Fiat Surfaces in the Basic Formal Ontology

The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) class <i>continuant fiat boundary</i> and its subclasses, including <i>fiat surface</i>, are not heavily axiomatized; they have elucidations, not definitions; and the meanings of these elucidations are poorly captured by the relevant BFO axioms. This paper is an effort to make progress in these respects for <i>fiat surface</i>. We identify a range of desiderata for a BFO-conformant view of <i>fiat surface</i>, argue that the GitHub does not satisfy them, argue that the view of fiat surfaces in Arp et al. (2015) does a better job, and supplement that view in ways that do a still better job. Our discussion allows us to, <i>inter alia</i>, present a number of axioms relevant to our topic worthy of consideration for inclusion in BFO or dependent ontologies in specific domains and for specific purposes.