Probe regarding labeling of some temporally qualified relations

[Alan Ruttenberg]

There are a number of relations which have definition which are consistent with the Relations paper and equivalent entailments to the previously used (still undefined) atemporal relations. 

For the purpose of this discussion I will focus on two relations: participation and concretization.

In the case of participation, the temporal qualification for the class relations in the Relations paper is "some time".

Has_participant

Has_participant is a primitive instance-level relation between a process, a continuant, and a time at which the continuant participates in some way in the process. The relation obtains, for example, when this particular process of oxygen exchange across this particular alveolar membrane has_participantthis particular sample of hemoglobin at this particular time.

To define the class-level counterpart of the participation relation we set:

P has_participant C = [definition] for all p, if Pp then there is some c, t such that Cct and p has_participant c at t.

The instance level relation is ternary, temporally indexed.

I believe the relation participates at some time would have entailments consistent with the class definitions wrt to class subsumption. For the instance relations, given that neither the atemporal or the at-some-time relation match the intended ternary relation, and that given the OWL definitions of each, entailments would be equivalent.

However the alternative labeling has cause some confusion about this. In order to mitigate that I'm wondering whether it would make sense to make the primary label "participates in" and have "participates in at some time" become an alternative label.

The downside is that the label would be the same as the relation defined in the reference even though the definition is not the same. OTOH, the alternative, using an undefined atemporal relation with the same name would seem to be strictly worse.

For concretization, which is not defined in the Relations paper, we don't have a similar reference. However I would argue that the natural sense of concretization more consistent with at-some-time, that at-some-time implies at-all-times, and that since concretization is not transitive, would not suffer from the issues the parthood relations (which need to be at-all-times in order to be transitive). 

Thoughts?

-Alan 

[Stefan Schulz]

I agree with the proposal regarding participation. However, I expect that in OWL ontologies the relation has_participant is much more frequently used, because having participants of a certain type is a necessary condition for most processes (e.g. phosphorylation subClassOf has_participant some Phosphate), whereas being participant of a certain type of process is much less frequently a necessary condition for continuants (e.g. Phosphate subClassOf participates_in some ???). 

Regarding concretization, could you explain why  at-some-time always implies at-all-times ?

-

Stefan

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Stefan SCHULZ  
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[Alan Ruttenberg]

On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 4:30 AM, Stefan Schulz <stefan...@medunigraz.at> wrote:

I agree with the proposal regarding participation. However, I expect that in OWL ontologies the relation has_participant is much more frequently used, because having participants of a certain type is a necessary condition for most processes (e.g. phosphorylation subClassOf has_participant some Phosphate), whereas being participant of a certain type of process is much less frequently a necessary condition for continuants (e.g. Phosphate subClassOf participates_in some ???). 

Regarding concretization, could you explain why  at-some-time always implies at-all-times ?

I'm sorry, I think I got confused and was thinking about inheres_in. 

In the case of inheres_in, we don't have a at-some-time relation as it would be equivalent to the at-all-times def given the definition of specific dependent continuant.

The proposal for concretization (and all at-some-time relations which have at-some-time inverses) is that the the as-some-time has inverse at-some-time. I need to do a more careful audit of the relations, which I will after I hear back.

So to be clear, you are comfortable with changing the preferred label of has-participant-at-some-time to just has-participant, and participates-in-at-some-time to participates-in, and have them be inverses, yes? And similarly for other relations subject to audit?

-Alan

[Jie Zheng]

I agree with the proposal and will be happy to see the changes made in BFO 2.0.

Jie