Dispositions and tendencies feature significantly in the biomedical domain and therefore in representations of knowledge of that domain. They are not only important for specific applications like an infectious disease ontology, but also as part of a general strategy for modelling knowledge about molecular interactions. But the task of representing dispositions in some formal ontological systems is fraught with several problems, which are partly due to the fact that Description Logics can only deal well with binary relations. The paper will (...) discuss some of the results of the philosophical debate about dispositions, in order to see whether the formal relations needed to represent dispositions can be broken down to binary relations. Finally, we will discuss problems arising from the possibility of the absence of realizations, of multi-track or multi-trigger dispositions and offer suggestions on how to deal with them. (shrink)

The concept of a function is central both to biology and to technology. But there is an intricate debate how functions as well as related entities like dispositions and roles are to be represented in top level ontologies and how they are to be related. We review important philosophical accounts and ontological models for functions and roles and discuss three models for the relation of functions and dispositions. We conclude that mainly because of the need to account for malfunctioning, functions (...) should not be treated as a subtype of dispositions, but as their sibling category. (shrink)