Grounding Realizable Entities

TL;DR

This paper refines ontological representations of qualities, dispositions, and roles within Basic Formal Ontology, proposing new grounding relations to better capture subtle distinctions in life science research, exemplified by host-pathogen interactions.

Contribution

It introduces new grounding relations between qualities, dispositions, and roles to address gaps in BFO's existing framework, enhancing ontological modeling.

Findings

Proposed definitions for grounding relations between qualities and dispositions.

Introduced grounding relations between dispositions and roles.

Applied the framework to model host-pathogen interactions.

Abstract

Ontological representations of qualities, dispositions, and roles have been refined over the past decade, clarifying subtle distinctions in life science research. After articulating a widely-used characterization of these entities within the context of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), we identify gaps in this treatment and motivate the need for supplementing the BFO characterization. By way of supplement, we propose definitions for grounding relations holding between qualities and dispositions, and dispositions and roles, illustrating our proposal by representing subtle aspects of host-pathogen interactions.