GMEOW Teleology Module

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

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 17 terms and contributes 0 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/events
• gmeow:slices/kernel
• gmeow:slices/temporal

Consumers

• The agent-memory flagship (an agent recording its own goals across sessions — Principle 14) and the lbox principia importer (a 21-goal hierarchy with counter-goals and tier tenure). The norms extension ranges prescribedConduct over Goal.

Local Map

Examples

Goal And Intention

• Source: slices/core/teleology/examples/goal-and-intention.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:Commitment, gmeow:Event, gmeow:Goal, gmeow:Group, gmeow:Intention, gmeow:Organization, gmeow:Person, gmeow:commitmentBeneficiary, gmeow:committedAgent, gmeow:eventTemporalFrame
• External prefixes: gufo, xsd

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: goals, intentions, and commitments. GMEOW separates the
# intentional moments gUFO keeps distinct: a gmeow:Goal is the SocialObject an
# agent aims at (gmeow:hasGoal); a gmeow:Intention is an intentional MODE borne by
# an agent that aims at that goal (gmeow:intentionGoal) and MOTIVATES concrete
# action (gmeow:motivates → an Event); a gmeow:Commitment is a relator binding a
# committed agent to a beneficiary. The desire-to / intend-to / commit-to layers
# are not collapsed — each is its own first-class moment.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/teleology/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .
@prefix xsd:   <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#> .

ex:dana a gmeow:Person ;
    gmeow:name    "Dana Reyes"@en ;
    gmeow:hasGoal ex:degreeGoal .

# --- The goal: a social object the agent aims at.
ex:degreeGoal a gmeow:Goal ; rdfs:label "Earn a master's degree"@en .

# --- The intention: an intentional mode borne by Dana, aimed at the goal, that
#     motivates a concrete action (the graduation event).
ex:intention a gmeow:Intention ;
    gmeow:intentBearer  ex:dana ;
    gmeow:intentionGoal ex:degreeGoal ;
    gmeow:motivates     ex:graduation .

ex:graduation a gmeow:Event ;
    rdfs:label                "Graduation ceremony"@en ;
    gmeow:eventType           gmeow:eventTypeGraduation ;
    gmeow:eventTime           "2027-06-15T00:00:00Z"^^xsd:dateTime ;
    gmeow:eventTemporalFrame  gmeow:temporalFrameUTCGregorian .

# --- The commitment: a relator binding the committed agent to a beneficiary,
#     aimed at the same goal — distinct from merely intending; a promise made TO
#     someone (a Commitment is an intentional moment, so it too aims at a goal).
#     The beneficiary must be an Agent — here the employer who sponsored the
#     degree (a gmeow:Group is a gufo:Collection, not an Agent).
ex:commitment a gmeow:Commitment ;
    gmeow:committedAgent        ex:dana ;
    gmeow:commitmentBeneficiary ex:employer ;
    gmeow:intentionGoal         ex:degreeGoal .

ex:employer a gmeow:Organization ; gmeow:name "Acme Robotics Inc."@en .

Terms

Classes

Properties

Guide

teleology

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

Goals, desires, intentions, and commitments — the UFO-C intentional-moment trichotomy surfaced as GMEOW core (the teleology design). Core by Principle 16 commitment: an agent recording its own goals across sessions is a question every AI system will face about itself, alongside identity and deception epistemics.

The commitment-graded trichotomy

All three sit under the named umbrella gmeow:IntentionalMoment (UFO-C's intentional moment), which exists so intentionGoal and motivates carry a generator-visible domain — anonymous union domains vanish from the LinkML / GraphQL / TypeScript surface (GraphQL / TypeScript surface review). All three aim at exactly one gmeow:Goal (intentionGoal) — the propositional content, a SocialObject describing a state of affairs, satisfied by situations (satisfiedBy, vantage-indexed satisfaction). DOLCE DnS arrives at the same description-satisfied-by-situations shape independently; IAO's objective specification is the BFO-world counterpart. Both are alignment targets (linkage-grade, never imported axioms), deferred with the rest of the alignment set to keep this landing pure-ontology — the target list is fixed in the alignment ledger: PROV Plan/hadPlan, P-Plan, FIBO FND-GAO, IAO, SUMO desires/intends, CCO Objective, CRM P20/P21, ConceptNet/ATOMIC; Wikidata goal Q4503831 (verified 2026-06-11).

Doctrine highlights

• counterGoal is constitutive, not lexical — the named shadow that partly defines the goal (an oath ↔ its betrayal). Symmetric, irreflexive (SHACL). Use cn:Antonym-grade opposition elsewhere.
• No global satisfaction verdicts (Principle 9): satisfiedBy, motivates, and goal-attribution all ride accordingTo on the statement. Avowed goals (agent's own vantage, top authority for its own standpoint) and attributed goals (observer vantage) coexist.
• Flat-first (Principle 4): hasGoal for the 80% case → Desire/Intention/Commitment when grade matters → IntentionTenure (the StandpointTenure idiom) when adoption/revision over time is the fact of interest. Revision by suppression, never deletion (Principle 10).
• Solver boundary (Principle 12): goal decomposition, planning, and means–end reasoning are never triples.
• Deontic force lives in the norms extension, which ranges prescribedConduct over Goal — dependency points extension → core only.

Terms

gmeow:Goal

The propositional content every intentional moment aims at — a SocialObject describing a state of affairs, satisfied by situations through satisfiedBy (vantage-indexed, no global verdict). The single target of intentionGoal.

gmeow:Desire · gmeow:Intention · gmeow:Commitment

The commitment-graded trichotomy: wanted (Desire), internally committed (Intention) — both gufo:IntrinsicMode bound to one agent via intentBearer — and socially committed (Commitment, a gufo:Relator binding a committedAgent to distinct commitmentBeneficiary parties).

gmeow:IntentionalMoment · gmeow:IntentionalMode

The named umbrella over the trichotomy (UFO-C's intentional moment), giving intentionGoal and motivates a generator-visible domain instead of an anonymous union; IntentionalMode is its value-vocabulary axis.

gmeow:intentionGoal · gmeow:intentBearer · gmeow:satisfiedBy · gmeow:counterGoal

The structural spine: intentionGoal ties a moment to its one Goal, intentBearer to its one agent, satisfiedBy records vantage-indexed satisfaction, and counterGoal names the constitutive shadow (symmetric, irreflexive) that partly defines the goal.

gmeow:committedAgent · gmeow:commitmentBeneficiary

The two Commitment relator roles — the agent who is bound, and the distinct parties the commitment is owed to.

gmeow:motivates

The attributed motive edge, ridden by accordingTo on the statement so avowed and observer-attributed motives coexist (Principle 9) without a winner slot.

gmeow:hasGoal

The flat-first shortcut (Principle 4) for the 80% case — an agent simply has a goal — promoted to Desire/Intention/Commitment when grade matters, then to IntentionTenure when adoption over time is the fact of interest.

gmeow:IntentionTenure · gmeow:tenureAgent · gmeow:tenureIntention

The reify-on-demand half (pairsWith hasGoal): the StandpointTenure idiom for an agent adopting, holding, and revising a goal across time — bound to its tenureAgent and tenureIntention, revised by suppression never deletion (Principle 10).