Mental Moment
- CURIE:
gmeow:MentalMoment - IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/MentalMoment
- Category: class
- Defined by:
gmeow:slices/kernel - Box roles: TBox role (What is this?)
The umbrella category of all agent mental states — intrinsic modes inhering in exactly one agent that constitute its cognitive / doxastic / conative life: knowing (cognition's gmeow:CognitiveState), believing (epistemics' doxastic states), and desiring/intending (teleology's gmeow:IntentionalMode). A NAMED class so a consumer can query ALL of an agent's mental moments uniformly (the agent-memory flagship, Principle 15) and the schema surface projects a single mental-state parent. Never instantiated directly.
Structure
Subclass of: gufo:IntrinsicMode
Practical Pattern
Use gmeow:MentalMoment as a specialized kind of gufo:IntrinsicMode. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.
Example Snippets
These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.
Abduction
- Source:
slices/core/inference/examples/abduction.ttl - Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-inference-examples-abduction
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/inference/> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — ABDUCTION (inference to the best explanation), the FULL CHAIN.
#
# This example exercises all three fidelity tiers and the endurant/occurrent
# split end to end:
#
# gmeow:InferenceProcess --hasInferenceCommitment--> gmeow:InferenceCommitment
# (the occurrent reasoning episode) (the endurant argument)
# | |
# producesMentalMoment conclusion
# v v
# the accepted belief is the agent's attitude gmeow:StandpointClaim
# (gmeow:MentalMoment) toward the winning ------> (the conclusion content)
# hypothesis
#
# A clinician observes a fever and reasons to its best explanation. Two
# candidate hypotheses compete (gmeow:competesWith); each is scored by a
# solver-layer gmeow:explanatoryScore (Principle 12 — there is no isBest bit).
# The winner's modality is promoted gmeow:conceivable -> gmeow:probable; the
# loser is SUPPRESSED (gmeow:displayable false), never deleted (Principle 10).
# --- The mental moment the reasoning produces (endurant doxastic mode) ------- #
# Distinct from the StandpointClaim conclusion (ex:hypInfluenza, the content the
# commitment concludes): this is the clinician's NEW belief — a gmeow:MentalMoment,
# the moment the reasoning episode brings into being. Its bearer is the process's
# gmeow:experiencer (ex:clinician); typed without asserting inherence (gufo:inheresIn
# is the alignment target, not an asserted axiom — Principle 5).
ex:beliefInfluenza a gmeow:MentalMoment ;
rdfs:label "The clinician's belief that the patient has influenza"@en .
Mental Timeline
- Source:
slices/core/mentation/examples/mental-timeline.ttl - Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-core-mentation-examples-mental-timeline
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/mentation/> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .
# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — a small mental timeline for one agent.
#
# Three mental occurrents illustrate the mentation slice's core idioms:
# 1. A gmeow:MentalProcess of type processPerception — Ada notices morning light.
# Carries a temporal frame the same way gmeow:Event takes one (events idiom,
# gmeow:eventTime + gmeow:eventTemporalFrame), and MANIFESTS a perceptual
# capacity via gmeow:realizesMentalMoment (ontological participation bridge).
# 2. A gmeow:MentalProcess of type processReasoning — Ada works through a proof.
# gmeow:producesMentalMoment points at ex:beliefQEDholds — the reasoning CREATES
# a new belief that did not exist beforehand (a gmeow:MentalMoment).
# 3. A gmeow:Experience (the phenomenal subset of MentalProcess) of type
# processDreaming — Ada's dream last night. gmeow:Experience is used because
# there is something it is like to undergo a dream (the qualia-bearing subset).
#
# All three are borne by exactly one experiencer (gmeow:experiencer is functional);
# gmeow:mentalProcessType is non-functional, so a process can carry multiple types.
# The bridge target: a gmeow:MentalMoment (the intrinsic perceptual mode). Its
# bearer is the process's gmeow:experiencer (ex:ada); like the cognition idiom
# (ex:adaPythonKnowing a gmeow:CognitiveState) the mode is typed without asserting
# inherence — gufo:inheresIn is an alignment target, not an asserted axiom (P5).
ex:perceivedMorningLight a gmeow:MentalMoment ;
rdfs:label "Ada's perceptual state: morning light perceived"@en .
Usage Advice
Use when
- Use as the shared parent to subclass an agent-state mode from (
gmeow:CognitiveState, a doxastic state,gmeow:IntentionalMode), or to query an agent's whole endurant mental life as one family without walking the cognition / epistemics / teleology branches separately (Principle 15).
Avoid when
- Avoid instantiating it directly (it is an abstract umbrella — type the specific mode instead) and avoid it for mental OCCURRENTS that unfold in time (perceiving, reasoning, dreaming); those are
gmeow:MentalProcess, the perdurant sibling, not aMentalMoment.
How to use
- Subclass the concrete mode (
gmeow:CognitiveState,gmeow:IntentionalMode, a doxastic state) under it from each consumer slice; a single agent-memory query overgmeow:MentalMomentthen returns knowing, believing, and intending together, andgmeow:producesMentalMoment/gmeow:realizesMentalMoment(mentation) bridge a process to the moment it settles.
Examples
- ex:knowingPython a
gmeow:CognitiveState; rdfs:subClassOfgmeow:MentalMoment.