Despite its central importance for an ontology of food and food production, the notion of food product remains ambiguous. In this work, we develop two ontological approaches to food products within the framework of the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), aiming to enrich the axiomatization of the class Food product in the existing BFO-compliant ontology FoodOn. The first, a derivation-based approach, characterizes food products as being intentionally “derived from” food materials. The second, a role-based approach, analyzes them as food materials that bear a “product role”. We propose to elaborate these approaches to food products by introducing the relation “derives from part of” for the derivation-based approach and the entity “consumption product role” for the role-based approach. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each approach and propose possible strategies for addressing their respective weaknesses.

The distinction between abstract and concrete entities, especially its precise characterization, remains underexplored in foundational ontology research. This paper aims to constitute the initial steps towards a formal ontology of abstracta and concreta. We begin by presenting three existing criteria (epistemic, spatiotemporal and causal) for the abstract/concrete distinction. We illustrate them with some well-known upper ontologies. After examining the shared assumption by the three criteria that any entity is either abstract or concrete but not both, we develop an alternative and more general framework for formally representing abstract and concrete entities. In particular, we propose a relational account of them by introducing the relation of “concretization”. The pivotal idea is that being abstract (or concrete) amounts to being concretized by (or concretizing) some other entity. We also briefly discuss a concretization-based reinterpretation of the spatiotemporal criterion and universals.

Realizable entities are properties that can be realized in processes of specific correlated types in which the bearer participates. It will be valuable to create a systematic classification of realizable entities because they are useful for various modeling purposes in ontologies. In this paper we outline a unifying framework for realizable entities (including dispositions and roles) in the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) that is theoretically underpinned by J. McKitrick’s pragmatic approach to dispositions. In particular, we develop a formal ontological account of “extrinsic dispositions” and illustrate its potential applications with clarification of functions and roles in BFO.

This article provides the basis of a formal axiomatic system for a mereology of informational entities based on the idea of information fillers that can occupy information slots, such as the same word that can be used in different sentences. It is inspired by Karen Bennett’s mereological system that enables a whole to have a part “twice over”, but differs from it in several key points, such as the acceptance of empty slots, and the possibility for slots to have slots. Information slots are analyzed as informational entities that can carry aboutness.

Persistence is about how things behave across time. It is generally discussed in terms of endurantism (three-dimensionalism) and perdurantism (four-dimensionalism). Despite the relevance of persistence to ontological modeling, however, there is no clear consensus over how to characterize precisely those two theories of persistence. This paper takes the initial steps towards a foundation for ontology of persistence. In particular, I examine by employing recent findings from philosophy of persistence how some major upper ontologies conceptualize endurantism and perdurantism. My resulting modest suggestion is that formal-ontological discussion on persistence should be updated by expanding its perspective beyond the topic of whether objects have proper temporal parts or not.

Belief, desire, and intention are central notions in mentality and agency. We provide conceptual and formal foundations for an ontology of those mental entities. In this framework, beliefs and desires have a dual face: dispositional and occurrent. As distinct from beliefs and desires, intentions are dispositions to actions that emerge from a decision process in which occurrent beliefs and occurrent desires interact. We also discuss how our theory can be extended to some major philosophical accounts of desires, and cognitive biases such as wishful thinking.