Foundational ontologies, central constructs in ontological investigations and engineering alike, are based on ontological categories. Firstly proposed by Aristotle as the very ur- elements from which the whole of reality can be derived, they are not easy to identify, let alone partition and/or hierarchize; in particular, the question of their number poses serious challenges. The late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg wrote around 1286 a tutorial that can help us today with this exceedingly difficult task. In this paper, I (...) discuss ontological categories and their importance for foundational ontologies from both the contemporary perspective and the original Aristotelian viewpoint, I provide the translation from the Latin into English of Dietrich's De origine II with an introductory elaboration, and I extract a foundational ontology–that is in fact a single-category one–from this text rooted in Dietrich's specification of types of subjecthood and his conception of intentionality as causal operation. (shrink)

The Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) was developed over the last two decades by consistently putting together theories from areas such as formal ontology in philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophical logics. It comprises a number of micro-theories addressing fundamental conceptual modeling notions, including entity types and relationship types. The aim of this paper is to summarize the current state of UFO, presenting a formalization of the ontology, along with the analysis of a number of cases to (...) illustrate the application of UFO and facilitate its comparison with other foundational ontologies in this special issue. (The cases originate from the First FOUST Workshop – the Foundational Stance, an international forum dedicated to Foundational Ontology research.). (shrink)

Thomas Langan's latest work, Being and Truth, sets as its object of inquiry the possibility of a genuine and meaningful intersubjectivity wherein both self and other come fully to nurture one another. The very condition for the possibility of such a significant onto-poetic relation is grounded and intertwined within a metaphysical Fundierung of Being illumined by Truth. In order to answer the aforementioned philosophical question, Langan maintains that the philosophical question must be cast as an ontological question. In other words, (...) the key to understanding and responding to the possibility of a genuine intersubjective relationship where both self and other come to fully interact with one another lies within the framework of a serious attempt to comprehend reflectively the constitutive dynamic between being, esse and Sein. Central to a genuine understanding and "holy" living out of self, other and the communal relationship which exists between the two is responsibility--the ability to respond to the exigencies and gifts of being. Hence, the need for our question to be cast in an ontological light. (shrink)

An approach in achieving semantic interoperability among heterogeneous systems is to offer infrastructure to assist with linking and integration using a foundational ontology. Due to the creation of multiple foundational ontologies, this also means linking and integrating those ones. In order to achieve this, we have selected the widely used foundational ontologies DOLCE, BFO, and GFO, and their related modules, on which to perform ontology mediation (alignment, mapping, and merging). The foundational ontologies were aligned (...) by identifying correspondences between ontology entities using seven tools, documentation, and our manual alignments, and comparing their effectiveness. Thereafter, based on the alignments, we created correspondences in the ontology files resulting in entity mappings and merged ontologies. However, during the mapping process, it was found that differences in foundational ontologies, such as their hierarchical structure, conflicting axioms due to complement and disjointness, and incompatible domain and range restriction, cause logical inconsistencies in foundational ontology alignments, thereby greatly reducing the number of mappings. We analyse and present these logical inconsistencies with possible solutions to some of them. (shrink)

In this very issue, Augusto (2022) formulates two requirements upon which to evaluate the adequacy of a foundational ontology. Specifically, the ontological categories: (i) should be understood as the most general kinds of things and (ii) are organized in a non-overlapping finite hierarchy. On the basis of such constraints, he claims that most existing foundational ontologies engineered in the context of Applied Ontology, including the UFO-B ontology, are inadequate. In this article, first we show that (...) his objection against UFO-B can be dissipated by pointing to a trivial terminological confusion. We then argue that his two constraints are not plausible. Then, we show that the disagreement between our point of view and Augusto’s framework is not restricted to those two constraints but extends over the notion of conceptualization of reality. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that accurately identifying and classifying competitors is a challenge for many companies and entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, it is a paramount activity which provide valuable insights that affect a wide range of strategic decisions. One of the main challenges in competitor identification lies in the complex nature of the competitive relationships that arise in business envi- ronments. These have been extensively investigate over the years, which lead to a plethora of competition theories and frameworks. Still, the concept of (...) competition remains conceptually complex, as none of these approaches properly formalized their assumptions. In this paper, we address this issue by means of an ontological analysis on the notion of competition in general, and of business competition, in particular, leveraging theories from various fields, including Marketing, Strategic Management, Ecology, Psychology and Cognitive Sciences. Our analysis, the first of its kind in the literature, is grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) and allows us to formally characterize why competition arises, as well as to distinguish between three types of business competitive relationships, namely market-level, firm-level and potential competition. (shrink)

While classifications of mental disorders have existed for over one hundred years, it still remains unspecified what terms such as 'mental disorder', 'disease' and 'illness' might actually denote. While ontologies have been called in aid to address this shortfall since the GALEN project of the early 1990s, most attempts thus far have sought to provide a formal description of the structure of some pre-existing terminology or classification, rather than of the corresponding structures and processes on the side of the patient. (...) We here present a view of mental disease that is based on ontological realism and which follows the principles embodied in Basic Formal Ontology and in the application of BFO in the Ontology of General Medical Science. We analyzed statements about what counts as a mental disease provided in the research agenda for the DSM-V, and in Pies' model. The results were used to assess whether the representational units of BFO and OGMS were adequate as foundations for a formal representation of the entities in reality that these statements attempt to describe. We then analyzed the representational units specific to mental disease and provided corresponding definitions. Our key contributions lie in the identification of confusions and conflations in the existing terminology of mental disease and in providing what we believe is a framework for the sort of clear and unambiguous reference to entities on the side of the patient that is needed in order to avoid these confusions in the future. (shrink)

The existence of a social world raises both the metaphysical puzzle: how can there be a “reality” of facts and objects that are genuinely created by human intentionality? and the epistemological puzzle: how can such a product of human intentionality include objective facts available for investigation and discovery by the social sciences? I argue that Searle’s story about the creation of social facts in The Construction of Social Reality is too narrow to fully solve either side of the puzzle. By (...) acknowledging different forms of rules for constructing social reality paralleling rules for creating ‘make-believe’ truths, we can build a more comprehensive social ontology and allow for a more appropriate range of discovery for the social sciences. Nonetheless, I argue that despite the parallels between methods for constructing make-believe and social facts, it would be mistaken to treat talk about social reality as involving a mere pretense to refer. (shrink)

The central task of cognitive neuroscience to map cognitive capacities to neural mechanisms faces three interlocking conceptual problems that together frame the problem of cognitive ontology. First, they must establish which tasks elicit which cognitive capacities, and specifically when different tasks elicit the same capacity. To address this operationalization problem, scientists often assess whether the tasks engage the same neural mechanisms. But to determine whether mechanisms are of the same or different kinds, we need to solve the abstraction problem (...) by determining which mechanistic differences are and are not relevant, and also the boundary problem by distinguishing the mechanism from its background conditions. Solving these problems, in turn, requires understanding how cognitive capacities are elicited in tasks. These three problems, which have been noted and discussed elsewhere in the literature, together form a ‘cycle of kinds’ that frames the central problem-space of cognitive ontology. We describe this cycle to clarify the intellectual challenges facing the cognitive ontologist and to reveal the kind of iterative process by which ontological revision in cognitive neuroscience is likely to unfold. (shrink)

It is no exaggeration to say that of the early 20th century German philosophers who claimed to establish a new ontology, former neo-Kantian turned realist Nicolai Hartmann is the only one to have actually followed through. "Ontology: Laying the Foundations" deals with "what is insofar as it is," and its four parts tackle traditional ontological assumptions and prejudices and traditional categories such as substance, thing, individual, whole, object, and phenomenon; a novel redefinition of existence and essence in terms (...) of the ontological factors Dasein and Sosein and their interrelations; an analysis of modes of "givenness" and the ontological embeddedness of cognition in affective transcendent acts; and a discussion of the status of ideal being, including mathematical being, phenomenological essences, logical laws, values, and the interconnections between the ideal and real spheres. Hartmann’s work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. Hartmann’s work offers rich resources for those interested in overcoming the human-centeredness of much 20th century philosophy. (shrink)

What follows is a first step towards an ontology of conscious mental processes. We provide a theoretical foundation and characterization of conscious mental processes based on a realist theory of intentionality and using BFO as our top-level ontology. We distinguish three components of intentional mental process: character, directedness, and objective referent, and describe several features of the process character and directedness significant to defining and classifying mental processes. We arrive at the definition of representational mental process as a (...) process that is the bringing into being, sustaining, modifying, or terminating of a mental representation. We conclude by outlining some benefits and applications of this approach. (shrink)

E. J. Lowe, a prominent figure in contemporary metaphysics, sets out and defends his theory of what there is. His four-category ontology is a metaphysical system which recognizes four fundamental categories of beings: substantial and non-substantial particulars and substantial and non-substantial universals. Lowe argues that this system has an explanatory power which is unrivalled by more parsimonious theories and that this counts decisively in its favour. He shows that it provides a powerful explanatory framework for a unified account of (...) causation, dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity and many other related matters, thus constituting a full metaphysical foundation for natural science. (shrink)

Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. ‘Ontology’ is often used by philosophers as a synonym for ‘metaphysics’ (literally: ‘what comes after the Physics’), a term which was used by early students of Aristotle to refer to what Aristotle himself called ‘first philosophy’. The term ‘ontology’ (or ontologia) was itself coined in 1613, independently, by two (...) philosophers, Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius), in his Lexicon philosophicum and Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus), in his Theatrum philosophicum. The first occurrence in English recorded by the OED appears in Bailey’s dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as ‘an Account of being in the Abstract’. (shrink)

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what (...) philosophical literature is about. (shrink)

This posthumous work by Gustav Bergmann was essentially complete before his death in 1987.

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial (...) domain, issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique. (shrink)

The paper presents, firstly, a brief review of the long history\nof information ethics beginning with the Greek concept of parrhesia\nor freedom of speech as analyzed by Michel Foucault. The recent concept\nof information ethics is related particularly to problems which arose\nin the last century with the development of computer technology and\nthe internet. A broader concept of information ethics as dealing\nwith the digital reconstruction of all possible phenomena leads to\nquestions relating to digital ontology. Following Heidegger{\textquoteright}s\nconception of the relation between ontology (...) and metaphysics, the\nauthor argues that ontology has to do with Being itself and not just\nwith the Being of beings which is the matter of metaphysics. The\nprimary aim of an ontological foundation of information ethics is\nto question the metaphysical ambitions of digital ontology understood\nas today{\textquoteright}s pervading understanding of Being. The\nauthor analyzes some challenges of digital technology, particularly\nwith regard to the moral status of digital agents. The author argues\nthat information ethics does not only deal with ethical questions\nrelating to the infosphere. This view is contrasted with arguments\npresented by Luciano Floridi on the foundation of information ethics\nas well as on the moral status of digital agents. It is argued that\na reductionist view of the human body as digital data overlooks the\nlimits of digital ontology and gives up one basis for ethical orientation.\nFinally issues related to the digital divide as well as to intercultural\naspects of information ethics are explored {\textendash} and long\nand short-term agendas for appropriate responses are presented. (shrink)

A major disagreement between different views about the foundations of quantum mechanics concerns whether for a theory to be intelligible as a fundamental physical theory it must involve a ‘primitive ontology’ (PO), i.e. variables describing the distribution of matter in four-dimensional space–time. In this article, we illustrate the value of having a PO. We do so by focusing on the role that the PO plays for extracting predictions from a given theory and discuss valid and invalid derivations of predictions. (...) To this end, we investigate a number of examples based on toy models built from the elements of familiar interpretations of quantum theory. (shrink)

In this volume, Brakel raises questions about conventions in the study of mind in three disciplines—psychoanalysis, philosophy of mind, and experimental philosophy. She illuminates new understandings of the mind through interdisciplinary challenges to views long-accepted. Here she proposes a view of psychoanalysis as a treatment that owes its successes largely to its biological nature—biological in its capacity to best approximate the extinction of problems arising owing to aversive conditioning. She also discusses whether or not "the mental" can have any real (...) ontological standing, arguing that a form of reductive physicalism can be sufficient ontologically, but that epistemological considerations require a branch of non-reductive physicalism. She then notes the positive implications of this view for psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Finally, she investigates the role of "consistency" in method and content, toward which experimental philosophers strive. In essence, Brakel articulates the different sets of challenges pertaining to: a) ancient dilemmas such as the mind/body problem; b) longstanding debates about the nature of therapeutic action in psychoanalysis; and c) new core questions arising in the relatively young discipline of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) symbolically represents the structural organization of the human body from the macromolecular to the macroscopic levels, with the goal of providing a robust and consistent scheme for classifying anatomical entities that is designed to serve as a reference ontology in biomedical informatics. Here we articulate the need for formally clarifying the is-a and part-of relations in the FMA and similar ontology and terminology systems. We diagnose certain characteristic errors in the treatment (...) of these relations and show how these errors can be avoided through adoption of the formalism we describe. We then illustrate how a consistently applied formal treatment of taxonomy and partonomy can support the alignment of ontologies. (shrink)

The origin of the concept of “emotional sharing” can be traced back to the first edition of Sympathiebuch [1913/23], in which Max Scheler paved the way to a phenomenology of emotions and to social ontology. The importance of his findings is evident: consider the central role of emotional sharing in Michael Tomasello’s analysis and the lively debate on social ontology and collective intentionality.

"Ontology and the Foundations of Mathematics" consists of three papers concerned with ontological issues in the foundations of mathematics. Chapter 1, "Numbers and Persons," confronts the problem of the inscrutability of numerical reference and argues that, even if inscrutable, the reference of the numerals, as we ordinarily use them, is determined much more precisely than up to isomorphism. We argue that the truth conditions of a variety of numerical modal and counterfactual sentences place serious constraints on the sorts of (...) items to which numerals, as we ordinarily use them, can be taken to refer: Numerals cannot be taken to refer to objects that exist contingently such as people, mountains, or rivers, but rather must be taken to refer to objects that exist necessarily such as abstracta. ;Chapter 2, "Modern Set Theory and Replacement," takes up a challenge to explain the reasons one should accept the axiom of replacement of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, when its applications within ordinary mathematics and the rest of science are often described as rare and recondite. We argue that this is not a question one should be interested in; replacement is required to ensure that the element-set relation is well-founded as well as to ensure that the cumulation of sets described by set theory reaches and proceeds beyond the level o of the cumulative hierarchy. A more interesting question is whether we should accept instances of replacement on uncountable sets, for these are indeed rarely used outside higher set theory. We argue that the best case for replacement comes not from direct, intuitive considerations, but from the role replacement plays in the formulation of transfinite recursion and the theory of ordinals, and from the fact that it permits us to express and assert the content of the modern cumulative view of the set-theoretic universe as arrayed in a cumulative hierarchy of levels. ;Chapter 3, "A No-Class Theory of Classes," makes use of the apparatus of plural quantification to construe talk of classes as plural talk about sets, and thus provide an interpretation of both one- and two-sorted versions of first-order Morse-Kelley set theory, an impredicative theory of classes. We argue that the plural interpretation of impredicative theories of classes has a number of advantages over more traditional interpretations of the language of classes as involving singular reference to gigantic set-like entities, only too encompassing to be sets, the most important of these being perhaps that it makes the machinery of classes available for the formalization of much recent and very interesting work in set theory without threatening the universality of the theory as the most comprehensive theory of collections, when these are understood as objects. (shrink)

The search for an ontological basis of medical practice is questioned from the viewpoint that ontologies are always related to the interpreting person in his situation, and that the definition of medicine includes a certain choice. This choice-character comes into greater play when ethical proposals are made. A foundation of medical ethics on an ontology of the healthy body or the factual medical practice is a naturalistic fallacy. Prior to an ontological basis, the ethical event of responsibility for the (...) suffering and transcendent other (Levinas) is constitutive for medicine. This event with its dimension of infinity of the other can only be ontologized by a totalitarian act. A philosophy of medicine should start with the heteronomy of the other. (shrink)

Prominent thinkers such as Kripke and Rescher hold that Russell has no modal logic, even that Russell was indisposed toward modal logic. In Part I, I show that Russell had a modal logic which he repeatedly described and that Russell repeatedly endorsed Leibniz's multiplicity of possible worlds. In Part II, I describe Russell's theory as having three ontological levels. In Part III, I describe six Parmenidean theories of being Russell held, including: literal in 1903; universal in 1912; timeless in 1914; (...) transcendental in 1918–1948. The transcendental theory underlies the primary level of Russell's modal logic. In Part IV, I examine Rescher's view that Russell and modal logic did not mix. (shrink)

The articulation of critical dialects of psychology has typically involved a questioning of the foundational assumptions of the so-called mainstream. This has included critiques in the name of more adequate scientific foundations, but more recently these have been accompanied by critiques in the name of an absence of foundations altogether, and critiques that suggest a rethinking of the concept of foundation. These latter versions are usually influenced by the great 20 th Century non-foundational philosophies of figures such as (...) Bergson, Whitehead, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, or by related thinkers such as Deleuze, Serres, Luhmann, Butler and Stengers. In foregrounding themes of process and multiplicity such thinkers provide potent tools for critically rethinking psychological questions. Less positive has been a tendency amongst critical psychologists to polarise natural and social scientific issues and to associate the former with negative images (all that is static, mechanistic, essentialist and conservative). This can lead to a formulaic criticality in which arguments for nature are bad, and those for culture are good. Deconstruction comes to appear simply as an assertion of ‘the discursive construction of’ whatever phenomenon is under scrutiny. To counteract this trend, the proposed paper will discuss a process approach to ontology that welcomes contributions from the natural sciences as well as the humanities and social sciences. (shrink)

This paper ist addressed to the contemporary crisis in the foundation of values. I argue that the justification of norms and values cannot be provided either by positivist approaches which derive from models of objective scientific explanation or by phenomenological approaches based on subjective intentionality. I propose a new approach to the justification of norms and values which I call social ontology. Such an approach sees values as having their foundation in the nature of human action and of social (...) reality. I argue that such fundamental values as freedom and justice are grounded in the character of human agency and in the structure of reciprocity in social relations. I proceed to argue that this social ontology overcomes the dichotomy between fact and value and that such an approach, while it is historical, is not relativist. (shrink)

The Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) was created to serve as a domain‐neutral resource for the representation of types of information content entities (ICEs) such as documents, data‐bases, and digital im‐ages. We identify a series of problems with the current version of the IAO and suggest solutions designed to advance our understanding of the relations between ICEs and associated cognitive representations in the minds of human subjects. This requires embedding IAO in a larger framework of ontologies, including most importantly the (...) Mental Func‐tioning Ontology (MFO). It also requires a careful treatment of the aboutness relations between ICEs and associated cognitive representa‐tions and their targets in reality, which implies in turn a new treatment of the relation of truthmaking. (shrink)

Information may be defined as the conceptual or communicable part of the content of mental acts. The content of mental acts includes sensory data as well as concepts, particular as well as general information. An information system is an external (non-mental) system designed to store such content. Information systems afford indirect transmission of content between people, some of whom may put information into the system and others who are among those who use the system. In order for communication to happen, (...) the conceptual systems of the originators and users of the information must be sufficiently similar. A formal conceptual framework that can provide the basis for exchange of information is termed an ontology. In its most fundamental form, ontology studies the most basic constituents of reality. Traditionally, ontology seeks to reflects structures that are independent of thought and cognition. The term ontology is used more broadly in artificial intelligence and software engineering, to refer to the conceptual basis for an information system. (shrink)

The object of the study is the culture of digital society, the subject is the ontological foundations of culture. The aim of the research is to reveal the ontological problems of cyberculture, which becomes the basis for a digital society with a virtual nature. In the modern world, the impact of digital technologies on human life has acquired an irreversible scale. The changes affected not only socio-economic relations, but also affected the sphere of personal relationships, information perception and cognitive processes (...) of the individual. People are spending more and more time on the Internet, using social networks, using applications. We can talk about a new stage in the development of human civilization, the culture of which has its own special features. In this study, the culture of digital society is considered from a philosophical and ontological point of view. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that cyberculture is in the stage of its formation. Digital society is changing, Internet technologies are developing, new applications are appearing. All these processes require philosophical reflection and scientific analysis. A special contribution of the author to the study of the phenomenon of cyberculture and the ontologization of the culture of digital society, which has its own distinctive features, namely crisis, virtuality, technology. The main conclusions of the study are that cyberculture, the culture of communities based on the use of advanced information technologies, is postmodern in nature. The further development of digital technologies gives a chance to a person to overcome the limitations of the individual nature of the personality, but at the same time there is a great danger of losing generic features and ceasing to be a person in the classical sense. (shrink)

This extensive collection develops the philosophical content of sections from the previously published The Structure of the Mind . Dr. Belfiore begins from the basic ontological conception that considers the human 'mind' or 'spirit' as an evolving, conscious triad composed of intellect, sensitivity, and power, each exerting a selfish or moral activity. Through this approach the author develops new concepts about ethics, political philosophy, and the philosophy of law. Dr. Belfiore poses these and other concepts under the opinion that issues (...) concerning human beings can only be discussed by referring to what humans are as ontological entities. Thus, the notions of good and norms of morality, law, and society are derived from the structure and function of the mind. It follows that the solutions Dr. Belfiore presents are the results of a discovery and not the consequence of a conscious choice. Otherwise stated, ethics, politics, and law are given an ontological foundation. For each topic considered, Dr. Belfiore shows how his thought can reinterpret the views of other philosophers. The result of this is an innovative and highly stimulating text, which is of interest to graduate students and scholars in the philosophical branches of ethics, politics, and law. (shrink)

In this revised edition, Belfiore adds new concepts and discusses the views of additional thinkers. He gives an ontological foundation to ethics, politics, and law and shows how his thought can reinterpret the views of other philosophers regarding these topics.

The paper analyzes, from a perspective which is itself existential-ontological, the way in which in an early text of Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles (Anzeige der hermeneutischen Situation) [1922] – which had already outlined some determinative elements of the ideas expounded in Being and Time –, the meditation on the always living and current conditions and hermeneutical situation of philosophizing expanded in fact into an inquiry about the origins, grounds, essence and sense of philosophy as such. Meditation in and (...) through which philosophy identifies itself and is founded on the one hand exactly as a mode of existence of the mortal “human Dasein” (menschliches Dasein), that is a factic mode of existence of this, philosophy, on the other hand, itself originates from and in man’s factic life exactly with the aim of being the modality through which this being – namely ourselves – returns towards the problematization of his existential possibilities even by taking upon himself the burden and “weight” of radical interrogation. Which therefore goes and must go itself and resolutely – because if this entirely “without God” and consequently a-theist – to the historical and ontological roots of a present con-temporarized (mitzeitigt) both with the past and the future existential horizons of the assumed factic possibilities. (shrink)

There is a common misconception across the lntelligence Community (IC) to the effect that information trapped within multiple heterogeneous data silos can be semantically integrated by the sorts of meaning-blind statistical methods employed in much of artificial intelligence (Al) and natural language processlng (NLP). This leads to the misconception that incoming data can be analysed coherently by relying exclusively on the use of statistical algorithms and thus without any shared framework for classifying what the data are about. Unfortunately, such approaches (...) do not yield sustainable results where we are dealing with widely distributed, highly heterogeneous and often changing bodies of data. We argue here that the needed integration requires the use of what we call an lntegrating Semantic Framework (ISF), which provldes a consistent set of categories and relationships that can be reused over and over again to tag successive bodies of data in ways which foster more coherent representation and reasoning. (shrink)

Despite the recent advances in information and communication technology that have increased our ability to store and circulate information, the task remains of ensuring that the right sorts of information reach the right sorts of people. In what follows we defend the thesis that efforts to develop efficient means for sharing information across healthcare systems and organizations would benefit from a careful analysis of human action in healthcare organizations, and that the communication of healthcare information and knowledge needs to rest (...) on a sound ontology of social interaction. We illustrate this thesis in relation to the HL7 RIM, which is one centrally important tool for communication in the healthcare domain. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe causal powers realism as a conjunction of four claims: causal powers are not reducible to counterfactuals; they are empirically-discoverable; they manifest effects in conjunction with partners; and their manifestations empower further manifestations. We describe four challenges to extended mind theory and for each show how an ontology of causal powers realism either avoids or dissolves the problem. We close by suggesting that causal powers realism isn’t a competitor with extended mind theory but rather a (...) new way to understand what it means for minds to be extended. (shrink)

This Element looks at the problem of inter-translation between mathematical realism and anti-realism and argues that so far as realism is inter-translatable with anti-realism, there is a burden on the realist to show how her posited reality differs from that of the anti-realist. It also argues that an effective defence of just such a difference needs a commitment to the independence of mathematical reality, which in turn involves a commitment to the ontological access problem – the problem of how knowable (...) mathematical truths are identifiable with a reality independent of us as knowers. Specifically, if the only access problem acknowledged is the epistemological problem – i.e. the problem of how we come to know mathematical truths – then nothing is gained by the realist notion of an independent reality and in effect, nothing distinguishes realism from anti-realism in mathematics. (shrink)

The article introduces and defends Aristotelian ontological theory of the possible as that which a power is capable of bringing about. It regards this conception to be a sort of middle way between Platonic explanation based on abstracta on one hand and the possibilist theory ultimately making everything possible into actual on the other. The doctrine defended leads to the conception of necessary being. Combined with other assumptions concerning this being, there arise some interesting issues and apparent tensions to be (...) resolved. The article outlines some of the discussions related to these problems in medieval and early modern Scholasticism. (shrink)

In recent decades, the internet has become our predominant public space and yet the role of art in this space remains largely unthought. This paper argues that graphic art, and in particular digital graphic art, has great power to shape and transform our thinking and experience. But with that power comes an enormous political and ethical responsibility, a responsibility too often ignored by programmers and computer scientists. This paper uses the work of Denis Schmidt and Jacques Taminiaux as important resources (...) for developing a Heideggerian response to this lack. (shrink)

In recent years, William Lane Craig has vigorously championed a moral argument for God's existence. The backbone of Craig's argument is the claim that only God can provide a ' sound foundation in reality' for morality. The present article has three principal aims. The first is to interpret and clarify the account of the ontological foundation of morality proposed by Craig. The second is to press home an important objection to that account. The third is to expose the weakness of (...) Craig's case for saying that without God morality would be groundless and illusory. (shrink)