Spatial Dimensionality as a Classification Criterion for Qualities

• Authors: Florian Probst;Martin Espeter
• Venue: Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference (FOIS 2006)
• Year: 2006

We discuss how the spatial extent of physical endurants influences the conceptualization of their spatial qualities. Comparing the spatial dimensionality of a physical endurant with the spatial dimensionality of its qualities leads to an interesting formal ontological question. Should a spatial quality be conceptualized as having a value range instead of a single value when its bearer has a higher spatial dimensionality? For example, the one-dimensional depth quality can be conceptualized as having a value range when it is assigned to the three-dimensional water body of a lake. In terms of the foundational ontology DOLCE, the “value” of a quality, sometimes called quale, is located at an atomic region at a certain time. Allowing a value range at a time is to model qualities as being located at non-atomic regions at a time. That might be philosophically debatable, yet, this modeling approach enables the development of information discovery systems that can cope with ontologically imprecise user queries and can assist the user in defining ontologically precise quality specifications. This brings formal ontology closer to practical applications. The investigation is based on the foundational ontology DOLCE and introduces a classification for spatial qualities based on their spatial dimensionality.