has_material_basis

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ref states:
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ELUCIDATION: a has_material_basis b at t means: 
a is a disposition 
& b is a material entity 
& there is some c bearer_of a at t
& b continuant_part_of c at t
& c has_disposition d at t because b continuant_part_of c at t. [071-001]

EXAMPLES: the material basis of John’s disposition to cough is the viral 
infection in John’s upper respiratory tract; the material basis of the 
disposition to wear unevenly of John’s tires is the worn suspension of his 
car.
======

I think there might be a disconnect between what this elucidation is actually 
saying and what people want it to say. Consider the 2nd example:

"the material basis of the disposition to wear unevenly of John’s tires is 
the worn suspension of his car."

Let us call the suspension of John's car "s", and let us say it has the 
following 3 qualities or characteristics:

q1: being worn
q2: being purchased from Barry's autoshop
q3: being colored bright pink

Note that according the elucidation, the basis is "s", not any of the qualities 
of "s".

This means the example could equally well be written as:

"the material basis of the disposition to wear unevenly of John’s tires is 
the suspension that was purchased from Barry's autoshop."

"the material basis of the disposition to wear unevenly of John’s tires is 
the bright pink suspension."

These are logically the same but carry different connotations of where the 
blame in the worn tires lies. If the example is not to mislead, it should be 
re-written as:

"the material basis of the disposition to wear unevenly of John’s tires is 
the suspension."

This would then be a non-misleading example.

But note that this exposes the fundamental weakness of this relation. In fact, 
s has many qualities, and only a subset of these are in any way causally 
related to the disposition. Presumably the pinkness of the suspension (q3) does 
not have any causal role in the wear of the tires. And knowing Barry is not a 
dodgy mechanic we presume the causal basis is not in s's characteristic of 
being bought from Barry (q2). We have no way to "pin the blame" of the worn 
tires on q1. And AFAICT there is no way to compose this from existing relations 
- it has to be a primitive.

I propose that has_material_basis is generalized to include qualities of 
material emtities as the range of the relation, OR a new fundamental relation 
has_qualitative_basis is introduced.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by cmung...@gmail.com on 17 Jul 2012 at 5:04

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Regarding the proposal to expand the range of 'has material basis' to include 
qualities... 

One of the original motivations for choosing 'has material basis' as the label 
for this relation was to highlight the fact that the range was bfo:material 
entity. This was an improvement on talk of a 'physical basis' for a disposition 
(since almost all entities can be described as 'physical').  

I have mentioned several times that there should be a corresponding 'has 
qualitative basis' relation with range bfo:quality that would relate 
dispositions to the essential qualities of their bearers. Most recently, the 
need for 'has qualitative basis' came up on the ogms-discuss thread:
https://groups.google.com/d/topic/ogms-discuss/7SYug0AWAcE/discussion

I think for clarity and intuitive ease-of-use, it would be best to have two 
relations 'has material basis' (domain: disposition, range: material entity) 
and 'has qualitative basis (domain: disposition, range: quality).

Original comment by albertgo...@gmail.com on 5 Feb 2013 at 9:15

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What is the material basis of an information-bearing radio signal that crosses 
the universe?

Original comment by steschu@gmail.com on 5 Feb 2013 at 10:25

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BFO has never coped with physical fields, energetic or gravitational.  The hard 
core BFO'er could try to argue the emitter (or emitter/receiver pair) were the 
material basis of the signal, or invoke some wave/particle duality and say the 
particles form the material basis for the waves.  Feh. Fields are as real as 
anything else in this universe.

Original comment by HunterOn...@gmail.com on 5 Feb 2013 at 10:45

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'has material basis' is a relation between a disposition and a material entity 
(roughly: in virtue of what material parts of the bearer does the disposition 
exist).  

I am not sure what the disposition is in your example (disposition to travel 
across a portion of the universe?) or what the disposition inheres in. It seems 
that any issue you would take with the radio wave example could be brought 
against 'inheres in' or 'borne by' or any relation between dispositions and 
material entities.

In any event, I don't believe there is an axiom that says every disposition 
must have a material basis. The fact that some (indeed many) clearly do is 
reason enough for this relation to be in BFO2.

Original comment by albertgo...@gmail.com on 5 Feb 2013 at 11:13