title: Representing vision and blindness.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  There have been relatively few attempts to represent vision or blindness ontologically. This is unsurprising as the related phenomena of sight and blindness are difficult to represent ontologically for a variety of reasons. Blindness has escaped ontological capture at least in part because: blindness or the employment of the term 'blindness' seems to vary from context to context, blindness can present in a myriad of types and degrees, and there is no precedent for representing complex phenomena such as blindness.
  
  
  METHODS
  We explore current attempts to represent vision or blindness, and show how these attempts fail at representing subtypes of blindness (viz., color blindness, flash blindness, and inattentional blindness). We examine the results found through a review of current attempts and identify where they have failed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  By analyzing our test cases of different types of blindness along with the strengths and weaknesses of previous attempts, we have identified the general features of blindness and vision. We propose an ontological solution to represent vision and blindness, which capitalizes on resources afforded to one who utilizes the Basic Formal Ontology as an upper-level ontology.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The solution we propose here involves specifying the trigger conditions of a disposition as well as the processes that realize that disposition. Once these are specified we can characterize vision as a function that is realized by certain (in this case) biological processes under a range of triggering conditions. When the range of conditions under which the processes can be realized are reduced beyond a certain threshold, we are able to say that blindness is present. We characterize vision as a function that is realized as a seeing process and blindness as a reduction in the conditions under which the sight function is realized. This solution is desirable because it leverages current features of a major upper-level ontology, accurately captures the phenomenon of blindness, and can be implemented in many domain-specific ontologies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA.
authors.forename: Patrick L
authors.initials: PL
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA.
authors.forename: Alexander P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Cox
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA.
authors.forename: Travis
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Allen
authors.affiliation: New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA.
authors.forename: William
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Duncan
authors.affiliation: New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA ; Department of Neurology, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY USA.
authors.forename: Alexander D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Diehl
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D064229:Biological Ontologies; D001766:Blindness; D003117:Color Vision Defects; D006801:Humans; D014785:Vision, Ocular