Functions, Malfunctioning, and Negative Causation

Jansen, Ludger

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-72577-2_7

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…For this reason, theories formulated using DOLCE tend to be easy(er) to use and understand. -We agree with Jansen and Röhl [40,81] on the external grounding of functions and the relation of functions with malfunctions. Therefore, we cannot use ontologies, such as BFO, which make incompatible ontological commitments with this view.…”

Section: An (Enriched) Subset Of the Dolce Ontologysupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Coming to BFO, the view of functions as special dispositions was expanded and defended by its authors in [2,93], and criticized by other philosophers, e.g., Röhl and Jansen [40,81], arguing that functions and dispositions must be disjoint, though related, categories. More specifically, in BFO functions are defined as follows [93]: "f is a disposition & f exists in virtue of its bearer's physical make-up & this physical make-up is something that this bearer possesses because it came into being, either through evolution (in the case of natural biological entities) or through intentional design (in the case of artifacts), in order to realize processes of a certain sort."…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Towards a formal ontology of engineering functions, behaviours, and capabilities

Compagno¹,

Borgo²

2024

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In both applied ontology and engineering, functionality is a well-researched topic, since it is through teleological causal reasoning that domain experts build mental models of engineering systems, giving birth to functions. These mental models are important throughout the whole lifecycle of any product, being used from the design phase up to diagnosis activities. Though a vast amount of work to model functions has already been carried out, the literature has not settled on a shared and well-defined approach due to the variety of concepts involved and the modeling tasks that functional descriptions should satisfy. The work in this paper posits the basis and makes some crucial steps towards a rich ontological description of functions and related concepts, such as behaviour, capability, and capacity. A conceptual analysis of such notions is carried out using the top-level ontology DOLCE as a framework, and the ensuing logical theory is formally described in first-order logic and OWL, showing how ontological concepts can model major aspects of engineering products in applications. In particular, it is shown how functions can be distinguished from the implementation methods to realize them, how one can differentiate between capabilities and capacities of a product, and how these are related to engineering functions.

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Section: An (Enriched) Subset Of the Dolce Ontologysupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a formal ontology of engineering functions, behaviours, and capabilities

Compagno¹,

Borgo²

2024

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“…In such a future ontology of health, the features need to be aligned to appropriate top-level classes. It seems to be promising to analyze many physiological functions as processes, considering that the respective dysfunctions consist in the lack of the dispositions to realize these processes [123]. Moreover, our framework is again flexible enough to allow for subtypes of aging, like linear aging , or progressive aging , in order to single out those aging processes that contribute to a specific kind of decline of health or survival.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health and Aging: Unifying Concepts, Scores, Biomarkers and Pathways

Fuellen¹,

Jansen²,

Cohen³

et al. 2019

Aging and disease

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Despite increasing research efforts, there is a lack of consensus on defining aging or health. To understand the underlying processes, and to foster the development of targeted interventions towards increasing one’s health, there is an urgent need to find a broadly acceptable and useful definition of health, based on a list of (molecular) features; to operationalize features of health so that it can be measured; to identify predictive biomarkers and (molecular) pathways of health; and to suggest interventions, such as nutrition and exercise, targeted at putative causal pathways and processes. Based on a survey of the literature, we propose to define health as a state of an individual characterized by the core features of physiological, cognitive, physical and reproductive function, and a lack of disease. We further define aging as the aggregate of all processes in an individual that reduce its wellbeing , that is, its health or survival or both. We define biomarkers of health by their attribute of predicting future health better than chronological age. We define healthspan pathways as molecular features of health that relate to each other by belonging to the same molecular pathway. Our conceptual framework may integrate diverse operationalizations of health and guide precision prevention efforts.

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“…At present, BFO characterizes functions as dispositions of bearers with a specific kind of historical development [40], although controversy exists as to the validity of the dispositional identification of functions [12] [41]. In more details, a function is a disposition that its bearer possesses in virtue of its having a certain physical makeup because of how it came into being, either through evolution (when the bearer is a natural biological entity) or intentional design (when the bearer is an artifact).…”

Section: Functions In Bfomentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Unified Dispositional Framework for Realizable Entities

Toyoshima

Barton

Jansen

et al. 2021

Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications

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Realizable entities are properties that can be realized in processes of specific correlated types in which the bearer participates. It will be valuable to create a systematic classification of realizable entities because they are useful for various modeling purposes in ontologies. In this paper we outline a unifying framework for realizable entities (including dispositions and roles) in the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) that is theoretically underpinned by J. McKitrick’s pragmatic approach to dispositions. In particular, we develop a formal ontological account of “extrinsic dispositions” and illustrate its potential applications with clarification of functions and roles in BFO.

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Functions, Malfunctioning, and Negative Causation

Cited by 5 publications

References 22 publications

Towards a formal ontology of engineering functions, behaviours, and capabilities

Towards a formal ontology of engineering functions, behaviours, and capabilities

Health and Aging: Unifying Concepts, Scores, Biomarkers and Pathways

Towards a Unified Dispositional Framework for Realizable Entities

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