Context note

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The class sdh:C1 Quality is situated in the taxonomy of classes at the same level as crm:E3 Condition or State and crm:E4 Period, both child classes of crm:E2 Temporal Entity. In fact, a careful ontological analysis shows that, strictly speaking, it is the class crm:E4 Period (or even more the class crmE5 Event) that corresponds to the class Perdurant in DOLCE, and not crm:E2 Temporal Entity, because no property of the latter associates it with objects or physical space, and therefore it only represents the temporal dimension of phenomena. At the same time, we observe that the crm:E2 Temporal Entity class is also a parent of crm:E3 Condition or State class, which appears to be equivalent to the sdh:C1 Quality class, albeit with a restriction to physical objects. The proposed modelling approach thus complies with the DOLCE's conceptualisation in defining the two classes crm:E4 Period (perdurant) and sdh:C1 Quality (quality-quale) as children of the crm:E2 Temporal Entity class. Of course the formalisation of the sdh:C1 class is different from that of DOLCE which expresses the association to a quale using a time-indexed property.

Qualities appear to be epistemic in the sense that the definition of their temporal extent, and thus their identity, is generally observer-dependent rather than intrinsic, although they are essentially observable phenomena. The epistemic dimension of qualities is also specific to physical features, regardless of the fact that these two classes are disjoint. Indeed, as stated in the CRM scope note of the crm:E26 Physical Feature class (versons 6.2 ez 7.1.2), features are defined as "fiat objects" which amounts to saying that their identity and extent is defined by the observers.

Language

en