172 research outputs found
A formal ontological perspective on the behaviors and functions of technical artifacts
No full textIn this paper we present a formal characterization of the engineering concepts of behavior and function of technical artifacts. We capture the meanings that engineers attach to these concepts by formalizing, within the formal ontology DOLCE, the five meanings of artifact behavior and the two meanings of function that Chandrasekaran and Josephson identified in 2000 within the functional representation approach.We begin our formalization by reserving the term “behavior” of a technical artifact as “the specific way in which the artifact occurs in an event.” This general notion is characterized formally, and used to provide definitions of actual behaviors of artifacts, and the physically possible and physically impossible behaviors that rational agents believe that artifacts have. We also define several other notions, for example, input and output behaviors of artifacts, and then show that these ontologically characterized concepts give a general framework in which Chandrasekaran and Josephson’s meanings of behavior can be explicitly formalized. Finally we show how Chandrasekaran and Josephson’s two meanings of artifact functions, namely, device-centric and environment-centric functions, can be captured in DOLCE via the concepts of behavioral constraint and mode of deployment of an artifact. A more general goal of this work is to show that foundational ontologies are suited to the engineering domain: they can facilitate information sharing and exchange in the various engineering domains by providing concept structures and clarifications that make explicit and precise important engineering notions. The meanings of the terms “behavior” and “function” in domains like designing, redesigning, reverse engineering, product architecture, and engineering knowledge bases are often ambiguous or overloaded. Our results show that foundational ontologies can accommodate the variety of denotations these terms have and can explain their relationships.Values and TechnologyTechnology, Policy and Managemen
The design stance and its artefacts
No full textIn this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these ways as giving the correct formulation of the design stance in Dennett’s approach, but propose to replace Dennett’s original design stance by two design stances: an intentional designer stance that incorporates the intentional stance, and a teleological design stance that does not. Our arguments focus on descriptions of technical artefacts: drawing on research in engineering, cognitive psychology and archaeology we show that both design stances are used for describing technical artefacts. A first consequence of this disambiguation is that a design stance, in terms of interpretative assumptions and in terms of the pragmatic considerations for adopting it, stops to be a stance that comes hierarchically between the physical stance and the intentional stance. A second consequence is that a new distinction can be made between types of entities in Dennett’s approach. We call entities to which the intentional designer stance is applied tools and entities to which the teleological design stance is applied instruments, leading to a differentiated understanding of, in particular, technical artefacts.Values and TechnologyTechnology, Policy and Managemen
If engineering function is a family resemblance concept: Assessing three formalization strategies.
No full textIn this paper we argue that the challenge of the formalization of functions not merely consists of analyzing and formalizing yet another concept; the challenge may also consist of formalizing a concept that is to be taken as a family resemblance concept in the Wittgensteinian sense. We focus on engineering for giving this argument and indicate briefly how the argument can also be given for biological functions. We demonstrate that in engineering there are a number of different meanings attached to the term “function”, and observe that engineers moreover seem to hold that having all these meanings is useful in their field. This observation make plausible that function indeed is to be taken as a family resemblance concept. Then we describe three strategies for the formalization of functions – the revisionary, the overarching and the descriptive strategies – and relate them to a number of the current proposals for this formalization. Assessing the strategies with the meta-ontological goals for formalizations of adequacy and minimality, we argue that if function indeed is to be taken as a family resemblance concept, then the descriptive strategy is to be preferred
The formalisation of functional modeling functions within the DOLCE ontology
No full textIn this paper we give formalizations of two engineering
concepts of technical functions and present
in more general terms the project of supporting engineering
functional reasoning by means of ontological
analyses. The concepts that we formalize
are the concepts of function as defined in the Functional
Representation approach by Chandrasekaran
and Josephson and in the Functional Basis approach
by Stone and Wood. These two concepts represent
two main ways of understanding functions in engineering:
the first by means of the behavior of artifacts,
and the second by means of operations on
flows as preformed by artifacts. Both formalizations
are given within the foundational DOLCE ontology.
Our choice to formalize existing concepts of functions
within a single foundational ontology, is one
strategy towards the goal of ontological analyses of
functions. This goal of enabling the development of
tools for automated functional reasoning, may be realized
by other strategies as well, such as defining a
single formalized concept of function, either for replacing
existing concepts or for use as a reference to
which existing concepts should be related. We compare
these strategies briefly and discuss the merits
and shortcomings of our strategy
Two ontology-driven formalisations of functions and their comparison
No full textIn this paper, we give formalisations of two engineering concepts of technical function and present in more general terms the project of supporting functional description translation by ontological analysis. The formalisations are given within the foundational dolce ontology and the concepts formalised are as follows: (1) the function as defined in the Functional Representation approach by Chandrasekaran and Josephson and (2) the function as defined in the Functional Basis approach by Stone and Wood. These two concepts represent two main ways of understanding functions in engineering: the first by means of the behaviour of artefacts, and the second by means of operations on flows as performed by artefacts. We analyse the similarities and differences between these concepts by means of the formalisations and show how the formalisations support the automated translation between functional descriptions based on these two concepts. In addition, we compare our strategy of formalising different engineering concepts of function within one foundational ontology with other strategies in the ontology-driven formalisation, such as defining a single formalised concept of function, either for replacing existing engineering concepts, or for use as a reference by which such existing concepts can be related. We compare these strategies and sketch the merits and shortcomings of our strategy
A Formalization of Functions as Operations on Flows
No full textThis paper presents a formalization of the notion of function as operation on flows as advanced in the Functional Basis approach of Stone and Wood. We first analyze the modeling of functions in this approach and identify the notions that are ontological significant for their formalization within the foundational ontology DOLCE. Then, we build the logical system in which this engineering notion of function is formally translated and connected to the ontology. Furthermore, we posit a number of constraints for a correct interpretation of the formal system and also provide a web ontology language version. We conclude with an assessment of our results and a discussion of our larger project aimed at analysing functional descriptions of technical artifacts, and at translating functional descriptions using different engineering notions of function
Behavior of a Technical Artifact: An Ontological Perspective in Engineering
No full textThe 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 usag
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