GMEOW Inquiry Module

• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/inquiry
• Tier: core
• Group: core

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 18 terms and contributes 2 mapping or projection rows. Use it when its terms match the native fact you want to preserve; use the linkage tables to see how those facts leave GMEOW for consumer vocabularies.

Dependencies

• gmeow:slices/epistemics
• gmeow:slices/kernel
• gmeow:slices/observations
• gmeow:slices/standpoint
• gmeow:slices/temporal

Consumers

• Agent memory of open problems / what it is trying to find out (Principle 14); recall surfaces open inquiries; abduction answers typeWhy questions; the metacognition slice's known-unknowns mint Questions; loaded-question detection bridges the deception slice.

Local Map

Examples

Loaded Question

• Source: slices/core/inquiry/examples/loaded-question.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:Proposition, gmeow:Question, gmeow:Standpoint, gmeow:StandpointClaim, gmeow:claimModality, gmeow:methodExpertJudgement, gmeow:observationMethod, gmeow:observedFeature, gmeow:presupposes, gmeow:questionType

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — a LOADED question via the deception bridge, with NO new
# axiom. The classic "have you stopped cheating?" is a polar gmeow:Question that
# gmeow:presupposes a proposition ("you were cheating"). Loadedness is NOT a flag
# on the question: it is a gmeow:StandpointClaim over the presupposed proposition
# carrying gmeow:claimModality gmeow:refuted — a standpoint DENIES the
# presupposition, exposing the question as loaded. This reuses the standpoint /
# deception machinery (P6); there is no isLoaded bit and no truth bit anywhere.

@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/inquiry/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

# --- The polar question and the proposition it takes for granted.
ex:stoppedCheating a gmeow:Question ;
    gmeow:questionType gmeow:typePolar ;
    gmeow:presupposes ex:wasCheating ;
    rdfs:label "have you stopped cheating?"@en .

ex:wasCheating a gmeow:Proposition ;
    rdfs:label "you were cheating"@en .

# --- The frame from which the presupposition is denied.
ex:accused a gmeow:Standpoint ;
    gmeow:sharpens gmeow:universalStandpoint .

# --- The deception bridge: a StandpointClaim over the presupposed proposition
#     carrying gmeow:refuted. From this vantage the presupposition is DENIED, so
#     the question is exposed as loaded. The question STAYS OPEN — loadedness is
#     the refuted presupposition, not a property of the gmeow:Question itself.
ex:denial a gmeow:StandpointClaim ;
    gmeow:vantage ex:accused ;
    gmeow:observedFeature ex:wasCheating ;
    gmeow:observationMethod gmeow:methodExpertJudgement ;
    gmeow:claimModality gmeow:refuted .

Open Question And Resolution

• Source: slices/core/inquiry/examples/open-question-and-resolution.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:Agent, gmeow:Entity, gmeow:Question, gmeow:Standpoint, gmeow:StandpointClaim, gmeow:answers, gmeow:asks, gmeow:believes, gmeow:claimModality, gmeow:knowsThat

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — the open→resolved inquiry lifecycle, reusing the epistemics
# spine. An agent asks a Wh-question, holding it OPEN. One vantage answers it
# with a gmeow:StandpointClaim (a kind of Observation): the answer rides
# gmeow:observedFeature / gmeow:observationResult and gmeow:answers the question.
# The agent RESOLVES the question by accepting that answer-claim through the
# epistemics spine — gmeow:knowsThat (which ENTAILS gmeow:believes by the
# keystone). No truth bit anywhere, and no global "answered" flag: resolution
# REUSES the epistemics spine rather than minting a new resolved term (P6).

@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/inquiry/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

# --- The agent and the open Wh-question.
ex:lillith a gmeow:Agent ;
    gmeow:asks ex:whereIsKey .   # the question is held OPEN by lillith

ex:whereIsKey a gmeow:Question ;
    gmeow:questionType gmeow:typeWh ;
    rdfs:label "where is the key?"@en .

# --- The observer whose vantage supplies an answer.
ex:houseObserver a gmeow:Standpoint ;
    gmeow:sharpens gmeow:universalStandpoint .

ex:hookLocation a gmeow:Entity ;
    rdfs:label "the hook by the door"@en .

# --- One vantage's answer: a StandpointClaim that gmeow:answers the question.
#     The answer content rides the Observation spine (observedFeature = the
#     thing observed, observationResult = the located place); the claim is one
#     vantage-indexed answer among possibly many (P9), never THE answer.
ex:keyOnHook a gmeow:StandpointClaim ;
    gmeow:answers ex:whereIsKey ;
    gmeow:vantage ex:houseObserver ;
    gmeow:observedFeature ex:whereIsKey ;
    gmeow:observationResult ex:hookLocation ;
    gmeow:observationMethod gmeow:methodDirectObservation ;
    gmeow:claimModality gmeow:unequivocal .

# --- Resolution: lillith ACCEPTS the answer-claim through the epistemics spine.
#     gmeow:knowsThat ⊑ gmeow:believes (the epistemics keystone): accepting the
#     answer-claim closes the inquiry. The question is now RESOLVED FOR lillith
#     — there is no global "answered" flag; another agent may still hold it open.
ex:lillith gmeow:knowsThat ex:keyOnHook .   # entails gmeow:believes ex:keyOnHook

Terms

Classes

Properties

Individuals

Linkages

• Rows: 2
• Projection profiles: -
• External vocabularies: schema

Guide

Inquiry

Slice: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/slices/inquiry · tier: core

Erotetic content — what an agent asks, as opposed to what it asserts or pursues. The epistemic stack already lets an agent assert (gmeow:Proposition, truth-condition) and aim (gmeow:Goal, satisfaction-condition); inquiry supplies the missing third content sibling, gmeow:Question, individuated by its answerhood condition — the set of propositions counting as direct answers. A question is neither true/false nor satisfied: it is resolved by an accepted answer. This minimal core seeds the gmeow:Question class, the closed gmeow:QuestionType value vocabulary, the presupposition / answer relations, the flat four-verb inquiry-attitude spine, the solver-layer gmeow:evokes decoration, and the reified gmeow:InquiryTenure half.

The missing third sibling

The epistemic stack can assert and aim but not ask. gmeow:Question completes the trio of content modes — three gmeow:SocialObject siblings differing only in mode of content:

The three are documented siblings, not subsumed: there is deliberately no rdfs:subClassOf between them, in either direction. Subsumption would erase the content-mode distinction that is the whole point — a question shares no truth-condition with a proposition and no satisfaction-condition with a goal, only the gmeow:SocialObject genus (content existing by social convention). This extends the Proposition/Goal direction-of-fit precedent (a belief and a goal may share the same proposition yet differ in fit, with no Goal ⊑ Proposition bridge) rather than amending it. The siblinghood lives in prose and the tests/test_inquiry.py no-subsumption guard, never in an axiom.

gmeow:Question

Erotetic content individuated by its answerhood condition — the set of propositions counting as direct answers — not by a truth-condition. A gmeow:SocialObject (gufo:Kind) existing by social convention like every description, it is neither true nor false (unlike a gmeow:Proposition) nor satisfied (unlike a gmeow:Goal): it is resolved by an accepted answer. Mint it once, classify it with gmeow:questionType, link its presuppositions with gmeow:presupposes and its candidate answers with gmeow:answers, and let several agents hold the one question open and answer it differently from different vantages (Principle 9).

Question types

gmeow:QuestionType is a closed value vocabulary (gufo:AbstractIndividualType ⊑ gufo:QualityValue), mirroring the gmeow:StandpointModality pattern: its members are individuals, never subclasses, and more than one may co-apply to a single question (the property is non-functional).

Two type values carry documented routing bridges (no axiom): a gmeow:typeWhy question's explanandum is exactly the abductive explanandum, so abduction (the inference tetrad) answers gmeow:typeWhy questions; a gmeow:typeHow question is answered by a procedure described in the procedures extension. The bridges are routing for consumers, not entailments.

gmeow:QuestionType · gmeow:questionType

gmeow:QuestionType is the closed value vocabulary of erotetic kinds; gmeow:questionType (domain gmeow:Question, range gmeow:QuestionType) classifies a question by pointing it at one or more of those values. It is non-functional on purpose — a "why … and how" question is both gmeow:typeWhy and gmeow:typeHow — so consumers route the explanandum to abduction and the procedure to the procedures extension off the co-applied values.

The inquiry attitude spine

Four agent-to-question attitudes form the flat 80% surface (Principle 4). Each is an owl:ObjectProperty with domain gmeow:Agent, an open range (the epistemics doxastic-spine precedent, Principle 13), and is non-functional — an agent holds many inquiries at once.

The spine is deliberately FLAT: there is no rdfs:subPropertyOf among the four — they are four distinct attitudes, not a hierarchy. This contrasts the doxastic spine's keystone gmeow:knowsThat ⊑ gmeow:believes; inquiry has no analogous keystone subproperty because no inquiry attitude entails another (wondering is not a weaker asking — it is a different stance). The open range lets the 80% case point cheaply at any gmeow:Question or reified inquiry; whose vantage and over what interval ride gmeow:accordingTo / gmeow:validFrom / gmeow:validUntil on the statement.

gmeow:asks · gmeow:wondersWhether · gmeow:inquiresInto · gmeow:seeksToKnow

The flat inquiry attitudes, weakest to most directed: gmeow:asks holds a question open; gmeow:wondersWhether idly entertains it; gmeow:inquiresInto actively investigates it; and gmeow:seeksToKnow aims the inquiry at an epistemics resolution. All four share domain gmeow:Agent, an open range, non-functionality, and no subproperty hierarchy.

Open vs resolved. A question is open for an agent until that agent gmeow:accepts or gmeow:knowsThat an gmeow:answers-claim for it. Resolution reuses the epistemics doxastic spine — there is no new resolved, isAnswered, or answerValue term (Principle 6). The open-question-and-resolution.ttl example walks the full lifecycle: ex:lillith gmeow:asks ex:whereIsKey (a gmeow:typeWh question held open); a house observer's gmeow:StandpointClaim gmeow:answers it (one vantage-indexed answer among possibly many, riding the Observation spine); and ex:lillith gmeow:knowsThat that answer-claim resolves the question for lillith — gmeow:knowsThat ⊑ gmeow:believes materialises the belief by the keystone. Resolution is per-agent, never a global "answered" flag; another agent may still hold the question open. No truth bit appears anywhere.

Presupposition & loaded questions

gmeow:presupposes (domain gmeow:Question, range gmeow:Proposition, non-functional) records a proposition that must hold for the question to admit a true answer — "have you stopped X?" presupposes "you once did X". The presupposition rides as the subject of the relation, never asserted as a fact of the universal standpoint.

A loaded question carries no new axiom and no isLoaded flag. Loadedness is a contested or false presupposition, modelled by reusing the standpoint / deception machinery (Principle 6): a gmeow:StandpointClaim over the presupposed gmeow:Proposition carrying gmeow:claimModality gmeow:refuted — a standpoint denies the presupposition, exposing the question as loaded. The loaded-question.ttl example shows the classic "have you stopped cheating?" (a gmeow:typePolar question presupposing "you were cheating"): the accused standpoint mints a refuted gmeow:StandpointClaim over that presupposition. The question itself stays open — loadedness is the refuted presupposition, not a property of the gmeow:Question — and the deception slice reads the denial off the standpoint layer.

gmeow:presupposes

Relates a question to a proposition it takes for granted. Non-functional (a question may presuppose several propositions). To mark a loaded question, mint a refuted gmeow:StandpointClaim over the presupposed gmeow:Proposition rather than altering the question — the deception-slice bridge, with no isLoaded bit and no truth bit on the question.

Answers are vantage-indexed

gmeow:answers (range gmeow:Question, open domain, non-functional) relates a candidate direct answer — typically a gmeow:StandpointClaim or a gmeow:Proposition — to the question it answers. The domain stays open (documented in prose, never an owl:unionOf) so the answer surface is not prematurely closed. Answers are vantage-indexed (Principle 9): different standpoints answer the same question differently and the answers coexist — there is never one global answer. Whose answer it is rides gmeow:accordingTo on the statement; an agent's acceptance rides the epistemics spine (gmeow:accepts / gmeow:knowsThat), never a privileged-winner slot.

gmeow:answers · gmeow:evokes

gmeow:answers carries one standpoint's direct answer (open domain, vantage-indexed, non-functional); gmeow:evokes (range gmeow:Question, open domain, non-functional) records Wiśniewski's erotetic implication — a declarative or erotetic premise giving rise to a further question (a gmeow:Proposition or a gmeow:Question may evoke a question, e.g. "who committed it?" evokes "what was the motive?"). gmeow:evokes is a solver-layer decoration (Principle 12): it carries no reasoner / entailment semantics in core — the ontology never derives an evoked question and no DL axiom enforces the relation; whether one question genuinely evokes another is solver work, asserted here only as recorded structure.

gmeow:InquiryTenure · gmeow:tenureInquirer · gmeow:tenureQuestion

gmeow:InquiryTenure (gufo:SituationType ⊑ gmeow:TimeScopedRelation) is the reified, time-scoped fact that an agent held an open question over an interval — the gmeow:StandpointTenure idiom applied to inquiry, minted on demand when the opening / closing of an inquiry is itself the fact of interest (the common case is a bare gmeow:asks with gmeow:validFrom / gmeow:validUntil, Principle 4). It carries its interval via gmeow:duringInterval (temporal module) and mediates at least one question through an EL owl:someValuesFrom restriction on gmeow:tenureQuestion (closed-world "exactly one" is SHACL's gmeow:InquiryTenureShape). gmeow:tenureInquirer (functional, range gmeow:Agent) names the one inquirer and gmeow:tenureQuestion (functional, range gmeow:Question) the one question — two agents holding the same question open are two tenures sharing one gmeow:tenureQuestion, five open questions are five tenures.

Reopening, retain-never-delete. An inquiry opened in January and closed by an accepted answer in June is an opened-then-closed tenure, never a deletion (Principle 10). Reopening a closed inquiry suppresses the prior accepted answer with gmeow:displayable false rather than removing any triple — the question and its full inquiry history stay queryable.

SSSOM alignments (mappings/equivalences.ttl)

Authored once in mappings/equivalences.ttl and compiled to mappings/gmeow-inquiry.sssom.tsv by gmeow compile-mappings (Principle 4); all by reference (Principle 5) — GMEOW never imports an external axiom. The match to schema.org's QA vocabulary is deliberately loose (skos:closeMatch, not equivalentClass).

The speech-act-vs-answerhood-content distinction is why neither row is equivalentClass: the schema:acceptedAnswer / schema:suggestedAnswer split has no gmeow counterpart and folds into the standpoint layer. The competency-question (CQ) practice familiar from ontology engineering — a question as a requirement a model must answer — is the natural consumer of this slice but has no stable IRI vocabulary, so it is referenced in prose only. The gmeow:QuestionType value vocabulary likewise has no stable external IRI counterpart and is intentionally left unmapped.

Dependencies

Verified by construction

tests/test_inquiry.py pins the load-bearing shape of the slice:

• Sibling no-subsumption guard — gmeow:Question is a gmeow:SocialObject (gufo:Kind) with no rdfs:subClassOf to or from gmeow:Proposition / gmeow:Goal in either direction.
• Flat, open-range spine — each of gmeow:asks / gmeow:wondersWhether / gmeow:inquiresInto / gmeow:seeksToKnow is an object property with domain gmeow:Agent, no rdfs:range, no owl:FunctionalProperty, and no rdfs:subPropertyOf.
• No truth or resolution bit — none of isResolved / isAnswered / answerValue / isTrue / isFalse appears in any triple position; resolution reuses the epistemics spine.
• gmeow:answers / gmeow:evokes open domain — both range over gmeow:Question with no asserted rdfs:domain, so the answer / evocation surface is never prematurely closed.
• gmeow:InquiryTenure shape — a gufo:SituationType ⊑ gmeow:TimeScopedRelation with functional gmeow:tenureInquirer / gmeow:tenureQuestion and the EL owl:someValuesFrom mediation restriction on gmeow:tenureQuestion.
• Annotation completeness (Principle 8) — all 18 locally-declared terms carry an rdfs:label, a skos:definition, and rdfs:isDefinedBy the inquiry slice IRI.