GMEOW Epistemics Module

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

What This Slice Covers

This slice owns 6 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/kernel

Consumers

• The agent-memory flagship store_claim / recall MCP surface (Principle 14): an LLM output is a held attitude toward a proposition, recorded via the flat doxastic spine; the keystone knowsThat subPropertyOf believes materialises belief from any knowledge claim. The reified tier (DoxasticState, credence, justification) lands in sibling children.

Local Map

Examples

Belief And Knowledge

• Source: slices/core/epistemics/examples/belief-and-knowledge.ttl
• GMEOW terms: gmeow:Agent, gmeow:Proposition, gmeow:accepts, gmeow:believes, gmeow:knowsThat, gmeow:suspendsJudgementOn

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example — the flat doxastic spine. An agent knowsThat one proposition
# (which ENTAILS believes by the keystone), believes a second, pragmatically
# accepts a third without believing it, and suspends judgement on a fourth.
# No truth bit anywhere; modality and vantage would ride the statement layer.

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

ex:earthOrbitsSun  a gmeow:Proposition ; rdfs:label "the Earth orbits the Sun"@en .
ex:coffeeIsHealthy a gmeow:Proposition ; rdfs:label "coffee is healthy"@en .
ex:nullHypothesis  a gmeow:Proposition ; rdfs:label "the null hypothesis, assumed for the test"@en .
ex:lifeOnEuropa    a gmeow:Proposition ; rdfs:label "there is life on Europa"@en .

ex:ada a gmeow:Agent ;
    gmeow:knowsThat            ex:earthOrbitsSun ;   # entails gmeow:believes ex:earthOrbitsSun
    gmeow:believes            ex:coffeeIsHealthy ;
    gmeow:accepts             ex:nullHypothesis ;   # a working premise — NOT believed
    gmeow:suspendsJudgementOn ex:lifeOnEuropa .

Terms

Classes

Properties

Guide

epistemics

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

Propositional epistemic relations — an agent's attitudes toward propositions/claims: belief, doubt, suspension, pragmatic acceptance, and non-factive knowledge-that. The propositional companion to the cognition slice (objectual, agent → entity): epistemics relates an agent to a proposition, not to an entity. This minimal core seeds the slice with the truth-apt gmeow:Proposition and the flat doxastic spine; the reified tier (a doxastic state, credence, justification) and the mental-moment grounding land in sibling children.

The flat doxastic spine

Domain gmeow:Agent, range open (Principle 13): the 80% case points cheaply at any reified statement or claim; typed gmeow:Proposition content arrives at the reified tier.

Doctrine highlights

• The keystone — gmeow:knowsThat rdfs:subPropertyOf gmeow:believes: knowledge entails belief; the reverse never holds; asserting knowsThat materialises believes.
• No factive knows (Principles 1, 12) — there is no isTrue, no truth datatype, no factivity axiom. knowsThat is a vantage-indexed claim that (belief ∧ truth-per-frame ∧ justification) holds, never a global verdict; the JTB → knowledge judgement (and Gettier defeaters) is solver work.
• Truth-per-frame is reused, never re-minted (Principle 6) — how settled a proposition is held rides the standpoint modality (gmeow:standpointModality on a flattened statement, gmeow:claimModality on a reified StandpointClaim), in the standpoint slice.
• believes → accordingTo is documented, not axiomatised — an owl:ObjectProperty cannot rdfs:subPropertyOf an owl:AnnotationProperty in OWL 2 DL; the gmeow:vantage ⊑ accordingTo precedent. Realised in the projection layer.
• Proposition is the sibling of Goal, by direction of fit — a belief and a goal may share the same gmeow:Proposition but differ in fit (mind-to-world vs world-to-mind); deliberately no Goal ⊑ Proposition subsumption, no teleology dependency.
• Acceptance is not belief — gmeow:accepts is pragmatic; it entails neither belief nor truth.

Terms

The truth-apt content class and the flat doxastic spine this minimal core seeds — domain gmeow:Agent, range open (Principle 13).

gmeow:Proposition

The truth-apt content an attitude is taken toward — the sibling of Goal by direction of fit: a belief and a goal may share the same gmeow:Proposition but differ in fit (mind-to-world vs world-to-mind), with deliberately no Goal ⊑ Proposition subsumption.

gmeow:believes · gmeow:knowsThat

The base attitude and its factive-looking refinement: gmeow:believes holds the proposition true, and gmeow:knowsThat rdfs:subPropertyOf gmeow:believes is the keystone — knowledge entails belief, never the reverse. There is no factive isTrue axiom; knowsThat is a vantage-indexed claim that belief, truth-per-frame, and justification hold, with the JTB judgement left to the solver.

gmeow:doubts · gmeow:suspendsJudgementOn · gmeow:accepts

The non-believing stances: gmeow:doubts holds the proposition in low-credence doubt; gmeow:suspendsJudgementOn is agnostic withholding (neither believes nor disbelieves); gmeow:accepts is a pragmatic working premise that entails neither belief nor truth.

Dependencies

Depends on kernel (gmeow:SocialObject, gmeow:Agent). The believes → accordingTo bridge to standpoint is documentation only at this tier; standpoint becomes a hard dependency at.