Behavior of a Technical Artifact: An Ontological Perspective in Engineering

Authors:
Stefano Borgo;Massimiliano Carrara;Pieter E. Vermaas;Pawel Garbacz
Affiliations:
Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Italy;Department of Philosophy, University of Padua, Italy;Department of Philosophy, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands;Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
Venue:
Proceedings of the 2006 conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference (FOIS 2006)
Year:
2006

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Abstract

The term 'behavior' is used ubiquitously in engineering. It refers roughly to the way technical artifacts 'behave' in a given or hypothetical situation, and plays a pivotal role in specific design methodologies since it allows connecting descriptions of the physical structure of technical artifacts to descriptions of their technical functions. However, behavior does not have a precise meaning: engineers use the term loosely and when attempting to pinpoint it, end up with incompatible characterizations. Here we formalize the different notions underlying the engineering usage by providing a uniform framework in which they can be related. This framework lays also a conceptual basis for a precise characterization of the notion of technical function in engineering. Our approach develops within the DOLCE ontology and introduces behavior as a new type of individual quality that relates a technical artifact to the event to which it participates. Starting with this assumption, one can distinguish actual, possible and general behaviors of an artifact (token). We add a few more definitions to capture more specific aspects and show their role in capturing engineering usage.