Ontology: Akt-Support-Ontology; Representation Language: OCML; File: foundations

This ontology was created by the Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) project. AKT is an Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC), which is sponsored by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under grant number GR/N15764/01. The AKT IRC comprises the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Sheffield, Southampton and the Open University.

;;; Mode: Lisp; Package: ocml

;;; The Open University

(in-package "OCML")

(in-ontology akt-support-ontology)

;;;A very simple top-level. We define something called THING, which 
;;;is the top-level concept in the ontology.  We then distinguish two basic 
;;;types of 'things': TANGIBLE-THING, something that has some physicality,
;;;and INTANGIBLE-THING, something which has not. We use a very open definition 
;;;of being tangible: obviusly a physical object is tangible, but also a sub-atomic
;;;particle is tangible, even if some of them are very tricky (you do not see them)
;;;you only see the trace they leave behind.  Also a piece of software will be
;;;considered a tangible thing, it is something that you can see on a floppy disk.
;;;In contrast an algorithm will be an intangible, although the file that contains
;;;its implementation will be a tangible thing.

;;;This is a stop-gap top level. Over the course of teh project we may want to extend this 
;;;and link to existing top levels (SUO, HPKB, CYC, Sowa, Guarino, etc.)


(def-class THING () 
  "This is the top-level concept in the AKT reference ontology"
  ((has-pretty-name :type string
                    :max-cardinality 1
                    :documentation "A human readable name")
   (has-variant-name :type string
                     :documentation "Other variants of the human readable name")))


(def-class INTANGIBLE-THING (thing) 
  "This comes from HPKB upper level.
   The collection of things that are not physical -- are not made 
   of, or encoded in, matter. Every Collection is an Intangible (even if its
   instances are tangible), and so are some Individuals. 
   Caution: do not confuse `tangibility' with `perceivability' -- humans can perceive
   light even though it's intangible--at least in a sense.")

(def-class TEMPORAL-THING (thing) 
  "Like in Cyc, this is something which has a temporal extent."
  ((has-time-interval :type time-interval)))

(def-class TANGIBLE-THING (temporal-thing) 
  "Something which is not intangible, something which is physical, made of matter.
   It does not matter whether things are real of imaginary.  Therefore we consider
   Mickey Mouse's car and a hippogriff as  tangible things")

(def-axiom TANGIBLE-AND-INTANGIBLE-THINGS-ARE-DISJOINT 
  (subclass-partition thing (set-of Tangible-Thing  Intangible-thing)))

(def-class INDIVIDUAL (Thing) ?x 
  "Something which is not a set."
  :iff-def (not (set ?x))

  ;;;the definitions below are effective ways to prove whether 
  ;;;somebody is an individual in OCML
  :prove-by (or 
             (and (variable-bound ?x)
                  (not (set ?x)))
             (= ?x nil))
  :no-proofs-by (:iff-def))

(def-class QUANTITY (Individual Intangible-thing) 
  "From SUO: Any specification of how many or how much of something there is. 
   Accordingly, there are two subclasses of Quantity: Number (how many) 
   and Physical-Quantity (how much).")

(def-class PHYSICAL-QUANTITY (quantity) 
 "SUO: Physical Quantities are distinguished from Numbers by the
  fact that the former are associated with a dimension of measurement."
  ((has-unit-of-measure :type unit-of-measure)
   (has-magnitude :type number)))


(def-class UNIT-OF-MEASURE (Intangible-thing) 
  "Any kind of unit of measure, metre, dollar, kilogram, etc..")

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