Re: Mapping SKOS into BFO

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 10:47 AM, Simon Spero <ses@unc.edu> wrote:
> Just to check:
>  how would  you axiomitize, and what is entailed by these: (first, with just
> BT, second with the more specific relations).
> Car BT Vehicle  [ BTG ]
> Honda S2000 BT Car [ BTG]
> Simon's S2000 BT Honda S2000 [ BTI ]
> Honda S2000 Steering Wheel BT Steering Wheel [ BTP ]
> Honda S2000 Steering Wheel BT Honda S2000 [ BTP ]
> Simon's S2000 Steering Wheel BT Simon's S2000 [ BTP]

CMO is concerned only with the relationships between
{classes,properties,instances} and concepts. If a class, property, or
instance is conceptual, that's fine too. In general, each of those
concepts would cmo:represent something, and the axioms relating to
those things have more to do with the way the modeler wants to make
it. The mapping of your example into SKOS is clear, mapping the same
information into OWL is also straightforward:

Car owl:subclassOf Vehicle.
Honda S2000 owl:subclassOf Car.
Simon's S2000 a Honda S2000.
Honda S2000 Steering Wheel owl:subclassOf Steering Wheel.
Honda S2000 Steering Wheel owl:subclassOf [a SomeValuesFrom;
ro:part_of Honda S2000].
Simon's S2000 Steering Wheel ro:part_of Simon's S2000.

But that's more a modeling question for the logical model than any
concern of how CMO treats it.
The only thing that would show up in CMO would be the relationship
between steering wheels and cars:

Steering Wheel Part Of Car Concept a cmo:Relation;
  cmo:represents ro:part_of;
  cmo:hasSourceRole Steering Wheel;
  cmo:hasTargetRole Car.
  skos:broader PartOf.

This gets more in to how relations work in CMO, but it illustrates how
a property can be represented. Obviously, this concept is not
comprehensive on ro:part_of, but there is never any guarantee of that
anyway.

> Also: does a concept exist before it is first conceived; does it exist after
> it is forgotten;

Again, this is out of scope for CMO. In my understanding of the
continuent/occurrent dichotomy, the lifetime of the concept is
considered separate from the concept itself. The concept is not
temporally extended, but the lifetime is.

> what about in modal contexts in which it is never conceived
> in the first place.

Then we would never have a URI for it, I would think. Universal
classes can exist without concepts for them to represent them. Think
of all the species that may have gone extinct (especially in bacteria
and achea) without any evidence of their existence.

Jim
-- 
Jim McCusker
Programmer Analyst
Krauthammer Lab, Pathology Informatics
Yale School of Medicine
james.mccusker@yale.edu | (203) 785-6330
http://krauthammerlab.med.yale.edu

PhD Student
Tetherless World Constellation
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
mccusj@cs.rpi.edu
http://tw.rpi.edu

Received on Monday, 18 April 2011 15:31:49 UTC