Reification in Cyc is the process by which we create a Cyc FORT corresponding to a particular concept. Or, to put it another way, reification is the process of adding a term that denotes a particular concept to the Cyc Knowledge Base. Every reified term in Cyc consists of an indexed data structure in the system. Cyclists commonly use the term “reify” in two slightly different ways:
- Reifying a concept refers to the manual creation of a Cyc constant to denote that concept.
- Reifying a NAT refers to the automatic preservation in the Cyc ontology of FORTs corresponding to non-atomic terms that use elements of
#$ReifiableFunction.