Toward a Unified Framework for Realizable Entities: Dispositions, Plans, and Beyond

This paper extends the concept of a realizable entity (RE). Traditionally, REs include dispositions, functions, and roles. We propose an enriched typology that also encompasses plans and information content entities (ICEs). We term these structured and epistemic REs, respectively, based on shared characteristics: they depend on a bearer and can exist regardless of whether the entity they refer to is actually instantiated. To capture this commonality,
we introduce a unified relation, ‘refers to’, which generalizes the notions of realization, concretization, and aboutness. The ‘refers to’ relation enables reference to both individuals and repeatables (i.e., universals, types, concepts), including hypothetical, future, or even impossible entities. To address cases of generic reference—where the referent is a repeatable and not a particular instance—we introduce collections as extensions of repeatables.
After presenting the motivation for this unified relation, we incorporate it into a series of OWL-based design patterns. Some of these patterns require the expressive power of the OWL-DL profile, while others are compatible with the more scalable OWL-EL. These patterns support, or approximate, the representation and reasoning over REs, with particular attention to references to repeatables, represented as collections. We mention several
open issues, including the semantics of collections, the disambiguation of reference types, and complexities introduced by multi-referential information content entities. Our approach aims to support practical ontology engineering across diverse domains—especially biomedicine and clinical informatics—where modeling uncertainty, risk, hypothetical states, and plans is essential. Our proposal offers a lightweight, user-friendly framework for computable reasoning while remaining largely agnostic with respect to foundational metaphysical assumptions.
Further validation is needed to assess its effectiveness and to address its current limitations.