FOIS is the flagship conference of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications, a non-profit organization which promotes interdisciplinary research and international collaboration at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science. This book presents the papers delivered at FOIS 2023, the 13th edition of the Formal Ontology in Information Systems conference. The event was held as a sequentially-hybrid event, face-to-face in Sherbrooke, Canada, from 17 to 20 July 2023, and online from 18 to 20 (...) September 2023. In total, 62 articles from 19 different countries were submitted, out of which 25 were accepted for inclusion in the conference and for publication; corresponding to an acceptance rate of 40 percent. The contributions are separated into the book’s three sections: (1) Foundational ontological issues; (2) Methodological issues around the development, alignment, verification and use of ontologies; and (3) Domain ontologies and ontology-based applications. In these sections, ontological aspects from a wide variety of fields are covered, primarily from various engineering domains including cybersecurity, manufacturing, petroleum engineering, and robotics, but also extending to the humanities, social sciences, medicine, and dentistry. A noticeable trend among the contributions in this edition of the conference is the recognition that improving the tools to analyze, align, and improve ontologies is of paramount importance in continuing to advance the field of formal ontology. The book will be of interest to all formal and applied ontology researchers, and to those who use formal ontologies and information systems as part of their work. (shrink)

Salient landmarks enhance route learning. We hypothesised that semantically salient nostalgic landmarks would improve route learning compared to non-nostalgic landmarks. In two experiments, participants learned a route through a computer-generated maze using directional arrows and wall-mounted pictures. On the test trial, the arrows were removed, and participants completed the maze using only the pictures. In the nostalgia condition, pictures were of popular music artists and TV characters from 5 to 10 years ago. In the control condition, they were recent pictures (...) of these same artists and characters. In Experiment 1, in the test trial, participants in the nostalgia condition completed the maze faster than controls. Experiment 2 conceptually replicated these findings and extended them by exploring boundary conditions. Participants had to learn two mazes sequentially. In Maze 1, we placed nostalgic/control landmarks only at non-decision points (whereas we placed them at decision points in Experiment 1). In Maze 2, we placed nostalgic/control landmarks at decision points during acquisition but removed them in the test trial (whereas they were present in the test trial in Experiment 1). In both mazes, participants in the nostalgia (compared to control) condition completed the test trial faster. (shrink)

An entity x is said to be generically dependent on a type F if x cannot exist without at least one entity of type F existing. In this paper several varieties of generic dependence are distinguished, differing in the nature of the relationship between an entity and the instances of a type on which it generically depends, and in the light of this, criteria of identity for generically dependent entities are investigated. These considerations are then illustrated in detail in a (...) series of three case studies, covering shapes, linguistic entities such as letters, words and sentences, and collectives. Each case study examines how far the entities involved have robust identity criteria, and to the extent that they do not it is questioned whether they can be regarded as bona fide examples of generic dependent entities. Finally, in the light of this, a number of possible accounts that may be given of the ontological status of such entities are considered. (shrink)

So-called ‘reified temporal logics’ were introduced by researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the early 1980s, and gave rise to a long-running series of debates concerning the proper way to represent states, events, causation, action, and other notions identified as crucial to the knowledge representation needs of AI. These debates never resulted in a definitive resolution of the issues under discussion, and indeed continue to produce aftershocks to the present day; none the less, we are now sufficiently far removed in (...) time from their heyday for it to be a worthwhile exercise to stand back and review them as a connected piece of history. (shrink)

Expressions designating collectives, such as “the committee” or “the ships in the port”, may be interpreted de re or de dicto, depending on context, according as they pick out collectives defined by their members or collectives defined by some criterion for membership. We call these E-collectives and I-collectives respectively, and in this paper we explore in depth the relationship between these two categories. In particular, we identify important respects in which they differ, regarding the nature of the dependence of the (...) collective on its members, the nature of the parthood relation in which the members stand to the whole, and, from an application perspective, the different methods used for identifying the two forms of collective from large spatio-temporal data-sets. (shrink)

The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed by future ontologists; these (...) recommendations are intended as guidelines for institutions and organizations that may consider establishing a program for training ontologists. Further, we recommend a number of specific actions for the community to pursue. (shrink)

In this paper we consider two key concepts from software engineering—‘specification’ and ‘implementation’—and explore their possible applications outside software engineering to other disciplines, notably the philosophy of action, evolutionary biology, and cognitive science. Throughout, the emphasis is on the gain in conceptual clarity that can be afforded by these concepts; it is not so much a matter of new knowledge or new theories but of a reorganization of existing knowledge and theories in a way that facilitates the transfer of insights (...) across a range of related fields. (shrink)

The value of logic techniques in circuit design has been well-known for many years, but a thorough grounding in mathematical logic is needed for all stages of software development, especially program specification, verification and program transformation. In all these stages, logic underpins the theory, bearing out the dictum that Logic is the calculus of computer science. This book presents the subject of mathematical logic in order to provide a grounding for students in computer science.

The notion of specification plays a key role in the developing science of computing. It is typically considered to be the keystone in the software development process. However, there is no single, generally agreed meaning of specification that bears close scrutiny. Instead there is a variety of different, although partially interlocking and overlapping interpretations of the term.We catalogue this varietal profusion and attempt to lay bare both the sources and consequences of each major alternative. We attempt to present the full (...) range of possibilities, and the biases inherent in each style of interpretation. (shrink)

Topics covered in this volume include the question of criminalization and the proper scope of the criminal law; the grounds of criminal responsibility; the ways ...

An open source open access logic textbook.

The Anatomy of Neoplatonism was the crowning achievement of A. C. Lloyd, the distinguished scholar of late ancient philosophy. He offers a rich and authoritative study of this school of thought, which was highly influential not only on subsequent philosophy but also on Christian theology. His discussion ranges over metaphysics, epistemology, logic, and language, and reveals the fundamental structure of Neoplatonist thought; the book is essential reading for all who work in this area. Lloyd shows that while Neoplatonism is not (...) a modern philosophy, it is indeed philosophy in the modern sense. (shrink)

The concept of randomness has been unjustly neglected in recent philosophical literature, and when philosophers have thought about it, they have usually acquiesced in views about the concept that are fundamentally flawed. After indicating the ways in which these accounts are flawed, I propose that randomness is to be understood as a special case of the epistemic concept of the unpredictability of a process. This proposal arguably captures the intuitive desiderata for the concept of randomness; at least it should suggest (...) that the commonly accepted accounts cannot be the whole story and more philosophical attention needs to be paid. 1. Randomness in science1.1Random systems1.2Random behaviour1.3Random sampling1.4Caprice, arbitrariness and noise2. Concepts of randomness2.1Von Mises/church/martin-löf randomness2.2KCS-randomness3. Randomness is unpredictability: preliminaries3.1Process and product randomness3.2Randomness is indeterminism?4. Predictability4.1Epistemic constraints on prediction4.2Computational constraints on prediction4.3Pragmatic constraints on prediction4.4Prediction defined5. Unpredictability6. Randomness is unpredictability6.1Clarification of the definition of randomness6.2Randomness and probability6.3Subjectivity and context sensitivity of randomness7. Evaluating the analysis[R]andomness … is going to be a concept which is relative to our body of knowledge, which will somehow reflect what we know and what we don't know. Henry E. Kyburg, Jr ([1974], p. 217)Phenomena that we cannot predict must be judged random. Patrick Suppes ([1984], p. 32). (shrink)

We have recently developed a new understanding of probability in quantum gravity. In this paper we provide an overview of this new approach and its implications. Adopting the de Broglie–Bohm pilot-wave formulation of quantum physics, we argue that there is no Born rule at the fundamental level of quantum gravity with a non-normalisable Wheeler–DeWitt wave functional \(\Psi\). Instead the universe is in a perpetual state of quantum nonequilibrium with a probability density \(P\ne \left| \Psi \right| ^{2}\). Dynamical relaxation to the (...) Born rule can occur only after the early universe has emerged into a semiclassical or Schrödinger approximation, with a time-dependent and normalisable wave functional \(\psi\), for non-gravitational systems on a classical spacetime background. In that regime the probability density \(\rho\) can relax towards \(\left| \psi \right| ^{2}\) (on a coarse-grained level). Thus the pilot-wave theory of gravitation supports the hypothesis of primordial quantum nonequilibrium, with relaxation to the Born rule taking place soon after the big bang. We also show that quantum-gravitational corrections to the Schrödinger approximation allow quantum nonequilibrium \(\rho \ne \left| \psi \right| ^{2}\) to be created from a prior equilibrium ( \(\rho =\left| \psi \right| ^{2}\) ) state. Such effects are very tiny and difficult to observe in practice. (shrink)

P. T. Mackenzie's article is remarkable and challenging in several ways. It is, for instance, noteworthy that he reaches the surely correct conclusion that personal identity cannot be analysed in terms of memory without so much as entertaining Bishop Butler's terse and decisive objection to any such analysis: ‘… one should really think it self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes’.

relevant alternatives: I take it that a process is reliable in the actual world iff, in the actual set of outcomes (i.e. beliefs being formed), the frequency of successes (those beliefs being true) is much greater than the frequency of failures (those beliefs being false). One may wish to run a more sophisticated kind of reliabilism, where one demands that a reliable process also be reliable in counterfactual situations, but one need not, and I won’t here. If perception is a (...) reliable belief forming process, then I can know things on the basis of perception. So let’s say I know p on the basis of perception. To know that I know p involves, first, knowing that I believe p, and second, knowing that I believe p on the basis of a reliable belief forming process, by the definition of knowledge. But can I know either of these things? (shrink)

Some philosophers have been attracted to the idea that the norm of belief is truth that is, a belief that p is correct i p is true. But this idea is problematic in view of some very common• place re ections on what one should believe about paradoxical sentences like the Truthteller. Interestingly, these re ections don't seem to trouble the rival knowledge norm for belief, and this may provide indirect support for that alternative norm.