Norm

• CURIE: gmeow:Norm
• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/Norm
• Category: class
• Defined by: gmeow:slices/norms
• Box roles: TBox role (What is this?)

A prescription existing by social convention — an obligation, prohibition, permission, or recommendation issued by an agent or standpoint over some conduct. A norm asserts nothing about the world: it records that an issuer prescribes. Whether anything complies is a vantage-indexed ComplianceAssessment; what wins when norms conflict is solver work over the recorded precedence claims (Principle 12). Every modality-bearing norm must name its issuer (SHACL): there is no ought, only ought-according-to (Principles 1, 9). GROUNDING: a gufo:Category at Entity level — the IntentionalMoment precedent — because the rights graft places gmeow:Rule (⊑ gufo:Relator) beneath it while plain standalone norms are object-like social descriptions; committing Norm to gufo:Object OR gufo:Relator would make one branch inconsistent (Object ⟂ Aspect), and a Kind would stack identities under the rights trio (OntoUML MixIden). The social-convention reading lives on the concrete classes: NormativeSystem ⊑ SocialObject, the trio ⊑ Relator.

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:Entity

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:Norm as a specialized kind of gmeow:Entity. 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.

Food Safety Compliance

• Source: slices/extensions/norms/examples/food-safety-compliance.ttl
• Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-extensions-norms-examples-food-safety-compliance

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: norms, deontic modality, and compliance . A gmeow:Norm in
# a gmeow:NormativeSystem carries a gmeow:deonticModality — obligation /
# prohibition / permission / recommendation — the deontic stance the rights slice
# applies to assets, here applied to CONDUCT. Whether an event lives up to a norm
# is not a bare boolean: it is a reified gmeow:ComplianceAssessment binding the
# assessed event, the assessed norm, and a gmeow:complianceVerdict (held /
# not-held / undetermined), AS OBSERVED by an assessor with a method — so a
# contested compliance ruling can coexist with another (P9).
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/norms/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:foodCode a gmeow:NormativeSystem ; rdfs:label "Municipal Food Safety Code"@en .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:Entity

Usage Advice

Use when

• Use for any issued prescription — obligation, prohibition, permission, recommendation — over some conduct, when the prescription names its issuer and asserts nothing about whether anything in fact complies.

Avoid when

• Avoid asserting a norm as a global ought (every modality-bearing norm must name gmeow:normIssuer — there is no ought, only ought-according-to) and avoid using it for whether conduct complied (that is a vantage-indexed gmeow:ComplianceAssessment).

How to use

• Mint the norm, fix its force with gmeow:deonticModality, name its issuer with gmeow:normIssuer, point gmeow:prescribedConduct at the governed conduct, and bind bearers with gmeow:normBearer (absent = everyone in the issuer's scope).

Examples

• ex:n1 a gmeow:Norm; gmeow:deonticModality gmeow:deonticObligation; gmeow:normIssuer ex:gdpr; gmeow:prescribedConduct ex:eraseOnRequest.