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An entity is something that has a distinct, separate existence, though it need not be a material existence. In particular, abstractions and legal fictions are usually regarded as entities. In general, there is also no presumption that an entity is animate.An entity could be viewed as a set containing subsets. This set itself is among other sets. In philosophy, these sets are said to be abstract objects as they do not refer to anything animate. The distinctive propriety of an entity rationaly yields the existence of the relativily distinct entities.
The word 'entity' is often useful when one wants to refer to something that could be a human being, a non-human animal, a non-thinking life-form such as a plant or fungus, or a lifeless object; for instance, one could say that any entity that enters a black hole would be transported, in many pieces, to another dimension.
Sometimes, the word 'entity' is used in a general sense of a being, whether or not the referent has material existence; e.g. God is often referred to as an 'Entity' with no corporeal form.
In law, an entity is something capable of bearing legal rights and obligationAn obligation can be legal or moral. There are also obligations in other normative realms: obligations of etiquette, social obligations, the "obligation" to spell words correctly, imposed by norms of standard spelling, etc. See also Law of obligations.s. It generally means " legal entityA legal entity or artificial person is a legal construct with legal rights or duties such as the legal capacity to enter into contracts and sue or be sued. It is an entity usually an organization such as a corporation or a government ultimately composed o" or "artificial person" but also includes " natural personIn jurisprudence, a natural person is a human being perceptible through the senses and subject to physical laws, as opposed to an artificial person, i. an organization that the law treats for some purposes as if it were a person distinct from its members".
1 Related concepts
- being
- individualIn metaphysics, the word individual while sometimes meaning "a person", more typically describes any numerically singular thing. Used in many contexts, both 'Socrates' and 'the Moon' denote individuals; 'grapefruit' and 'redness' (generally) do not. Indiv
- objectEtymology: The word object comes from the latin word objectum a noun form of objectus which in turn comes from objicere which means to throw or put something before someone. Objicere comes from ob "in front of" (related to the Greek epi and jacere "throw"
- personIn colloquial English, person is often synonymous with human''. However, in philosophy, there have been debates over the precise meaning and correct usage of the word, and what the criteria for personhood are. Are all persons human? Firstly, there is the
2 Specialized uses
- Entity is the root node of the SUMOThe Suggested Upper Merged Ontology or SUMO is an upper ontology intended as a foundation ontology for a variety of computer information processing systems. It was developed by Teknowledge Corporation and is one candidate for the "Standard Upper Ontology" ontology, and stands for the universal class of individuals.
- In VHDL, entity is the keyword for defining a new Object.
- An SGML entity is an abbreviation for some expanded piece of SGML text.
- In relational databases, an entity can refer to a table.
- In the context of the open systems architecture, an entity is an active routine within a layer.
