Artefacts in Formal Ontology

This chapter examines the field of applied ontology and the characterization of the notion of artefact within this same domain. It begins with a brief discussion of the basic issues that are of special relevance to formal ontology before then going on to present the main existing systems and emphasize their differences. The situation regarding the formalization of artefacts is discussed and the problems behind the few existing proposals are highlighted. The rest of the paper concentrates on our formal definition of artefact which is motivated by philosophical and application concerns. The grounds for the definition are introduced in conjunction with the presentation of the relevant formalization. This proposal is developed within the formal ontology dolce but it is designed to be of wider interest. The primitive notions on which the definition is based are constitution, capacity (modeled as a space of individual qualities), and intentionality (which is used to characterize both the act of selecting an entity and the attributing of capacities).