Brian Donohue, J. Neil Otte, and Barry Smith University at Buffalo November 2014.

An Ontological Approach toTerritorial Disputes

Brian Donohue, J. Neil Otte, and Barry Smith

University at BuffaloNovember 2014

Brian Donohue, [email protected]. Neil Otte, [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Ontology team led by Ron Rudnicki

Our purpose here

To build a cumulative, easily accessible, integrated, and continuously updated resource to provide information concerning territorial disputes.

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)

A simple top-level ontology to support information integration

Defining a framework that will help to ensure consistency and non-redundancy of the ontology modules created in its terms through downward population

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Example: The Cell Ontology

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

I2WD Ontologies (http://milportal.org)cROP Ontologies EnvO Environment Ontology US Army Biometrics OntologyNIF Standard (Neuroscience) OntologiesOAE Ontology of Adverse EventsOBO Foundry Ontologies

OGMS Ontology for General Medical Science IDO Infectious Disease Ontologies

(NIAID)8

Modular, downward population approach in other domains

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OBO Foundary Open Biomedical OntologiesNIF Standard Neuroscience Information

Framework IDO Consortium Infectious Disease OntologycROP Common Reference Ontologies

for Plants

MilPortal.org Military OntologyI2WD Ontologies Intelligence Ontology Suite

Basic Formal Ontology 1.0

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

Continuant Occurrent

IndependentContinuant

DependentContinuant

Thing

Process

Attribute

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DependentContinuant

QualityRealizable Dependent

Continuant

13

Disposition Function Role

of banana, to ripen

of heart, to pump blood

of employee, to work for pay

process of realization depends_on realizable

Continuant Occurrent


bearer

Realizable DependentContinuant

disposition

.... ..... .......14

Process of realization

IAO-IntelEmail

Ontology IAO-

Science

Information Artifact Ontology (IAO)

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)

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BFO-based Ontology Development

BFO 1.1: Specifically Dependent Continuant

SpecificallyDependentContinuant

Quality, Role, Disposition

Realizable Dependent Continuant

if any bearer ceases to exist, then the quality or function ceases to exist

the color of my skin

the function of my heart

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Generically Dependent Continuant

GenericallyDependentContinuant

pdf filejpg file

Gene Sequence

if one bearer ceases to exist, then the entity can survive, because there are other bearers

(copyability)

the pdf file on my laptop

the DNA (sequence) in this chromosome

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Information artifacts

pdf file

email

poem

symphony

algorithm

symbol

– can migrate from one information bearer to another

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Continuant


Specifically DependentContinuant

Quality

Disposition

Information Artifact

Role

Realizable DependentContinuant

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Gene Sequence

BFO 1.1

Continuant



Quality Information Artifact

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Gene Sequence

Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity

Continuant



QualityInformation

Artifact

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity (yourhard drive

Information Quality Entity (pattern on

your hard drive)

depends_on

Continuant



Quality Information Content

Entity

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity

Information QualityEntity

depends_on concretized_by

BFO

IAO



Quality Information Content

Entity

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Material Entity

Information Bearing

Entity

Information QualityEntity

depends_on concretized_by

universals

instances

this hard drive, that book

this excitation pattern,

that pattern of piles of ink

this pdf file, that Target Value Matrix

Next step: Document Ontology, Document Control Ontology

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Our Purpose

To build an ontology of territorial disputes

Problems to Overcome1. Identifying disputes through time.

2. Identifying participants in a dispute, including:

a) disputing parties, b) external or third parties, c) actions, d) territories, e) information artifacts involved in disputes, and f) objectives and motives of the parties.

3. Identifying false claims.

Disputes

• In Basic Formal Ontology, disputes (and conflicts) are relational processes; that is, they are processes dependent upon and involving as participants at least two agents.

Document ontology

• Bob Glushko: “A document is a purposeful and self-contained collection of information.” (Document Engineering)

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Document Ontology

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

• the social interactions in which documents play an essential role (how documents bind people together)

• the sorts of things which we can do with documents• the different types of institutional systems to which documents

belong• the provenance of documents (on what distinguishes original,

authentic documents from copies, forgeries ...)

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/document_ontology/

Documents relevant to territorial disputes

• treaties, press releases, policy statements,

with parts such as• maps• descriptions, • arguments with premises and

conclusions,• citations of principles, • claims, etc.

Participants in a dispute

With a claim to a territory:• Governments• Indigenous populations with a claim to a

territory.• Private individuals

Non-claimants:• Third parties• Intergovernmental organizations,

Application: Kuril Islands

• The Kuril Islands have been a subject of territorial dispute and conflict for over 150 years.

• The Russian Federation and Japanese Government are agents_in the dispute.

• Different treaties at different times have created different demarcations of territory within the Kuril Island chain.

Kuril Islands

Act of Treaty Signing

1945

event:Act

time:Temporal Interval

Identifier

geo:Island

is a is a

bfo:Occurrent

info:Designative Information

ContentEntity

geo:Geographic

Feature

is a

bfo:Site

bfo: Generically Dependent Continuant

is a

is a is a

is a

is a

RussiaRussian

Government

Dispute over Arctic

Arctic Territory

Country Relational Process Site

is a

is a is a

participates in

is delimited by

hassubject

Act ofReportin

g

agentin

Report

has output

Document

is a

is about

Russia Russian Federation

Japan JapaneseGovernment

Act of Treaty Signing

Temporal Interval

“1945”

Yalta Agreement

Kuril Islands

is delimited by

is delimited by

agent in

agent in

occurs on

designatedby

has output

is about

Kuril Islands Treaty Timeline

Arguments in BFO

• Arguments are information content entities that have two other information content entities as components: one or more premises and a conclusion.

Arguments

Example: Argument for the Legality of Israeli Settlements

P1. Principle of a Sovereignty Vacuum: “Where the prior holder of territory had seized that territory unlawfully, the State which subsequently takes the territory in the lawful exercise of self-defense has, against that prior holder, better title.”

P2. Israeli conquest of Arab-held territory was defensive rather than aggressive.

C. Israeli settlements are legal.

Schwebel: Justice in Law

Objectives, Motives, and Strategies

• Objectives are ends of action. Example: Nations may have economic objectives.

• Motives include reasons for acting. Example: a restoration of territory lost and expansion of territory for economic exploitation. The realization of an objective may constitute the motive of a nation.

• Strategies are plan specifications that prescribe steps toward achieving some objective.

Big Problem of False Claims

• How do we model the content of false sentences without being committed to the entities named therein?

• Example: “The North Korean government claims it owns New Jersey.”

Our Strategy for False Claims• Step One: Use the lacks_part relation to capture the true state of

affairs that makes the claim false. The lacks_part relation holds between a particular p and a universal U whenever p has no instance of U as part. Example: “North Korea lacks_part New Jersey.”

• Step Two: Tag the claim as false, allowing us to read the claim as containing a wide scope negation operator (It is not the case that “ “).

Example: “North Korea claims it owns New Jersey” becomes “North Korea claims ‘It is not the case that:’ North Korea lacks_part New Jersey.”

Russia’s false claim in Ukraine

North Korea on its labor camps.

Uses of the ontology

• To create the first knowledgebase of territorial disputes information

• A step towards algorithmic history• A teaching tool• A retrieval tool• An aid to the more reasoned treatment of

conflicting territorial claims

Brian Donohue, J. Neil Otte, and Barry Smith University at Buffalo November 2014.

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