We propose an ontological theory that is powerful enough to describe both complex spatio-temporal processes (occurrents) and the enduring entities (continuants) that participate in such processes. For this purpose we distinguish between meta-ontology and token ontologies. Token ontologies fall into two major categories: ontologies of type SPAN and ontologies of type SNAP. These represent two complementary perspectives on reality and result in distinct though compatible systems of categories. The meta-ontological level then describes the relationships between the different token ontologies. (...) In a SNAP (snapshot) ontology we have enduring entities such as substances, qualities, roles, functions as these exist to be inventoried at a given moment of time. In a SPAN ontology we have perduring entities such as processes and their parts and aggregates. We argue that both kinds of ontological theory are required, together with the metaontology which joins them together, in order to give a non-reductionistic account of both static and dynamic aspects of the geospatial world. (shrink)

The central premise of this book is that biblical Hebrew narrative, in terms of its structure, tends to operate under similar mechanical constraints to those of a stage-play; wherein space is central, characters are fluid, and objects within the narrative tend to take on a deep internal significance. The smaller episodic narrative units within the Hebrew aesthetic tend to grant primacy to space, both ideologically and at the mechanical level of the text itself. However space, as a (...) determinate structural category, has been all but overlooked in the field of biblical studies to date; reflecting perhaps our own inability, as modern readers, to see beyond the dominant cinematic aesthetic of our times. The book is divided into two major sections, each beginning with a more theoretical approach to the function of narrative space, and ending with a practical application of the previous discussion; using Genesis 28:10-22 (the Bethel narrative) and the book of Ruth respectively, as test cases.Where does the notion of free will come from? How and when did it develop, and what did that development involve? In Michael Frede's radically new account of the history of this idea, the notion of a free will emerged from powerful assumptions about the relation between divine providence, correctness of individual choice, and self-enslavement due to incorrect choice. Anchoring his discussion in Stoicism, Frede begins with Aristotle--who, he argues, had no notion of a free will--and ends with Augustine. Frede shows that Augustine, far from originating the idea (as is often claimed), derived most of his thinking about it from the Stoicism developed by Epictetus. (shrink)

I argue that there are no physical singularities in space–time. Singular space–time models do not belong to the ontology of the world, because of a simple reason: they are concepts, defective solutions of Einstein’s field equations. I discuss the actual implication of the so-called singularity theorems. In remarking the confusion and fog that emerge from the reification of singularities I hope to contribute to a better understanding of the possibilities and limits of the theory of general relativity.

This paper investigates Newton’s ontology of space in order to determine its commitment, if any, to both Cambridge neo-Platonism, which posits an incorporeal basis for space, and substantivalism, which regards space as a form of substance or entity. A non-substantivalist interpretation of Newton’s theory has been famously championed by Howard Stein and Robert DiSalle, among others, while both Stein and the early work of J. E. McGuire have downplayed the influence of Cambridge neo-Platonism on various aspects (...) of Newton’s own spatial hypotheses. Both of these assertions will be shown to be problematic on various grounds, with special emphasis placed on Stein’s influential case for a non-substantivalist reading. Our analysis will strive, nonetheless, to reveal the unique or forward-looking aspects of Newton’s approach, most notably, his critical assessment of substance ontologies, that help to distinguish his theory of space from his neo-Platonic contemporaries and predecessors. (shrink)

Could space consist entirely of extended regions, without any regions shaped like points, lines, or surfaces? Peter Forrest and Frank Arntzenius have independently raised a paradox of size for space like this, drawing on a construction of Cantor’s. I present a new version of this argument and explore possible lines of response.

In the exuberance that followed Einstein’s discoveries, philosophers at one time or another have proposed that his theories support virtually every conceivable moral in ontology. I present an opinionated assessment, designed to avoid this overabundance. We learn from Einstein’s theories of novel entanglements of categories once held distinct: space with time; space and time with matter; and space and time with causality. We do not learn that all is relative, that time in the fourth dimension in (...) any non-trivial sense, that coordinate systems and even geometry are conventional or that spacetime should be reduced ontologically to causal, spatio-temporal or other relations. (shrink)

In this paper the author examines the ontology of Byzantine music in its self, its aesthetical ground, the philosophical and cultural principles of creation, its episteme, the epistemological field that produced its forms from the 12th till the 14th century, and why that musical ontology hasn’t change through the centuries. The paper discusses in partucular Ernst Bloch’s view that the only evolutionary expression of the Absolute spirit as far as music is concerned, is Western classical music. The author (...) claims that the Western and the Byzantine music stand for two totally distinct and diverse ontologies of the musical being, something that Bloch seems to overlook; this, according to the author, is mostly due to the different systems of representation that have been used, and especially the representational ideas of the time-space relation. The author supports the view that while Western music is spatially-modeled, Byzantine music is time-modeled. (shrink)

This essay explores the role of God’s omnipresence in Newton’s natural philosophy, with special emphasis placed on how God is related to space. Unlike Descartes’ conception, which denies the spatiality of God, or Gassendi and Charleton’s view, which regards God as completely whole in every part of space, it is argued that Newton accepts spatial extension as a basic aspect of God’s omnipresence. The historical background to Newton’s spatial ontology assumes a large part of our investigation, but (...) with attention also focused on the details of Newton’s unique approach to these traditional Scholastic conceptions. (shrink)

This volume explores the inadequacies of the two standard conceptions of space or spacetime, substantivalism and relationism, and in the process, proposes a new historical interpretation of these physical theories. This book also examines and develops alternative ontological conceptions of space, such as the property theory of space and emergent spacetime hypotheses, and explores additional historical elements of seventeenth century theories and other metaphysical themes. Readers will learn about specific problems with the substantivalism versus relationism dichotomy. First, (...) Newton and Leibniz are often upheld as the retrospective forerunners of, respectively, substantivalism and relationism, but their work often contradicts the central tenets of these views. Second, these theories have proven problematic when transferred to a modern setting, especially with regards to general relativity and the recent quantum gravity hypotheses. In order to address these problems, the author develops a new classificational system that provides a more accurate taxonomy for the elements of all spatial ontologies, both in the seventeenth century and for contemporary theories of physics. This classification obtains successful analogies between Newton, Leibniz, and other natural philosophers with contemporary physical theories, and it also admits a role for the current brand of emergent spacetime hypotheses and the property theory of space. (shrink)

In this paper recognition is taken to be a question of social ontology, regarding the very constitution of the social space of interaction. I concentrate on the question of whether certain aspects of the theory of recognition can be translated into the terms of a socio-ontological paradigm: to do so, I make reference to some conceptual tools derived from John Searle's social ontology and Robert Brandom's normative pragmatics. My strategy consists in showing that recognitive phenomena cannot be (...) isolated at the level of human interaction, and are, rather, in part proper to animal interaction as well. Furthermore, it is argued that recognitive powers are constitutive powers more basic than deontic ones and play a role much broader than the one they in fact assume in Searle and in Brandom. (shrink)

This article investigates the problem of the identity of the parts of space in Newton’s natural philosophy, as well as the holistic or structuralist nature of Newton’s ontology of space. Additionally, this article relates the lessons reached in this historical and philosophical investigation to analogous debates in contemporary space-time ontology. While previous contributions, by Nerlich, Huggett, and others, have proven to be informative in evaluating Newton’s claims, it will be argued that the underlying goals of (...) Newton’s views have largely eluded prior analysis and that Newton’s approach is similar, and lends support, to several current structuralist trends in the conception of space-time ontology. (shrink)

In the correspondence with Clarke, Leibniz proposes to construe physical theory in terms of physical (spatio-temporal) relations between physical objects, thus avoiding incorporation of infinite totalities of abstract entities (such as Newtonian space) in physical ontology. It has generally been felt that this proposal cannot be carried out. I demonstrate an equivalence between formulations postulating space-time as an infinite totality and formulations allowing only possible spatio-temporal relations of physical (point-) objects. The resulting rigorous formulations of physical theory (...) may be seen to follow Leibniz' suggestion quite closely. On the other hand, physical assumptions implicit in the postulation of space-time totalities are made explicit in the reconstruction of the space-time versions from the physical-relation versions. (shrink)

Russian abstract: В данном сборнике статей раскрывается формирование структурно-онтологического представления о таком явлении, как городское пространство. Наряду с соответствующей концептуализацией, также представлено и объяснено определение городского сообщества. Обоснована логика классификации городских сообществ. А также проанализированы факторы, обуславливающие их устойчивость. -/- English abstract: This collection of articles reveals the formation of a structural-ontological concept of such a phenomenon as urban space. Along with relevant conceptualization, the definition of an urban community is also presented and explained. The logic of classification of (...) urban communities is substantiated. And also analyzed the factors that determine their stability. (shrink)

We will survey a range of ontologies relevant to space and ground system domains. The ontologies form part of the Common Core Ontology ecosystem (CCO) developed under the IARPA KDD initiative. We focus specifically on the Space Domain Ontologies, a suite of ontologies to support space situational awareness, including the Spacecraft Mission Ontology, Spacecraft Ontology, Space Event Ontology and Space Object Ontology.

The mainstream approach to the understanding of pain continues to be governed by the biomedical paradigm and the dualistic Cartesian ontology. This Volume brings together essays of scholars of literature, philosophy and history on the many enigmatic shades of pain-experience, mostly from an anti-Cartesian perspective of cultural ontology by scholars of literature, philosophy and history. A section of the essays is devoted to the socio-political dimensions of pain in the Indian context. The book offers a critical perspective on (...) the reductive conceptions of pain and argue that non-substance ontology or cultural ontology supports a more humane and authentic understanding of pain. The general ontological features of the self in pain and culturally imbued dimensions of pain-experience are, thus, brought together in a rare blend in this Volume. The essays dwell on the importance of understanding what cultural, social and political forces outside our control do to our pain-experience. They show why such understanding is necessary, both to humanely deal with pain, and to rectify erroneous approaches to pain-experience. They also explore the thoroughly ambivalent spaces between pain and pleasure, and the cathartic and productive dimensions of pain. The essays in this Volume investigate pain-experiences through the fresh lenses of history, gender, ethics, politics, death, illness, self-loss, torture, shame, dispossession and denial. (shrink)

Abstract The grammar of spatial and temporal concepts cannot, it is argued, be the same in their application to the (manifest) world as perceived and to the (nether) world of unobservable causes as modelled in physics. A parallel case is the dual meaning of colour words, for hues and for material dispositions. The keys to differentiating the two main ranges of uses of ?s? and ?t? are: differences in criteria of numerical and qualitative identity in the two ?worlds'; differences in (...) the logic of indexicals in each context; the explanatory role of powers. The differences can be illustrated in a close analysis of the concept of velocity. (shrink)

This provocative book attempts to resolve traditional problems of identity over time. It seeks to answer such questions as 'How is it that an object can survive change?' and 'How much change can an object undergo without being destroyed'? To answer these questions Professor Heller presents a theory about the nature of physical objects and about the relationship between our language and the physical world. According to his theory, the only actually existing physical entities are what the author calls 'hunks', (...) four-dimensional objects extending across time and space. This is a major contribution to ontological debate and will be essential reading for all philosophers concerned with metaphysics. (shrink)

John Bell proposed an ontology for the GRW modification of quantum mechanics in terms of flashes occurring at space- time points. This article spells out the motivation for this ontology, inquires into the status of the wave function in it, critically examines the claim of its being Lorentz invariant, and considers whether it is a parsimonious but nevertheless physically adequate ontology.

This book contains selected papers from the First International Conference on the Ontology of Spacetime. Its fourteen chapters address two main questions: first, what is the current status of the substantivalism/relationalism debate, and second, what about the prospects of presentism and becoming within present-day physics and its philosophy? The overall tenor of the four chapters of the book’s first part is that the prospects of spacetime substantivalism are bleak, although different possible positions remain with respect to the ontological status (...) of spacetime. Part II and Part III of the book are devoted to presentism, eternalism, and becoming, from two different perspectives. In the six chapters of Part II it is argued, in different ways, that relativity theory does not have essential consequences for these issues. It certainly is true that the structure of time is different, according to relativity theory, from the one in classical theory. But that does not mean that a decision is forced between presentism and eternalism, or that becoming has proved to be an impossible concept. It may even be asked whether presentism and eternalism really offer different ontological perspectives at all. The writers of the last four chapters, in Part III, disagree. They argue that relativity theory is incompatible with becoming and presentism. Several of them come up with proposals to go beyond relativity, in order to restore the prospects of presentism. · Space and time in present-day physics and philosophy · Relatively low level of technicality, easily accessible · Introduction from scratch of the debates surrounding time · Top authors explaining their positions · Broad spectrum of approaches, coherently represented. (shrink)

The Nature of Space is a translation of pioneering geographer Milton Santos' A Natureza do Espaço, originally published in Brazil in 1996. The book offers a theory of human space based on relationships between time and ontology, producing a system of ideas that can catalyze a descriptive and interpretive system of geography. Santos argues that when geographers consider the inseparability of time and space, they can then transcend fragmented realities and partial truths without trying to philosophize (...) or theorize their way around them. Based on these premises, The Nature of Space seeks to examine the role of space, defined as indissoluble systems of objects and systems of actions in social processes, and provide a geographic contribution to the production of a critical social theory. (shrink)

The paper points out that the modern formulation of Bohm’s quantum theory known as Bohmian mechanics is committed only to particles’ positions and a law of motion. We explain how this view can avoid the open questions that the traditional view faces according to which Bohm’s theory is committed to a wave-function that is a physical entity over and above the particles, although it is defined on configuration space instead of three-dimensional space. We then enquire into the status (...) of the law of motion, elaborating on how the main philosophical options to ground a law of motion, namely Humeanism and dispositionalism, can be applied to Bohmian mechanics. In conclusion, we sketch out how these options apply to primitive ontology approaches to quantum mechanics in general. (shrink)

Words are indispensable linguistic tools for beings like us. However, there is not much philosophical work done about what words really are. In this paper, I develop a new ontology for words. I argue that words are abstract artifacts that are created to fulfill various kinds of purposes, and words are abstract in the sense that they are not located in space but they have a beginning and may have an end in time given that certain conditions are (...) met. What follows from this two-fold argument is that words, from an ontological point of view, are more like musical works, fictional characters or computer programs, than numbers or sets. (shrink)

The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural understanding of the causes and effects we observe in time and space when we select subsystems of nature for modelling. But in modern physics, we do not go beyond the realm of common sense by augmenting our knowledge of what is going (...) on in nature. Rather, we have measurements that we do not understand, so we know nothing about the ontology of what we measure. We help ourselves by using entities from mathematics, which we fully understand ontologically. But we have no ontology of the reality of modern physics; we have only what we can assert mathematically. In this paper, we describe the ontology of classical and modern physics against this background and show how it relates to the ontology of common sense and of mathematics. (shrink)

In sections 1 through 5, I develop in detail what I call the standard theory of worlds and propositions, and I discuss a number of purported objections. The theory consists of five theses. The first two theses, presented in section 1, assert that the propositions form a Boolean algebra with respect to implication, and that the algebra is complete, respectively. In section 2, I introduce the notion of logical space: it is a field of sets that represents the propositional (...) structure and whose space consists of all and only the worlds. The next three theses, presented in sections 3, 4, and 5, respectively, guarantee the existence of logical space, and further constrain its structure. The third thesis asserts that the set of propositions true at any world is maximal consistent; the fourth thesis that any two worlds are separated by a proposition; the fifth thesis that only one proposition is false at every world. In sections 6 through 10, I turn to the problem of reduction. In sections 6 and 7, I show how the standard theory can be used to support either a reduction of worlds to propositions or a reduction of propositions to worlds. A number of proposition-based theories are developed in section 6, and compared with Adams's world-story theory. A world-based theory is developed in section?, and Stalnaker's account of the matter is discussed. Before passing judgment on the proposition based and world-based theories, I ask in sections 8 and 9 whether both worlds and propositions might be reduced to something else. In section 8, I consider reductions to linguistic entities; in section 9, reductions to unfounded sets. After rejecting the possibility of eliminating both worlds and propositions, I return in section 10 to the possibility of eliminating one in favor of the other. I conclude, somewhat tentatively, that neither worlds nor propositions should be reduced one to the other, that both worlds and propositions should be taken as basic to our ontology. (shrink)

I discuss the ontological assumptions and implications of General Relativity. I maintain that General Relativity is a theory about gravitational fields, not about space-time. The latter is a more basic ontological category, that emerges from physical relations among all existents. I also argue that there are no physical singularities in space-time. Singular space-time models do not belong to the ontology of the world: they are not things but concepts, i.e. defective solutions of Einstein’s field equations. I (...) briefly discuss the actual implication of the so-called singularity theorems in General Relativity and some problems related to ontological assumptions of Quantum Gravity. (shrink)

Consider the most recent Yale-Harvard football game, an event which occurred on 11/20/21 in New Haven, lasting about three hours. This event, like many college football games before, was composed of four quarters, each of which was composed of possessions, each of which was composed of downs, each of which was composed of particular movements, tackles and decisions of the individual players. Each of these parts of the game was itself an event, occurring in a smaller region of space (...) and time than the game itself. Each of these events involved material objects like players, helmets, jerseys, etc. Each had causes and effects, and each instantiated qualitative properties, such as being a kickoff or being a tackle. These are paradigmatic examples of events. Events are many and varied; some other examples include the melting of an ice cube, the birth of a horse, the supernova of a star, the presidential election campaign and a winter snowstorm. Each of these took place in a certain region of spacetime, had other events as parts, involved certain objects, had causes and effects, and instantiated properties. Objects and their properties are not the only furniture in the world. Events are a crucial part of our manifest and scientific pictures of the world. We go to football games, think about and participate in elections, eagerly anticipate the birth of a child, and quantify over and explain such things in our scientific theories. Yet, events have received insufficient attention from metaphysicians. Some philosophers have been skeptical of events, holding that talk of events can be paraphrased away, or that events can be reduced to objects and properties.1 When philosophers have accepted events, their motivations have usually been extrinsic—events are introduced in order to play a role in a larger philosophical system. This tendency has led philosophers to miss a number of interesting features of events. In this paper, I wish to reverse that trend by developing an ontology of events which is not an afterthought with respect to another philosophical project. In so doing, I will provide answers to substantive metaphysical questions about the relations in which events stand and their identity conditions. In the next section, I identify four basic relations in which events stand: parthood, involvement, causation and instantiation, focusing in particular on involvement. Then, I argue that events are individuated by their involvements, and criticize the identity conditions which have been offered by other philosophers, notably Quine, Davidson and Kim. I then conclude. (shrink)

I propose an account of the metaphysics of the expressions of a mathematical language which brings together the structuralist construal of a mathematical object as a place in a structure, the semantic notion of indexicality and Kit Fine's ontological theory of qua objects. By contrasting this indexical qua objects account with several other accounts of the metaphysics of mathematical expressions, I show that it does justice both to the abstractness that mathematical expressions have because they are mathematical objects and to (...) the element of concreteness that they have because they are also used as signs. In a concluding section, I comment on the pragmatic element that has entered ontology by way of the notion of indexicality and use it to give an answer to a question Stewart Shapiro has recently posed about the status of meta-mathematics in the structuralist philosophy of mathematics. (shrink)

‘Eruv’ is a Hebrew word meaning literally ‘mixture’ or ‘mingling’. An eruv is an urban region demarcated within a larger urban region by means of a boundary made up of telephone wires or similar markers. Through the creation of the eruv, the smaller region is turned symbolically (halachically = according to Jewish law) into a private domain. So long as they remain within the boundaries of the eruv, Orthodox Jews may engage in activities that would otherwise be prohibited on the (...) Sabbath, such as pushing prams or wheelchairs, or carrying walking sticks. There are eruvim in many towns and university campuses throughout the world. There are five eruvim in Chicago, five in Brooklyn, twenty three in Queens and Long Island, and at least three in Manhattan. The US Supreme Court is (like most other major US Federal Government buildings) located within the eruv of Washington DC. In many cases, not all of those living within or near the area of an actual or proposed eruv will themselves be Orthodox Jews, and this has sometimes led to protests against eruv creation. It is such protests which triggered the writing of this essay. (shrink)

A review of U. Mäki (ed.). Fact and Fiction in Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. xvi 384. ISBN 0521 00957. As people interested mainly in theory, methodologists and philos...

Parallel lives is an ontological model of nature in which quantum mechanics and special relativity are unified in a single universe with a single space-time. Point-like objects called lives are the only fundamental objects in this space-time, and they propagate at or below c, and interact with one another only locally at point-like events in space-time, very much like classical point particles. Lives are not alive in any sense, nor do they possess consciousness or any agency to (...) make decisions—they are simply point objects which encode memory at events in space-time. The only causes and effects in the universe occur when lives meet locally, and thus the causal structure of interaction events in space-time is Lorentz invariant. Each life traces a continuous world-line through space-time, and experiences its own relative world, fully defined by the outcomes of past events along its world-line, which are encoded in its external memory. A quantum field comprises a continuum of lives throughout space-time, and familiar physical systems like particles each comprise a sub-continuum of the lives of the field. Each life carries a hidden internal memory containing a local relative wavefunction, which is a local piece of a pure universal wavefunction, but it is the relative wavefunctions in the local memories throughout space-time which are physically real in PL, and not the universal wavefunction in configuration space. Furthermore, while the universal wavefunction tracks the average behavior of the lives of a system, it fails to track their individual dynamics and trajectories. There is always a preferred separable basis, and for an irreducible physical system, each orthogonal term in this basis is a different relative world—each containing some fraction of the lives of the system. The relative wavefunctions in the lives’ internal memories govern which lives of different systems can meet during future local interactions, and thereby enforce entanglement correlations—including Bell inequality violations. These, and many other details, are explored here, but several aspects of this framework are not yet fleshed out, and work is ongoing. (shrink)

Kant’s ontology of appearances implies that the numerical distinctness of empirical objects is grounded in their appearance-aspect, more precisely in space as pure intuition, in which alone such objects can be given. With distinguishing concepts things can only be thought: in contrast to Leibniz’s complete concepts and to Kripke’s rigid designators, Kant’s general concepts do not entail their referents analytically. They must be applied to intuition, i. e. be completed synthetically. Consequently, Kant’s ontology of merely singular individuals (...) is closely connected with a genuine semantics of synthetic reference via intuition, expressed by irreducible demonstratives such as “this”, “here”, and “now”. Accordingly, the judgment “There can be indiscernibles” is synthetic-apriori, which distinguishes Kant’s view both from skeptical empiricism and from heavyweight ontological realism. (shrink)

Although contemporary sociologists of science have sometimes claimed Max Weber as a methodological precursor, they have not examined Weber's own writings about science. Between 1908 and 1912 Weber published a series of critical studies of the extension of scientific authority into public life. The most notable of these concerned attempts to implement the experimental psychology or psycho-physics laboratory in factories and other real-world settings. Weber's critique centered on the problem of social measurement. He emphasized the discontinuities between the space (...) of the laboratory and that of the factory, showing how several qualitative and historically conditioned differences between the two settings rendered the transfer of instruments and methods between them highly problematic. Weber's critical arguments prepared the ground for his greatest foray into empirical sociology, a survey he directed for the Verein für Sozialpolitik investigating the conditions and attitudes affecting the lives and performance of industrial workers. Using a different measuring instrument — the questionnaire — Weber tried to implement a concept of social measurement which implied a different ontology, drawn not from natural sciences but from the historical sciences. (shrink)

Adopting a Quinean criterion of ontological commitment, I consider Kant’s theory of our a priori knowledge of objects. I am directly concerned with the customary view that the ontology of Kant’s theory of knowledge in general, whether a priori or empirical, must be thought in terms of the a priori conditions or representations of space, time, and the categories. Accordingly, the customary view is accompanied by the customary interpretation of the ontology as consisting of Kantian“appearances” or “empirical (...) objects.” I argue against this view and interpretation. The argument turns on the opposition between the necessity and universality of the a priori and the particularity and contingency of the existent. Its main point is that the a priori can remain necessary and universal only if the existence of objects is kept distinct from it. (shrink)

There are many ontologies of the world or of specific phenomena such as time, matter, space, and quantum mechanics1. However, ontologies of information are rather rare. One of the reasons behind this is that information is most frequently associated with communication and computing, and not with ‘the furniture of the world’. But what would be the nature of an ontology of information? For it to be of significant import it should be amenable to formalization in a logico-grammatical formalism. (...) A candidate ontology satisfying such a requirement can be found in some of the ideas of K. Turek, presented in this paper. Turek outlines the ontology of information conceived of as a part of nature, and provides the ‘missing link’ to the Z axiomatic set theory, offering a proposal for developing a formal ontology of information both in its philosophical and logicogrammatical representations. (shrink)

In the specific case of geography, the real world consists on the one hand of physical geographic features (bona fide objects) and on the other hand of various fiat objects, for example legal and administrative objects, including parcels of real estate, areas of given soil types, census tracts, and so on. It contains in addition the beliefs and actions of human beings directed towards these objects (for example, the actions of those who work in land registries or in census bureaux), (...) and the relations between these beliefs and actions and their targets. The document is a Report of the Specialist Meeting held under the auspices of the Varenius Project. (shrink)

There are many ontologies of the world or of specific phenomena such as time, matter, space, and quantum mechanics1. However, ontologies of information are rather rare. One of the reasons behind this is that information is most frequently associated with communication and computing, and not with ‘the furniture of the world’. But what would be the nature of an ontology of information? For it to be of significant import it should be amenable to formalization in a logico-grammatical formalism. (...) A candidate ontology satisfying such a requirement can be found in some of the ideas of K. Turek, presented in this paper. Turek outlines the ontology of information conceived of as a part of nature, and provides the ‘missing link’ to the Z axiomatic set theory, offering a proposal for developing a formal ontology of information both in its philosophical and logicogrammatical representations. (shrink)

The action-reaction principle (AR) is examined in three contexts: (1) the inertial-gravitational interaction between a particle and space-time geometry, (2) protective observation of an extended wave function of a single particle, and (3) the causal-stochastic or Bohm interpretation of quantum mechanics. A new criterion of reality is formulated using the AR principle. This criterion implies that the wave function of a single particle is real and justifies in the Bohm interpretation the dual ontology of the particle and its (...) associated wave function. But it is concluded that the Bohm theory is not dynamically complete because the particle and its associated wave function do not satisfy the AR principle. (shrink)