information artifact ontology: general background barry smith 1

Information Artifact Ontology: General Background

Barry Smith

1

Military Doctrine and Standardization of Terminology

3rd Century BC Standardized beacon signals used by Chinese military along Great Wall

1792 Drill manual for the units of the Continental Army to respond uniformly to commands during the Revolutionary War

1943 General James Gavin’s Training Memorandum on the Employment of Airborne Forces

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General James Gavin, On to Berlin: Battles of an Airborne Commander 1943-1946

for success of the D-Day invasion‘one of our most critical needs was to standardize the operating practices of our forces. … even simple terminology had to be agreed upon. … British flew in what they called “bomber stream” formations, We preferred troop-carrier group formations of 36 planes that flew in a V ... We referred to landing area as the “jump area,” the British called it “drop zone,” …’

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Current state

• DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (Joint Publication 1-02)

• New military dictionaries and terminology artifacts continue to be developed

• Dominant ethos: Library Science (all terminologies are equal), Lexicography (logical consistency of definitions is not important)

• Lexicons just grow

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Two kinds of data

1. Data about entities in the world (topics, subject-matters)

standard ontologies

2. Data about the information artifacts in which these entities are represented (= metadata)

Dublin CoreInformation Artifact Ontology and extensions, including IAO-Intel

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The Dublin Core: How not to solve the problem of creating consistent information

artifact metadata

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Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)an open organization supporting innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology http://dublincore.org/ Resource (as in ‘RDF’) + 15 basic ‘elements’:

0. RESOURCE 8. TYPE

1. TITLE 9. FORMAT

2. CREATOR 10. IDENTIFIER

3. SUBJECT 11. SOURCE

4. DESCRIPTION 12. LANGUAGE

5. PUBLISHER 13. RELATION

6. CONTRIBUTORS 14. COVERAGE

7. DATE 15. RIGHTS MANAGEMENT9

http://dublincore.org/

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)An open organization supporting innovation in metadata design and best practices across the metadata ecology


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The Core

• Resource (as in ‘RDF’) + 15 basic ‘elements’:

0. RESOURCE 8. TYPE 1. TITLE 9. FORMAT 2. CREATOR 10. IDENTIFIER 3. SUBJECT 11. SOURCE 4. DESCRIPTION 12. LANGUAGE 5. PUBLISHER 13. RELATION 6. CONTRIBUTORS 14. COVERAGE7. DATE 15. RIGHTS MANAGEMENT

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1) What’s a “resource”?A resource is anything that has identity. Familiar examples include an electronic document, an image, a service (e.g., "today's weather report for Los Angeles"), and a collection of other resources. Assumption: resource = information artifact

2) How do “elements” apply to “resources”?

An Element is a characteristic that a resource may “have”, such as a Title, Publisher, or Subject.

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http://dublincore.org/documents/usageguide/glossary.shtml#resource

http://dublincore.org/usage/documents/principles/#element

The same resource can be instantiated in different ways

Format: The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource. Examples of dimensions include size and duration.

Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary such as the list of Internet Media Types [MIME]. Example: image/jpeg.

The Core (cont.)

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http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/sectd.shtml#format

http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/

What describes the content / topic / subject-matter?

Title: The name given to the resource.

Description: An account of the content of the resource. Description may include but is not limited to: an abstract, table of contents, reference to a graphical representation of content or a free-text account of the content.

Subject: The topic of the content of the resource. Typically, a subject will be expressed as keywords or key phrases or classification codes that describe the topic of the resource.

The Core (cont.)

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http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/sectd.shtml#title

http://dublincore.org/documehttp:/dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/sectd.shtml#description

http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/sectd.shtml#subject

Benefits of Dublin Core

• Available in multiple formats• W3C recommended• Mapping to PROV

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Problems with Dublin Core• Scope not defined (‘anthing that has identity’)• Does not provide logical definitions, but relies

rather on vague natural language expressions (including use of “scare” “quotes” to warn the user that terms are not intended literally)

• Provides only suggestive guidance as to use of associated standards

• Does not interoperate well with other (topic) ontologies

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Confuses words and things

• Source: A reference to a resource from which the present resource is derived. The present resource may be derived from the Source resource in whole or part.

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http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/sectd.shtml#source

Engages in sloppy bundling

Type: The nature or genre of the content of the resource. Type includes terms describing general categories, functions, genres, or aggregation levels for content.

What is ‘content of the resource’?Is the nature of the content distinct from the nature

of the resource?

No taxonomic organization, but rather a tangled hierarchy

No distinction between things (continuants) and processes (occurrents) – consider performance of a work

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http://dublincore.org/documents/2001/04/12/usageguide/sectd.shtml#type

Does not address the goals of a Metadata Ontology

• Ability to expand consistently to new application areas

• Ability to gracefully integrate with domain ontologies and with other IA-related ontologies

• Ability to represent metadata of different categories– Complex application-specific content

• specific ways in which one IA relates to another IA

– Content vs. Bearers of content

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Requirements to Achieve These Goals• Conformance to ontology best practices

– http://ncorwiki.buffalo.edu/index.php/Distributed_Development_of_a_Shared_Semantic_Resource

– http://techwiki.openstructs.org/index.php/Ontology_Best_Practices

– http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/iswc07-semantic-web-intro/pdf/5.%20Ontology%20Design.pdf

• Conformance to an upper level ontology as starting point for coherent definitions

• Separation of aspects of an information artifact such as physical bearer, content, content organization

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http://ncorwiki.buffalo.edu/index.php/Distributed_Development_of_a_Shared_Semantic_Resource

http://ncorwiki.buffalo.edu/index.php/Distributed_Development_of_a_Shared_Semantic_Resource

http://techwiki.openstructs.org/index.php/Ontology_Best_Practices

http://techwiki.openstructs.org/index.php/Ontology_Best_Practices

http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/iswc07-semantic-web-intro/pdf/5.%20Ontology%20Design.pdf

http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/iswc07-semantic-web-intro/pdf/5.%20Ontology%20Design.pdf

DC Does Not Conform to Best Practices

Term Name: LocationPeriodOrJurisdiction URI: http://purl.org/dc/terms/LocationPeriodOrJurisdictionLabel: Location, Period, or JurisdictionDefinition: A location, period of time, or jurisdiction.

LOCATION PERIOD OR JURISDICTION is defined in the DC hierarchy as a subclass of LOCATION

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http://purl.org/dc/terms/LocationPeriodOrJurisdiction

Problems with verbal definitions

– PROVENANCE – “A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation.”

– The same definition is applied to the class and the property: PROVENANCE STATEMENT that is the Range of PROVENANCE is defined in exactly the same way.

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Does Not Conform to an ULO• DC does not conform to an upper level ontology and

does not show signs of downward development from more general to more specific terms.

• As a result– Generic element associations are absent or arbitrary or

informal. – If such associations were established, they would need

to be established manually instead of being inherited. For example, there are such classes as AGENT and AGENT CLASS where AGENT CLASS is defined as “A group of agents” but no formal relation with the class AGENT is asserted.

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Does Not Conform to an ULO (cont.)

• In the absence of a high-level single hierarchy, the relations between classes are not clear. For example

• PROVENANCE is defined as “A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation” seems to overlap with CREATOR, CONTRIBUTOR, and IS VERSION OF.

• But how?

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Limited Usability of DC• DC does not try to separately address such aspects

of an information artifact as its physical bearer, content, and content organization

• Will not allow for rich explications and annotations of document repositories, in particular repositories of military documents, and for various classifications of documents that are based on the content or bearer

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Information Artifact Ontology (IAO)

• Background: – Ontology for Biomedical Investigations– Scientific Publications

• How shall we start?– Artifacts (vs. utterances, thoughts)– Aboutness / Representation

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Shimon Edelman’s Riddle of Representation

two humans, a monkey, and a robotare looking at a piece of cheese;

what is common to the representational processes in their visual systems?

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Answer:

The cheese, of course

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The real cheese

Information Content Entities (ICEs)• ICEs are about something in reality (they have

this something as a subject; they represent, or mention or describe this something; they inform us about this something).

• Aboutness may be identifiable from different perspectives. Thus one analyst may interpret a given ICE as being about the geography of a given encampment; another may view it as providing information about the morale of those encamped there.

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Information artifact

• (roughly) an entity created through some deliberate act or acts by one or more human beings, and which endures through time, potentially in multiple (for example digital or printed) copies

Examples: a diagram on a sheet of paper, a video file, a map on a computer monitor, an article in a newspaper, a message on a network, the output of some querying process in a computer memory

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What IAO is for• IAO is not designed to replace existing

ontological or other standards • lots of documents exist conforming to lots of

different standards• purpose of IAO is to allow generation of the

needed metadata in a uniform, non-redundant and algorithmically processable fashion

• arms-length tagging of data and literature

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Sample terms in IAOReportProper NameSummaryDiagramOverlaySerial NumberEstimateListOrderMatrixTemplateGeographical Coordinate Set 34

Attributes of Information Artifacts• Examples

– Purpose– Life cycle Stage (draft, finished version, revision)– Language,– Format– Provenance– Source (person, organization)

• These are generic attributes, common to all areas• IAO will contain a Low-Level Ontology module for

each dimension35

Generic Purpose Attributes– Descriptive purpose: scientific paper, newspaper

article, after-action report– Prescriptive purpose: legal code, license, statement

of rules of engagement– Directive purpose (of specifying a plan or method

for achieving something): instruction, manual, protocol

– Designative purpose: a registry of members of an organization, a phone book, a database linking proper names of persons with their social security numbers

Cf. Speech Act Theory / Document Act Theory36

IAO-Intel Attribute DimensionsRole in the Intelligence Process (JP 3-0, III-11) Priority Intelligence Requirement (PIR) Commander’s Critical Information Requirement (CCIR)Essential Element of Information (EEI)Essential Element of Friendly Information (EEFI)

Confidence Level (JP 2.0, Appendix A)Highly LikelyLikelyEven Chance

UnlikelyHighly Unlikely

Discipline (JP 2.0, I-5)LegalIdeologyReligionPropaganda

IntelligenceSignalHuman Rumor intelligenceWeb intelligence

Intelligence Excellence (JP 2.0, II-6)AnticipatoryTimelyAccurateUsable

CompleteRelevantObjectiveAvailable 37

Use of IAO-Intel – Example:Digitalizing an MCOO

• IA #1 - Modified Combined Obstacle Overlay (MCOO) - a joint intelligence preparation of the operational environment product used to portray the militarily significant aspects of the operational environment, such as obstacles restricting military movement, key geography, and military objectives.

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Digitalizing an MCOO• Annotations to the attributes of IA#1

– ICE: MCOO – IBE: Acetate Sheet – uses-symbology MIL-STD-2525C– authored-by person #4644

• Annotations relating to the aboutness of IA#1 – Avenue of Approach – Strategic Defense Belt – Amphibious Operations– Objective

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Anatomy Ontology(FMA*, CARO)

Environment

Ontology(EnvO)

Infectious Disease

Ontology(IDO*)

Biological Process

Ontology (GO*)

Cell Ontology

(CL)

CellularComponentOntology

(FMA*, GO*) Phenotypic Quality

Ontology(PaTO)

Subcellular Anatomy Ontology (SAO)Sequence Ontology

(SO*) Molecular Function

(GO*)Protein Ontology(PRO*) Extension Strategy + Modular Organization

top level

mid-level

domain level

Information Artifact Ontology

(IAO)

Ontology for Biomedical

Investigations(OBI)

Spatial Ontology

(BSPO)

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)

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IAO-Science IAO-IntelIAO-Computing

IAO-Biolo

gy

IAO-Physi

cs

IAO-Intel-Navy

IAO-Intel-Army

IAO-Intel-FBI

IAO-Software

EMO-Email

Ontology

Each module built by downward population from its parent

top level

mid-level(generic hub)

domain level(spokes

populating downwards)

Information Artifact

Ontology(IAO)

Document Act Ontology


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Users of BFOExamples

AIRS OntologiescROP OntologiesMilPortal OntologiesNIF Standard OntologiesOBO Foundry OntologiesOAE Ontology of Adverse EventsEnvO Emotion Ontology IDO Infectious Disease Ontology (NIAID)US Army Biometrics Ontology

http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/users42

http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/users

http://www.ifomis.org/bfo/users

Continuant

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BFOOccurrent

Continuant

44

BFOOccurrent

Document Act

Continuant

45

BFO

Continuant

46

BFO

IndependentContinuant

Continuant

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BFOOccurrent


Specifically DependentContinuant

GenericallyDependentContinuant

Continuant

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BFOOccurrent



is tied to just one bearer


Continuant

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BFOOccurrent



is tied to just one bearer


can migrate from one bearer to another

Continuant

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BFOOccurrent




universals

instances

this man, that book

this excitation pattern,

that pattern of piles of ink

this gene sequence, this digital image

Continuant



Quality

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Material Entity

BFO

Disposition Role

Continuant



Quality

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity

Information QualityEntity

depends_on

BFO

IAO

Continuant



Quality Information Content

Entity

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Material Entity

BFO

IAO

Continuant




Entity

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity


depends_on concretized_by

BFO

IAO




Entity

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity



universals

instances

this hard drive, that book



this pdf filethis digital image



Quality Information Content / Structure

Entity

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity



universals

instances

this hard drive, that book



this pdf filethis digital image

located near

LatrineWell

‘VT 334 569’

Distance Measurement

Result

Village Name

‘Khanabad Village’

Village

is_a

instance_of

Geopolitical Entity

Spatial Region

GeographicCoordinate

Setdesignates

instance_of

located in

instance_of

has location designates

has location

instance_of

instance_of

’16 meters’

instance_of

measurement_of

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Universals and Instances (from Bill Mandrick)

IAO and BFO

BFO: Generically Dependent Continuant

BFO: Independent Continuant

BFO: Specifically Dependent Continuant

Information Content

Entity (ICE)

Information Quality Entity

(Pattern) (IQE)

Information Structure

Entity (ISE)

Information Bearing

Entity (IBE)

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Information Artifactsartifact =def. an entity created through some deliberate act or acts by one or more human beings and which endures through time

information artifact: an artifact that created to serve as a bearer of information

(a) information bearing entity (IBE) – a hard drive, a passport, a piece of paper with a drawing of a map(b) information content entity (ICE) – an entity which is about something and which can potentially exist in multiple (for example digital or printed) copies – a jpg file, a pdf file

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IAO: information content entity=def. an entity that is generically dependent on some artifact and stands in the relation of aboutness to some entity

Problems of non-referring information entities

Problems of information structure entities

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Types and tokens à la C. S. Peirce Copyable information artifacts can exist both as tokensPeirce and as typesPeirce

TokenPeirce = the particular information artifact of interest, tied to some particular physical information bearer: the photographic image on this piece of paper retrieved from this enemy combatantTypePeirce = The copyable information entity that is carried by the artifact in question. The same photographic image type may be printed out in multiple paper tokensWarning: this is not the same as the instance-class distinction 61

TokensPeirce of the type ‘Peirce’ Copyable information artifacts can exist both as tokensPeirce and as typesPeirce

TokenPeirce = the particular information artifact of interest, tied to some particular physical information bearer: the photographic image on this piece of paper retrieved from this enemy combatantTypePeirce = The copyable information entity that is carried by the artifact in question. The same photographic image type may be printed out in multiple paper tokensWarning: this is not the same as the instance-class distinction 62

TokensPeirce of the type ‘Peirce’ Copyable information artifacts can exist both as tokensPeirce and as typesPeirce

TokenPeirce = the particular information artifact of interest, tied to some particular physical information bearer: the photographic image on this piece of paper retrieved from this enemy combatantTypePeirce = The copyable information entity that is carried by the artifact in question. The same photographic image type may be printed out in multiple paper tokensWarning: this is not the same as the instance-class distinction Seven tokens 63

Each IA is concretized_by at least one IQE (Information Quality Entity)

The same IA can be concretized in multiple different media (paper, silicon, neuron …)

Concretization

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Generically dependent continuants such as plans, laws …

are concretized in specifically dependent continuants

(the plan in your head, the protocol being realized by your research team, the law being implemented by this government agency)

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Types and tokens

A A A

One type, three tokens

A type is a pattern

Patterns can be complex

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fragment of the War and Peace pattern

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War and Peace is an instance of the universal novel

SpecificallyDependentContinuant

War and Peace quality

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This bound copy of

War and Peace


The novelWar and Peace

instance_of instance_of instance_of

depends_on

concretized_by

Is War and Peace a kind or an instance?If War and Peace were a kind, and the copies of War and Peace in my library and in your library were instances, then

• there would be many War(s) and Peaces.

Hence War and Peace is an instance.

What is a work of literature?

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There can be two copies of the US Declaration of Independence

There cannot be two US Declarations of Independence

There cannot be subkinds of the US Declaration of Independence

Hence the US Declaration of Independent is an instance and not a kind.

There are not two Declarations of Independence

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Rule for universals

Their names are pluralizable

There can be three peopleThere cannot be three Michelle Obamas.

Information Content Entities are GDCs = entities which can exist in many copies

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they have a different kind of provenance

◦Aspirin as product of Bayer GmbH◦aspirin as molecular structure◦This Financial Report is submitted to the

SEC

Generically dependent continuants are distinct from universals

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IAO and BFO




Information Content

Entity (ICE)


(Pattern) (IQE)


Entity (ISE)

Information Bearing

Entity (IBE)

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Information Bearing Entities – IBEs

• An IBE is a material entity that has been created to serve as a bearer of information. IBEs are either (1) self-sufficient material wholes, or (2) proper material parts of such wholes.

• Examples under (1): a hard drive, a paper printout (e.g., a report)

• Examples under (2): a specific sector on a hard drive, a single page of a paper printout.

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Information Quality Entities (IQEs)

• An IQE is the pattern on an IBE in virtue of which it is a bearer of some information

• An IQE exists in a given IBE because of a certain patterned arrangement for example of ink or other chemicals, or of electromagnetic excitations.

• Every ICE is concretized by at least one IQE

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Information Structure Entities (ISEs)

• Information Structure Entity (ISE) is a structural part of an ICE, for example an empty cell in a spread sheet; or a blank Microsoft Word file. ISEs thus capture part of what is involved when we talk about the ‘format’ of an IA.

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Organization of IAO-Intel – IA‘IA’ refers either

– to some combination of ICEs and ISEs (roughly: the IA as body of copyable information content); or

– to some concreti zation of ICEs and ISEs in some IBE in which some IQE inheres (the information artifact is: this content here and now, on this specific computer screen or this printed page).

Different information artifact kinds will differ in different ways along these dimensions, as illustrated in Table 2.

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IA IBE ISE ICE

MS Word file (.doc, .docx)

Hard drive (magnetized sector)

MS Word format Varies

KML file Hard drive (magnetized sector)

KML Map overlay

JPEG file (.jpg)Hard drive (magnetized sector)

JPEG format Image

Email fileHard drive (magnetized sector)

Internet Message Format (e.g., RFC 5322 compliant) Message

USMTF Message file

A specific government network

USMTF Format Message

PassportPaper document; (may include photographs, RFID tags)

ID formats, security marking formats …

Name, Personal data, Passport number, Visas

Title Deed Official paper document Varies Varies

Report Varies Varies Varies

Overlay Sheet( e.g. Map Overlay Sheet)

Acetate sheetMIL-STD-2525 Symbols; FM 101-1-5 Operational Terms and Graphics

Map overlay78

IAO and BFO




Information Content

Entity (ICE)


(Pattern) (IQE)


Entity (ISE)

Information Bearing

Entity (IBE)

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IAO and BFO (cont.)

• BFO relations between ICEs, ISEs, IQEs and IBEs can be set forth as follows:– ICE generically-depends-on IBE– ISE generically-depends-on IBE– IQE specifically-depends-on IBE– ICE concretized-by IQE– ISE concretized-by IQE

• IAO contains in addition relations which allow to formulate metadata concerning attributes of IAs such as author, creation date, classification status, and so forth

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Anatomy Ontology(FMA*, CARO)

Environment

Ontology(EnvO)

Infectious Disease

Ontology(IDO*)

Biological Process

Ontology (GO*)

Cell Ontology

(CL)

CellularComponentOntology

(FMA*, GO*) Phenotypic Quality

Ontology(PaTO)

Subcellular Anatomy Ontology (SAO)Sequence Ontology

(SO*) Molecular Function

(GO*)Protein Ontology(PRO*) Extension Strategy + Modular Organization

top level

mid-level

domain level


(IAO)

Ontology for Biomedical

Investigations(OBI)

Spatial Ontology

(BSPO)


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OBO Foundry approach extended into other domains (all populating downwards from BFO)

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NIF Standard Neuroscience Information Framework

IDO Consortium Infectious Disease OntologycROP Common Reference Ontologies

for PlantsMilPortal.org Military OntologyAIRS Ontology Suite Intelligence Ontology Suite

Language

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Speech acts WritingActs of thinking* PrintingDocument acts Email …

*Mental Functioning Ontology (MFO)

Coverage domain of IAO

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Speech acts WritingActs of thinking PrintingDocument acts Email …

Generic Purpose Attributes– Descriptive purpose: scientific paper, newspaper

article, after-action report– Prescriptive purpose: legal code, license, statement

of rules of engagement– Directive purpose (of specifying a plan or method

for achieving something): instruction, manual, protocol

– Designative purpose: a registry of members of an organization, a phone book, a database linking proper names of persons with their social security numbers

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Mental Functioning Ontology (MFO)

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John Searle: start with biology, add speech

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The Searle ThesisThrough the performance of speech acts (of promising, marrying, accusing, exchusing) we bring into being₋ claims, ₋ obligations, ₋ relations of authority, ₋ relations of membership,… = the entities making up the ontology of the social world

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How, on this view, can institutional entities, endure through time?

• in the local case: through beliefs, memories, desires – planning a weekly coffee morning with your friends …

• But what about the global case (where there is no face-to-face contact, where there are many cheaters, where beliefs conflict ontologically)?

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Hernando de SotoInstitute for Liberty and Democracy, Lima, Peru

Bill Clinton: “The most promising anti-poverty initiative in the world”

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The de Soto thesis:

documents and document systems are the mechanisms for creating the institutional orders of Western capitalism

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else,

New York: Basic Books, 200093

With the invention of documented claims and obligations

• a new dimension of socio-economic reality comes into existence:bank accounts, stocks, shares, bonds, mortgages, credit cards

• these form enduring social networks – document systems – of entirely new types

• debts become information entities analogous to digital artifacts

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From speech act theory to document act theory

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Generalizing the de Soto thesis:documents and document systems are the mechanisms for creating all institutional orders of modern civilization

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Identity

An extralegal standardized sales contract for a one-acre parcel in the outskirts of Arusha, including the involvement of witnesses in the preparation of the document and the use of fingerprints to ensure the authenticity of the document.

Standardization

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Standardized documents• allow standardized transactions• improve the flow of communications • allow assets to be described using standard

categories, so as to enable comparisons• allow the transition from ad hoc narratives (as in

ancient title deeds) to structured representations • communication is advanced because signals are

abbreviated• supports the creation of more effective registries

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A. N. Whitehead

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

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Standardized documentsenable

– new types of distributed ownership through stocks, shares, pensions, …

– currency notes– new types of legal accountability– new types of business organization– new types of massively planned social agency – democracy– the state– law …

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Scope of document act theory

• the social and institutional (deontic, quasi-legal) powers of documents

• the sorts of things we can do with documents• the social interactions in which documents play

an essential role • the enduring institutional systems to which

documents belong

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The ontology not only of• capital, bankruptcy, stock market …

but also of• the Holy Roman Empire• the Swedish language• the United Nations• the internet• a symphony concert• urban planning• mathematicians

is to be understood in terms of the different sorts of documents which these phenomena involve

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103

How to do things with words (speech act theory)

1. We represent how things are: record, report, description, assertion …

2. We try to get people to do things:request, order, command …

1. We commit ourselves to doing things promise, agreement, …

• We bring about changes in the world through utterances

congratulating, blessing, forgiving …

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How to do things with documents(document act theory)

1. We represent how things are: map, chemical diagram, x-ray image, …

2. We try to get people to do things:blueprint, musical score, plan of battle …

3. We commit ourselves to doing things contract, planning agreement, flow chart …

4. We bring about changes in the world through document acts

organigram, act of parliament, license, diploma …

How to do things with diagrams

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From speech acts to document acts

Documents can be copied, modified, stored …

Documents can be aggregated (attachment of liens …)

Documents can be meshed together (for example into plans and sub-plans – as in a musical score, plans for a military operation)

Documents can be algorithmically executable (Turbotax …)

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John Searle: Directions of fit

• world-to-mind: I promise I will mow your lawn tomorrow

• mind-to-world: I see that my lawn has been mowed

• automatic mind-to-world-and-world-to-mind: I say “I promise to pay you $100 dollars” and thereby make it true that I promise to pay you $100 dollars

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Directions of fit for documents• world-to-mind: a plan is formulated to

change the world (to make it conform to the mind of the planner …)

• mind-to-world: a report is published evaluating the success of the execution of the plan

• automatic mind-to-world-and-world-to-mind: Act of Parliament is published declaring that such-and-such is the law and such-and-such is the law

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(musical) directions of fit• world-to-score: the score tells the world how

to shape itself to create a performance that is in conformance with the score

• score-to-world: the score, when the performance is completed, serves as a record of the performance

• automatic score-to-world-and-world-to-score: Berlioz completes the score and thereby brings into being a work that is precisely in conformance to the score

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Individual performers may use their scores in different ways

1. they may mark up their copies of the score to add specific instructions for their own use

2. they may mark up their copy of the score to record errors in their own performance

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111

what begins as a plan, ends as a record

Blueprint

what begins as a plan

ends as a record • of process• of product

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From speech acts to document acts

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Searle, Tuomela, Gilbert, Bratman deal with simple local interaction of cooperative agents communicating by speech

“Would you like to dance?”“Let’s lift this table”“Shall we cook dinner together?”“Waiter, bring me a beer!”…

Scott J. Shapiro, “Massively Shared Agency”, 2013

[Bratman, Searle …] ‘are unable to account for the existence of massively shared agency.

they ‘have largely concentrated on analyzing shared activities among highly committed participants. The working assumption has been that those who sing duets or paint houses together are all committed to the success of the activity.’

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Shapiro: To adapt standard theory of collective agency to deal with massively shared actions we need to add authority

Authorities are … “mesh creating” mechanisms. When disputes between participants break out with respect to the proper way to proceed, authorities can create a mesh between the subplans of the participants by demanding that both sides accept a certain solution.

Basic for Shapiro’s theory of the nature of law

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Conclusion

Documents, as much as authority, are what make possible the sorts of massively shared agency we find in business corporations, universities, organized religions, governments,

legal systems, standing armies116

Document Acts and the Ontology of Social Reality

Barry SmithRijeka, May 7, 2014

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How To Do Things With Documents

Part I: PhilosophyPart II: Africa

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Massively Planned Social Agency

Philosophers of language have concentrated on the speech acts involved in simple conversations among friends sharing common goals

Large-scale social institutions require communication across time and space and between persons who have conflicting goals

Hypothesis: Documents – and thus document acts – are indispensable to the workings of large-scale social institutions

.

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PART I

Philosophy (Ontology) of Documents

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Some examples of documents

Made of paper Not made of paper

novel

newspaper

recipe

map

journal article

license

dollar bill

diploma

contract

will

blueprint

gravestone

film credits

street name

sundial

clay tablet

car license plate

policeman’s badge

traffic sign

Some major types

• Literary document

• Journalistic document

• Scientific document

• Legal document

• Financial document

• Identity Document

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What you can do with any (paper) document

• Burn it

• Lose it

• Throw it away

• Give it away

• Shelve it

• Steal it

You can’t steal a speech act

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What can you do with a literary document

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what you can do with a documentvs.

what a document can do

• cite another document

• provide evidence

• document a command

• document a right (driver’s license)

• document an obligation (IOU)

• serve as a medium of exchange125

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We will focus here on the class of legal and financial (roughly: time-sensitive)

documents

of importance e.g.

• in security (identification documents)

• in commerce

• in law

• picture of a Florida beach condo

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Some processes in the social realm

• In 2007, a bank in Florida lends you $1 million

• You buy a beach condo for $1 million

• In 2008, the value of your condo collapses

• You owe the bank $1 million but your house is worth only $500,000

• You walk away from the loan and give the keys back to the bank

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Some objects in the social realm• The bank• The condo• The price you paid in 2007• The price you could get in 2008• Your mortgage• Your mortgage contract• Your signature on the mortgage contract• Your breaching of the mortgage contract• The value of the mortgage in 2007

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Some ontological questions

• What is a debt?

• What is a mortgage?

• What is a mortgage contract?

• What is a signature?

• What is a credit card?

• What is a credit card number?

Why do Plato and Kant have no answers to such questions?

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Systems of mutually correlated claims and obligations

are essential to the workings of societies both large and small

compare how traffic laws are essential to the workings of roads

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John Searle

The Searle Thesis

Through the performance of speech acts (acts of promising, marrying, accusing, baptising) we change the world

• by bringing into being claims, obligations, rights, relations of authority, debts, permissions, names, …

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How do the obligations created by speech acts

• hold (large and small) societies together over the long term?

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In the local case, when you make a promise

your obligation is tied to psychological factors: memories, expectations, your desire to preserve your good name

But what about the non-local case?

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The de Soto Thesis

Documents and document systems are mechanisms for creating the institutional orders of modern societies

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West

and Fails Everywhere Else,New York: Basic Books, 2000

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With the invention of documented claims and obligations

• a new dimension of socio-economic reality comes into existence:

bank accounts, stocks, shares, bonds, mortgages, credit cards

These form enduring social networks – document systems – of entirely new types

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Hernando de Soto

• first recognized the pivotal role of documents in the ontology of socio-economic reality

• documents enable – new types of distributed ownership through

stocks, shares, pensions

– new types of legal accountability

– new types of business organization

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What document act theory is about

• the social and institutional (deontic, quasi-legal) powers of documents

• the social interactions in which documents play an essential role – for example allowing post-mortem instructions

• the enduring institutional systems to which documents belong

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What happens when you sign your passport?

• you initiate the validity of the passport

• you attest to the truth of the assertions it contains (autographic)

• you provide a sample pattern for comparison (allographic)

Three document acts for the price of one

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Passport acts

• I use my passport to prove my identity

• You use my passport to check my identity

• He renews my passport

• They confiscate my passport to initiate my renunciation of my citizenship

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The creative power of documents

title deeds create property

stock and share certificates create capital

examination documents create PhDs

marriage licenses create bonds of matrimony

bankruptcy certificates create bankrupts

statutes of incorporation create business organizations

charters create universities, cities, guilds

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The creative power of documentsdocuments create authorities(physician’s license creates physician)

authorities create documents(physician creates sick note)

documents issued by an authority within the framework of a valid legal institution

vs. documents issued by an authority extralegally on its own behalf (cf. US Declaration of Independence)

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Part II

Africa

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Bill Clinton: “The most promising anti-poverty initiative in

the world”147

All of the document types we now take for granted

• and all of the processes and institutions in which documents are involved

• had to be invented – for instance letters of credit were invented in Florence, Venice Genoa in the Middle Ages

de Soto: They are being reinvented in Africa today

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In Africa: the realm of extra-legal (spontaneously created) law

• In Tanzania, villages are relatively isolated from the influences of big-city law

• but this does not mean that they are free of legal-commercial activities and of associated institutions

• and of rudimentary documents

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extralegal cell phone renting and supply of pre-paid call time

Massai cell phone User

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MwenyekitiThe Mwenyekiti (or democratically elected village chairman in Tanzania)

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identification

Document in which a Mwenyekiti from the Kibaha area certifies the identity of an individual from his village. Both photograph and signature are authenticated with an official stamp.

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identification

Marks used to identify ownership of the cattle at an auction market in Dodoma.The cattle identification by branding serves as the basis for a formal pledge system.

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adjudication

Elders engaged in dispute resolution in Kisongo (Tanzania) dealing with conflicts about family matters, parcel boundaries and other property issues. Evidence is brought from witnesses and community members.

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Documentation of the resolution of a dispute over land in the Arusha area and of the property rights thereby established.A council of notable elders is selected as judges and they follow established rules for the hearing, for presenting and processing evidence before the community. 155

property right

• The difference between a piece of land and property is that property can be set out in a written document with determinate meaning. This document creates and establishes the right, which ties owner to physical asset in an enduring way.

• The system of such documents creates a new abstract order

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registrationThe Mwenyekitikeeps records of births deaths, contracts ..., provides written and unwritten proof of customary rights of occupancy, participates in real estate transactions as witness

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registration

• registration makes documents permanently accessible, providing in one single source records of the information required to know who owns what

• without this information, the combination and mobilization of assets is risky, and it is impossible to apply legal provisions against fraud and theft.

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registration

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registration

• Paper documents serve as filaments that bind different elements of social and institutional reality in a way which leads to the creation of new types of value.

• A network of social relations is created by the network of cross-referenced and cross-attached documents. In this way, the registry of documents forms a mirror of the network of legal and property relationships.

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Anchoring to reality

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fingerprint

official stamp

photograph

bar code

cow brand-mark

car license plate

allow cross-referencing to documents

Anchoring

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The Mystery of Capital

when you have legal title to your house you can

• use your house as an address for receiving public utility services such as mail and electricity

• buy insurance on your house

• use your house as collateral on a loan – your house allows you to live in it and at the same time use its value to build a factory

An ontological problem: what is a bank loan?

On the one hand it is something like a mathematical structure.

Yet its existence is tied to time and change.

Plato would have regarded such a combination of properties as something impossible.

(Cf. Mackie’s argument from metaphysical queerness)

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– not a physical object taking part in causal relations– but a historical object, with a very special provenance, standing in relations analogous to those of ownership, existing only within a nexus of working financial institutions of specific kinds– something like an abstract key fitting into a global system of (institutional) locks

What is a credit card number?

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Austin, Searle et al. all mention that speech acts can be performed with documents (in French speech acts are called ‘actes du langage’)

Is document act theory really something new?

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http://code.google.com/p/information-artifact-ontology/

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information artifact ontology: general background barry smith 1

Documents

core resource

metadata design

metadata ecology http

information artifacts

best practices

basic elements

chinese military

military doctrine