Results for ' Formal ontology'

948 found
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  1. Formal Ontology.Jani Hakkarainen & Markku Keinänen - 2023 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Formal ontology as a main branch of metaphysics investigates categories of being. In the formal ontological approach to metaphysics, these ontological categories are analysed by ontological forms. This analysis, which we illustrate by some category systems, provides a tool to assess the clarity, exactness and intelligibility of different category systems or formal ontologies. We discuss critically different accounts of ontological form in the literature. Of ontological form, we propose a character- neutral relational account. In this metatheory, (...)
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  2. Formal ontologies of space and time. IFOMIS Report.Thomas Bittner & Barry Smith - 2003 - In Thomas Bittner & Barry Smith (eds.), IFOMIS Report.
    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. (...)
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  3. Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology.Robert Arp, Barry Smith & Andrew D. Spear - 2015 - Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
    In the era of “big data,” science is increasingly information driven, and the potential for computers to store, manage, and integrate massive amounts of data has given rise to such new disciplinary fields as biomedical informatics. Applied ontology offers a strategy for the organization of scientific information in computer-tractable form, drawing on concepts not only from computer and information science but also from linguistics, logic, and philosophy. This book provides an introduction to the field of applied ontology that (...)
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  4. (1 other version)Formal Ontology as an Operative Tool in the Theories of the Objects of the Life-World.Horacio Banega - 2012 - Symposium 16 (2):64-88.
    Formal ontology as it is presented in Husserl`s Third Logical Investigation can be interpreted as a fundamental tool to describe objects in a formal sense. It is presented one of the main sources: chapter five of Carl Stumpf`s Ûber den psycholoogischen Ursprung der Raumovorstellung (1873), and then it is described how Husserlian Formal Ontology is applied in Fifth Logical Investigation. Finally, it is applied to dramatic structures, in the spirit of Roman Ingarden.
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  5. A formal ontology of artefacts.Gilles Kassel - 2010 - Applied ontology 5 (3):223-246.
    This article presents a formal ontology which accounts for the general nature of artefacts. The objective is to help structure application ontologies in areas where specific artefacts are present - in other words, virtually any area of activity. The conceptualization relies on recent philosophical and psychological research on artefacts, having resulted in a largely consensual theoretical basis. Furthermore, this ontology of artefacts extends the foundational DOLCE ontology and supplements its axiomatization. The conceptual primitives are as follows: (...)
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  6. Formal Ontology for Natural Language Processing and the Integration of Biomedical Databases.Jonathan Simon, James M. Fielding, Mariana C. Dos Santos & Barry Smith - 2005 - International Journal of Medical Informatics 75 (3-4):224-231.
    The central hypothesis of the collaboration between Language and Computing (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is that the methodology and conceptual rigor of a philosophically inspired formal ontology greatly benefits application ontologies. To this end r®, L&C’s ontology, which is designed to integrate and reason across various external databases simultaneously, has been submitted to the conceptual demands of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). With this project we (...)
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  7. Entities and their genera: Slicing up the world the medieval way--and does it matter to formal ontology?Luis M. Augusto - 2022 - Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 3 (2):4-47.
    Genera, typically hand-in-hand with their branching species, are essential elements of vocabulary-based information constructs, in particular scientific taxonomies. Should they also feature in formal ontologies, the highest of such constructs? I argue in this article that the answer is “Yes” and that the question posed in its title also has a Yes-answer: The way medieval ontologists sliced up the world into genera does matter to formal ontology. More specifically, the way Dietrich of Freiberg, a Latin scholastic, conceived (...)
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  8. Formal ontology for biomedical knowledge systems integration.J. M. Fielding, J. Simon & Barry Smith - 2004 - Proceedings of Euromise:12-17.
    The central hypothesis of the collaboration between Language and Computing (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is that the methodology and conceptual rigor of a philosophically inspired formal ontology will greatly benefit software application ontologies. To this end LinKBase®, L&C’s ontology, which is designed to integrate and reason across various external databases simultaneously, has been submitted to the conceptual demands of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). With this, (...)
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  9. Formal ontology, common sense, and cognitive science.Barry Smith - 1995 - International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 43 (5-6):641–667.
    Common sense is on the one hand a certain set of processes of natural cognition - of speaking, reasoning, seeing, and so on. On the other hand common sense is a system of beliefs (of folk physics, folk psychology and so on). Over against both of these is the world of common sense, the world of objects to which the processes of natural cognition and the corresponding belief-contents standardly relate. What are the structures of this world? How does the scientific (...)
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  10. Functions in Basic Formal Ontology.Andrew D. Spear, Werner Ceusters & Barry Smith - 2016 - Applied ontology 11 (2):103-128.
    The notion of function is indispensable to our understanding of distinctions such as that between being broken and being in working order (for artifacts) and between being diseased and being healthy (for organisms). A clear account of the ontology of functions and functioning is thus an important desideratum for any top-level ontology intended for application to domains such as engineering or medicine. The benefit of using top-level ontologies in applied ontology can only be realized when each of (...)
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  11. BFO: Basic Formal Ontology.J. Neil Otte, John Beverley & Alan Ruttenberg - 2022 - Applied ontology 17 (1):17-43.
    Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology consisting of thirty-six classes, designed to support information integration, retrieval, and analysis across all domains of scientific investigation, presently employed in over 350 ontology projects around the world. BFO is a genuine top-level ontology, containing no terms particular to material domains, such as physics, medicine, or psychology. In this paper, we demonstrate how a series of cases illustrating common types of change may be represented by universals, defined (...)
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  12. Basic Formal Ontology for bioinformatics.Barry Smith, Anand Kumar & Thomas Bittner - 2005 - IFOMIS Reports.
    Two senses of ‘ontology’ can be distinguished in the current literature. First is the sense favored by information scientists, who view ontologies as software implementations designed to capture in some formal way the consensus conceptualization shared by those working on information systems or databases in a given domain. [Gruber 1993] Second is the sense favored by philosophers, who regard ontologies as theories of different types of entities (objects, processes, relations, functions) [Smith 2003]. Where information systems ontologists seek to (...)
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  13. Strengths and Limitations of Formal Ontologies in the Biomedical Domain.Barry Smith - 2009 - Electronic Journal of Communication, Information and Innovation in Health 3 (1):31-45.
    We propose a typology of representational artifacts for health care and life sciences domains and associate this typology with different kinds of formal ontology and logic, drawing conclusions as to the strengths and limitations for ontology in a description logics framework. The four types of domain representation we consider are: (i) lexico-semantic representation, (ii) representation of types of entities, (iii) representations of background knowledge, and (iv) representation of individuals. We advocate a clear distinction of the four kinds (...)
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  14. Bridging mainstream and formal ontology: A causality-based upper ontology in Dietrich of Freiberg.Luis M. Augusto - 2021 - Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 2 (2):35.
    Ontologies are some of the most central constructs in today's large plethora of knowledge technologies, namely in the context of the semantic web. As their coinage indicates, they are direct heirs to the ontological investigations in the long Western philosophical tradition, but it is not easy to make bridges between them. Contemporary ontological commitments often take causality as a central aspect for the ur-segregation of entities, especially in scientific upper ontologies; theories of causality and philosophical ontological investigations often go hand-in-hand, (...)
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  15. Wholistic reference, truth-values, universes of discourse, and formal ontology: tréplica to Oswaldo Chateaubriand.John Corcoran - 2005 - Manuscrito 28 (1):143-167.
    ABSTRACT: In its strongest unqualified form, the principle of wholistic reference is that in any given discourse, each proposition refers to the whole universe of that discourse, regardless of how limited the referents of its non-logical or content terms. According to this principle every proposition of number theory, even an equation such as "5 + 7 = 12", refers not only to the individual numbers that it happens to mention but to the whole universe of numbers. This principle, its history, (...)
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  16. On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal Ontology.Barry Smith - 2010 - In Barry Smith, Riichiro Mizoguchi & Sumio Nakagawa (eds.), Interdisciplinary Ontology, Vol. 3: Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting. Tokyo: Keio University Press. pp. 1-13.
    Basic Formal Ontology was created in 2002 as an upper-level ontology to support the creation of consistent lower-level ontologies, initially in the subdomains of biomedical research, now also in other areas, including defense and security. BFO is currently undergoing revisions in preparation for the release of BFO version 2.0. We summarize some of the proposed revisions in what follows, focusing on BFO’s treatment of material entities, and specifically of the category object.
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  17. An Essay in Formal Ontology.Barry Smith - 1978 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 6 (1):39-62.
    As conceived by analytic philosophers ontology consists in the application of the methods of mathematical logic to the analysis of ontological discourse. As conceived by realist philosophers such as Meinong and the early Husserl, Reinach and Ingarden, it consists in the investigation of the forms of entities of various types. The suggestion is that formal methods be employed by phenomenological ontologists, and that phenomenological insights may contribute to the construction of adequate formal-ontological languages. The paper sketches an (...)
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  18. An Axiomatisation of Basic Formal Ontology with Projection Functions.Kerry Trentelman, Alan Ruttenberg & Barry Smith - 2010 - In Kerry Taylor (ed.), Advances in Ontologies, Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Ontology Workshop. University of Adelaide. pp. 71-80.
    This paper proposes a reformulation of the treatment of boundaries, at parts and aggregates of entities in Basic Formal Ontology. These are currently treated as mutually exclusive, which is inadequate for biological representation since some entities may simultaneously be at parts, boundaries and/or aggregates. We introduce functions which map entities to their boundaries, at parts or aggregations. We make use of time, space and spacetime projection functions which, along the way, allow us to develop a simple temporal theory.
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  19. Framework for formal ontology.Barry Smith & Kevin Mulligan - 1983 - Topoi 2 (1):73-85.
    The discussions which follow rest on a distinction, first expounded by Husserl, between formal logic and formal ontology. The former concerns itself with (formal) meaning-structures; the latter with formal structures amongst objects and their parts. The paper attempts to show how, when formal ontological considerations are brought into play, contemporary extensionalist theories of part and whole, and above all the mereology of Leniewski, can be generalised to embrace not only relations between concrete objects and (...)
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  20. Basic concepts of formal ontology.Barry Smith - 1998 - In Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. IOS Press. pp. 19-28.
    The term ‘formal ontology’ was first used by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations to signify the study of those formal structures and relations – above all relations of part and whole – which are exemplified in the subject-matters of the different material sciences. We follow Husserl in presenting the basic concepts of formal ontology as falling into three groups: the theory of part and whole, the theory of dependence, and the theory of (...)
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  21. The cornucopia of formal-ontological relations.Barry Smith & Pierre Grenon - 2004 - Dialectica 58 (3):279–296.
    The paper presents a new method for generating typologies of formal-ontological relations. The guiding idea is that formal relations are those sorts of relations which hold between entities which are constituents of distinct ontologies. We provide examples of ontologies (in the spirit of Zemach’s classic “Four Ontologies” of 1970), and show how these can be used to give a rich typology of formal relations in a way which also throws light on the opposition between threeand four-dimensionalism.
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  22. A First-Order Logic Formalization of the Industrial Ontology Foundry Signature Using Basic Formal Ontology.Barry Smith, Farhad Ameri, Hyunmin Cheong, Dimitris Kiritsis, Dusan Sormaz, Chris Will & J. Neil Otte - 2019 - In Barry Smith, Farhad Ameri, Hyunmin Cheong, Dimitris Kiritsis, Dusan Sormaz, Chris Will & J. Neil Otte (eds.), ”, Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO), Graz.
    Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper (...) descending from BFO. The axiomatization is designed to capture the meanings of terms commonly used in manufacturing and is designed to serve as starting point for the construction of the IOF ontology suite. (shrink)
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  23. Function, role and disposition in Basic Formal Ontology.Robert Arp & Barry Smith - 2008 - Proceedings of Bio-Ontologies Workshop, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), Toronto.
    Numerous research groups are now utilizing Basic Formal Ontology as an upper-level framework to assist in the organization and integration of biomedical information. This paper provides elucidation of the three existing BFO subcategories of realizable entity, namely function, role, and disposition. It proposes one further sub-category of tendency, and considers the merits of recognizing two sub-categories of function for domain ontologies, namely, artifactual and biological function. The motivation is to help advance the coherent ontological treatment of functions, roles, (...)
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  24. Using cross-lingual information to cope with underspecification in formal ontologies.Werner Ceusters, Ignace Desimpel, Barry Smith & Stefan Schulz - 2003 - Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 95:391-396.
    Description logics and other formal devices are frequently used as means for preventing or detecting mistakes in ontologies. Some of these devices are also capable of inferring the existence of inter-concept relationships that have not been explicitly entered into an ontology. A prerequisite, however, is that this information can be derived from those formal definitions of concepts and relationships which are included within the ontology. In this paper, we present a novel algorithm that is able to (...)
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  25. The formal ontology of boundaries.Barry Smith & Achille C. Varzi - 1997 - Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy 5 (5).
    Revised version published as Barry Smith and Achille Varzi, “Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 60: 2 (March 2000), 401–420.
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  26. Non classical concept representation and reasoning in formal ontologies.Antonio Lieto - 2012 - Dissertation, Università Degli Studi di Salerno
    Formal ontologies are nowadays widely considered a standard tool for knowledge representation and reasoning in the Semantic Web. In this context, they are expected to play an important role in helping automated processes to access information. Namely: they are expected to provide a formal structure able to explicate the relationships between different concepts/terms, thus allowing intelligent agents to interpret, correctly, the semantics of the web resources improving the performances of the search technologies. Here we take into account a (...)
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  27. What are Tropes, Fundamentally? A Formal Ontological Account.Jani Hakkarainen - 2018 - Acta Philosophica Fennica 94:129-159.
    In this paper, I elaborate on the Strong Nuclear Theory (SNT) of tropes and substances, which I have defended elsewhere, using my metatheory about formal ontology and especially fundamental ontological form. According to my metatheory, for an entity to have an ontological form is for it to be a relatum of a formal ontological relation or relations jointly in an order. The full fundamental ontological form is generically identical to a simple formal ontological relation or relations (...)
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  28. Bradley's Reductio of Relations and Formal Ontological Relations.Jani Hakkarainen & Markku Keinänen - 2016 - In Hemmo Laiho & Arto Repo (eds.), DE NATURA RERUM - Scripta in honorem professoris Olli Koistinen sexagesimum annum complentis. Turku: University of Turku. pp. 246-261.
    In this paper, we argue that formal ontological relations avoid Bradley's reductio of relations, including his famous relation regress.
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  29. Applying the Realism-Based Ontology-Versioning Method for Tracking Changes in the Basic Formal Ontology.Selja Seppälä, Barry Smith & Werner Ceusters - 2014 - In Paweł Garbacz & Oliver Kutz (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference. IOS Press. pp. 227-240.
    Changes in an upper level ontology have obvious conse-quences for the domain ontologies that use it at lower levels. It is therefore crucial to document the changes made between successive versions of ontologies of this kind. We describe and apply a method for tracking, explaining and measuring changes between successive versions of upper level ontologies such as the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The proposed change-tracking method extends earlier work on Realism-Based Ontology Versioning (RBOV) and Evolutionary Terminology (...)
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  30. (1 other version)Logic and formal ontology.B. Smith - 1989 - In Barry Smith (ed.), Constraints on Correspondence. Hölder/Pichler/Tempsky. pp. 29-67.
    The current resurgence of interest in cognition and in the nature of cognitive processing has brought with it also a renewed interest in the early work of Husserl, which contains one of the most sustained attempts to come to grips with the problems of logic from a cognitive point of view. Logic, for Husserl, is a theory of science; but it is a theory which takes seriously the idea that scientific theories are constituted by the mental acts of cognitive subjects. (...)
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  31. Parts and Moments. Studies in Logic and Formal Ontology.Barry Smith (ed.) - 1982 - Philosophia Verlag.
    A collection of material on Husserl's Logical Investigations, and specifically on Husserl's formal theory of parts, wholes and dependence and its influence in ontology, logic and psychology. Includes translations of classic works by Adolf Reinach and Eugenie Ginsberg, as well as original contributions by Wolfgang Künne, Kevin Mulligan, Gilbert Null, Barry Smith, Peter M. Simons, Roger A. Simons and Dallas Willard. Documents work on Husserl's ontology arising out of early meetings of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy.
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  32. Who Cares about Axiomatization? Representation, Invariance, and Formal Ontologies.R. Ferrario - 2006 - Epistemologia 29 (2):323-342.
    The philosophy of science of Patrick Suppes is centered on two important notions that are part of the title of his recent book (Suppes 2002): Representation and Invariance. Representation is important because when we embrace a theory we implicitly choose a way to represent the phenomenon we are studying. Invariance is important because, since invariants are the only things that are constant in a theory, in a way they give the “objective” meaning of that theory. Every scientific theory gives a (...)
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  33. Interoperability of disparate engineering domain ontologies using Basic Formal Ontology.Thomas J. Hagedorn, Barry Smith, Sundar Krishnamurty & Ian R. Grosse - 2019 - Journal of Engineering Design 31.
    As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to (...)
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  34. Normalizing medical ontologies using Basic Formal Ontology.Thomas Bittner & Barry Smith - 2004 - In K. Versorgung & V. Forschung (eds.), Ubiquitäre Information (Proceedings of GMDS 2004). Videel OHG. pp. 199-201.
    Description Logics are nowadays widely accepted as formalisms which provide reasoning facilities which allow us to discover inconsistencies in ontologies in an automatic fashion. Where ontologies are developed in modular fashion, they allow changes in one module to propogated through the system of ontologies automatically in a way which helps to maintain consistency and stability. For this feature to be utilized effectively, however, requires that domain ontologies be represented in a normalized form.
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  35. An Overview of the BFO - Basic Formal Ontology - and Its Applicability for Satellite Systems.Adolfo Americano Brandão & Geilson Loureiro - 2020 - In Franciele Braga Machado Tullio & Lucio Mauro Braga Machado (eds.), Ampliação e Aprofundamento de Conhecimentos nas Áreas das Engenharias,. Atena Editora. pp. 30-38.
    This work aims to present an overview of the top-level ontology BFO - Basic Formal Ontology - and its applicability for Satellite Systems. As an upper level ontology, the BFO was designed to be extended, providing the basis for the specification of detailed representational artifacts about scientific information domains. These aspects and the challenges of satellite systems complexity and large size compose a suitable scenario for the creation of a specialized dialect to improve efficiency and accuracy (...)
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  36. On the application of formal principles to life science data: A case study in the Gene Ontology.Jacob Köhler, Anand Kumar & Barry Smith - 2004 - In Köhler Jacob, Kumar Anand & Smith Barry (eds.), Proceedings of DILS 2004 (Data Integration in the Life Sciences), (Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics 2994). Springer. pp. 79-94.
    Formal principles governing best practices in classification and definition have for too long been neglected in the construction of biomedical ontologies, in ways which have important negative consequences for data integration and ontology alignment. We argue that the use of such principles in ontology construction can serve as a valuable tool in error-detection and also in supporting reliable manual curation. We argue also that such principles are a prerequisite for the successful application of advanced data integration techniques (...)
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  37. Formal Approaches to the Ontological Argument.Ricardo Silvestre & Jean-Yves Beziau - 2018 - Journal of Applied Logics 5 (7):1433-1440.
    This paper introduces the special issue on Formal Approaches to the Ontological Argument of the Journal of Applied Logics (College Publications). The issue contains the following articles: Formal Approaches to the Ontological Argument, by Ricardo Sousa Silvestre and Jean-Yves Béziau; A Brief Critical Introduction to the Ontological Argument and its Formalization: Anselm, Gaunilo, Descartes, Leibniz and Kant, by Ricardo Sousa Silvestre; A Mechanically Assisted Examination of Begging the Question in Anselm’s Ontological Argument, by John Rushby; A Tractarian Resolution (...)
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  38. LinkSuite™: Software Tools for Formally Robust Ontology-Based Data and Information Integration.Werner Ceusters, Barry Smith & James Matthew Fielding - 2004 - In Werner Ceusters, Barry Smith & James Matthew Fielding (eds.), Proceedings of DILS 2004 (Data Integration in the Life Sciences), (Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, 2994). Springer. pp. 1-16.
    The integration of information resources in the life sciences is one of the most challenging problems facing bioinformatics today. We describe how Language and Computing nv, originally a developer of ontology-based natural language understanding systems for the healthcare domain, is developing a framework for the integration of structured data with unstructured information contained in natural language texts. L&C’s LinkSuite™ combines the flexibility of a modular software architecture with an ontology based on rigorous philosophical and logical principles that is (...)
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  39. Constructing formal semantics from an ontological perspective. The case of second-order logics.Thibaut Giraud - 2014 - Synthese 191 (10):2115-2145.
    In a first part, I defend that formal semantics can be used as a guide to ontological commitment. Thus, if one endorses an ontological view \(O\) and wants to interpret a formal language \(L\) , a thorough understanding of the relation between semantics and ontology will help us to construct a semantics for \(L\) in such a way that its ontological commitment will be in perfect accordance with \(O\) . Basically, that is what I call constructing (...) semantics from an ontological perspective. In the rest of the paper, I develop rigorously and put into practice such a method, especially concerning the interpretation of second-order quantification. I will define the notion of ontological framework: it is a set-theoretical structure from which one can construct semantics whose ontological commitments correspond exactly to a given ontological view. I will define five ontological frameworks corresponding respectively to: (i) predicate nominalism, (ii) resemblance nominalism, (iii) armstrongian realism, (iv) platonic realism, and (v) tropism. From those different frameworks, I will construct different semantics for first-order and second-order languages. Notably I will present different kinds of nominalist semantics for second-order languages, showing thus that we can perfectly quantify over properties and relations while being ontologically committed only to individuals. I will show in what extent those semantics differ from each other; it will make clear how the disagreements between the ontological views extend from ontology to logic, and thus why endorsing an ontological view should have an impact on the kind of logic one should use. (shrink)
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  40. On The Logical Formalization of Ansem's Ontological Argument.Ricardo Silvestre - 2015 - Revista Brasileira de Filosofia da Religião 2 (1):142–161.
    he general theme of this paper is the issue of formalization in philosophy; in a more specific way, it deals with the issue of formalization of arguments in analytic philosophy of religion. One argument in particular – Anselm’s Proslogion II ontological argument – and one specific attempt to formalize it – Robert Adams’ formalization found in his paper “The Logical Structure of Anselm’s Arguments”, published in The Philosophical Review in 1971 – are taken as study cases. The purpose of the (...)
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  41. Trouble Up at t’Ontological Mill: An Inconclusive Dialog.Peter Simons - 2017 - Cosmos + Taxis 4 (4):64-66.
    Grenon and Smith (2004) propose a framework for the ontology of things in space and time involving and invoking the distinction between continuants and occurrents, which has become a key element of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The terminology of SNAP (from “snapshot:” state of a continuant at a time) and SPAN (how an occurrent develops over an interval or timespan) occurs in that paper’s title. While any commonsense ontology will have a place for both continuants and (...)
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  42. Biomedical Ontologies.Barry Smith - 2022 - In Peter L. Elkin (ed.), Terminology, Ontology and Their Implementations: Teaching Guide and Notes. Springer. pp. 125-169.
    We begin at the beginning, with an outline of Aristotle’s views on ontology and with a discussion of the influence of these views on Linnaeus. We move from there to consider the data standardization initiatives launched in the 19th century, and then turn to investigate how the idea of computational ontologies developed in the AI and knowledge representation communities in the closing decades of the 20th century. We show how aspects of this idea, particularly those relating to the use (...)
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  43.  78
    Quasi-set theory: a formal approach to a quantum ontology of properties.Federico Holik, Juan Pablo Jorge, Décio Krause & Olimpia Lombardi - 2022 - Synthese 200 (5):1-26.
    In previous works, an ontology of properties for quantum mechanics has been proposed, according to which quantum systems are bundles of properties with no principle of individuality. The aim of the present article is to show that, since quasi-set theory is particularly suited for dealing with aggregates of items that do not belong to the traditional category of individual, it supplies an adequate meta-language to speak of the proposed ontology of properties and its structure.
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  44. Biodynamic Ontology: Applying BFO in the Biomedical Domain.Barry Smith, Pierre Grenon & Louis Goldberg - 2004 - Studies in Health and Technology Informatics 102:20–38.
    Current approaches to formal representation in biomedicine are characterized by their focus on either the static or the dynamic aspects of biological reality. We here outline a theory that combines both perspectives and at the same time tackles the by no means trivial issue of their coherent integration. Our position is that a good ontology must be capable of accounting for reality both synchronically (as it exists at a time) and diachronically (as it unfolds through time), but that (...)
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  45. O/ontology.Luis M. Augusto - 2022 - Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 3 (3):1-2.
    The gulf between philosophical and formal ontology can and should be bridged. In this Editorial, I elaborate briefly on this subject.
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  46. Ontology: Towards a new synthesis.Barry Smith & Chris Welty - 1998 - In Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. IOS Press.
    This introduction to the second international conference on Formal Ontology and Information Systems presents a brief history of ontology as a discipline spanning the boundaries of philosophy and information science. We sketch some of the reasons for the growth of ontology in the information science field, and offer a preliminary stocktaking of how the term ‘ontology’ is currently used. We conclude by suggesting some grounds for optimism as concerns the future collaboration between philosophical ontologists and (...)
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  47. A Compatibilist Approach in Ontology: Steps Towards a Formalization.Massimiliano Carrara & Vittorio Morato - 1998 - In Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. IOS Press. pp. 182-194.
    Commonsense ontology often conflicts with the ontology of our best scientific and philosophical theories. However, commonsense ontology, and commonsense belief systems in general, seems to be remarkably efficient and cognitively fundamental. In cases of contrast, it is better to find a way to reconcile commonsense and ”theoretical” ontologies. Given that commonsense ontologies are typically expressed within natural language, a classical procedure of reconciliation is semantical. The strategy is that of individuating the ”ontologically problematic” expressions of natural language (...)
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  48. The Ontology of Biological and Clinical Statistics (OBCS) for standardized and reproducible statistical analysis.Jie Zheng, Marcelline R. Harris, Anna Maria Masci, Lin Yu, Alfred Hero, Barry Smith & Yongqun He - 2016 - Journal of Biomedical Semantics 7 (53).
    Statistics play a critical role in biological and clinical research. However, most reports of scientific results in the published literature make it difficult for the reader to reproduce the statistical analyses performed in achieving those results because they provide inadequate documentation of the statistical tests and algorithms applied. The Ontology of Biological and Clinical Statistics (OBCS) is put forward here as a step towards solving this problem. Terms in OBCS, including ‘data collection’, ‘data transformation in statistics’, ‘data visualization’, ‘statistical (...)
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  49. The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations.Anita Bandrowski, Ryan Brinkman, Mathias Brochhausen, Matthew H. Brush, Bill Bug, Marcus C. Chibucos, Kevin Clancy, Mélanie Courtot, Dirk Derom, Michel Dumontier, Liju Fan, Jennifer Fostel, Gilberto Fragoso, Frank Gibson, Alejandra Gonzalez-Beltran, Melissa A. Haendel, Yongqun He, Mervi Heiskanen, Tina Hernandez-Boussard, Mark Jensen, Yu Lin, Allyson L. Lister, Phillip Lord, James Malone, Elisabetta Manduchi, Monnie McGee, Norman Morrison, James A. Overton, Helen Parkinson, Bjoern Peters, Philippe Rocca-Serra, Alan Ruttenberg, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Richard H. Scheuermann, Daniel Schober, Barry Smith, Larisa N. Soldatova, Christian J. Stoeckert, Chris F. Taylor, Carlo Torniai, Jessica A. Turner, Randi Vita, Patricia L. Whetzel & Jie Zheng - 2016 - PLoS ONE 11 (4):e0154556.
    The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, such as adding semantic (...)
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  50. UFO: Unified Foundational Ontology.Giancarlo Guizzardi, Alessander Bottes Benevides, Claudemir M. Fonseca, João Paulo A. Almeida, Tiago Prince Sales & Daniele Porello - 2022 - Applied ontology 1 (17):167-210.
    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 (...)
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