discussion on the SNAP form and with the proper vocabulary introduced, here are some categorial partitions of SNAP which follow more or less diagrammatic representations known so far:
55

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Contrast with (Randell et al., 1992) where the universe is defined as that entity to which all regions connect. 56 This might be more adequate when defining spatial restrictions of a SNAP ontology, however, it suggests that one could want to be careful, if not more subtle, in introducing spatial regions in a restriction. I will not discuss restrictions of ontologies in this part of the report.

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The first is tentative (it is shorter to write this once than each partition in the respective subcategories): partition57(SnapE, Substantial, Trope, SR) Given that CSR(x) Substantial(x) 58 Ill allow: partition(CSR, FCSR, PBCSR) Then, alternatively, this: partition(Substantial, RSubstantial, QSubstantial) or the likes of these: partition(Trope, RTrope, QTrope) partition(CSR, RCSR, QCSR) (31) (32) (30) (29) (28) (27)

Again, recall that I do not handle categorially the notions of parts and aggregates of substances, nor even introduce predicative notations for these but rely on mereological notions available. 3.2.4 Existence Existence at a Time. Constituents of ontologies are those entities whose existence is recognized by an ontology. This is generally true for all ontologies and entities. In the case of SNAP ontologies, given their temporal index, this has a more specific meaning. Being a constituent of a time-indexed ontology amounts to existing at the indexing time.59 I will write exists-at(x, y) and read x exists at y. Thus, the following definition: exists-at (x, y) def (Snap() index(, y) const(x, )) (33)

It follows from the definition that this relation is restricted in principle to continuants in time, that is, in BFO, SNAP entities are found in the first argument place and instants of time (TI) are found only in the second argument place: exists-at(x, y) (SnapE(x) TI(y)) (34)

Recall the discussion of Partition and a working understanding of subsumption in 2.1. Though really, what one would want to write is that CSR is the predicate corresponding to a subcategory of the category of substantial entities to which corresponds Substantial. With this in mind, one could say also that CSR is a subpredicate of (or more specific predicate than) Substantial. 59 It is not the case with occurrents since properly speaking they do not exist in time, but are located in time.
58

57

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The relation exists-at holds between entities, it is clear however from the above that it has a strong meta-ontological flavour (because it is trans-ontological too, in particular, while x belongs to a SNAP ontology, y is a constituent of a canonical SPAN ontology encompassing all time). Space exists at any time, hence: TI(x) exists-at(Space, x) and therefore, for each time there is at least one SNAP ontology: TI(x) index(, x) (36) (35)

Extended Existence.60 Enduring entities exist during an extended period of time and at each instant in this period (in contradistinction with perdurants which are such that at each moment or smaller period of their existence, only a part of themselves exists). In other words, endurants exist continuously and persist identically for a certain temporal interval. Although their existence at a time is more elementary in our framework, we may speak about existence during a period of time. To this end we define a relation between a SNAP entity and an extended period of time during which it exists. Here TR is the symbol for the predicate under which fall regions of time of arbitrary length (TR subsumes TI). We symbolize our relation exists-during and write: exists-during(a, b) for a exists during the period of time b, i.e., a exists at every instant in b: exists-during (x, y) def (TR (y) z ((TI (z) p(z, y) exists-at (x, z))) 3.2.5 SNAP Intra-ontology A SNAP intra-ontological relation is such that its relata are common constituents of a SNAP ontology. Given the fact that these relations have all their relata in a given SNAP ontology, and that this ontology is temporally indexed by a moment of time, all these relations will be co-temporal. The following axiom schema holds for SNAP intra-ontological relations. Again, I use r as a schematic letter for any given such relation: (r(x, y, ) index(, t)) (exists-at(x, t) exists-at(y, t)) (38) (37)

r(x, y, ) means that r holds of x and y in . As seen in 3.1, the use of an ontological index or parameter for r is necessary. It might be indeed that the holding of the relation between its two entity-relata be contingent, in other words, true only in a restricted number of ontologies only. The falsity of the relationship between the two in a given
60

I consider that extending temporal existence to non-momentary times is a matter of SNAP trans-ontology (Part II, 4.3). It thus requires a dose of meta-ontology in order to put period of times in the picture.

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ontology is not incompatible with its truth in . Nonetheless, whenever the relation holds in an ontology, it is by definition required that both entity-relata belong to that ontology. Because a SNAP ontology has a (unique) temporal index, the relata are therefore existing at that time. One should be careful not to conclude that the relata are co-temporal (i.e., any one exists whenever the other does). Since there is no reason to assume the entityrelata as eternal, one might be a constituent of an ontology while the other is not. Recall, that here existence is understood as recognition by an ontology, not merely as accounted for by the logical existential operator (cf. supra, Ontologies and Entities in 3.1). I will briefly survey definitional material for elementary formal relations which are the most significant for SNAP intra-ontology. These are relations which allow to account for characteristics of the entities constituting a given SNAP ontology in terms of their mereological and mereotopological structures, spatial disposition and location at a spatial region, and the inherence of tropes (SNAP dependent entities) in substantials (SNAP independent entities). For the sake of exposition, I will drop the ontological index of these relations (although ontological indexing should be borne in mind by the reader), unless specifically needed. 3.2.6 Mereology in SNAP Here I review the most elementary features of mereology in SNAP and suggests some salient forms of the parthood relation (i.e., subrelations). Recall that all three main categories of SNAP entities (substantials, tropes, and spatial regions) are dissective. It is convenient to introduce specific forms of the parthood relation on the restrictions of the domain which each high-level category defines in SNAP. ppIND(x, y) ( Substantial(x) Substantial(y) pp(x, y)) ppDEP(x, y) ( Trope(x) Trope(y) pp(x, y)) ppSR(x, y) ( SR(x) SR(y) pp(x, y)) (39) (40) (41)

With these relations, it becomes possible to relax aforementioned constraints (cf. supra, 3.1.1). Dissectivity and cumulativity can be restricted in regard to these relations on their respective domain of definition. These properties become trivial. But, on the other hand, we gain more freedom when it comes to handle putative cross-categorial sums. What these sums are precisely for BFO, it is in my understanding still an open issue. It should be noted that in any event, such sums will not come across as new or extra entities. They are given in an ontology as soon as their constituents are given. The issue is whether such non extra entities have an explanatory role to play.

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3.2.7 Spatial Locational Relations Spatial location is the third high level primitive for cross-categorial relationship in SNAPs intra-ontology. There are a number of relations which fall under the family of locational relations and this variety is preserved in spatial locational relations. They all have in common that they relate an entity to a spatial region which the former occupies (somehow). All the relations described in this section are SPAN intra-ontological. They relate entities of the same SNAP ontology. I very much like the treatment of spatial localization given by Casati and Varzi in their (Casati and Varzi, 1996). These authors are careful not to commit their formalism to either substantivalism or relationism about space. I acknowledge the fact that I will be re-using their formal theory in the context of substantival space. I will here focus the main relations of exact, partial and whole location (Casati and Varzi have also a generic location which subsumes all of the previous but which I will not use). In addition, I hold that relations of approximate location could be added to the theory of spatial location. Despite the fact that SNAP ontologies are temporalized and are indexed at a moment of time, not all locational relations are functional. Exact location (in space) is, however, at a given time (and that it can be taken at a time is warranted by its intra-ontological character). Later, I shall discuss temporalized versions of these relations (Part II). Exact location in space (ex-locs) is the primitive locational relation. It holds between an entity and the portion of space it fully and only occupies, i.e., with which it is co-incident, or co-extended in the case of extended regions. The location of an entity is thus a part of space at any part of which a part of the entity is located (possibly an improper part). This is precisely the meaning of the boundedness in space of SNAP entities. ex-locs(x, y) (SnapE(x) SR(y)) 61 (42)

Partial Location in space (pa-locs) is the relation between an entity and a region of space at which a part of the entity is exactly located. pa-locs(x, y) def z (pp(z, x) ex-locs(z, y)) (43)

Whole location (wh-locs) is the relation between an entity and a spatial region which has the entitys exact location as a part. wh-locs(x, y) def z (pp(z, y) ex-locs(x, z))
61

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This relation and its variants would be definable in the event that a more general (exact) location relation, ex-loc, had been taken as primitive. Straightforwardly then: (42') ex-locs(x, y) def SnapE(x) SR(y)) ex-loc(x, y)

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Thus, we have the following: ex-locs(x, y) (pa-Locs(x, y) wh-locs(x, y)) (45)

Notice in addition that ex-locs is an equivalence relation. Actually, it is an identity condition for spatial regions, i.e.: (ex-locs(x, y) SR(x) SR(y)) x = y (46)

Remark. Spatial regions are here assumed to have an existence of their own, in particular, location is as yet not conceived mereologically. The question remains open however and BFO might evolve on this issue. Notice that in the event in which location is conceived mereologically, BFO would introduce yet another form of parthood, namely, between spatial regions and other entities. This suggests however that co-location is a form of mereological overlap (by a spatial part). Incidentally, to my understanding, it tends to give incentive to treating mereologically the inherence of tropes in substances. Although I am theoretically sympathetic to this view, I will not pursue this direction since BFO officially or tentatively rejects this approach. On the other hand, it does not seem advisable to take location as a relation of parthood between a substance or a trope and a spatial region in this order. The account of locational change in particular would be even more baroque, as we would end up with allegedly pure spatial regions changing their concrete parts over time. Change is not the more difficult issue however, it only illustrates the puzzle of such cross-categorial parthood. I will say no more here about these alternative approaches to spatial location. 3.2.8 Spatial Relations Spatial relations constitute an important family of relations in BFO. They are relations which obtain between entities in virtue of the relations obtaining between these entities respective spatial location. As with locational relations, spatial regions are trivially themselves in such relations. The family of spatial relation can be divided into further subfamilies, including: topological relations (having to do with relative connectedness for instance), distance relations (most primitive are qualitative, e.g., being far of, between two entities), and orientation relations (above, left-of, south-of, and so on).62 Among others, spatial collocation is immediately as follows: colocateds(x,y) def z (ex-locs(x, z) ex-locs(x, z))
62

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There is a rich literature on issues relating to spatial representation and reasoning going beyond the scope of what is alluded to here and worthy of interest, in particular (Cohn et al., 1997; Galton, 2001).

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Spatial Part. This is a more specific form of parthood, in short a spatial part of a SNAP entity is that part which fills a part of the location of the entity. Categories are dissective via the relation of spatial part (so a spatial part of a substantial is a substantial, a spatial part of a trope is a trope and so on and so forth). 3.2.9 Inherence The most salient form of dependence in SNAP is the relation which holds between a trope (a dependent SNAP entity) and the independent (typically, a substance) in which it inheres. For instance, between the redness of the ball and the ball. I shall use here the name inheres-In for this relation; inheres-In(x, y) is to be read x inheres in y, where x is the dependent entity (more precisely, a trope) and y the independent one (more precisely, a substance or some like). inheres-In(x, y) (depends-On(x, y) Trope(x) Substantial(y)) (48)

Obviously inheres-In is neither reflexive nor symmetric, nor even transitive. Since inherence is here an intra-ontological relation, it follows that both its relata are common constituents of a given SNAP ontology. However, this is already entailed by (Aspec of intra dependence). (inheres-In(x, y) const(x, ) const(y, )) = ' (49)

In BFO, inherence is not a form of parthood. It thus respects the categorical divide alluded to in section 2.2.1. Because this is a non trivial metaphysical claim, it is worth asserting as an axiom (which really is entailed by the constraints on the relation). ~ (inheres-In(x, y) x y) I took inherence as a primitive, but we could try to define it.63 A Family of Inherence Relations. I would like to propose inheres-In as the most general form of relation between a dependent and an independent. From there, I propose a few forms of inherence which account for specific settings of this relation:
It looks like in an axiomatization of BFO, we might want to define inherence in terms of dependence and substantials (more generally the complement of the category of tropes in that of SNAP entities). Then Trope(x) can be defined as x is in the the domain of the inherence relation. Suppose Substantial is primitive (Substance is to be defined), Space is taken for granted and depends-On is primitive as well. The definitions could go as follow: inheres-In(x, y) =def Substantial(y) depends-On(x, y) ~ (Substantial(x) SR(x)) (48') colocateds(x,y) and (48'') Trope(x) =def y inheres-In(x, y) We could then infer the partition of SnapE, although the viability of this solution apparently demands the rejection of cross-categorial sums).
63

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1. direct inherence, symbolized d-Inheres-In 2. partial inherence, symbolized pa-Inheres-In 3. whole inherence, symbolized wh-Inheres-In 4. conditional inherence, symbolized cond-Inheres-In. Direct inherence is the more specific relation of inherence which accounts for an independents (exclusive) ownership of a trope. It is based on this relation that we are entitled to say that a trope is precisely that of an independent SNAP entity and no other. Chiracs presidentship is a particular presidentship which is no others, he did not inherit that of his predecessor, Francois Mitterand. He will not transmit it to his successor. Or that the balls redness is the redness of this ball and no other entitys, not even parts of the ball. Each part of the ball has its own redness, although if the ball is uniform in color, these rednesses might be exactly similar (same hue, brightness, and intensity).64 That is to say, direct inherence is functional in its second argument (it is a relation between a trope and its unique bearer): (d-Inheres-In(x, y) d-Inheres-In(x, z)) y = z (51)

In contradistinction, a given substance may of course have more than one trope directly inhering in itself. Direct inherence does not carry over proper part, i.e., a trope is specific to the independent in which it inheres. ~ (d-Inheres-In(x, y) pp(y, z)) d-Inheres-In(x, z)) (52)

We may nonetheless design additional forms of inherence which comport a mereological element, these are forms indirect inherence. In the first place partial inherence is a relation between a trope directly inhering in a substantial and a part of this substantial which participates in the existence of the trope. This is for instance the relation between the strength of a human being (supposing there is such an entity) and her heart (the strength of the human being partially inheres in her heart). pa-Inheres-In(x, y) def z ( d-Inheres-In(x, z) p(y, z)) (53)

Conversely, we may define whole inherence as a relation between a trope directly inhering in a part of a substantial and that substantial (the strength of the heart wholly inheres in the human being). wh-Inheres-In(x, y) def z ( d-Inheres-In(x, z) p(z, y)) (54)

64

Resemblance between particulars is explained in terms of universals, in short, as co-instantiation of certain universals.

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There seems to be incentive for endorsing the view that a trope wholly inhering in a substantial and a trope partially inhering in a part of this substantial could be in a mereological relation. E.g. the strength of the heart of a human being is a part of that human beings strength. Direct, whole and partial inherence are forms of inherence: (d-Inheres-In(x, y) wh-Inheres-In(x, y) pa-Inheres-In(x, y)) inheres- (55) In(x, y) Moreover, whole and partial inherence are implied by direct inherence (this is a corollary of their definition): d-inheres-In(x, y) ( wh-Inheres-In(x, y) pa-Inheres-In(x, y)) (56)

If a trope t directly inheres in substantial s, and that s is exactly located at region r, then t is exactly located at r. d-Inheres-In(x, y) ex-locs(y, z) ex-locs(x, z) Generally, the location of a trope overlaps a substantial in which it inheres: (inheres-In(x, y) ex-locs(x, s) ex-locs(y, s')) o(s, s') And more specifically, whole inherence entails parthood among locations: (wh-Inheres-In(x, y) ex-locs(x, s) ex-locs(y, s)) p(s', s) and, partial inherence, the inverse of parthood: (pa-Inheres-In(x, y) ex-locs(x, s) ex-locs(y, s)) p(s', s) (60) (59) (58) (57)

Suppose the substantial s has a proper part s1 located at a proper part of r, named r1 (a substantial as well). How is t (a trope directly inhering in it) located with respect to r1? It can't be exactly located at r1, it is already exactly located at r and r1 is a proper part of r. For the same reason, it cannot be wholly located at r1 (because, here, r1 is necessarily smaller than the exact location r of t). t has to be partially located at r1, that is, there is a part of t, t1, which is exactly located at r1. Two possibilities remain: i) there exists t1, a trope which inheres directly in s1 (a part of s exactly co-located with t1) ii) t has a spatial part exactly located at r1 but which does not inhere directly in s1. (t is clearly the sum of its spatial parts, however, it is not clear whether t is the sum of the tropes inhering directly in the parts of s.) -53-

To my understanding, there is now the following alternative in the treatment of complex attribution concerning the respective roles of inherence and dependence: i) broaden the constraints on inherence and introduce a relation of dependence among tropes: inheres-In(x, y) (d-Inheres-In(x, y) z (d-Inheres-In(z, y) z x (61) depends-On(z, x))) ii) keep tight constraints and introduce a relation between two tropes, trope-Requires, the first requiring the second to be a trope of a given substance in order for the former to inhere in that substance: cond-inheres-In(x, y) (inheres-In(x, y) z (d-Inheres-In(z, y) trope- (62) Requires(x, z))) with (inheres-In(x, y) trope-Requires(x, z)) inheres-In(z, y) (63)

It seems to me that solution i) tends to mess up the taxonomy and that although tricky, ii) is intuitively more accurate and has the benefit of illustrating a peculiar relation of ontological dependence between tropes. I will say no more about this relation of requirement for now, as I have no idea of how to make sense of it without recourse to universals65. In order to avoid modal mess, and as with depends-On, I take trope-Requires as a primitive. The existential dependence of tropes on substantials may be formulated as follows: (Trope(x) const(x, )) y (const(x, ) inheres-In(x, y, )) (64)

In other words, any trope which is a constituent of an ontology is such that there exists a bearer in that ontology. (The assertion has, of course, no modal power.) Notation: the non indexed inherence relations used here are to be understood in the previously presented framework for BFOs formalization according to the following schema: inheres-In(x, y) (const(x, ) (const(y, ) inheres-In(x, y, )) (65)

65

Such dependence relations among tropes (particulars) are to be understood as corresponding to or coming from relations of dependence between certain property-universals.

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3.2.10 Partial Conclusion I presented some of the most salient formal relations in SNAP intra-ontology. In particular, nearly half a dozen elementary ones from which it is possible to build more complex relations. Such construction is motivated however by mostly pragmatic matter and a simple algebraic exercise once the metaphysical grounds are cleared. This work is in progress and there is no use attempting the tedious exercise of laying out all conceivable relations at this stage.

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3.3 SPAN Structures Temporally occurring and perduring entities in BFO are located at a (period or instant of) time and unfold through time. In contradistinction with BFOs framework for endurance (namely, SNAP), a form of eternalism is regarded as adequate for SPAN by BFO. I tend to regard as open the question whether full eternalism or a restricted view which only takes into account the past and the present moment is to be preferred. Either an all time encompassing or a growing spatio-temporal manifold will do. Reality within the realm of perduring entities is given in a way that outflanks the present time. It turns out that the role of the present or of a particular instant (corresponding to a slice of the spatio-temporal manifold) is of importance when articulating the two frameworks, in particular, when bringing occurrents within reach of the presentist inspired picture of the framework for endurance. But presentism, or simply momentary temporal incidence, although adequate for this meta-ontological task, does not leave much room to account easily for full-fleshed perdurants. In a word, I will work under the assumption that the intuition according to which occurrents which are extended in time are located at extended regions of time, that they have (proper) temporal parts given on a par (ontologically speaking), and that they know of a temporal order is correct. Time itself is a constituent of this reality. It is at the very least the stance which I will assume in the forthcoming description of SPAN. 3.3.1 SPAN Ontologies An ontology of occurring and perduring entities in BFO is formed by a depiction of the part of reality constituted by occurrents throughout time. These ontologies instantiate the SPAN form presented in 2.3. In as much as ontologies of endurants are analogous to snapshots of reality, ontologies of BFOs perdurants are analogous to video. In the context of BFO, I shall abbreviate ontology of occurring and perduring entities by using SPAN ontologies. I use the predicate Span in order to denote these ontologies (Span(x) is to be read: x is an ontology of perduring entities or, to use the institutional imagery, x is a SPAN ontology). Remark. It might be unclear why I am speaking of SPAN ontologies (in the plural) after mentioning the institutional stance according to which there is only one SPAN ontology (modulo granularity). Forthcoming discussion will explain this use (Part II, 4.3.2). Of course, the following hold: Span() () and, moreover: -56(66)

~ (Snap() Span()) 3.3.2 SPAN Entities

(67)

A constituent in a SPAN ontology is an entity whose existence is recognized by . Here too, it is worth emphasizing for the sake of clarity that SPAN entities are those entities which are constituents of some SPAN ontology. For this reason, I called these entities SPAN entities. The predicate SpanE denotes SPAN entities.66 SPAN entities are constituents of SPAN ontologies only, and SPAN ontologies are ontologies of SPAN entities only: const(x, ) (Span() SpanE(x)) Here or at this level, I consider that Span and SpanE are interdefinable. Remark. A SPAN intra-ontological relation is such that its relata are common constituents of the same SPAN ontology. SPAN intra-ontological relations are, in an extension version of the framework I present, capable of being given an ontological index. It is however inessential for the discussion of these intra-ontological relations as such. I will postpone this discussion to 4.3.2 (Part II). And in the light of this forthcoming discussion, I will here assume in the remainder of this section fixed ontological indices for the relations presented. 3.3.3 Time Time is a designated individual, named Time. Time is a genuine existent, although a quite peculiar one, and it is a perdurant. Obviously, it is a SPAN entity: SpanE(Time) TR for temporal regions is defined as follow: TR(x) def p(x, Time) And the following comes as a corollary: TR(x) SpanE(x) (71) (70) (69) (68)

66

This has the advantage of cutting through the terminological issue as to whether these entities should be called perdurants (as instantaneous entities clearly do not perdure) or occurrents which, although already a better term, is not without having a confusing taste. The latter term seems to give an intuitive advantage to momentary entities and to render slightly uneasy its application to pure spatiotemporal regions (since processuals occur at a time, for instance, it seems that times are degenerate cases of occurrences). Enough with terminology for now.

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Individual times are constituents of SPAN ontologies, since they are perdurants. Moreover, time is always part of a SPAN ontology, i.e., there is always an individual time. Span() x (TR(x) const(x, )) 67 (72)

I am tempted to claim that there is always Time in a SPAN ontology (which simplifies the business of defining temporal regions), however, I shall introduce in Part II the notion of temporal restriction of SPAN ontology analogously to the spatial restrictions of SNAP ontologies alluded to earlier. For the sake of it, heres a beautiful assertion: Span() const(Time, ) 68 (73)

There are both extended and momentary regions of time. I introduced notation for instants (TI) but shall not do so with extended regions, and stick with TR in the general case. TI(x) TR(x) (74)

Remark. There are no empty times in BFO, i.e., time but no happening, and therefore no purely temporal ontology. Thus, since there is a sense in which time is an ontologically dependent SPAN entity, in any SPAN ontology there is at least one non purely temporal existent. An intuition which incidentally fits the understanding of temporal relationism (time is not an independent existent, but just amounts to an arrangement of concrete happenings). Span() x (SpanE(x) ~TR(x) const(x, )) 3.3.4 Spacetime Spacetime is a designated symbol for spacetime, the whole of the (pure) spatiotemporal universe. Analogously to the case with Time: SpanE(Spacetime) Spatiotemporal regions are defined as follows: STR(x) def p(x, (Spacetime) And the following comes as a theorem: STR(x) SpanE(x) Again, I am tempted to assert:
67 68

(75)

(76)

(77)

(78)

The converse is intended as trivial. This, of course, is thought of as entailing the weaker claim.

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Span() const(Spacetime, )) and, at any rate, the weaker claim: Span() x (STR(x) const(x, )) 3.3.5 Partitions in BFO

(79)

(80)

The category of SPAN entities is therefore partitioned into processuals, spatiotemporal regions and temporal regions.69 partition(SpanE, Processual, STR, TR) I mentioned quasi and regular entities, this would give: partition(Processual, RProcessual, QProcessual) (82) (81)

Remark. The categorial lay out of SPAN seems poor (minimal) at the level of interest here. This is because I abstain from treating other distinctions categorially. But given that according to the rationale endorsed here (partition manipulating predicates), one could probably write the adequate assertions. Notice however that in order to claim that the pseudo-categories of processes and that of their parts are disjoint, one needs to restrict talk about the relevant entities to those recognized in a given (token) ontology I havent made that formally explicit in my use of partition, just add the relevant ontological indexes. Again, I contend that the relevant entities are sufficiently well captured with an adequately developed mereological apparatus. 3.3.6 Temporal order The basic primitive relations for temporal order which I will present are relations between time instants. The informal motivation is a general leaning toward presentism. This comes in handy when addressing basic features of SNAP entities. Nonetheless, there will be a need for relations which account for order between extended time periods. I will not formally address this need however. The topic has become more than a classic of temporal calculus since (Allen, 1984). I will give considerations to the instrumental notions necessary for going further with the presentation of BFO. The relations in question are not unrelated to the mereology of temporal regions. Later, I will define generalized forms which hold somewhat metonymically of concrete SPAN entities (processuals) in virtue of the order relations holding between their respective temporal

69

BFO rejects any notion of dependent SPAN entities or tropes of processes anlagous to SNAP tropes. The only dependencies are mereological and maybe causal. I believe this state of affairs ought to change.

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location, the locative apparatus provided below will then be used in order to properly define these relations. I use the relation before (and its converse after) in order to account for the temporal order between moments of time. There is no branching time in the theory.70 It thus appears that i) time moments are given a primitive existence, ii) they are linearly ordered by the before relation. before is a relation between non extended temporal regions: before(x, y) (TI(x) TI(y)) (83)

This is a linear order, it is thus transitive and satisfies trichotomy on the domain of temporal moments. after is the converse relation of before: after(x, y) def before(x, y) Then, trichotomy can be expressed as: (TI(x) TI(y)) (before(x, y) (x = y) after(x, y)) (85) (84)

Remark 1. The view on time is exemplified by so-called Newtonian view. Thus, it gives rise in both SNAP and SPAN to an approach to spacetime which in essence can be seen as linear ordering of a succession of snapshot of an enduring spatial universe (SNAP) or of temporal slices of the spatiotemporal manifold (SPAN). But notice that both views can not be equated, despite the commonality of the ordering. In SPAN, the spatiotemporal universe is a perdurant, in SNAP, there is no spatio-temporal universe, only an enduring spatial universe. A temporal slice of the former is not equal to the latter at a time. The former is a substratum for processual, the latter for concrete SNAP entities. None the less, their relation will appear to be a form of co-incidence. Remark 2. For extended periods of time, it is possible to give some elements of ordering, and relative comparison, without entering in too tedious details. The first elements of ordering will be given by mereology. If a period of time is a proper part of another, the former will be less extended, but not occur earlier or later than the latter. But this is about all that can be said with mereology. Indeed, if we take into account scattered temporal regions, even proper overlap (i.e., sharing of a proper part) will not help in telling which region started earlier than the other. There is thus a need for topological consideration about boundaries (temporal boundaries), starting and ending points, but also

70

However, it seems desirable to me to seriously consider the possibility of managing branching time in the future in the theory.

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connectedness. There are apparatus for both interval logic and mereotoplogical treatments of temporal regions which could be used or built on for our purpose. See for instance, (Allen, 1984) or (Randell and Cohn, 1989; Randell et al., 1992). BFO will try to handle boundaries in the spirit of Smith (1997). 3.3.7 Temporal and Spatiotemporal Location of SPAN Entities Time is but a dimension in SPAN. The real substratum in SNAP ontologies is the spatiotemporal manifold. Issues of locations always have to be understood in the spatiotemporal framework when it comes to an ultimate account. However, it is possible to distinguish two forms of abstraction with respect to which a sensible and useful apparatus of projective location for SPAN entities might be devised: 1. Temporal location as projection of processes upon the axis of time. 2. Spatio-temporal locations as projections of processes at an instant or over a time period on the spatio-temporal substratum. This is a useful element for a typology of processes according to their shapes in spacetime. 3. Spatial projections of processes (proxy of spatiotemporal location at a given time and over time).71 Temporal Location of SPAN Entities. SPAN entities, occurrents, are bound in time. They exist in time by being located at a given temporal region. Thus, SPAN entities can be assigned a temporal location. I use the primitive relation of exact temporal location between a SPAN entity and a region of time (instantaneous or extended) is symbolized by ex-loct. I write ex-loct(a, t) for: a is exactly located at the temporal region t or a is (exactly) temporally located at t. This relation I understand as a form of projection of SPAN entities upon the temporal dimension, in BFO this is an intra-ontological relation. ex-loct(x, y) (SpanE(x) TR(y)) 72 (86)

It would be possible to devise a series of locational relations following the Casati and Varzi schema alluded to in the general discussion of location. Every SPAN entity has an exact temporal location: SpanE(x) y ex-loct(x, y) (87)

The exact temporal location of a given SPAN entity is unique (it is the location of the whole entity), and t-loc is therefore functional:
See Part II. If ex-loct were not a primitive here, but the primitive relation ex-loc had been given at the general level (as alluded to in 3.1.3), ex-loct would definable as follows: (86') ex-loct(x, y) def SpanE(x) TR(y) ex-loc(x, y)
72 71

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(ex-loct(x, y) ex-loct(x, z)) z = y Trivially, temporal regions are exactly located at themselves: TR(x) ex-loct(x, x)

(88)

(89)

Instantaneous SPAN entities are located at instant of time. I use the specific symbol at-time for its relation to that instant (this is just a convenient shorthand which will prove useful). Thus, at-time(a, t) will read: a is temporally located at t. It is an intraontological relation between a SPAN entity and an instant of time: at-time(x, y) def (ex-loct(x, t) TI(y)) (90)

Instantaneous, or momentary, occurrents occur at a momentary temporal region. Some (called in BFO processes) are extended in time. Their temporal projection is an extended region of time. At this level of generality, there are no topological constraints on the structure of these periods. It is possible for a processual to be located at a discontinuous region, this is typical of aggregates of processes. Trivially, momentary processuals are located at connected regions, since their temporal location is atomic. Remark. The duration of a SPAN entity is thus the length of the time during which it exists, i.e., the measure of that complete period which it exists. The duration of a SPAN ontology is the duration of the sum total of its constituents. Spatiotemporal Location of SPAN Entities. Spacetime constitutes a universal substratum for all entities in SPAN ontologies. Issues of locations always ultimately have to be understood in relation to this spatiotemporal framework. I use ex-locst to symbolize the relation of exact spatiotemporal location between a SPAN entity and the region of Spacetime it is exactly located at. ex-locst(x, y) (SpanE(x) STR(y)) 73 Every SPAN entity is located at a spatio-temporal region: SpanE(x) y ex-locst(x, y) Trivially, spatiotemporal regions are located at themselves: STR(x) ex-locst(x, x) Then, again, exact location is functional and so is ex-locst. (93) (92) (91)

73

Same remark as with temporal location. The definition of ex-locst would go as follows: ex-locst(x, y) def SpanE(x) STR(y) ex-loc(x, y)) (91')

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3.3.8 Temporal and Spatiotemporal Relations Analogously to the merely spatial case of SNAP entity location, it is possible to define, based on locational relations and mereotopological and order relations among temporal regions, a set of temporal relations holding between concrete SPAN entities and similarly in the spatio-temporal case, i.e., relations between non purely temporal or spatio-temporal entities or processuals. Temporal relationalists, who deny the existence of temporal regions as entities in their own right, would rest content with temporal relations. Temporal Relations. It is possible to define a number of temporal relations holding between processuals in virtue of the ordering and mereotopological relations which exist between their temporal locations, in particular, the relation of cotemporality among entities which exist (for the SNAP ones) or are located (for the SPAN ones) during or at a given temporal region. In such cases, I shall write cotemporal(a, b) for: a and b are cotemporal. It is possible to define order of occurrence relationships based on the ordering of temporal regions and location of SPAN entities, for instance, a generalized relation of precedence obtaining between two SNAP entities when one occurs at a time which is before any time of occurrence of another. I use occurs-at though it will only be formally defined later (in 3.3.10). generalized-before(x, y) def (SpanE(x) SpanE(y) t (occurs-at(x, t) (94) t (occurs-at(x, t) before(t, t))) Or complex relations based on mereological relations and locational ones: temporal overlap (sharing of a moment of occurrence), a partial version of this relation, temporal subsumption (an entity occurs during a part of the time of occurrence of another), and so on. I am using mostly temporal instants to characterize these relations but we could also use Allens relations based on extended periods of time. Examples: o-loct(x, y) def ex-loct(x, t) ex-loct(y, t) o(t', t) 74 p-loct(x, y) def t (ex-loct(x, t) ex-loct(y, t)) coloct(x, y) def z (ex-loct(x, z) ex-loct(y, z)) (95) (96) (97)

74

Of course, one can use a ternary relation making apparent the time of overlap. The binary and ternary relations are trivially interdefinable.

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Spatiotemporal Relations. Here again, as with temporal and spatial relations, it is possible to introduce a number of spatio-temporal relations holding between processuals in virtue of their respective relation to Spacetime and of its structure. In particular, it is possible to introduce further mereological and mereotopological relations such as spatiotemporal co-location, parthood, overlap, and so on. For examples: co-incidence in Spacetime (when two entities occupy the same spatio-temporal region): colocst(x, y) def z (ex-locst(x, z) ex-locst(y, z)) overlap of location (when they only share parts of their location): o-locst(x, y) def (ex-locst(x, v) ex-locst(y, w) o(v, w)) 3.3.9 Mereology and Mereotopology in SPAN ontologies More important, however, will be relations falling under the theories of temporal mereology and mereotopology. Spatiotemporal Parthood. Spatiotemporal parthood is the most general form of parthood among SPAN entities. I will note it st-part and read st-part(x, y), x is a spatiotemporal part of y. st-part(x, y) def p(x, y) z ((p(z, y) colocst(x, z)) p(z, x)) (100) (99) (98)

A spatiotemporal part occupies a part of the spatiotemporal region occupied by the entity it is a part of. (st-part(x, y) ex-locst(x, v) ex-locst(y, w)) p(v, w) (101)

In other words, spatiotemporal parthood implies subsumption of spatiotemporal extents: st-part(x, y) p-locst(z, x)) (102)

The converse is not true. There are many ways in which a SNAP entity may be a spatio-temporal part of another. This relation is intra-ontological and exclusively intra-categorial among SNAP entities, i.e., BFOs perdurants. There will be several forms of this relation. Figure 3 gives an illustration of this variety. Notice that generally, a spatio-temporal part is typically a spatio-temporal restriction of a SPAN entity (the spatio-temporal extension of the former is a part of the latter). However, there will be senses in which we will want to distinguish between mere parts of processuals and more cohesive sub-processuals, namely, when the part will in itself contain a form of cohesion and integrality.

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(c) e (c) a d

a: temporal part b: spatio-temporal part c: scattered, w/ ending part d: temporal slice e: boundary

Figure 3. Kinds of spatio-temporal parts of SPAN entities.

Temporal Parts. SPAN entities are bound in time. Those entities which persist through time do so by perduring, i.e., by having successive temporal parts. Temporally extended SPAN entities are perdurants and have temporal parts. A temporal part a of an existent b is an existent which is a part of b and which overlaps with every part of b that exist during the existence of a.75 I write t-part(a, b) for: a is a temporal part of b. It is not a basic relation in the sense that SNAP entities do not enter in this relation, as indeed, they do not have temporal parts. I will not address the rhetorical remark according to which, trivially, endurants verify the definition of temporal parts. It is even more trivial that this relation is not defined for these entities. t-part(x, y) def part(x, y) SpanE(x) SpanE(y) z ((part(z, y) t- (103) coloct(x, z)) part(z, x)) It might be helpful to write down an immediate corollary, which specifies that SPAN entities temporally subsume their temporal parts: (t-part(x, y) ex-loct(x, t) ex-loct(x, t)) p(t, t) Here too, temporal parthood implies subsumption of temporal extents: t-part(x, y) p-loct(z, x)) As in the spatiotemporal case, the converse is not true. Temporal Slices. Typically, if a perduring existent is extended in time, its temporal parts are extended themselves. However, this is not a necessary condition and there are
75

(104)

(105)

This is in the main lines a canonical definition, see for instance (Sider, 2001).

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instantaneous temporal parts. I will call these temporal slices and use the symbol t-slice for the relation between the slice and the entity it is a slice of. This relation is but a specific form of temporal part, and inherits most of its structural features, and its only specificity is that the time at which the slice exists is a moment of time, i.e.: t-slice(x, y) def t (t-part(x, y) at-time(x, t)) (106)

As with SNAP entities, double counting is here but an artefact of axiomatization. Temporal parts and slices are not extra entities. However we may now define the formal predicate Event which holds of instantaneous processuals. We can for instance say that events are slices of processes: Event(x) def y (Processual(y) temporal-slice(x, y)) (107)

Boundaries. Provided we have already defined the notion of boundary for temporal regions, we can give a characterization of temporal boundaries for SPAN entities. The temporal boundary of an entity will be that temporal slice of the entity which is located at a boundary of its temporal projection. In the case of connected spatio-temporal wholes, there will be two temporal boundaries, namely, a beginning and an ending. When the SPAN-entity is scattered in spacetime, it will have twice as many temporal boundaries as it has maximally connected parts, i.e., components. It will still be possible to define a beginning and an ending. The beginning is its earliest temporal boundary, in other words, the beginning of its earliest component. The ending is the ending of its latest component, its latest temporal boundary. I could have used a relation of being a temporal boundary of (t-bound) in order to relate SPAN entities with their temporal boundaries. BFO is primarily interested in initial and final boundaries (beginnings and endings), but generally, to my understanding, all events will be standing in the t-bound relation with a process they are slices of. Indeed, even if they are not endings of beginnings of a given process, they are the boundaries of some of its temporal parts they are the present boundaries of a process. 3.3.10 Occurrence It is possible to define as follows the relation of occurrence of a processual at a time with that time: occurs-at,76 which will clearly collapse into at-time in the case of events. It is the relation which holds between a processual (possibly extended) and a time at which a temporal slice of this processual is located (in the sense of at-time):
76

Similarly, one may introduce a relation between an extended occurrent and an extended region of time during which it occurs (in full or part, and so on). It is rather straightforward, but arguably not as interesting as the relation to a time instant granted, this may be a presentist bias. In any case, full period of occurrence for extended processuals is but the time of exact location.

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occurs-at(x, t) def y (t-slice(y, x) at-time(y, t)) The relation of co-occurrence is just defined as follows: co-occur(x, y) def z (occurs-at(x, z) occurs-at (y, z))

(108)

(109)

Here again, it would be possible to define a series of mereologically based variants (cooccurrence over a given period, partial co-occurrence, etc). In addition, we may also introduce as needed a ternary version of co-occur which indicates the time of cooccurrence (both, relations are trivially interdefinable). There is a lot of possible variations on the theme but I shall not enter into the details of additional definitions here. Remark en passant that processuals occurring at a time are partially spatiotemporally located at the spatiotemporal location of their corresponding temporal slices (since these are spatiotemporal parts). 3.3.11 Salient Parts of Processes Going forward with a proper mereological treatment ought to lead to better characterization of a series of notions, (pseudo-)categories and relations, in particular, so as to identify mereotopological kinds of SPAN entities, e.g., extended in time and having a possibly complex structure of their temporal parts; self-connected and scattered SPAN entities; or maximally connected parts, temporal and spatiotemporal boundaries of temporally extended entities. One interesting notion to aim at then is that of a subprocess of a process (a process which is part of another process). Clearly, this is a case of spatiotemporal parthood. It would be nice to have this notion at hand, however, we will have to wait until Part II. Indeed, subprocesses can not be related intra-ontologically in a granularist treatment of SPAN (parts of processes are not themselves processes by principle). We need a transgranular and thus trans-ontological notions of parthood. I mentioned in the introduction that I find it a great impediment, but so goes the story if one is to follow the assumptions of BFO. Meanwhile, can we put to work a proxy notion while still remaining intra-ontological? Surely, we can try. There are a few candidates, they will not be much more than a restricted form of parthood. The determining characteristics will come from those of the highlighted parts of a processual. We can consider the following cases: i) a relation between two processuals. This is really spatiotemporal parthood restricted to processuals. ii) a relation between a process and a processual (aggregate) it is a part of. Now this sounds quite specific. We could call that an episode. -67-

iii) a relation between the maximally connected parts of a process or processual and this process / processual. This sounds potentially more interesting. I will try to dig a little bit the variant of the third case relating processuals to a process. In order to respect granularist sensibilities, I will not call this relation subprocess, although I think we will come close to what this might be (strictly speaking we would also require bona fide boundaries, but this requirement has its own limitations and difficulties). I will call the relation process component. I say that components of a process in a given SPAN ontology are spatiotemporal parts of that process (hence, they are processuals) such that there may be another SPAN ontology (presumably of a different level of granularity) which recognizes them as processes.77 Roughly speaking, they are self-connected spatiotemporal parts of the process. I write componentproc(x, y) for x is a component of process y. We can define this quite straightforwardly provided we have the notion of a spatiotemporally self-connected processual, which I assume to be given here: componentproc(x, y) def st-part(x, y) Self-Connectedst(x) Process(y) (110)

The defined relation is therefore reflexive and antisymmetric (since processes are spatiotemporally self-connected). It is not transitive because of its intra-ontological character. There are a couple of ways in which we could try to use this relation in order to carve up more specific kinds of parts. Consider first that temporal parts are very peculiar spatiotemporal parts of SPAN entities. That process components be proper temporal parts (in addition to the definitional requirement of being spatiotemporal parts for components) seems to me an interesting possibility, but not a requirement of course. Accordingly, I shall introduce the two additional notions of a proper component of a process and of a phase of a process. Proper components. Proper components are just components which are proper spatiotemporal parts of the process they are component of. I write pcomponentproc(x, y) for x is a proper component of y. pcomponentproc(x, y) def componentproc(x, y) st-pp(x, y) (111)

For instance, one of the cavalry charges during the battle of Waterloo was such a part of the battle. It was definitively a part of the battle and was circumbscribed to a given part of the battle field, it probably occurred during a brief time compared to the battle itself.
77

That may be is replaced with is with the trans-ontological qualification will be the mark of subprocesses.

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There might be an overwhelming fiat dimension in defining which parts of a process are and are not components. Would the sneezing of a horse belong to the charge? Spatiotemporally we surely can make a case for this. Functionally, it is less obvious. Although the sneezing may have had causal influence on the charge, it is usually not the kind of parts which we will be looking for in explaining a larger scale process. (This is to some extent a matter of classification and description, but not only. I dont believe that uttering the word granularity in that context is of any help.) It is not quite true that all components will be carved out by fiat. It is probably true however that there will be no means to find crisp criteria within SPAN only (more generally via recourses to occurrents only). The clue is given away by the description of processes involving references to non processes (SNAP entities). The charged of the French cavalry at Quatre-Bras is certainly characterized by the time of its occurrence. However, it is identified primarily by its participants (the French cavalry) and the location at which it occurred even if there is an element of vagueness namely, around QuatreBras. It could also be characterized functionally. All of this is again trans-ontological, although this time it pertains to SNAP-SPAN trans-ontology (Part II). Environments. Differently to what is the case with location, environment for is a kind of parthood it might be a good candidate for providing an individuation criterion for processuals, although maybe only contextually. It might be that in some instances environment for turns out as a more specific relation than the inverse of componentproc. The burning of Joan of Arc might be seen as a component of The Hundred Years War: the former is allegedly self-connected and is a proper spatiotemporal part of the latter however, since the Hundred Years War is a disconnected aggregate, strictly speaking, the burning of Joan of Arc is probably only a component of an episode of it. Incidentally, we see why it is important to request spatiotemporal parthood when defining the notion of a component of a process, and not merely subsumption with respect to spatiotemporal extent (because the latter is not obviously extensional, at least in BFO and to my understanding). Phases. Phases can be seen as salient temporal parts. That they are components means that they are self-connected. I write phase-Of(x, y) for x is a phase of y. I allow the relation phase-Of to be reflexive, so a process is one of its own phases. The only requirement for a temporal part of a process to be a phase is that it be a component (i.e., it is self-connected). Such characterization is also sufficient for the moment: phase(x, y) def (t-p(x, y) componentpro(x, y)) (112)

Here again, the delineation of phases seems prima facie to be a matter of fiat, and an extreme view could be that they are merely stipulated. However, as with proper -69-

component, there seems to be some clear cases of salience among the temporal parts of a process. Indeed, our best clues will be provided by considerations which go beyond mere SPAN ontology. Again, criteria for individuation of phases in processes seem to rely typically on identification of participants (or their tropes, including functions) in those processes. It is a clear cut, for instance, when a SNAP entity either starts or stops playing a role in a process. Indeed, if the process is one which brings about the birth or the death of a SNAP entity, this is even more salient.

Figure 4. Some kinds of salient parts of a process.

3.3.12 Digressive Remarks and Partial Conclusion Notice that salience of the parts discussed here is not primarily intended as cognitive salience, although it is hard to eliminate this interpretation. On the other hand, there are processes which are marked by the disappearance of a participant, for instance, but for which this part of the process has no specific salience. I am certainly looking for ways to secure reliable descriptions in order to build a formalism. But I am not claiming that any such accident is crucial to a description, rather that it is possible that there are such discontinuities and that it is possible to have a meaningful treatment of them provided one needs to account for them. A phase can be a temporal part of a process in which a particular entity plays a role. A disease (its full extended occurrence) carves out a phase in the life of (a part of) an organism in some other instances, it carves many. When the person is of an age which value is within an interval, the corresponding part of the life of that person may be seen as a phase. A phase may be a temporal part of a process / processual which is such that all efforts are directed toward the realization of a goal or a plan. For instance, therapies, medical studies, invasions are segmented into such phases which correspond to the stepwise fulfilling of a plan. That a person participates in certain processes typical for her age might define a phase of its life (puberty, menopause, etc.) I -70-

am ignoring granularity issues here and I am making a metonymical use of the term phase. There is one caveat in approaching phases through one typical feature (participant, realization of a plan, and so on). It turns out that it is possible to identify a phase by reduction of the individuating feature. For instance, suppose a single institutional agent participates in the realization of a given part in a plan and that this is also its sole role in this realization. The phase thereby alluded to may be characterized both by the fact that it realizes a given part of a plan or that it is the temporal part of the process during which participates said agent. One should be cautious here as it is unclear whether this analysis should apply. Indeed, the specification of the plan presumably mentions that the phase has a single participant, and, implicitly or by omission, that this agent has no other role in the overall process. So, it turns out to be logically equivalent to speak about the execution of the relevant part of the plan or the part of the process which is characterized by the participation of the agent. I have no reliable intuition as to how general this practice can be taken for granted and how such prima facie de dicto distinctions have to be handled in BFO. The issues of individuation and classification of processes are notorious. It seems to me that granularity is not truly an answer, it is a way of stipulating an answer on a case by case basis maybe. Nevertheless, stipulation is not sufficient and the ontology has to rest on firmer grounds. BFO has two (kinds of) tools as far as I can tell, and I am not certain whether these are sufficient to handle all aspects of the question. On the one hand is the mereotopological apparatus which I have outlined (but which remains to be fully developed, of course, if not simply found among the numerous mereotoplogies available) on the other hand is the trans-ontological analysis of participation of SNAP entities in processuals (and the trans-ontological dependence of entities of the latter sort on those of the former sort). It is to the second kind of tools that part II is dedicated.

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References for Part I

Allen, J. (1984) Towards a General Theory of Action and Time, Artificial Intelligence, 23, 123-154. Armstrong, D. M. (1978). Universals and Scientific Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bittner, T., and Smith, B. (2002). A Theory of Granular Partitions. In M. Duckham, M. Goodchild and M. Worboys (Eds.). (2002). Foundations of Geographic Information Science. London: Taylor & Francis Books. Brentano, F. (1976). Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time and the Continuum, trans. by Smith, B., London: Croom Helm, 1987. Casati, R. and Varzi, A. C. (1994). Holes and other superficialities. Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Casati, R. and Varzi, A. C. (1996). The Structure of Spatial Localization, Philosophical Studies, 82: 2, 205-239. Casati, R. and Varzi, A. C. (1999). Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation. Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press. Cohn, A. G., Bennett, B., Gooday, J. M. and Gotts, N.M. (1997). Representing and Reasoning with Qualitative Spatial Relations about Regions. O. Stock (Ed.). Temporal and spatial reasoning. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cohn, A. G. and Hazarika, S. (2001). Qualitative Spatial Representation and Reasoning: An Overview. Fundamenta Informaticae, 46, 1-29. Cohn, A. G. and Varzi, A. C. (2003). Mereotopological Connection, forthcoming in Journal of Philosophical Logic. Correia, F. (2003) Existential Dependence and its Cognate Notions. Thse de Doctorat es Lettres, Universit de Genve. Galton, A. C. (2001). Qualitative Spatial Change. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grenon, P. (2003a) The Ontology of Spatio-Temporal Reality and its Formalization. Foundations and Applications of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning (FATSR), AAAI Spring Symposium Technical Reports Series, AAAI Press, pp. 27-34. Grenon, P. (2003b) Knowledge Management from the Ontological Standpoint. Proceedings of the WM2003 Workshop on Knowledge Management and Philosophy, CEUR-WS, http://ceur-ws.org/vol-85/grenon.pdf. Grenon, P. and Johansson, I. (2003). A Formalization of the Peculiarities of Aristotelian Universals. IFOMIS Technical Report Series, manuscript. Grenon, P. and Smith, B. (2003) SNAP and SPAN: Towards Dynamic Spatial Ontology, forthcoming in Spatial Cognition and Computation. Guarino, N and Welty, C. (2000) A Formal Ontology of Properties. In, Dieng, R., and Corby, O. (eds.), Proceedings of EKAW-2000: The 12th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management. Spring-Verlag (LNCS 1937), 97-112.

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Husserl, E. (1913/1931) Ideen au einer reinen Phaenomenologie und phaenomenologischen Philosophie. English trans. by Roy Gibson, W. R.: Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. Collier-Macmillan, London. Ingarden, R. (1964). Time and Modes of Being. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas. Johansson, I. (1989). Ontological Investigations: An Inquiry into the Categories of Nature, Man and Society, London: Routledge. Johansson, I. (2000). Determinables as Universals. The Monist, 83: 1, 101-121. Lowe, E. (2002). A Survey of Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Masolo C., Borgo S., Gangemi A., Guarino, N., Oltramari, A., and Schneider, L. (2002) WonderWeb Deliverable D17. The WonderWeb Library of Foundational Ontologies and the DOLCE ontology, Preliminary Report (ver. 2.0). Quine, W. V. O. (1960). Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Randell, D.A. and Cohn, A.G. (1989) Modelling Topological and Metrical Properties in Physical Processes, in Brachman, R., Levesque, H. and Reiter R. (eds.) Proceedings of the First International Conference on the Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Los Altos, Morgan Kaufaman, 55-66. Randell, D. A., Cui, Z. and Cohn, A. G. (1992) A Spatial Logic Based on Regions and Connection, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, San Mateo, Morgan Kaufmann, 165-176. Sider, T. (2001). Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Simons, P. (1987). Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, B. (1997). On Substances, Accidents and Universals: In Defence of a Constituent Ontology. Philosophical Papers, 26, 105127. Smith, B. (2001b). Fiat Objects. Topoi, 20: 2, 131148. Smith, B. (2003). Ontology and Information Science, forthcoming in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Smith, B. and Brogaard, B. (2003) A unified Theory of Truth and Reference, Logique et Analyse 43,169-170. Smith, B. and Grenon, P. (2003) The Cornucopia of Formal Relations, forthcoming in Dialectica. Smith, B. and Mulligan, K. (1982). Pieces of a Theory. in B. Smith (Ed.). Parts and Moments: Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology. Munich: Philosophia. Smith, B. and Varzi, A. C. (1999). The Niche. Nous, 33: 2, 198-222. Smith, B. and Varzi, A. C. (2000). Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60:2, 401420. Smith, B. and Varzi, A. C. (2002). Surrounding Space: The Ontology of OrganismEnvironment Relations. Theory in Biosciences, 121: 2, 139-162. Stroll, A. (1988). Surfaces. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Zemach, E. (1970). Four Ontologies. The Journal of Philosophy, 47, 231-247. -73-

Annex: Diagrammatic Representations of BFO

This annex provides a few representations of BFO as it evolved since spring 2002. They were eventually put online by Barry Smith (http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo). I start with draft 0.0003 and provides few comments on gaps and problems with these schemas. Some of these comments led to changes although not always in a way which removed the difficulties pointed at. This is concerned with BFO from early drafts to (Grenon and Smith, 2003). I am very opinionated against some features of Barry Smiths Draft 0.0006, which failed to reflect some of the desiderata expressed in earlier drafts of this report and added the obscure categories labelled strutucal part. To my understanding the current schema is that used for (Grenon and Smith, 2003) and, terminological mismatch asides, one which corresponds to some of the views presented in this report.

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Enduring entity Independent entities and their parts and aggregates Substance Fiat part of substance Boundary of substance Aggregate of substances Occupied

Spatial Entity

Dependent Entity

Unoccupied Tunnel Hollow

Quality Requisite Optional State Role, Power, Function, Disposition

3-dimensional 2-dimensional

Cavity

Figure 5. SNAP component of BFO, version 0.0004 (02 July 2002).

The species of Spatial entity indicate a relationalist treatment. Relational regions should fall under the category of independent (substantial entities). The category of substantival regions or pure regions should be introduced with less species. In particular the occupied / unoccupied is fictional: merely conceptual or logical constructs, they are the regions occupied by some entity or by none this should not be handled as a category, even if a predicate is introduced. Status: Resolved forllowing this report (nota preliminary remark in 2.2.5) and additional comments accompanying SNAP 0.0006. The requisite / optional distinction is new. But where exactly does it apply? Does it only apply to qualities? What are (which are the) qualities anyway? How many requisite qualities for one substance? Is there one above the other? Are the requisite qualities tied up together by specific dependence? Is their relation to optional ones one of generic dependence? Do requisite and optional qualities relate differently to substances? Forthcoming work. Need more details on the species of the category labeled dependent entity and on their of realizations.

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Temporally extended entities

Portion of Spacetime 3+T-dimensional spacetime worms Temporal interval

Processual Entity

Process Fiat part of process Aggregate of processes Temporal boundary of process

Figure 6. SNAP component of BFO, version 0.0004.

In spring 2002, we discussed the possibility of having in SPAN a number of entities analogous to tropes (SNAP dependent entities) my more-realist-than-the-realist-king view prevailed for only about a week. They are no longer accounted for by BFO after this point nor are there any satisfactory treatment of properties of processes. (Grenon and Smith, 2003) alludes to spatiotemporal criteria, following the intuitions guiding this report. One alternative way could be to regard these as parts of the processes they characterized. It seems to me that there is something of both of these intuitions partly involved in Smiths suggestion of introducing introducing a category labeled structural parts in 0.0006 (see below).

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Enduring entity Independent entities and their parts and aggregates Substance Fiat part of substance Boundary of substance Aggregate of substances Quasi-substance
Figure 7. SNAP component of BFO, version 0.0005.

Spatial region of dimension 0, 1, 2 ,3 Physically bound portion of space Stationary Mobile Free Portion of Space

Dependent Entity

Quality, State, Power Quasi-quality, Quasi-state, Quasipower

It seems that the quasi / non quasi distinction ought to generate a level in itself. The categories of substance/parts/aggregates appear both in the quasi and non quasi cases. Status: See this report. The examples of species of Spatial region reflect a relationalist treatment. If there must be such entities, they must fall under the category of substantials, where precisely is open to alternatives. Preserve spatial regions as substantival (container space), good species are generated by dimensionality and topological features (e.g., self-connected). Nevertheless, the species are less ad hoc than those of 0.0004. Status: See this report.

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Concrete Entity Spatio-temporal region 3+T-dimensional 2+T-dimensional 1+T-dimensional 0+T-dimensional Temporal region Processual Entity

Process Fiat part of process Aggregate of processes Temporal boundary of process Quasi-process

Figure 8. SPAN component of BFO, version 0.0005.

I dont know why the top was labeled concrete entity, though this probably reflected a relationalist intuition behind this choice.

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Continuant

Space region

Independent Entity

Dependent Entity

3-dimensional 2-dimensional 1-dimensional 0-dimensional

Substantial Entity Substance Fiat part of substance Boundary of substance Structural part of process Aggregate of substances

Site

Quality Function

Hole, Cavity Place Niche

Power, Liability Condition Role

Figure 9. SNAP component of BFO, version 0.0006 (Barry Smith, 13 July 2003).

General comment. As usual with diagrams, it is hard to provide comments based on labels only. The original diagram (online) provides few examples for substantial entities and dependent entities (these terms used as 0.0006 use them). The use of the term continuant (and occurrent in the SPAN component) indicates an attempt at aligning with DOLCEs terminology. Is there a partition of the category of Substantial Entities? Does the category labeled aggregate of substances include aggregates of fiat parts of a substance? The talk of double counting is confusing, sometimes it is not clear whether we are speaking of fiat parts of substances or of substantials, similarly with aggregates. If that is of substances only, do we really have a partition of the category of substantials? (The strength of the mereology for substantials is not very clear). Status: Blurred, see discussion in this report. What are structural parts of substance? The online version mentions shape and bauplan as examples. The first could be best understood as spatiotemporal parts, how would they differ from boundaries? However, BFOs intuition had seemed to be that shapes fell -79-

under the category of dependent entities (being tropes). Is there duplication of concepts/entities? One interpretation seems to be that structural parts are or give the necessary/essential features of an entity (a continuant). It seems that tropes could do the job and that relations between tropes could account for the dependency at stake. It seems to me that structural parts are some sort of substantivalized haecceity. Are they in the SNAP ontology conceived as parts for symmetry reasons with the SPAN ontology? Are they not conceived as tropes because other tropes depend on them (hence, they are relatively independent). Structural parts are obscure and seem to denote a category mistake, they come across as fictitious. Status: It seems that the notion is derived from the use of the term in biology. Remains obscure. (Grenon and Smith, 2003) ignored structural parts. Why arent boundaries not structural? Just wondering. Because they are dependent upon substances? But structural parts as well (since they are parts). What depend on them are tropes? other parts? Sites do not form an additional second level category below the category labeled Independent Entity. Sites should be special kinds of aggregates of substances (or aggregates of parts and aggregates of substances). If the categories labeled fiat parts and aggregates are the narrow ones, there is a better claim for making that of sites a direct specialization of that of substantials. Otherwise, it falls under aggregates of . In any case, there should not be the proposed third level distinction between substantials and sites, else substantials has in this version a very peculiar meaning (disjunction of the 4 categories below, doesnt include parts of aggregates or aggregate of parts of different distinct substances, and so on); the label Independent Entity should be replaced with Substantial Entity. Status: (Grenon and Smith, 2003) follows this reports (largest interpretation for categories of parts and aggregates and sites as aggregates). See 2.2.5, this report for a general rationale. The term site was arrived at to settle a terminological squeamish concerning the term concrete spatial region for the category presented in this report (similarly with setting for concrete spatiotemporal region in the SPAN component). Independent/dependent labels are misleading. Suppose we are given a relation of dependence depends-on (which one exactly is yet another issue). The labels suggest that Independent Entity is the range of this relation and Dependent Entity its domain. This is not the intended distinction. The dependent / independent terminology reflects one very specific form of dependence, namely inherence. Suggestion: replace independent with substantial and dependent with trope. -80-

Status: Partially resolved. (Grenon, and Smith, 2003) warn against the interpretation, this report is more explicit. But the former, while adopting the term substantial sticks with the term dependent. This is unfortunate. Issues with the term trope are much less dangerous than those with dependent. Related to this is the underdevelopment of the species of tropes. Species of Dependent Entity are obscure. Status: Ongoing work.

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Occurrent

Spacetime region

Processual Entity

Setting

3+T-dimensional 2+T-dimensional 1+T-dimensional 0+T-dimensional

Process Fiat part of process Aggregate of processes Structural part of process Temporal boundary

with stationary spatial component with mobile spatial component

Figure 10. SPAN component of BFO, version 0.0006 (Barry Smith, 13 July 2003).

General comment. The original diagram (online) provides few examples for processuals. They are not all especially helpful as I will suggest. The use of the term occurrent comes from the desire to align with DOLCEs terminology. However, it is unfortunate here. Regions of time and spacetime do not properly occur, they are where and when concrete entities (in contradistinction with pure regions sometimes called unfortunately abstract) occur. A better name would be perdurant, though it seems not quite adequate to instantaneous entities, Leipziger zealots will prefer SPAN entity. No temporal regions in this ontology. Where are temporal regions? (I dont think they are spatiotemporal regions and certainly not the 0+T-dimension ones). Status: Resolved. (Grenon and Smith, 2003) follows this reports and distinguish temporal from spatiotemporal regions. Is there a partition of the category of Processual Entities. Does the category labeled aggregate of processes include aggregates of fiat parts of a process? The talk of double counting is confusing, sometimes it is not clear whether we are speaking of fiat parts of processes or of processuals, similarly with aggregates. If that is of processes only, do we really have a partition of the category of processuals? Status: Blurred, see discussion in this report.

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What are structural parts of processes? The online version mentions process-shape and bauplan as examples. The first are best understood as spatiotemporal projections on spacetime (they should belong to some sort of ad hoc subcategory of spacetime regions Im not pushing too much for that) or else, they should be the analogous to SNAP dependent entities, but dependent on processes. In that case, rather than structural parts, we should have an additional category of dependent entities here as well. The category mistake with the second example is even more obvious, its even an ontology mistake. A bauplan (blueprint) is an endurant (and a dependent one, only some representations might be substantial) or else: what does this term means? Status: It seems that the notion is derived from the use of the term in biology. Remains obscure and related to the unsolved issue of qualities of processes. (Grenon and Smith, 2003) ignored structural parts of processes, the last paragraph of 6.4 in that paper alludes to the issue. Why arent temporal boundaries not structural? Just wondering. It seems that the only kind of dependent entities in SPAN are the parts of processes (including boundaries). Settings do not form an additional second level category. Settings should be special kinds of aggregates of processes. They are spatiotemporal settings above all. It is unclear whether this leads to a treatment of causality. Status: Resolved. (Grenon and Smith, 2003) follows this reports. Species of Settings are unclear (labels are meaningless). The expressions stationary spatial components / mobile spatial components doesnt make sense to me. Is the term component synonymous of participant? Status: Such putative distinction is ignored in (Grenon and Smith, 2003).

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