FROLIO – Formalizable Relationship-Oriented Language-Insensitive Ontology

© Roger M Tagg 2008, revised January 2010, links fixed December 2010

Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web". This website is continually under construction - please send suggestions for improvements to the author.

Relationship Major Category Introduction - "Sensation"

General Meaning

This class of relationships covers the means by which brains (human, sentient animal or robot) are triggered by a variety of external things, events and states of affairs.

Category Icon

The icon represents a person sensing something - whatever it is looks shocking in this picture!

Relationship Role Diagram (for key to the letter codes click here)

The A role, i.e. what is sensed, is represented by the happy and sad faces for the emotional sub-category (see below); by the military observer for observation, and by the "thing" for robotic detection. Role B is generally the receiver of the sensation (human or animal), while the meter represents the robotic detector. Tools I and Procedures M are not generally relevant, nor are Theories Y. Author (Z) may only be relevant if the relationship is claimed or reported.

A	A	A	B	B
A				B
I			M
P				Z
	T	X	Y

Relationship Types in this Category

Remember that in this category, the brain doing the sensing is in role B (i.e. it follows the “to”), and what is sensed is in role A.

The first subtype is emotional, code “Se”; There are lots of possibilities. Most of these relationship types come in pairs, i.e. the "nice" and "nasty" versions.

• feels heavy/light to
• feels rough/smooth to
• feels pleasurable/painful to
• seems near to / far from
• seems difficult/easy to
• seems believable/unbelievable to
• seems straight/fishy to
• seems in order/kaputt to
• seems proper/disgusting to
• seems happy/sad to
• seems beautiful/ugly to
• seems well-structured/chaotic to
• seems familiar/strange to
• seems puzzling/obvious to
• seems encouraging/discouraging to
• seems promising/unpromising to
• seems interesting/boring to
• seems frightening to
• seems threatening to
• triggers a vague awareness for – maybe through some sixth sense or telepathy?

The next sub type, code “So”, is that of explicit physical experience or observation by a human or animal, whether by sight, hearing, smell, taste or touch, code. Some tool (in role I) might be involved, e.g. a telescope, microscope, fibre optic probe, television set, telephone system, music player etc.

• is seen by
• is heard by
• is smelt by
• is tasted by
• is felt by

The final sub type, code “Sr” is that of detection of environmental conditions by a robot or instrument. The tool (here in role A) may indicate some physical property, e.g. light, sound, heat, weight, volume, length, area, frequency of events, electric current, magnetism etc, by which the awareness is achieved. Whatever is detected needs to be distinguishable from the background noise or randomness.

• is detected by – the robot, sensor or instrument B will react to some stimulus A (represented in this case by the "Thing" icon. It can then be stored as a measurement representing the observation, read by human vision (So), or communicated to a control system (probably computerized) - which would be Interaction.
• is triggered by - role B is an alarm device, using the same sort of method as above.

Examples

Emotion This shopping bag feels heavy to me. Girls in bikinis seem disgusting to the moslem cleric. Our air-conditioning seems kaputt (to us). The sermon seemed boring to the young men in the congregation. I was vaguely aware of someone coming in the back door.

Observation The electricity meter was seen by the meter man on Tuesday (and presumably recorded - see Representation). The bang was heard a mile away. The gas leak was smelt by our dog Rover before we noticed. The curry was tasted by our youngest child, to whom it seemed disgusting (Se).

Robotic Detection The drop in atmospheric pressure was detected by automatic barometer (and then presumably communicated it to the Met Office computer system). My nail scissors were detected by the airport security scanner. The smoke alarm was triggered by the burnt toast.

Links to other Categories (these cross-links now fixed!)

Other Links

• Explanation of roles in relationships
• Top level of the FROLIO relationships
• Top level of the FROLIO ontology

• FROLIO home page

This version updated on 3rd December 2010

If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author at rogertag@tpg.com.au .