Capabilities: An Ontology

TL;DR

This paper develops an ontological framework for understanding capabilities, a subset of dispositions that are of interest in various contexts, aiming to unify and extend current capability data collection.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive ontological account of capabilities, enhancing the understanding and integration of capability data across different domains.

Findings

Provides a formal ontology of capabilities

Enables better integration of capability data

Supports diverse applications in science and daily life

Abstract

In our daily lives, as in science and in all other domains, we encounter huge numbers of dispositions (tendencies, potentials, powers) which are realized in processes such as sneezing, sweating, shedding dandruff, and on and on. Among this plethora of what we can think of as mere dispositions is a subset of dispositions in whose realizations we have an interest a car responding well when driven on ice, a rabbits lungs responding well when it is chased by a wolf, and so on. We call the latter capabilities and we attempt to provide a robust ontological account of what capabilities are that is of sufficient generality to serve a variety of purposes, for example by providing a useful extension to ontology-based research in areas where capabilities data are currently being collected in siloed fashion.