policy instrument roles/qualities/functions

[l-emele]

Description of the issue

In #1545 we added economic instrument, regulatory instrument, information instrument, education instrument, voluntary agreement instrument and voluntary agreement to bring structure in the policy instruments.

However, there are instruments that fit in more than one category. E.g. the European Union Emissions Trading System can be seen both as an economic instrument (as certificates are traded) and as a regulatory instrument (as the emissions market only exists due to regulatory intervention).

Ideas of solution

Create a multihierarchy by introducing policy instrument roles/qualities/functions and convert the existing subclasses of policy instrument to equivalent classes.

Workflow checklist

• I discussed the issue with someone else than me before working on a solution
• I already read the latest version of the workflow for this repository
• The goal of this ontology is clear to me

I am aware that

• every entry in the ontology should have a definition
• classes should arise from concepts rather than from words

[l-emele]

First try:

• An economic instrument quality is a quality of a policy instrument that expresses that the policy instrument has aspects of an economic instrument.
• A regulatory instrument quality is a quality of a policy instrument that expresses that the instrument has aspects of an economic instrument.
• ...

(I know, these are definition proposals are bit cyclic...)

[l-emele]

@stap-m : any thoughts on this proposal?

[stap-m]

• An economic instrument quality is a quality of a policy instrument that expresses that the policy instrument has aspects of an economic instrument.
• A regulatory instrument quality is a quality of a policy instrument that expresses that the instrument has aspects of an economic instrument.

I replaced "quality" with "property" for now. I hope that we can find a def that expresses, what we mean, and see, which classification fits in the next step.
I also made some changes to find a clearer definition. Does this express, what we mean?

• An economic instrument property is a property of a policy instrument that promotes, amongst others, economic measures.
• A regulatory instrument property is a property of a policy instrument that promotes, amongst others, regulatory measures.
• ...

Axioms:

• 'economic instrument' EquivalentTo ('policy instrument' and 'has property' some 'economic instrument property'
  ...

[l-emele]

Do we have property resp. has property?

[stap-m]

No, its just a placeholder for now...

[l-emele]

No, its just a placeholder for now...

Do you have any proposals instead of quality? Or any argument why it is not a quality?

I also made some changes to find a clearer definition. Does this express, what we mean?

• An economic instrument property is a property of a policy instrument that promotes, amongst others, economic measures.
• A regulatory instrument property is a property of a policy instrument that promotes, amongst others, regulatory measures.
• ...

Axioms:

• 'economic instrument' EquivalentTo ('policy instrument' and 'has property' some 'economic instrument property'
  ...

I am fine with this structure.

[l-emele]

I would really like to move on with this issue. A pragmatic solution without deciding yet on whether a policy property is a role, a quality or a function would be to implement the the properties as direct subclasses of realizable entity.¹ 😄

• An economic instrument property is a realizable entity of a policy instrument that promotes, amongst others, economic measures.
• A regulatory instrument property is a realizable entity of a policy instrument that promotes, amongst others, regulatory measures.
• ...

Axioms:

• 'economic instrument' EquivalentTo ('policy instrument' and 'has characteric' some 'economic instrument property'

These wouldn't be the first direct subclasses of realizable entity, we already have acceptance there.

Footnotes

1. Including an editor note that they will be finally made subclasses of either role, quality or function. ↩

[han-f]

Your suggestion reads good to me, the editor note also helpful for those viewing the OEO.

[stap-m]

I read again about functions, roles and qualities. About function, Arp et al 2015 says:

A function is a special kind of [...] realizable entity whose realization is an end-directed activity of its bearer [...]. Thus a function is a disposition that exists in virtue of the bearer’s physical make-up, and this physical make-up is something the bearer possesses because of how it came into being — either through natural selection (in the case of biological entities) or through intentional design (in the case of artifacts).

In our case, we could say that certain policy instruments are designed to have e.g. an economic impact and therefore have an economic instrument function.

[l-emele]

I would be fine with function.

[l-emele]

So can I implement these as functions or is there anything left to discuss here?

[stap-m]

Yes, please, go ahead!

[l-emele]

I've implemented as discussed however we overlooked a thing:
A function needs an independent continuant as bearer, however a policy instrument is an information content entity and therefore a generically dependent continuant. Therefore the reasoner now fails in my feature branch of PR #1906.

[stap-m]

I see. For has role we've already broken up the original range and changed it to just continuant, e.g. to enable model role. We did this based on a discussion with @fabianneuhaus.
We might think of doing the same to has function. However, changing the range of imported relations is not a clean solution... 🤔 😕

[stap-m]

I think, the cleanest solution is to use has characteristic instead of has function:

• has characteristic is the parent object property of has function
• it is inverse of characteristic of, which is annotated like this:
  

[l-emele]

Implemented in #1906