The Formal Ontology of Spatio-Temporal Reality and its Formalization

Foundations and Applications of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning (FASTR)

Volume

Papers from the 2003 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

A framework for spatio-temporal reasoning has to account for the variety of modes of existence and persistence in time. It should thus be based on a formal ontology of spatio-temporal reality. For pragmatic reasons, however, it is even better if while being based on a realist foundation, the framework has the potential of being extended and amended contextually. I propose a rich modular framework based on a realist formal ontology of spatio-temporality. I present the ontology as a theory and position it with respect to the vari-ety of spatio-temporal theories. The theory defended has the privilege and strength of being realist, and generates a framework having the potentiality to cope modularly with more exotic theories.