Kind, Collective and Quantity vs Agent, Object, Social and Physical

This is the second post of the issue series, which aims to validate the following fraction of the UFO-C ontology:

As we did on the previous post, lets review the definitions os each concept before we present the issue itself. We translated some definitions from Zamborlini's MSc. Thesis, entitled 'Study of Alternatives for Mapping Ontologies in OntoUML to OWL: Approaches for the Representation of Temporal Information'¹, for many found her explanations "user friendly" :)

UFO-A

Substance: A general type which contains individuals whose identities are well defined.

Functional Complex Individual: General category whose instances are all individuals that instantiate a Kind universal. A functional complex is the one whose instances can be composed of other functional complexes as long as the parts have different functions regarding the whole. For example, the human body is a functional complex composed of many parts with different functions such as the heart and the brain.

Collective Individual: General category whose instances are all individuals that instantiate a Collective universal. In opposition to functional complexes, instances of Collective have parts which play the same function regarding the whole. We can exemplify the concept using Forest (a set of trees) or Book Stack (an ordered set of books).

Quantity Individual: General category whose instances are all individuals that instantiate a Quantity universal. Quantity is a type which aggregates individuals which are maximal portions of an amount of matter, like the amount of water inside a glass.

UFO-C

Social Substance: Individuals which are intangible and are the product of a social convention and exists while recognized by a community.

Physical Substance: Tangible individuals which have physical properties such as mass, volume and dimensions. 

Agent: Individuals that have agentive properties, i.e. have Intentions and are capable to act (perform Actions) in order to fulfill them, besides being capable of perceiving.

Object: Opposed to Agents, Objects are passive entities, they cannot do anything, only be used (or participate) in events.

With those concepts in mind, we can now discuss our issue!

Looking at that model, one can see that every instance of Substance must also be an instance of exactly one subtype of each generalization set, because they are all disjoint and complete. The whole set of combinations is:

1. Functional Complex, Agent, Physical
2. Functional Complex, Agent, Social
3. Functional Complex, Object, Physical
4. Functional Complex, Object, Social
5. Quantity, Agent, Physical
6. Quantity, Agent, Social
7. Quantity, Object, Physical
8. Quantity, Object, Social
9. Collective, Agent, Physical
10. Collective, Agent, Social
11. Collective, Object, Physical
12. Collective, Object, Social

The issue we would like to discuss in this post is if all these combinations are valid and should be allowed by the ontology. 

From our intuition and common sense, we are tempted to say that every quantity should be a Physical Substance and also an Object. What implies that combinations 5, 6 and 8 should be forbidden. The reasoning behind it is quite simples: Quantities represent maximal portions of amounts of matter; if something is an amount of matter, then it must be physical, so that someone could touch it, or see it... but again, if something is matter, it cannot really do anything, being really hard to picture an amount of matter with intentions or having any other agentive property.

Regarding collectives, we only raise the question regarding its tangibility, which is: can there really be physical collectives? When we think about some examples like of collections like Wolf Pack, Forest, Orchestra and Fleet, they all seem like social entities, although composed of physical ones. The Brazilian Symphony Orchestra, for example, although composed by musicians (clearly physical entities), does not have a physical reference in the world itself. What makes this position controversial is that we tend to attach physical properties to social objects. Sentences like: "Where is the orchestra playing tonight?", "The area of the Amazon forest is shrinking everyday." and "The english fleet is moving south" are totally acceptable in natural language. Summing up, we are not quite sure about this restriction, but if was enforced, combinations 9 and 11 would be forbidden. 

The remainder combinations, including all the ones with Functional Complex, seem to be acceptable for us... What do you guys think?

Cheers,

Tiago and Bernardo

1 In portuguese: 'Estudo de Alternativas de Mapeamento de Ontologias da Linguagem OntoUML para OWL: Abordagens para Representação de Informação Temporal (download) '^↩