This concept’s semantic web URI is: [ http://sw.cyc.com/2006/07/27/cyc/GeopoliticalEntity ]Link to OWL representation

Political entity

Unique Tag: [ GeopoliticalEntity ]

Aliases: [ Demesne, Demesnes, Domain, Domains, Geopolitical entities, Geopolitical entity, Land, Lands, Political entities, Political geographic region, Political geographic regions ]
A specialization of organization and of legal agent and of geographical agent; instances of this collection control GeographicalRegions. Each instance of political entity includes a governing body, but is more than just that governing body.

Important subcollections include country, independent country, state, city, and province. Instances include Tokyo, the Bronx, Alaska, Rwanda, Singapore, InnerMongolia, Somerset, and Taiwan.

A central feature of this collection is that geopolitical-entities (indeed, all GeographicalAgents) are viewed in two significantly different ways with respect to two different types of geography-related microtheories. In a physical geography microtheory (i.e. Cyc's knowledge about physical geography and its submicrotheories), geopolitical-entities are clearly distinguished from the regions they control. (Territory Fn GEO-POL) is used in these contexts to denote the land mass (a geopolitical region) of a given geopolitical-entity GEO-POL. In a dualist geography microtheory (i.e. Dualist Geopolitical Mt and its submicrotheories), on the other hand, geopolitical-entities are viewed as being both agents and land masses (i.e. GeographicalRegions). Thus, there is little need for Territory Fn in the latter sort of context. (Despite their somewhat paradoxical flavor, dualist microtheories arguably allow Cyc to mimic commonsense reasoning about geopolitical entities and regions more closely than do the stricter physicalist microtheories.) There are also some generic geography microtheories (e.g. Cyc's knowledge about world geography and Cyc's knowledge about United States geography) which are neutral with respect to the physical and dualist views.

Also see the shared-note for this constant.

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