This ontology has the following classes and properties.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Abstract
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Action
Actions are occurents which are caused by some presential (the agent) at every (inner and outer) time-boundary of the chronoid framing the occurent.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Amount_of_substrate
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Awareness_level
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Biological_level
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Category
Categories satisfy the following conditions: (1) Categories can be instantiated; (2) Categories can be predicated of other entities. Categories are defined intensional-with-an-s. They are, therefore, closely related to language.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Change
A change in the technical sense refers to a pair of process boundaries. Either at coinciding boundaries (then it comes close to notions like punctual'' or
instantaneous event'' as well as ``moment'' -- in a temporal reading), or at boundaries at the opposite ends of a process of arbitrary extension. The notion of change is relative to contradictory conditions between which a transition takes place. These contradictions refer to some collection of pairwise disjoint universals.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Chemical_level
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Chronoid
Chronoids are entities sui generis. Every chronoid has exactly two extremal and infinitely many inner time boundaries which are equivalently called time-points.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Concept
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Concrete
Concrete individuals have a relation to time or space (they are in time and space).
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Configuration
We consider a collection of presential facts which exist at the same time-boundary. Such collections may be considered themselves as presentials, and we call them configurations. It is further required that configurations contain at least one material object.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Configuroid
Configuroids are, in the simplest case, integrated wholes made up of material structure processes and property processes.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Continuous
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Continuous_change
For the purpose of formalizing continuous changes, a minimal chronoid universal D(c) is employed in order to capture the idea of observable differences during certain chronoids, whereas the change itself does not allow the observation of a difference. The predicate change(e1,e2, u1, u2, u, D(c)) is intended to formalize this approach. Continous changes occur over time (a chronoid).
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Continuous_process
Processes where all non-coinciding internal boundaries are intrinsic changes. These turn out as purely continuous processes, described e.g. in physics by differential equations.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Dependent
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Discrete
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Discrete_presential
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Discrete_process
Discrete processes are made up of alterations of extrinsic changes and states.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Entity
Everything which exists is called an entity.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Extrinsic_change
Deprecated. Extrinsic changes are represented by change(e1,e2, u1, u2, u), where e1 and e2 are a pair of coincident process boundaries, and u1 and u2 are disjoint sub-universals of u.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Function
A function F is a universal (conceptual structure) defined in purely teleological terms with respect to a given goal G which commonly is ascribed by means of has-function relation to entities that are the realizations of the function F, execute such a realization or are intended to do it.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/History
Histories consist of a number of process boundaries. We assume that any history can be embedded into a process, which then forms a foundation of the history. If it were not for this foundation, one would face the problem of singling out the right boundaries in order to get a natural history: It is not sensible to measure the temperature of a patient first, then determine his weight, followed by measuring his blood pressure and to consider these strangely arbitrary process boundaries as a history of the patient's body data.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Independent
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Individual
Individuals are entities which cannot be further instantiated.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Instantanuous_change
Instantanuous changes are represented by change(e1,e2, u1, u2, u), where e1 and e2 are a pair of coincident process boundaries, and u1 and u2 are disjoint sub-universals of u. Instantanuous changes are therefore changes of properties on two coinciding time boundaries.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Intrinsic_change
Deprecated. For the purpose of formalizing intrinsic changes, a minimal chronoid universal D(c) is employed in order to capture the idea of observable differences during certain chronoids, whereas the change itself does not allow the observation of a difference. The predicate change(e1,e2, u1, u2, u, D(c)) is intended to formalize this approach.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Item
An item is everything which is not a set. Also called ur-element.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Level
An ontological level, which is sth. more restricted and "part of" some gfo:Stratum.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Line
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Mass_entity
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_boundary
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_line
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_object
A material structure is an individual which satisfies the following conditions: it is a presential, it occupies space, it is a bearer of qualities, but other entities cannot have it as quality, and it consists of an amount of substrate, and it instantiates a persistant ("has identity").
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_persistant
Material persistants are particular universals whose instances are material structures; they are related to those entities which are called sometimes continuants or objects, as apples, cars or houses. Material persistants capture the phenomenon of persistance through time of a material object. A material persistant P satisfies a number of neccessary conditions. For every material persistant P there exists a process P such that the set of instances of P coincides with the set of process-boundaries of P. This implies the existence of a chronoid c such that for every time-point t of c there exists exactly one instance of P at time point t.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_point
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_stratum
According to (Poli,2001), the basic structure of the material stratum is a distinction of physical, chemical and biological levels. These levels can be further refined.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_structure
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Material_surface
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Mental_stratum
In accordance with the work of R. Poli, we divide the psychological/mental stratum into the layer of awareness and the layer of personality. Awareness comprises most of what is studied by cognitive science (perception, memory, reasoning, etc). Personality on the other hand concerns the phenomenon of will and the way in which someone reacts to her experiences.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Occurrent
Occurents have temporal parts and thus cannot be present at a time-boundary. Time belongs to them, because they happen in time and the time of the occurent is built into it. The relation between an occurent and a chronoid is determined by the projection relation. Occurents are also called generalized processes in the GFO.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Ontological_layer
Ontological_layer, all of its subconcepts and the properties layer_of and on_layer are work in progress in a premature beta state.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Persistant
Persistants are GFO's way to capture identity over time. GFO pursues an approach which accounts for persistence by means of a suitable universal whose instances are presentials. Such universals are called persistants. These do not change and they can be used to explain how presentials which have different properties at different times can nevertheless be the same.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Personality_level
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Physical_level
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Point
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Presential
A presential exists wholly at exactly one time boundary.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Process
Processes are a special kind of occurent. Processes are directly in time, they have characteristics which cannot be captured by a collection of time boundaries.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Processual_role
Processual roles are dependent processes. They are roles with a process as context.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Property_value
The concept of a property value reflects a relationship between the property of x and the same property as exhibited by another entity y.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Relational_role
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Relator
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Role
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Set
Set is a category pertaining to the individuals in the ZFC set theory.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Situation
A situation is a special configuration which can be comprehended as a whole and satisfies certain conditions of unity, which are imposed by relations and categories associated with the situation. Herein, we consider situations to be the most complex kind of presentials.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Situoid
Situoids are processes whose boundaries are situations and which satisfy certain principles of coherence, comprehensibility, and continuity. They are regarded as the most complex integrated wholes of the world. A situoid is, intuitively, a part of the world which is a coherent and comprehensible whole and does not need other entities in order to exist. Every situoid has a temporal extent and is framed by a topoid.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Social_role
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Social_stratum
On the one hand, the social stratum is divided into Agents and Institutions. Agents are the bearers of the social roles that humans play. Institutions are defined as systems of interrelated social components. On the other hand, a social system can be seen as a network in which businesses, politics, art, language (and many other facets) both present their own features and influence each other.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Space
GFO uses Brentano space.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Space_time
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Spatial_boundary
Boundaries of regions are surfaces, boundaries of surfaces are lines, and boundaries of lines are points. As in the case of time-boundaries, spatial boundaries have no independent existence, i.e. they depend on the spatial entity of which they are boundaries.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Spatial_region
Space regions are mereological sums of topoids.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/State
A process without an instantanuous change at any of its inner time boundaries is called a state.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Stratum
According to (Poli, 2001, 2002) (based on the philosopher Hartmann) we distinguish at least three ontological strata of the world: the material stratum, the mental/psychological stratum, and the social stratum stratum. Every entity of the world participates in certain strata and levels. We take the position that the layers are characterized by integrated systems of categories. Hence, a layer can be understood as a meta-category whose instances are categories of certain kinds. Among these levels specific forms of categorial and existential dependencies hold. For example, a mental entity requires an animate material object as its existential bearer.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Surface
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Symbol
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Symbol_sequence
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Temporal_region
Time Regions are defined as the mereological sum of chronoids, i.e. time regions may consist of non-connected intervals of time.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Time
The time model of GFO is based on Brentano and the glass continuum of Allen&Hayes.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Time_boundary
Time boundaries depend on a chronoids (i.e. they have no independent existence) and can coincide.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Topoid
Topoids are connected compact regions of space. They have spatial boundaries.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Universal
Universals are immanent universals. They exist in re.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Value_space
Property values usually appear in groups which are called value structures, value spaces or measurement systems. Each of these structures corresponds to some property. More intuitively, one could say that the property may be measured with respect to some measurement system. For instance, sizes may be measured with the values small''
big'' or very big'', which are the elements of one value structure. The notion of a value structure of a property is similar to a quality dimension in (Gardenfors, 2000). Further, value structures are related to quality spaces in DOLCE (Masolo, 2003}. A quality space consists of all
quales'' (our property values) of some quality'' (our property). Often it seems to be the case that a notion of distance can be defined, and that certain layers of value structures are isomorphic to some subset of real numbers, which allows for a mapping of values to pairs of a real number and a unit, as in the case of
10 kg''.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/abstract_has_part
has characteristics: transitive
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/abstract_part_of
The abstract part-of relation is denoted by p(x,y); the argument-types of this relation are not specified, i.e. we allow arbitrary entities to be arguments. We assume that p(x,y) satisfies the condition of a partial ordering, .i.e. the following axioms: reflexivity, antisymmetry and transitivity.
has characteristics: transitive
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/agent_in
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/boundary_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/categorial_part_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/category_in_layer
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/caused_by
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/constituent_part_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/depends_on
This relation captures the notion of existential dependence.
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/exists_at
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/framed_by
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/frames
has characteristics: inverse functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/function_determinant_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/functional_item_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/goal_of
"goal" here refers to "final state" in (Burek, 2006).
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_boundary
has characteristics: inverse functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_categorial_part
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_category
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_constituent_part
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_function
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_function_determinant
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_functional_item
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_goal
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_left_time_boundary
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_member
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_part
has characteristics: transitive
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_participant
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_proper_part
has characteristics: transitive
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_requirement
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_right_time_boundary
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_sequence_constituent
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_spatial_boundary
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_time_boundary
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_token
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/has_value
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/instance_of
The instantiation relation holds between a category and an item. It is not a relation between categories and individuals due to higher order categories such as "species".
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/instantiated_by
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/layer_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/left_boundary_of
Left boundary of a chronoid.
has characteristics: inverse functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/level_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/member_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/necessary_for
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/occupied_by
has characteristics: inverse functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/occupies
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/on_layer
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/on_level
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/on_stratum
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/part_of
has characteristics: transitive
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/participates_in
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/plays_role
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/projection_of
has characteristics: inverse functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/projects_to
has characteristics: functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/proper_part_of
has characteristics: transitive
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/realizes
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/requirement_of
"requirement" here refers to "initial state" in (Burek, 2006).
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/right_boundary_of
Right boundary of a chronoid.
has characteristics: inverse functional
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/role_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/sequence_constituent_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/spatial_boundary_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/stratum_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/time_boundary_of
IRI: https://w3id.org/gfo/base/value_of
IRI: http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#comment
IRI: http://purl.org/dc/terms/license
IRI: http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#versionInfo
The authors would like to thank Silvio Peroni for developing LODE, a Live OWL Documentation Environment, which is used for representing the Cross Referencing Section of this document and Daniel Garijo for developing Widoco, the program used to create the template used in this documentation.
Abstract individuals are independent from time and space (they are not in time and space). Examples: the number "2" or pi.