Discussion at ONTAC forum

Communicated from Barry Smith

Note from Paul Prueitt

There are no concepts in BFO. (Ontology is not psychology or linguistics.) BFO is a top-level ontology, with 38 types (universals, categories, kinds, classes), described here:

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bfo/

It serves as the top-level ontology of the Foundational Model of Anatomy, with some 72,000 types, and a complete ontology of biomedical entities is currently being constructed on its basis. See

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bio/OBR.pdf

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bio/ISMB/ISMB_Bio-ontologies.pdf

Not least important is

http://genomebiology.com/2005/6/5/R46

which describes the BFO ontology of relations (recently adopted by the Open Biomedical Ontologies consortium). Uniquely, among existing contributions, the BFO Relation Ontology allows the drawing of a clear distinction between relations on the level of instances (e.g. between your heart and your body) and relations on the level of types (e.g. between the type human heart and the type human body).

Barry Smith

Additional comments about [210]:

I am not sure about 'affinity' and 'path of least resistance'. Do you have definitions for these terms? It is not clear to me that 'intention' is a term that should belong to a top-level ontology; does it not belong rather to the level of psychology? In any case an intention would be an instance of the type: dependent continuant, in BFO terms.

As to affordances, environment, and the like (entities dear to my heart as a stout Aristotelo-Gibsonian) see:

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/medo/Functions_Smith.html

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/bio/niche-smith.htm

(Note from Paul Prueitt:

ah, I would have only used the term “affordance” as Gibson used it. It is noteworthy to note that Karl Pribram and I have discussed Gibson’s notion of affordance and Karl has been very insistent that Gibson refused to find the notion of internal affordance from the living system that is intention. He feels that this distinction between how Pribram sees internal and external affordances as being quite different in many respects. “Affinity” (for specific action) and “path of least resistant” (as in Newtonian systems) would not be “technical terms by my use of language in a common way to get at the meaning I attribute to “affordance” (as used by myself, as a type of “merge” of the use by Gibson and Pribram.)