BFO 'participates/has participant' Relations

[Anthony Petosa]

'participates in at some time'

b participates in p at some time =Def for some time t (p has participant b at t)

'has participant at some time':

p has participant c at some time =Def for some time t (p is a process, c is a continuant, and c participates in p some way at t

'participates in at all times'

b participates in p at all times =Def for all times t, b exists at t implies (p has participant b at t)

'has participant at all times'

p has participant c at all times = Def for all times t, p exists at t implies (p is a process, c is a continuant, and c participates in p some way at t)

The "Basic Formal Ontology 2.0 Specification and User's Guide" (Smith, Barry, June 26, 2015) documentation Section 3.10.4 offers this elucidation of the 'has participant' relation"

"has_participant is an instance-level relation between a process, a continuant, and a temporal region at which the continuant participates in some way the process."

Can the preceding definitions and elucidation be reworded in a manner that breaks their circular references? To say that 'p has participant c' means, in part, that c participates in p in some way constitutes a circular reference.

[Pierre Grenon]

Hi Anthony, 

Is there anything more than stylistic involved here? 

Basically participation is something fundamental that Smith,2015 'elucidates'. 

From there, we contemplate variants of a pair of predicates which are interdefinable because they are essentially just converse. 

All the best, 
Pierre

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[wolandscat]

Related issue: I have always had difficulty with the implied definition of 'participates' in BFO, because passive involvement and active participation by entities with any level of agency are (in my view) two different things, but are treated identically in BFO. The practical difficulty this raises is that BFO doesn't (on its own) enable the distinction and separation of what we would ordinarily call 'participants' (entities with agency that have awareness of a process) and 'resources', i.e. entities (usually material) that are used in / by a process.

thomas