统一物理与生物功能：跨学科视角的挑战与工程功能基础

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本文《统一物理人工制品与生物功能的定义》由Mizoguchi、Riichiro、Kitamura、Yoshinobu和Borgo三位作者合作撰写，发表于2016年的《应用本体论》(Applied Ontology)第11卷第2期，卷号129-154。文章旨在解决长期以来在不同学科领域中对物理人工制品（如机器）和生物系统（如生命体）功能研究的一个核心挑战：如何构建一个统一的概念框架，将自然物体（如生物）和设计物体（如工具）的功能进行整合。在生物学和工程学等领域，尽管对于实体行为和环境背景（即上下文）的研究有所深入，但至今仍未找到一个能涵盖生物功能（例如细胞的生长、繁殖）和人工制品功能（如电脑程序的运行）的通用功能性概念。文章认为，理解行为和上下文是构建这种统一定义的关键。行为是指一个系统在特定环境中的操作或表现，而上下文则决定了这些操作的必要条件和目标。通过将行为和上下文作为基本元素，论文试图为人工制品和生物功能提供一个更为一致和包容的理论基础。在论文中，作者可能会探讨以下几个主要观点： 1. **功能的多维度性**：强调功能不是单一的，而是根据不同的视角和环境表现出多种形式。生物功能可能涉及遗传、生理和生态层面，而人工制品功能可能涉及设计目标、用户需求和技术性能。 2. **行为与功能的关系**：阐述行为如何反映和定义功能，例如，生物的行为可以被看作其适应环境、生存和繁衍的方式，而人工制品的行为则是执行预定任务的能力。 3. **上下文的重要性**：强调功能在特定环境中的实现，比如生物必须在特定的生态系统中发挥作用，而人工制品则依赖于其设计环境和使用者的操作条件。 4. **跨学科的融合**：论文可能提出将工程学中的功能性理论与生物学中的系统观相结合，以创建一个能够包容不同领域功能性的通用模型。 5. **方法和挑战**：探讨如何通过建立概念模型、开发新的分析工具或通过案例研究来推进这个统一定义的形成，同时承认面临的挑战，如如何量化和比较不同性质的功能。《统一物理人工制品与生物功能的定义》这篇文章为理解并区分这两类截然不同的实体提供了深入的思考，并提出了可能的框架，以便更好地整合和比较它们的功能特性。通过这种方式，研究者们可以更好地跨越学科界限，促进对复杂系统（包括生物和人造系统）的全面理解。

R. Mizoguchi et al. / A unifying deﬁnition for artifact and biological functions 133

uses some input to produce some output. Useful related notions (actually, roles) are conduit, operand,

medium, input/inlet and output/outlet.

An individual can play multiple roles (Mizoguchi et al., 2007)at

the same time; for example, a shaft in a car plays a conduit role and a medium role respectively to transfer

and to hold torque. Note that in this approach objects can be seen as systems of components (systemic

view). The idea is that the components of a system interact with each other and these interactions realize

a behavior of the system as a whole. A behavior is identiﬁed by looking at the changes caused on some

operand. In the case of the heating device described in the previous example, the heater’s behavior is

modeled as a change between the temperature of a ﬂuid (the operand) at the inlet and at the outlet. This

view assumes that changes in real life are reducible to changes of physical (observable) qualities.

Scientists, like engineers and biologists, work with a simpliﬁed model of the processes in real-life.

Since real processes are rich of features and it is hard to build a perfect model, they select some aspects

and the relative properties which are relevant for their tasks and ignore the rest. Thus, they actually deal

with simpliﬁed representations obtained by considering a limited perspective of the ongoing change(s).

As we will see in the subsequent sections, such a model of behavior is adequate for understanding

functions.

4. Function context

The notion of context is a useful conceptual tool applied in different domains, from psychology and

sociology (Rogoff and Lave, 1984), to philosophy and linguistics (Lewis, 1980), from logic and rea-

soning (McCarthy, 1993; Ghidini and Giunchiglia, 2001) to human-computer interaction (Dey, 2001).

Contexts are regularly used and studied in interdisciplinary research (Brézillon et al., 2013). Notwith-

standing the large interest in the research community, no shared deﬁnition has emerged in the literature.

It is generally claimed that a context is like an environment or a situation, though these terms may have

quite different connotations (Dey, 2001).

Our goal is to investigate the notion of function with respect to a suitable notion of context. We assume

that the latter notion is available and use it as a primitive element that we specialize into the notion of

function context. For this purpose, we informally assume that a context C is a complex entity with (at

least) the following characteristics:

1. C existentially depends on (at least) one entity O. We highlight this by writing that the context C

is for O. For example, a heating context depends on a heat exchanger artifact, call it A

.Wethen

say that such a heating context is for A

(and perhaps for other entities as well).

2. For some entity O there exist multiple distinct contexts C

,...,C

. For example, heating and

cooling can be contexts for the same heat exchanger artifact A

3. There exists a context C which is context for different entities O

,...,O

. For example, a school

system is the context for both the teachers and the students of that school.

4. A context C for O identiﬁes an entity S consisting of all the objects in C, including O,anda

description of a state (or set of states) of S. We call such a S the support of C. Typically, S is the

mereological sum of the entities in the context and in richer cases may include their relationships

as well. For example, the support of the cooling context is the sum of the heat exchanger artifact

(a radiator) with the connected pipes, pumps, ﬂuids, heat generator(s) etc.

These and other notions are detailed in the device ontology presented in Mizoguchi and Kitamura (2009).

134 R. Mizoguchi et al. / A unifying deﬁnition for artifact and biological functions

5. Let C be a context with support S, then a larger context is a context C



with support S



such that

S is a mereological part of S



. In short, contexts can be nested. For example, the school context is

nested into the education context of some social system.

In summary, we assume that a context C for an entity O is a complex entity that identiﬁes an entity S

(the support) which includes O. A context C is included in a larger context C



provided the support of

the former is a part of the support of the latter. We now introduce function context as a specialisation of

the above notion of context.

4.1. Function, systemic and use contexts

As this paper deals with the attribution of function to biological and artiﬁcial physical objects, in what

follows we further elaborate on the above notion of context restricted to physical objects, thus leaving

aside abstract entities. Indeed, in the study of physical objects that can perform a function, contexts

are introduced to help identifying the physical environment with which these objects interact. More

precisely, this restriction amounts to the notion of (physical) function context, i.e., contexts that allow

to deﬁne some function role. Here we also assume that a relation “contributes to” is given, see Borgo

and Mizoguchi (2014). This relation applies to two processes and in this paper the second process will

always be a process that leads to a state. Thus, the relation “a process A contributes to the process of

achieving state B” (or “a process A contributes to state B”, for short) stands for the causal relationship

that the process A is bringing about the state B as in “the raising of the mist contributes to a state of lack

of visibility.”

Based on the notion of artifact’s behavior introduced in the previous section, we deﬁne function con-

text as follows:

Deﬁnition 1 (Function Context). GivenanobjectO,afunction context C for O is a triple formed by a

context for O, a behavior B of O and a state G, called goal, such that the behavior B causally contributes

to achieve the state G.

Deﬁnition 2 (Appropriateness between Goals). Fix a function context C for O with goal G and be-

havior B. We say that G, speciﬁed by C,isappropriate for a goal G



, speciﬁed by a function context



for an object O



, if there exists a sequence of distinct contexts C

,...,C

with distinct objects

,...,O

, goals G

,...,G

and processes B

,...,B

such that (1) O = O

, O

is part of O

i+1

(for 1  i<n), and O

= O



;and(2)G = G

, G



= G

and the process B

achieving G

contributes

to the process B

i+1

achieving G

i+1

As discussed in the introduction, “goal” in these deﬁnitions does not mean “intentional goal” since no

agent might be involved in these contexts. The goal in the deﬁnition of function context is simply the

state associated with the given context, that is, the state to be achieved. Furthermore, appropriateness of

a goal G is always relative to some other (larger) goal G



There are two basic types of function contexts: systemic function context and use function context.

Deﬁnition 3 (System and its Components). A system is an entity which consists of two or more identi-

ﬁed components and their relationships. The components can be atomic or complex. An atomic compo-

nent is not decomposed further. A complex component is itself a (sub-)system. Every system is decom-

posed into atomic components in a ﬁnite number of steps.

Recall that the “causally contributes to” relation has been partially formalized in Borgo and Mizoguchi (2014).

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