Fictional Universes and OWL! – Part IV

An attraction of representing fictional universes using OWL axioms is also linked to the fact that we can help understand how such inconsistency/incoherence errors can tie into biomedicine.

OrganCraftFair

Consider only the following set of axioms asserted:

  1. Classes: Kidney, GallBladder, Brain, Stone, Hormone, GallStone, KidneyStone
  2. Object Properties: produce
  3. Individuals: Dopamine (instanceOf Hormone) and Dopamine (NOT instanceOf Stone)
  4. subClassOf axioms:
    1. KidneyStone (subclassOf Stone),
    2. GallStone (subclassOf Stone)
  5. (Brain) subclassOf (produce ONLY Hormone)

Question: Can Brain produce KidneyStones?

Answer: Yes, because Stone and Hormone are not explicitly disjoint, so there exists a kidney stone instance that can also be a hormone, which the brain produces.

Suppose, you modify the “5th” axiom to be:

(Brain) subclassOf (produce VALUE Dopamine)

Question: Can Brain now produce KidneyStones?

Answer: No, since hasValue/Value restrictions limit all brains to produce only dopamine instance.