The present paper deals with grammatical categories and their formalization as morphological units on the example of aspectuality / temporality on the one hand, and aspect / tense on the other hand with special attention paid to Polish, German, English and Romanic languages such as Italian, French and Spanish. It could be shown that the formal realization of aspectuality cannot be considered as being restricted to aspects, but also comprises tense in languages which are deprived of aspects. Furthermore the author (...) proves that the German system of past tenses semantically largely differ from its English binary counterpart which it is often wrongly equated with. (shrink)

Das Anliegen der vorliegenden Studie ist der Entwurf eines wirklichkeitstreuen Modells der Kommunikation. Ebenfalls hat uns interessiert, die konstitutiven Regeln der Kommunikation zu bestimmen und einige Wirksamkeitsnormen und moralische Normen, die mit wünschenswerten sozialen Kommunikationsformen assoziierbar sein könnten, zu identifizieren. Die Kommunikation ist ein facettenreiches und zugleich interpretationsoffenes Phänomen, welches zahlreiche unterschiedliche theoretische Modelle erlaubt. Sie kann von den Psychologen als selbstständigen Verhaltenstyp, von den Soziologen als entscheidenden Sozialisierungsfaktor, von den Anthropologen als kulturhervorbringendes und -verbreitendes Mittel, von den Semiologen als (...) Prozess der (Um-)Konfiguration der verschiedenen Bedeutungen von Bedeutungsträgern usw. gedeutet werden. Das vorliegende Interpretationsmodell der Kommunikation ist allgemein, zum Teil auch hermeneutisch, indem es a) den Kommunikationsprozess als solchen und nicht etwa als eine gesonderte Instanz desselben berücksichtigt, b) eine einzige, nämlich die interaktive Perspektive auf die Kommunikation hervorhebt und c) zweckgemäß die Kommunikation in einen normativen, intelligiblen Rahmen überträgt, wobei sich eine empirische Beschreibung der Kommunikationsfakten zwecks Feststellung allgemeingültiger Gesetze von selbst erübrigt. Diesem theoretischen Modell entsprechend ist die Kommunikation eine Interaktion oder eine wechselseitige semiotische Interaktion, innerhalb derer die involvierten Personen mithilfe von Zeichen komplementäre Verhalten manifestieren, die bestimmten (sozialen) Regeln unterworfen sind. Demzufolge ist die Kommunikation kein individuelles Spiel, sondern ein Team-Spiel. Ihre Protagonisten spielen alle genauso wichtige Rollen, und von ihrer Teilnahme hängt beides, Gelingen und Misslingen der Kommunikation, gleichermaßen ab. Nachdem wir den Begriff der Kommunikation im allgemeinen erklärt hatten, galt unser Interesse der Definition und der Klassifizierung der exklusiven Ausführungsmittel des oben beschriebenen Prozesses, das heißt, der Zeichen. Die semiotische Literatur behandelt die Zeichen sowohl als (stoffliche, mentale oder gemischte) Objekte als auch als Funktionen. Für unsere Demarche haben wir es vorgezogen, die Zeichen als in Wirklichkeit existierende Reize zu beschreiben, die auf Grund von sozialen Konventionen stets auf „etwas Anderes” als auf sich selbst hinweisen. Dieses gemeinte „Andere“, die Bedeutung des Zeichens, ist nichts anderes als die Gesamtheit seiner Anwendungen. Die Natur des Verhältnisses von Zeichen und (willkürlicher, notwendiger, durch Analogie oder Ähnlichkeit begründeter) Bedeutung hat uns dann erlaubt, vier Zeichenkategorien auszumachen und zu beschreiben: Wörter, Indizien, Bilder und Sinnbilder. Was die Erläuterung der konstitutiven Faktoren der Kommunikation anbetrifft, haben wir im Einklang mit den Forschungen angesehener Semiotiker mit sechs grundlegenden Parametern gerechnet: Sender, Empfänger, Mitteilung, Code, Kommunikationssituation und Kommunikationskanal. Doch war das wirklich die einzige treffliche Option? Hätte der Kommunikationsprozess nicht ausgehend von anderen – wenigeren oder mehreren – Faktoren analysiert werden können? Gewiss kann die Kommunikation auch mittels weiterer Variablen verstanden werden – und die Fachliteratur ist nicht müde geworden, die Vorzüge anderer Beschreibungsmuster zu zeigen –; von den sechs semiotischen, von Roman Jakobson eingeführten Parametern kann man indes nicht wegsehen. Sie erlauben allemal eine ziemlich genaue Bestimmung der durch die Protragonisten der Kommunikation durchgeführten Handlungen. In Übereinstimmung mit der allgemeinen Methode der Handlungstheorie haben wir jeden konstitutiven Faktor der Kommunikation mit je einem Handlungspaar korreliert, zum einen beim Sender, zum anderen beim Empfänger. Die Berücksichtigung der Sprache und implizite der Kommunikation im Kontext der Handlungstheorie ist keine bahnbrechende Unternehmung, da sie unter anderem schon John Austin, John Searle und Jürgen Habermas als Ausgangspunkt ihrer Analyse der Sprechakte gedient hat. Auch die Korrelation der Kommunikationsparameter mit einer Handlung ist kein Novum, indem sie auf analoge Weise bereits durch die Versuche einiger Semiotiker wie Roman Jakobson und Karl Bühler, die Funktionen der Sprache bzw. des linguistischen Zeichens zu systematisieren, unternommen wurde. Unser origineller Beitrag besteht aus der Korrelation jedes Faktors der Kommunikation mit einer Interaktion, das heißt mit einem Paar von komplementären Handlungen, so dass jeder Handlung des Senders eine Handlung des Empfängers entspricht. In diesem Sinne haben wir Sender, Empfänger, Mitteilung, Code, Kommunikationssituation und Kommunikationskanal in spezifischen Interaktionstypen (Sichentlarven – Nachvollziehen, Einflussnahme – Antwort, Sendung – Empfang, syntaktische Informierung – syntaktisches Verständnis, Bezeichnung – „Mitbezeich-nung“ bzw. Anknüpfung einer soziale Beziehung – Beibehaltung einer soziale Beziehung) inszeniert. Nachdem wir den Kommunikationsprozess als Totalität von sechs Interaktionstypen beschrieben hatten, haben wir auf drei mögliche Ordnungen der Kommunikationsformen verwiesen, wobei die Einteilungskriterien jeweils die verschiedenen gebrauchten Zeichentypen, die Art der Beziehung zwischen Sender und Empfänger bzw. der sich spontan manifestierende soziale Abstand zwischen den Kommunizierenden waren. Indem unsere Demarche darauf abzielte, die Eigentümlichkeiten verbaler vs. nonverbaler, formaler vs. informaler, der individuell, gruppenweise oder öffentlich stattfindenden Kommunikation auszumachen, haben wir die Akzente auf die Pragmatik der Kommunikation gesetzt und somit einige Hinweise auf den Erwerb spezifischer Kommunikationsfähigkeiten geben können. Das von uns vorgeschlagene theoretische Modell hat also nicht nur ein besseres Verständnis der Kommunikation beabsichtigt, sondern auch die Feststellung eines vollständigen Regelwerks der Kommunikation. Diese Regeln wurden als Formen des zu erwartenden sozialen Verhaltens behandelt – sowohl im normativen als auch im antizipativen Sinne – und wurden im Gefolge von John Searle in zwei Hauptklassen eingeteilt: konstitutive und normative Regeln. Die konstitutiven Regeln bestimmen die von ihnen logisch-abhängigen Verhaltensweisen und legen die Bedingungen der Kommunikationsakte fest, während die normativen Regeln die vorgegebenen, unabhängigen Verhaltensweisen berücksichtigen und die wünschenswerten Bedingungen für ihre Vollziehung festlegen. Um die konstitutiven Regeln ausmachen zu können, sind wir davon ausgegangen, dass der Prozess der menschlichen Kommunikation kein naturhafter, sondern ein institutioneller ist. Mit anderen Worten ist die Kommunikation das Ergebnis einer sozialen Vereinbarung und eben kein unabhängiges Phänomen, das nur von außen zu beschreiben wäre. Je nachdem, wie die notwendigen Regeln, welche die soziale Vereinbarung definieren, respektiert oder verletzt werden, haben wir fünf mögliche Situationen identifiziert: die vollkommene Kommunikation, die teilweise geglückte Kommunikation, die Nonkommunikation, die relative und die absolute Antikommunikation, wobei man hinzufügen muss, dass die erste und die letzte Situation Grenzerfahrungen ohne jegliche Referenz darstellen. Die konstitutiven Regeln der Kommunikation wurden mit allen sechs spezifischen Interaktionstypen korreliert (Sichentlarven – Nachvollziehen, Einflussnahme – Antwort, Sendung – Empfang, syntaktische Informierung – syntaktisches Verständnis, Bezeich-nung – „Mitbezeichnung“ bzw. Anknüpfung einer soziale Beziehung – Beibehaltung einer soziale Beziehung), so dass sie wenigstens aus einem bestimmten Gesichtspunkt ein konsistentes und vollständiges System bilden können. Im Unterschied zum System der konstitutiven Regeln sind hier die Kommunikationsnormen nicht erschöpfend behandelt worden. So wurden aus der Vielfalt der Vorschriften, die zu erwünschten Ergebnissen in der Kommunikation führen könnten, nur einige im Rahmen der vorliegenden Studie angegangen. Diese betreffen die Wirksamkeit und die moralischen Aspekte der Kommunikation und wurden ihrerseits mit den oben angeführten sechs Interaktionstypen korreliert. Dabei waren nicht so sehr die unausweichlichen Lücken im Inventarisieren der Normen, welche die Genauigkeit und die Ökonomie der Kommunikation gewähren, am problematischsten, sondern vielmehr der Grad an moralischer Relevanz, den die Kommunikationsakte beanspruchen können. Wir sind fest davon überzeugt, dass die Handlungen der Kommunizierenden eher davon abhängen, inwiefern sie moralische Verpflichtungen eingehen, und eben nicht davon, was für einen Gewinn sie dadurch erzielen, da keine der berücksichtigten Handlungen sich der Moral gänzlich entziehen können. Ob „neutrale Metaregeln“ für den Fall, dass einige moralische Eingrenzungen mit den Wirksamkeitsnormen kollidieren, vonnöten sind, sei dahin gestellt. Ein theoretisches Modell kann nur dann als nützlich bezeichnet werden, wenn es neue Forschungsansätze bringt und neue Forschungswege ermöglicht. Unter diesem Blickwinkel hat die vorliegende Studie zwei mögliche Fortsetzungen: die Ergänzung der Gesamtheit der normativen Regeln der Kommunikation (im allgemeinen), bzw. das Unterteilen des allgemeinen Modells der Kommunikation in stereotypen Mustern wie der politischen oder didaktischen Kommunikation usw. Schließlich hängen Gelingen und Anwendbarkeit der vorliegenden Studie in pragmatischer Sicht eben davon ab, inwiefern sie dem Leser / Benutzer als Wekzeug zur Verbesserung seiner Kommunikationsleistungen dienen kann. (shrink)

Abstract (German) Dieses Buch faßt meine Forschungen zur Semiotik Giordano Brunos und zu deren Grundlagen in der Kosmologie und in der Gedächtnistheorie zusammen, wobei sowohl die Heterogenität als auch der Universalität des Denkers den Charakter dieses Buches geprägt haben. Es wird kein glattes Bild seiner Person oder seines Werkes angeboten, kein bejahender Jubel über eine epochale Leistung; wichtiger war mir die bis ins Detail gehende, manchmal mühselige Interpretation seiner Systementwürfe, wobei ich versucht habe, auch deren formales und technisches Niveau deutlich (...) zu machen. Nicht seine Weltanschauung soll dargestellt werden, sondern sein Versuch, eine Vielfalt von Detaillösungen in eine wohlproportionierte, wenn auch ins Unendliche reichende Wissensarchitektur zu integrieren. Als Startsignal mag folgende Frage dienen: Inwiefern ist Giordano Bruno Semiotiker? Der Philosoph Bruno wird von Jacobi als Beispiel spinozistischer Tendenzen wieder ins Gespräch gebracht; später wird er für die spekulative Naturphilosophie, die aus Kants Schatten heraustritt, z.B. für Schelling und Hegel, interessant, und schließlich wird er als Märtyrer der Freiheit von den Antiklerikalen im Risorgimento hochgehoben. Der Heroenkult um die „Kopernikanische Wende" weiß mit Bruno nichts anzufangen, er ist kein Naturwissenschaftler, wie man ihn sich im 20 . Jh . wünscht. Von Yates ( 1964 ) wird er als Hermetiker und Ahnherr der Rosenkreuzer entdeckt, und plötzlich soll er auch noch ein Semiotiker sein ? Die Etikette „Semiotiker" ist allerdings weniger riskant als jene früher an Bruno herangetragenen. Bruno ist Philosoph, in einem allgemeinen Sinn , insofern er alle wesentlichen Aspekte: metaphysische, natur philosophische, ethische, semiotische, poetologische zum Entwurf eines möglichst kohärenten Bildes vereint, und er ist ein Renaissance-Philosoph, d .h. das antike Erbe, besonders jenes in den orientalischen Tiefen der Kulturgeschichte (Ägypten und Chaldäer) ist sein Ausgangspunkt. Selbst den Entwurf des Copernicus versteht Bruno in erster Linie als eine Wiederentdeckung antiker Einsichten. Es gibt jedoch in Brunos Schaffen einen roten Faden: die Architektur unseres Wissens, das Gedächtnis der Kultur- und Wissensgemeinschaft und natürlich desjenigen, der wie Bruno dieses Wissen zu einer Synthese vereinigen will . Seine Philosophie versucht, wie jede große Philosophie, alles, was wir wissen und was wir daraus an weiterem impliziten Wissen erschließen können, in einer Einheit zu denken, und diese Einheit ist notwendigerweise nur als Zeichensystem (begrifflich, argumentativ, bildhaft, als imaginierte Welt) zu realisieren. -/- Abstract (English) This book summarizes my research on Giordano Bruno's semiotics and its foundations in cosmology and memory theory, whereby both the heterogeneity and the universality of the thinker have shaped the character of this book. No smooth picture of his person or his work is offered, no affirmative jubilation over an epochal achievement; What was more important to me was the sometimes laborious interpretation of his system designs, which went down to the last detail, and I also tried to make their formal and technical level clear. It is not his worldview that should be presented but his attempt to integrate various detailed solutions into a well-proportioned, albeit infinitely reaching, architecture of knowledge. The following question may serve as a starting signal: To what extent is Giordano Bruno a semiotician? Jacobi brings up the philosopher Bruno again as an example of Spinozist tendencies; later, he becomes important for the speculative natural philosophy emerging from Kant's shadow, e.g., for Schelling and Hegel. He is finally extolled as a martyr of freedom by the anticlericals in the Risorgimento. The hero cult around the "Copernican turn" does not know what to do with Bruno; he is not a natural scientist as one would wish in the 20th century. Yates (1964) discovered him as a hermetic, even an ancestor of the Rosicrucians. The etiquette "semiotic" is certainly less risky than the associations that Bruno used to have. Bruno is a philosopher, in a general sense, in that he combines all the essential aspects: metaphysical, natural philosophical, ethical, semiotic, poetological to project a picture that is as coherent as possible, and he is a Renaissance philosopher, i .e . the ancient heritage, especially that in the oriental depths of cultural history (Egypt and Chaldeans) is his starting point. Bruno sees even the draft of Copernicus primarily as a rediscovery of ancient insights. However, there is a common thread in Bruno's work: the architecture of our knowledge, the memory of the cultural and knowledge community and, of course, of those who, like Bruno, want to unite this knowledge into a synthesis. His philosophy, like every great philosophy, tries to think of everything that we know and what we can deduce from it as further implicit knowledge as a unit, and this unit is necessarily only available as a system of signs (conceptual, argumentative, pictorial, as an imagined world). to realize. 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Not focusing on the history of classical logic, this book provides discussions and quotes central passages on its origins and development, namely from a philosophical perspective. Not being a book in mathematical logic, it takes formal logic from an essentially mathematical perspective. Biased towards a computational approach, with SAT and VAL as its backbone, this is an introduction to logic that covers essential aspects of the three branches of logic, to wit, philosophical, mathematical, and computational.

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 such as ontology-based (...) multi-database querying, automated ontology alignment and ontology-based text-mining. These theses are illustrated by means of a case study of the Gene Ontology, a project of increasing importance within the field of biomedical data integration. (shrink)

The purpose of this introduction is to give a rough overview of the discussion of the formalization of arguments, focusing on deductive arguments. The discussion is structured around four important junctions: i) the notion of support, which captures the relation between the conclusion and premises of an argument, ii) the choice of a formal language into which the argument is translated in order to make it amenable to evaluation via formal methods, iii) the question of quality criteria for such formalizations, (...) and finally iv) the choice of the underlying logic. This introductory discussion is supplemented by a brief description of the genesis of the special issue, acknowledgements, and summaries of each article. (shrink)

How does one formalize the structure of structures necessary for the foundations of physics? This work is an attempt at conceptualizing the metaphysics of pregeometric structures, upon which new and existing notions of quantum geometry may find a foundation. We discuss the philosophy of pregeometric structures due to Wheeler, Leibniz as well as modern manifestations in topos theory. We draw attention to evidence suggesting that the framework of formal language, in particular, homotopy type theory, provides the conceptual building blocks for (...) a theory of pregeometry. This work is largely a synthesis of ideas that serve as a precursor for conceptualizing the notion of space in physical theories. In particular, the approach we espouse is based on a constructivist philosophy, wherein ``structureless structures'' are syntactic types realizing formal proofs and programs. Spaces and algebras relevant to physical theories are modeled as type-theoretic routines constructed from compositional rules of a formal language. This offers the remarkable possibility of taxonomizing distinct notions of geometry using a common theoretical framework. In particular, this perspective addresses the crucial issue of how spatiality may be realized in models that link formal computation to physics, such as the Wolfram model. (shrink)

This contribution unfolds an existential-ontological response to the question of sexual difference in the context of Heidegger’s formally indicative concept of “Dasein.” The question of Dasein’s “neutrality” concerns how formal indication formalizes, empties, and neutralizes the givenness of factical human existence. Ostensibly “given” biological and anthropological facts, such as sexual difference, are interpreted from an emptied and neutralized perspective that appears abstract and fictional to Heidegger’s critics. How, then, is the “neutrality” of formalizing emptying related to the “facticity” of in (...) each case factically existing as a sexual and gendered being? The answer lies in Heidegger’s elucidation of the existential-ontological structure of Dasein: Dasein is always relationally instituted in its factical entangled life through “being-with.” The sexual difference of human existence is not merely biologically or anthropologically given, but disclosed and enacted according to one’s relations with others, the environment, and oneself. The formally indicating concept “Dasein” indicates, accordingly, the concrete diversity and plurality of individuated sexual and gendered ways of being. (shrink)

(This is for the Cambridge Handbook of Analytic Philosophy, edited by Marcus Rossberg) In this handbook entry, I survey the different ways in which formal mathematical methods have been applied to philosophical questions throughout the history of analytic philosophy. I consider: formalization in symbolic logic, with examples such as Aquinas’ third way and Anselm’s ontological argument; Bayesian confirmation theory, with examples such as the fine-tuning argument for God and the paradox of the ravens; foundations of mathematics, with examples such as (...) Hilbert’s programme and Gödel’s incompleteness theorems; social choice theory, with examples such as Condorcet’s paradox and Arrow’s theorem; ‘how possibly’ results, with examples such as Condorcet’s jury theorem and recent work on intersectionality theory; and the application of advanced mathematics in philosophy, with examples such as accuracy-first epistemology. (shrink)

A formal model of metaphor is introduced. It models metaphor, first, as an interaction of “frames” according to the frame semantics, and then, as a wave function in Hilbert space. The practical way for a probability distribution and a corresponding wave function to be assigned to a given metaphor in a given language is considered. A series of formal definitions is deduced from this for: “representation”, “reality”, “language”, “ontology”, etc. All are based on Hilbert space. A few statements about a (...) quantum computer are implied: The sodefined reality is inherent and internal to it. It can report a result only “metaphorically”. It will demolish transmitting the result “literally”, i.e. absolutely exactly. A new and different formal definition of metaphor is introduced as a few entangled wave functions corresponding to different “signs” in different language formally defined as above. The change of frames as the change from the one to the other formal definition of metaphor is interpreted as a formal definition of thought. Four areas of cognition are unified as different but isomorphic interpretations of the mathematical model based on Hilbert space. These are: quantum mechanics, frame semantics, formal semantics by means of quantum computer, and the theory of metaphor in linguistics. (shrink)

Im institutionalisierten Bereich interkultureller Beziehungen kommt es permanent zu Bemühungen, über gemeinsame musikalische Projekte Brücken zum Austausch von Lebensrealitäten und Erfahrungen zu erzielen. In vielen Fällen besteht jedoch nicht die Gelegenheit des gegenseitigen Austausches, weil die beteiligten Akteure entweder nebeneinander agieren, ohne aufeinander einzugehen und die Impulse ihres Gegenübers in den eigenen Beiträgen zu reflektieren, oder aber eine der beiden Bestandteile den anderen dominiert, und keine entsprechende Gelegenheit zur gleichberechtigten Artikulation einräumt. Der Grund dafür liegt häufig in der Starrheit der (...) musikalischen Systeme, die bei solchen Gelegenheiten aufeinander treffen und deren Unfähigkeit, auf Impulse außerhalb des jeweiligen Bezugsrahmens einzugehen. Die Improvisation bietet in diesem Zusammenhang einen tatsächlichen Spielplatz für unterschiedliche Zugänge und Entwürfe, der dazu einlädt, sich spielerisch einander anzunähern. Während im idiomatisch eingeschränkten Ausdrucksspektrum auch hier noch einige Barrieren existieren dürften, stellt sich im Kontext der harmonisch und rhythmisch freien Variante eine scheinbar ideale Basis zum gegenseitigen Erfahrungsaustausch dar. Diese wird nicht zuletzt aufgrund einer stark individualisierten Klangästhetik und Ausdruckspalette erzielt, deren Repräsentationsanteil an deutlich zuzuordnenden Elementen einer jeweiligen kulturellen Entität jedoch oft nicht exakt zu bestimmen ist. So widmet sich ein zentraler Aspekt der Arbeit der Frage nach der Zuweisungsebene der in diesem Zusammenhang getätigten Ausdrucksweisen, die sich im Bereich zwischen eindeutig einer bestimmten kulturellen Entität zuzuordnenden Elemente – häufig in Form von traditionellen Instrumenten als kulturelle Artefakte einer spezifischen regionalen Zugehörigkeit – und der rein technischen Herangehensweise an die musikalische Praxis der Kollektiv-Improvisation als Bestandteil einer global präsenten Subkultur der freien Improvisationsszene bewegt. Regelmäßig initiierte Projekte, die sich mit dieser Thematik auseinandersetzen werden im methodischen Teil der Arbeit zur Diskussion gestellt und als Ausgangspunkt für Erkenntnisse zur Optimierung von Projekten mit ähnlich ausgerichteten Zielsetzungen herangezogen. (shrink)

This paper reviews the central points and presents some recent developments of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency in terms of the preservation of evidence. Two formal systems are surveyed, the basic logic of evidence (BLE) and the logic of evidence and truth (LET J ), designed to deal, respectively, with evidence and with evidence and truth. While BLE is equivalent to Nelson’s logic N4, it has been conceived for a different purpose. Adequate valuation semantics that provide decidability are given for (...) both BLE and LET J . The meanings of the connectives of BLE and LET J , from the point of view of preservation of evidence, is explained with the aid of an inferential semantics. A formalization of the notion of evidence for BLE as proposed by M. Fitting is also reviewed here. As a novel result, the paper shows that LET J is semantically characterized through the so-called Fidel structures. Some opportunities for further research are also discussed. (shrink)

Im Rahmen der folgenden Seiten sollen die Kommunikationsbedingungen im Kontext der Kollektiv-Improvisation genauer analysiert und einem Vergleich mit den Voraussetzungen der idealen Sprechsituation von Habermas unterzogen werden. Hinleitend dazu erfolgt zum Einstieg eine Darstellung jener Ausgangsbedingungen, welche die Methode der kollektiven Improvisation von herkömmlichen musikalischen Verfahren unterscheidet. Zu diesem Zweck werden neben einer kurzen Erläuterung der bereits im vorangegangenen Kapitel ausführlich diskutierten Ausgangsbedingungen u.a. Ansätze aus der Musiktherapie herangezogen, die sowohl soziale als auch politische Faktoren mit einbeziehen. Im Anschluss daran (...) sollen mittels einer systemtheoretisch orientierten Annäherung, wie sie von Borgo und Goguen vorgenommen wurde, jene Aspekte genauer beleuchtet werden, die Aufschluss über die tatsächlichen Kommunikationsstrukturen und geben. (shrink)

Although formal thought disorder (FTD) has been for long a clinical label in the assessment of some psychiatric disorders, in particular of schizophrenia, it remains a source of controversy, mostly because it is hard to say what exactly the “formal” in FTD refers to. We see anomalous processing of terminological knowledge, a core construct of human knowledge in general, behind FTD symptoms and we approach this anomaly from a strictly formal perspective. More specifically, we present here a symbolic computational model (...) of storage in, and activation of, a human semantic network, or semantic memory, whose core element is logical form; this is normalized by description logic (DL), namely by CL, a DL-based language – Conception Language – designed to formalize conceptualization from the viewpoint of individual cognitive agency. In this model, disruptions in the rule-based implementation of the logical form account for the apparently semantic anomalies symptomatic of FTD, which are detected by means of a CL-based algorithmic assessment. (shrink)

Inspired by impossibility theorems of social choice theory, many democratic theorists have argued that aggregative forms of democracy cannot lend full democratic justification for the collective decisions reached. Hence, democratic theorists have turned their attention to deliberative democracy, according to which “outcomes are democratically legitimate if and only if they could be the object of a free and reasoned agreement among equals” (Cohen 1997a, 73). However, relatively little work has been done to offer a formal theory of democratic deliberation. This (...) article helps fill that gap by offering a formal theory of three different modes of democratic deliberation: myopic discussion, constructive discussion, and debate. We show that myopic discussion suffers from indeterminacy of long run outcomes, while constructive discussion and debate are conclusive. Finally, unlike the other two modes of deliberation, debate is path independent and converges to a unique compromise position, irrespective of the initial status quo. (shrink)

A study of the background of Husserl’s early thinking in the perceptual psychology of Carl Stumpf and of the implications of Stumpfian ideas for an understanding of Husserl’s phenomenology. Other topics treated include the ontology of part, whole and dependence; gestalt theory; and Husserl’s notion of the synthetic a priori.

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.

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 is of (...) particular relevance to biomedicine, covering theoretical components of ontologies, best practices for ontology design, and examples of biomedical ontologies in use. After defining an ontology as a representation of the types of entities in a given domain, the book distinguishes between different kinds of ontologies and taxonomies, and shows how applied ontology draws on more traditional ideas from metaphysics. It presents the core features of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), now used by over one hundred ontology projects around the world, and offers examples of domain ontologies that utilize BFO. The book also describes Web Ontology Language (OWL), a common framework for Semantic Web technologies. Throughout, the book provides concrete recommendations for the design and construction of domain ontologies. (shrink)

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, ontological forms of entities (...) are their standings in internal relations whose holding is neutral on the character of their relata. These relations are “formal ontological relations”. Entities belong to ontological categories because they stand in the same formal ontological relations. We hold a nominalist relationalism about ontological categories and forms. We conclude by showing that our metatheory is useful for understanding categorial fundamentality/non- fundamentality, different formal ontologies, and for unifying metaphysical questions. (shrink)

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 (...) treatment of this world relate to traditional and contemporary metaphysics and formal ontology? Can we embrace a thesis of common-sense realism to the effect that the world of common sense exists uniquely? Or must we adopt instead a position of cultural relativism which would assign distinct worlds of common sense to each group and epoch? The present paper draws on recent work in computer science (especially in the fields of naive and qualitative physics), in perceptual and developmental psychology, and in cognitive anthropology, in order to consider in a new light these and related questions and to draw conclusions for the methodology and philosophical foundations of the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

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 ontology 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)

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)

I argue that normative formal epistemology (NFE) is best understood as modelling, in the sense that this is the reconstruction of its methodology on which NFE is doing best. I focus on Bayesianism and show that it has the characteristics of modelling. But modelling is a scientific enterprise, while NFE is normative. I thus develop an account of normative models on which they are idealised representations put to normative purposes. Normative assumptions, such as the transitivity of comparative credence, are characterised (...) as modelling idealisations motivated normatively. I then survey the landscape of methodological options: what might formal epistemologists be up to? I argue the choice is essentially binary: modelling or theorising. If NFE is theorising it is doing very poorly: generating false claims with no clear methodology for separating out what is to be taken seriously. Modelling, by contrast, is a successful methodology precisely suited to the management of useful falsehoods. Regarding NFE as modelling is not costless, however. First, our normative inferences are less direct and are muddied by the presence of descriptive idealisations. Second, our models are purpose-specific and limited in their scope. I close with suggestions for how to adapt our practice. (shrink)

Formalizing Euclid’s first axiom. Bulletin of Symbolic Logic. 20 (2014) 404–5. (Coauthor: Daniel Novotný) -/- Euclid [fl. 300 BCE] divides his basic principles into what came to be called ‘postulates’ and ‘axioms’—two words that are synonyms today but which are commonly used to translate Greek words meant by Euclid as contrasting terms. -/- Euclid’s postulates are specifically geometric: they concern geometric magnitudes, shapes, figures, etc.—nothing else. The first: “to draw a line from any point to any point”; the last: the (...) parallel postulate. -/- Euclid’s axioms are general principles of magnitude: they concern geometric magnitudes and magnitudes of other kinds as well even numbers. The first is often translated “Things that equal the same thing equal one another”. -/- There are other differences that are or might become important. -/- Aristotle [fl. 350 BCE] meticulously separated his basic principles [archai, singular archê] according to subject matter: geometrical, arithmetic, astronomical, etc. However, he made no distinction that can be assimilated to Euclid’s postulate/axiom distinction. -/- Today we divide basic principles into non-logical [topic-specific] and logical [topic-neutral] but this too is not the same as Euclid’s. In this regard it is important to be cognizant of the difference between equality and identity—a distinction often crudely ignored by modern logicians. Tarski is a rare exception. The four angles of a rectangle are equal to—not identical to—one another; the size of one angle of a rectangle is identical to the size of any other of its angles. No two angles are identical to each other. -/- The sentence ‘Things that equal the same thing equal one another’ contains no occurrence of the word ‘magnitude’. This paper considers the problem of formalizing the proposition Euclid intended as a principle of magnitudes while being faithful to the logical form and to its information content. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of manifolds was developed for the first time in a very short form in the Prolegomena to his Logical Investigations, §§ 69–70 (pp. 248–53), then repeatedly discussed in Ideas I, §§ 71–2 (pp. 148–53), in Formal and Transcendental Logic, §§ 51–4 (pp. 142–54), and finally in the Crisis, § 9 (pp. 20–60). Husserl never lost sight of it: it was his idée fixe. He discussed this theme over forty years, expressing the same, in principle, ideas on it in (...) different terms and versions. His discussions of it, however, were always cut short and inconclusive, so that he never developed his theory of manifolds in detail. Main claim in this essay is that Husserl’s theory of manifolds is twofold. It is (1) a theory of theories, advanced in the good German tradition of Wissenschaftslehre, launched first by Bernard Bolzano. The latter, in turn, is an offspring of the ancient tradition of mathesis universalis, explored in the modernity by Descartes and Leibniz. Further, (2) the theory of manifolds is also a formal theory of everything. Its objective is to provide a systematic account of how the things in the world (its parts) hang together in wholes of quite different kind. It is to be noted that Husserl explicitly speaks about (1) and only implicitly about (2). In this paper we shall also show that the theory of everything is intrinsically connected with the theory of theories. (shrink)

One shortcoming of the chain rule is that it does not iterate: it gives the derivative of f(g(x)), but not (directly) the second or higher-order derivatives. We present iterated differentials and a version of the multivariable chain rule which iterates to any desired level of derivative. We first present this material informally, and later discuss how to make it rigorous (a discussion which touches on formal foundations of calculus). We also suggest a finite calculus chain rule (contrary to Graham, Knuth (...) and Patashnik's claim that "there's no corresponding chain rule of finite calculus"). (shrink)

When we ask ourselves about the meaning of life, two analyses are possible in principle: 1. that we are asking something about the purpose or the reason of being of life or of a life, or 2. that we are asking something the value of life or of a life. At the present article, I do not approach 1 neither the life as a whole, but I take the individual lives in the context of 2. I briefly explain what would (...) be to someone to have an objectivist conception of the meaning of life and what would be to someone to have a subjectivist one; and, then, I try to show how we can think in formulas that can capture the intuitions of those conceptions, without acquiring commitment with none of them. My way is to show that both objectivist and subjectivist conceptions think the meaning of life as related to projects or realizations that fulfill principles of value (the value can be objective or subjective according to the adopted conception), and ten I try to indicate that the projects or realizations from a person’s life come together through a simple sum to make the meaning of life of such a person’s life. The way I suggested for us to find the value of one of those realizations does not seem to present none theoretical problem. But the simple sum of realizations (and/or projects) to represent the value of the meaning of a person’s life simply did not work. That’s because it seems to lack some kind of index that is able to formalize the relations between realizations. Thus, although we couldn’t properly formalize the relation between the realizations that achieve the meaning of someone’s life at a certain moment, we get a good intuitive formalization of the value of a realization and we hope to have started an interesting investigation for future logicians, metaphysicians, mathematicians and theorists of value. (shrink)

This is an informal presentation of the theory of niches understood as ecological contexts. The first part sets out the basic conceptual background. The second part outlines the main principles of the theory and addresses the question of how the theory can be extended to aid our thinking in relation to the special types of causal integrity that characterize niches and niched entities.

The formal sciences - mathematical as opposed to natural sciences, such as operations research, statistics, theoretical computer science, systems engineering - appear to have achieved mathematically provable knowledge directly about the real world. It is argued that this appearance is correct.

Although Kant (1998) envisaged a prominent role for logic in the argumentative structure of his Critique of Pure Reason, logicians and philosophers have generally judged Kantgeneralformaltranscendental logics is a logic in the strict formal sense, albeit with a semantics and a definition of validity that are vastly more complex than that of first-order logic. The main technical application of the formalism developed here is a formal proof that Kants logic is after all a distinguished subsystem of first-order logic, namely what (...) is known as geometric logic. (shrink)

In my old manuscript “Formal Theology” that now is out as a preprint I show that science and theology can be founded upon the same set of basic assumptions. I now follow up this idea with the thought that Formal Theology may be used to ground also a religion. “Religion“, in this regard, as related to beliefs. I’m not going into any details, neither concerning the original manuscript, nor this new idea. The important thing, I think, is to explore if (...) this kind of “religion”, in any way, can be accommodated with “ordinary” religions. I leave more rigorous work to myself or to others for the future. (shrink)

Cidadania Formal e Cidadania Real: Divergências e Direitos Infantis -/- 1 Introdução sobre o que seria cidadania -/- Para o clássico sociólogo francês Durkheim, a ideia de cidadania é questão de coesão social, isto é, essa coesão social nada mais é do que uma ideia de um Estado que mantém os indivíduos unidos (mais parecido com a ideia do fascismo em seus primórdios, que consistia basicamente na união do povo como um feixe), integrados a um grupo social, ou simplesmente, um (...) Estado de integração coesa do grupo social. Isso nos dá uma ideia genérica do que seria um cidadão para o pensador. -/- Na perspectiva de sociedade como um conjunto integrado, Dallari afirma que a sociedade humana é um conjunto de pessoas, ligadas entre si pela necessidade de se ajudarem umas às outras… a fim de que possam garantir a continuidade da vida e satisfazer seus interesses e desejos . -/- Já constitucionalmente, a cidadania está ligada ao direito, e a mesma é garantida e estabelecida em lei conforme a Constituição de um determinado país. O conceito, tal qual aceitado nas Ciências Sociais, é definido a partir dos conjuntos de direitos e deveres que foram conquistados ao longo de anos, mediante insistentes lutas para garantir e assegurar esses direitos. A cidadania também está ligada às condições sociais e locais dos indivíduos. Nessa perspectiva, a cidadania como estudo praxista, é dividida em duas esferas sociais divergenciadas em toda sua totalidade: Cidadania Formal e Cidadania Real. Logo, faz-se necessário desmembrar acerca de ambas para uma melhor análise e compreensão do texto. -/- 2 Breve divergência acerca das cidadanias formal e real -/- Sob um estudo superficial acerca do tema, podemos conceituar a cidadania formal como sendo a cidadania descrita em papel, isto é, a cidadania como ela deveria ser teoricamente, descrita sob lei universal onde descreve a igualdade entre todos, liberdade dos indivíduos e que garante a capacidade de lutar pelos direitos através do âmbito jurídico. Exemplo: o Estado deve priorizar proteção física, psicológica, etc a crianças e adolescentes, bem como outros direitos, como educação básica de qualidade conforme prescrita no ECA (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente). Uma vez que o Estado desobedeça tais regras constitucionais, o mesmo fere a universalidade dos direitos dos seus cidadãos que estão assegurados em lei. Então, pela cidadania formal, tais cidadãos negligenciados pelo governo, podem lutar pela proteção, educação, etc dos indivíduos que compõem a comunidade territorial, uma vez que a cidadania formal garante a possibilidade de luta pelos direitos no espaço jurídico. -/- Segundo Correa a cidadania formal nada mais é do que, conforme o direito universal, um indicativo de nacionalidade . Ainda ressalta que o termo ganha mais relevância no campo das Ciências Sociais e que se define mediante a posse dos direitos civis, políticos e sociais. A cidadania formal para a conformação infantil brasileira é platônica, isto é, está mais ligada a ideia utópica de teoria das ideias teóricas do que esperava-se da vida pragmática dessas crianças. -/- Em contrapartida, a cidadania real, por vezes alcunhada de substantiva, está ligada a vida tal qual ela é vivenciada; em termos sociais é concernente a vida pragmática dos indivíduos, em que os mesmos participam da arenga social, do debate de ideias, etc. Em contradição a formal que diz que todos os indivíduos são iguais, na vida real é observada uma sociedade estruturada sob uma divergência totalitária em diferentes ordens, seja a social, monetária, educacional, política, cultural, etc e, com isso, é levado ao grande problema social do Brasil e demais países, em que determinados grupos ditos “inferiores” sofrem os mais diversos tipos de preconceito. -/- É na cidadania real que se explicita todas as contradições sociais entre brancos e negros, ricos e pobres, homens e mulheres, etc. Por lei, todos esses indivíduos de diferentes classes e status social como elenca Marshall, são iguais e, por fim, são cidadãos aptos a receber os mesmos tratos, os mesmos privilégios, etc, só que no Brasil, como em demais países brancos agridem verbalmente e fisicamente os negros que todos os dias sofrem racismos e preconceitos; pobres ficam cada vez mais pobres, uma vez que o dinheiro cada vez se concentra nas mãos dos mais ricos e com maior poder e influência social e mulheres que trabalham igual ou até mais que os homens e não recebem o mesmo salário por serem “inferiores” dentro da cultura e sociedade machista e patriarcalista. -/- Exemplo claro: Um estudante de ensino público que não consegue pleitear uma competição em condições de igualdade com um estudante de ensino privado, tem sua cidadania “formal” conquistada, uma vez que a lei lhe garante acesso à educação de boa qualidade tal qual oferecida em escolas particulares, contudo, a cidadania “real” está bem longe de ser alcançada. E o mesmo acontece com negros e deficientes que conquistaram direitos formalmente, todavia tem um longo caminho para alcançar a cidadania real. Para que todos os indivíduos possam assegurar e garantir seus direitos na vida pragmática, direitos pelo qual encontram-se previstos em lei pela cidadania formal, é necessário uma “luta” entre os divergentes grupos sociais, como dizia Karl Marx, visando a justiça e a soberania social. -/- 3 Cidadania e Direitos Infantis -/- Para garantir e assegurar uma melhor faculdade de vida para as crianças -e também adolescentes-, bem como caucionar os direitos dos mesmos como cidadãos, a partir de 1990, pós Constituição brasileira, entrou em firmeza o ECA -Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente-. Na produção e institucionalização do ECA, priorizou-se a ideia de que as crianças estão em processo de desenvolvimento e, com isso, demandam de mais necessidades específicas que demais camadas etárias, e que tais necessidades devem ser identificadas e respeitadas, sobretudo pelas leis. -/- Com toda essa institucionalização de direitos infantis, a camada etária de até 12 anos de idade -crianças-, passaram a ter adjutório integral reconhecida por lei como um direito. E que, a partir de tais prescritos, nenhuma criança pode sofrer violência das mais variadas possíveis, nenhum tipo de negligência, falta de cuidado, certo tipos de crueldade, discriminação, nenhum tipo de preconceito e nenhum tipo de exploração seja para trabalho ou demais áreas e que cabem aos adultos respeitar e fazer valer as regras estabelecidas pelo ECA. -/- O ECA, institucionalizou e definiu os direitos à vida, ao lazer, à nutrição, à liberdade, à altivez, à educação de boa qualidade, à profissionalização, ao respeito acima de tudo, à cultura e ao convívio e vivenciamento familiar e em comunhão. Não obstante, mesmo com todos esses direitos assegurados e garantidos em lei, crianças de todo os países sofrem por faltas de cuidados, sobretudo pelos pais e que gera um grande problema social que é o do suicídio; crianças são exploradas para labotar nos mais diversos ramos e até mesmo na prostituição; crianças são vítimas de violência e agressões físicas e verbais em casa ou na escola; crianças se envolvem com o tráfico e uso de drogas e entorpecentes; enfim, cabe aos familiares e ao Estado, garantir a integridade física e mental da camada infantil, com acompanhamento pedagógico, psicológico, etc, e que punam os responsáveis pela denigração física, motora e mental das crianças. -/- O que nos leva a questões de discussão social. As crianças gozam de todos os direitos essenciais inerentes à pessoa humana? “Menores drogados ameaçam quem passa pelo entorno da Rodoviária Laura Machado | Rio+ | 19/06/2011 10h33” -/- Esses menores, não têm direito real à cidadania? Como explanado anteriormente, a comunidade de infantes está amparada pelas leis e instituições do ECA em todo o país, no entanto, cabe aos adultos garantir a prioridade e o acompanhamento desses menores que, com toda a maldade do mundo e propriamente das pessoas, perdem o direito de gozar de sua infância. -/- . (shrink)

It is commonly said that some standards, such as morality, are ‘normatively authoritative’ in a way that other standards, such as etiquette, are not; standards like etiquette are said to be ‘not really normative’. Skeptics deny the very possibility of normative authority, and take claims like ‘etiquette is not really normative’ to be either empty or confused. I offer a different route to defeat skeptics about authority: instead of focusing on what makes standards like morality special, we should focus on (...) what makes standards like etiquette ‘not really normative’. I defend a fictionalist theory on which etiquette is ‘not really normative’ in roughly the same way that Sherlock is ‘not really a detective’, and show that fictionalism about some normative standards helps us explain the possibility of normative authority. (shrink)

This paper introduces new logical systems which axiomatize a formal representation of inconsistency (here taken to be equivalent to contradictoriness) in classical logic. We start from an intuitive semantical account of inconsistent data, fixing some basic requirements, and provide two distinct sound and complete axiomatics for such semantics, LFI1 and LFI2, as well as their first-order extensions, LFI1* and LFI2*, depending on which additional requirements are considered. These formal systems are examples of what we dub Logics of Formal Inconsistency (LFI) (...) and form part of a much larger family of similar logics. We also show that there are translations from classical and paraconsistent first-order logics into LFI1* and LFI2*, and back. Hence, despite their status as subsystems of classical logic, LFI1* and LFI2* can codify any classical or paraconsistent reasoning. (shrink)

Wittgenstein asks: “Now what do the words of this language signify?—What is supposed to shew what they signify, if not the kind of use they have?” Might one answer that rhetorical question by giving a compositional semantics for Wittgenstein’s builder language?

Ontology and theology cannot be combined if ontology excludes non physical causes. This paper examines some possibilities for ontology to be combined with theology in so far as non physical causes are permitted. The paper builds on metaphysical findings that shows that separate ontological domains can interact causally indirectly via interfaces. As interfaces are not universes a first universe is allowed to be caused by an interface without violating the principle of causal closure of any universe. Formal theology can therefore (...) be based on the assumption that the (first) universe is caused by God if God is defined as the first cause. Given this, formal theology and science can have the same ontological base. (shrink)

I argue that Aristotle’s account of scientific demonstrations in the Posterior Analytics is centred upon formal causation, understood as a demonstration in terms of essence (and as innocent of the distinction between form and matter). While Aristotle says that all four causes can be signified by the middle term in a demonstrative syllogism, and he discusses at some length efficient causation, much of Aristotle’s discussion is foremost concerned with the formal cause. Further, I show that Aristotle had very detailed procedures (...) for identifying the formal cause, and that he is aware of several problems which might lead one to erroneously identify the wrong form as the cause of a property. Finally, I show that Aristotle’s account can easily be adapted to material causation, and through some modifications (introduction of process universals related through parthood), hinted at in II 11-12 and 16-17, to efficient and final causation. (shrink)

Edward Nieznański developed two logical systems to deal with the problem of evil and to refute religious determinism. However, when formalized in first-order modal logic, two axioms of each system contradict one another, revealing that there is an underlying minimal set of axioms enough to settle the questions. In this article, we develop this minimal system, called N3, which is based on Nieznański’s contribution. The purpose of N3 is to solve the logical problem of evil through the defeat of a (...) version of religious determinism. On the one hand, these questions are also addressed by Nieznański’s systems, but, on the other hand, they are obtained in N3 with fewer assumptions. Our approach can be considered a case of logic of religion, that is, of logic applied to religious discourse, as proposed by Józef Maria Bocheński; in this particular case, it is a discourse in theodicy, which is situated in the context of the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this paper I try to answer four basic questions: (1) How the concept of God is to be represented? (2) Are there any logical principles governing it? (3) If so, what kind of logic lies behind them? (4) Can there be a logic of the concept of God? I address them by presenting a formal-logical account to the concept of God. I take it as a methodological desideratum that this should be done within the simplest existing logical formalism. I (...) start with first-order logic (FOL) with identity, and then show that its simplest modal extension (SQML, or the simplest quantified modal logic) is enough for us to formalize a minimally satisfactory theory of the concept of God. I focus exclusively on the monotheistic concept of God. (shrink)

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 aim to move beyond the level of (...) controlled vocabularies to yield an ontology with the ability to support reasoning applications. Our general procedure has been the implementation of a meta-ontological definition space in which the definitions of all the concepts and relations in LinKBase® are standardized in a framework of first-order logic. In this paper we describe how this standardization has already led to an improvement in the LinKBase® structure that allows for a greater degree of internal coherence than ever before possible. We then show the use of this philosophical standardization for the purpose of mapping external databases to one another, using LinKBase® as translation hub, with a greater degree of success than possible hitherto. We demonstrate how this offers a genuine advance over other application ontologies that have not submitted themselves to the demands of philosophical scrutiny. LinKBase® is one of the world’s largest applications-oriented medical domain ontologies, and BFO is one of the world’s first philosophically driven reference ontologies. The collaboration of the two thus initiates a new phase in the quest to solve the so-called “Tower of Babel”. (shrink)

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: artificial entity, intentional production (...) of entities, (state of) capacity, capacity to play a role in actions of a given type, function and functional object. These primitives enable artefacts in general to be characterized as intentionally and successfully produced entities, and isolate an important subclass of “technical” artefacts to which a function is ascribed. Lastly, we emphasize the novelty of this ontology by comparing it with other works with similar objectives. (shrink)

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 to the (...) Ontological Argument, by Erik Thomsen; On Kant’s Hidden Ambivalence Toward Existential Generalization in his Critique of the Ontological Argument, by Giovanni Mion; The Totality of Predicates and the Possibility of the Most Real Being, by Srećko Kovač; An Even More Leibnizian Version of Gödel’s Ontological Argument, by Kordula Świętorzecka and Marcin Łyczak; A Case Study On Computational Hermeneutics: E. J. Lowe’s Modal Ontological Argument, by David Fuenmayor. (shrink)

This publication defends a phenomenalist interpretation of Kant’s idealism, which, however, deviates from usual phenomenalist interpretations in several respects. According to my reading, appearances are the content of representations, but not the true object of cognition. The object to which our cognition refers is rather the thing itself as the transcendental object. Nonetheless, we only cognize them as they appear and not as they are in themselves. Thus the unknowability of things as they are in themselves is retained. In the (...) course of my presentation, I discuss a number of aspects of Kant’s philosophy, among which are the distinction between appearances and things in themselves, Kant’s relationship to Cartesian epistemology, the refutation of idealism, and not least his theory of synthesis. My aim is not only to show that Kant is a phenomenalist, but also to characterize the kind of his phenomenalism. (shrink)

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, (...) and were essentially inseparable in medieval thought. This constitutes the foundation for a bridge, and this article analyzes the causality-based ontology of the late medieval philosopher Dietrich of Freiberg from the viewpoint of today's upper-ontology engineering. In this bridging attempt, it offers a translation into English of the first part of Dietrich's De origine (abbreviated title) that is a compromise between traditional scholarly translations of medieval Latin philosophical texts and contemporary ontology. (shrink)

Recent debate about the error theory has taken a ‘formal turn’. On the one hand, there are those who argue that the error theory should be rejected because of its difficulties in providing a convincing formal account of the logic and semantics of moral claims. On the other hand, there are those who claim that such formal objections fail, maintaining that arguments against the error theory must be of a substantive rather than a formal kind. In this paper, we argue (...) that formal objections to the error theory cannot be eschewed but must be met head-on. (shrink)

Formal epistemology is just what it sounds like: epistemology done with formal tools. Coinciding with the general rise in popularity of experimental philosophy, formal epistemologists have begun to apply experimental methods in their own work. In this entry, I survey some of the work at the intersection of formal and experimental epistemology. I show that experimental methods have unique roles to play when epistemology is done formally, and I highlight some ways in which results from formal epistemology have been used (...) fruitfully to advance epistemically-relevant experimental work. The upshot of this brief, incomplete survey is that formal and experimental methods often constitute mutually informative means to epistemological ends. (shrink)

It is often assumed that concepts from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, have to be treated differently from concepts from non-formal sciences. This is especially relevant in cases of concept defectiveness, as in the empirical sciences defectiveness is an essential component of lager disruptive or transformative processes such as concept change or concept fragmentation. However, it is still unclear what role defectiveness plays for concepts in the formal sciences. On the one hand, a common view sees formal (...) concepts to be protected against defects because of their precise and stable nature. On the other, studies going back as far as Lakatos (1963) showcase the changeability of such concepts. -/- In this paper, I will investigate if and how defectiveness based on the occurrence of inconsistencies can appear with formal concepts. To make the case as strong as possible, I employ a strict notion of formal concept that assumes the concept to have a fixed and definite extension. I will show that there are indeed certain types of defectiveness that cannot occur with such concepts; but that there are other types of defectiveness that do occur. This means that while formal concepts have to be treated differently than non-formal concepts, questions about defectiveness---as raised in the conceptual engineering debate and philosophy of science---can still be applied to them. I will highlight this point by showing how formal sciences have special strategies available to them that allow them to resolve defectiveness of their concepts in a flexible and informative manner. (shrink)