Towards an Ontological Framework for

Events as Trasitions among Situations

Fabrício Henrique Rodrigues (fabricio.rodrigues@inf.ufrgs.br)
Advisors: Mara Abel and Joel Luís Carbonera

Events are things that happen in time. They can be viewed as a

transitions among situations (i.e., configurations of a portion of
reality) and as manifestations of dispositions (i.e., particularized
EVENTS

properties that are manifested under certain stimulus conditions).

It is a powerful account, but lacks constraints for unintended models.

Thus, we propose system as the invariant element that unify and
delimits the situations in the course of an event. Our goal is to
derive consequences of this approach into a framework for events.

System is a complex object composed of connected objects. Connection is a

relationship that affects the way the relata will behave in certain circumstances. The
SYSTEM-INVARIANT

environment of a system is the set of objects that are connected to components of the
system, but that are not components themselves. A system is open if objects (or
substrate) can enter or leave the system. Based on that, we propose the notion of ...
EVENTS

DISPOSITIONAL CONNECTION: relationship that fulfills stimulus

conditions of dispositions of its relata

If stimulus conditions are external to the bearer of a disposition, every manifestation of disposition (i.e., every event) requires a
dispositional connection between the bearer and another object, composing a system with it. Then we propose the notion of...

Transition among situations that are snapshots of a

SYSTEM-INVARIANT EVENT
system of dispositionally connected participants

CLOSED EVENT: Event that is delimited by Derived types

Change
Qualitative Identity
CLOSED EVENTS

a closed system (e.g., Sculpting a Statue) of event:

Creation

Change
Destruction

Stasis

OPEN EVENT:Event delimited by an open system

OPEN & AUX. EVENTS

AUXILIARY EVENT: Event in which an

(e.g., Train Trip)
object acquires or loses the connection(s) that
makes it a component of the system
g br
i n
is a co eak
sh ns is a nn
a
l i
b t io Auxiliary Event ec ing
st e c ti o
e nn ns
co Entry Event Exit Event
is a Open Event is a

Boarding is a Deboarding

Train Trip
entry event of exit event of

Our approach can be sem as complementing previous work:

“Events as what happens System delimiting which
REMARKS

“Events as transformations System as what delimits to a set of focal qualities” qualities to focus on
FINAL

of a portion of reality” the portion of reality (Guarino, Guizzardi, 2016)

(Guizzardi et al, 2013)
(help to extend it to existential events)

“Events as what happens Existential events as what happens to Also

System as such Allows multiple and
to a (concrete) object” concrete object properties of conserved substrate
varying participants
(Bunge, 1977) (Lombard, 1998) (Rodrigues, Carbonera, Abel, 2020)