REMARKS ON EVOLUTION AND TIME-SCALES, Graham Cairns-Smith; HODGSON'S BLACK BOX, Thomas Clark; DO HODGSON'S PROPOSITIONS UNIQUELY CHARACTERIZE FREE WILL?, Ravi Gomatam; WHAT SHOULD WE RETAIN FROM A PLAIN PERSON'S CONCEPT OF FREE WILL?, Gilberto Gomes; ISOLATING DISPARATE CHALLENGES TO HODGSON'S ACCOUNT OF FREE WILL, Liberty Jaswal; FREE AGENCY AND LAWS OF NATURE, Robert Kane; SCIENCE VERSUS REALIZATION OF VALUE, NOT DETERMINISM VERSUS CHOICE, Nicholas Maxwell; COMMENTS ON HODGSON, J.J.C. Smart; THE VIEW FROM WITHIN, Sean Spence; COMMENTARY ON HODGSON, (...) Henry Stapp. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plato on Knowledge as a Power1Nicholas D. SmithAt 471C4 in Plato’s Republic, the argument takes a sudden turn when Glaucon becomes impatient with all of the specific prescriptions Socrates has been making, and asks to return to the issue Socrates had earlier set aside—whether or not the city he was describing could ever be brought into being. In response to Glaucon’s impatient question, Socrates articulates his “third wave of (...) paradox” (472ag–7), namely, that the ills of the cities will never be ended until either philosophers become rulers or rulers become philosophers (473c11–d6). Glaucon immediately responds that such a view is likely to be greeted with violence and scorn (473e6–474a4), and so Socrates must hasten to explain his odd claim. His explanation, it turns out, is that true philosophers have an enormous cognitive advantage over non-philosophers—philosophers have and use knowledge (ἐπιστήμη), whereas non-philosophers have and use only opinion (δόξα).2 This distinction, between επιστήμη and δόξα, turns out: to be a distinction between two different cognitive powers (δυνάμεις—477d7–e3). And different powers, Plato clearly tells us, apply to or take as their objects (Plato says they are “ἐπί”) different things (477dl).In this paper, I shall argue that the relationship between the cognitive powers and their various objects has been fundamentally misunderstood, which has led scholars into one or more misinterpretations of important and explicit features of the text. At the heart of these misunderstandings, I claim, is [End Page 145] their shared misconception of the relation between the cognitive power and its objects as interpretable in terms of the relationship between a cognitive stale and what the content of that state is of or about.3 One consequence of the view for which I shall argue is that what has come to be known as the “two-worlds theory”4 of Plato’s epistemology is seriously mistaken, but no less mistaken than the alternatives given by its recent critics. Another consequence that I shall draw from my argument is that Plato should be understood neither as a kind of foundationalist with regard to knowledge and warrant, as some have supposed him to be,5 nor as a coherentist, as others have supposed,6 but, rather, as a kind of causal reliabilist. [End Page 146]1. KNOWLEDGE AS A POWERScholarly interpretations of Plato’s epistemology have routinely sought to understand the relationships between each cognitive power of Republic Book V and the objects of the ἐφ’ ᾦ (“what it is related to”) condition by which it is differentiated from other δυνάμεις as Plato’s way of telling us what each sort of cognition is of or aboul. 7 So, for example, we find Gail Fine using the expressions “belief [δόξα] is set over [Fine’s translation of Plato’s ἐπί] …” and “knowledge is set over …” interchangeably with “belief is of …” or “belief is about…” and “knowledge is of …” or “knowledge is about …”8 Against the “two-worlds theory,” Fine argues that, for Plato, there can be knowledge of sensibles and beliefs about Forms. Accordingly, since she assimilates the power-ἐπί-object set of relations to the cognilion-of/about-object relation, she concludes—in order to account for knowledge of sensibles and beliefs about Forms—that the objects of knowledge and opinion must be propositions. Plato’s claims that knowledge is ἐπί what is, whereas opinion is ἐπί what is and is not, Fine understands as, “One can only know true propositions; one can believe both true and false propositions.”9 We shall see later that this “veridical” understanding of what Plato means to identify as “what is,” and “what is and is not” fails to account for important and explicit elements of Plato’s exposition of the epistemological and metaphysical distinctions he is making. For now, it is enough to note that Fine understands the ἐφ’ᾦ) relation in terms of our cognition-of/about-object relation. One finds the same assimilation made by those who advance existential readings of Plato’s “is” and “is not,”10 as [End Page 147] well as those who have urged that we adopt predicative readings of “is” and “is not.”11But I think there are very serious problems with this assimilation. Plato is very... (shrink)

: In the epistemology of the late Wittgenstein, a central place is given to the notion of the hinge: an arational commitment that provides a foundation of some sort for the rest of our beliefs. Quasi-fideism is an approach to the epistemology of religion that argues that religious belief is on an epistemic par with other sorts of belief inasmuch as religious and non-religious beliefs all rely on hinges. I consider in this paper what it takes to find the appropriate (...) hinge for a quasi-fideist approach to the epistemology of religion. (shrink)

This is the first book-length philosophical study of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and Freud’s theory of the unconscious. The book investigates the possibility for Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology to clarify Freud’s concept of the unconscious with a focus on the theory of repression as its centre. Repression is the unconscious activity of pushing something away from consciousness, while making sure that it remains active as something foreign within us. How this is possible is the main problem addressed in the work. Unlike previous (...) literature (including Ricœur, Merleau-Ponty and Derrida) this book makes full use of the resources of genetic phenomenology and passivity in the attempt to clarify the Freudian unconscious. The central argument developed is that the structure of the lebendige Gegenwart as the core of Husserl’s theory of passivity consists of preliminary forms of bodily kinaesthesia, feelings and drives in a constantly ongoing process where repression occurs as a necessary part of all constitution. The clarification of Freudian repression thus takes place by showing how it presupposes a broad conception of consciousness such as that presented by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology. By arguing that “repression” is central to any philosophical account of subjectivity, this book takes on the most distinct challenge to philosophy posed by Freud. (shrink)

This paper examines the justice of unconditional basic income (UBI) through the lens of the Hegel-inspired recognition-theory of justice. As explained in the first part of the paper, this theory takes everyday social roles to be the primary subject-matter of the theory of justice, and it takes justice in these roles to be a matter of the kind of freedom that is available through their performance, namely ‘social’ freedom. The paper then identifies the key criteria of social freedom. The extent (...) to which the introduction of an UBI would meet these criteria is then examined, with a focus on the social role that stands to be most affected by an UBI, namely that of the worker-earner. It is argued that while an UBI is likely to be only partially effective as an instrument of specifically social freedom, its main justification lies not here, but in securing a basis for the subjective freedom that social freedom presupposes. (shrink)

A summary of the main features of a 'recognition-theoretic' research program in the social sciences and a brief account of how it promises to advance on rival research programs in the social sciences.

I suggest that the post-Hegelian tradition presents us with three contrasting normative models of work. According to the first model, the core norms of work are those of means-ends rationality. In this model, the modern world of work is constitutively a matter of deploying the most effective means to bring about given ends. The rational kernel of modern work, the core norm that has shaped its development, is on this view instrumental reason, and this very same normative core, in the (...) shape of advanced technology and more efficient, time-saving production, can help to liberate it. The second model, by contrast, takes the core norms of work to be internal to working activity. Rather than work gaining its normativity from something external to it, from ends to which the work is a contingent means, on this second view the core norms of work are expressions of values or meanings that are immanent to working practices themselves. The expressive model of work regards the actual world of work to be constituted historically by work-specific norms, norms which working subjects themselves have invoked and mobilised around in the course of their struggles for emancipation. According to the third model, the core norms of work have to do neither with instrumental rationality nor authentic self-expression. Rather they concern norms that relate either to individual achievement or contribution through work (in the form of esteem) or to the conditions that must in place for individuals to participate in the exchange of services by which market societies reproduce themselves (in the form of mutual respect). (shrink)

An analysis of how the sphere of work can be considered to instantiate norms of recognition, even when those norms give rise to paradoxes and ideologies surrounding how work ought to be done and the goods at stake in it.

What is the fundamental purpose that justifies the existence of the modern university? The answer proposed in this essay is the promotion of social freedom. The essay begins by distinguishing social freedom from negative freedom and reflective freedom along the lines proposed by other theorists of social freedom, such as Frederick Neuhouser and Axel Honneth. After noting the need for a more developed account of the university than has so far been provided by these other theorists, the essay analyses the (...) various dimensions in which universities have, at their best, promoted social freedom. The essay then explains why it is through the promotion of social, as distinct from negative or reflective freedom, that universities fulfil their purpose. It concludes with some reflections on how this understanding of the purpose of the university fits an “immanent” model of social criticism. (shrink)

Plato recognizes faction as a serious threat to any political community. The Republic’s proposed solution to faction relies on bringing citizens into a relation of ὁμόνοια. On the dominant line of interpretation, ὁμόνοια is understood along the lines of “explicit agreement” or “consensus.” Commentators have consequently thought that the καλλίπολις becomes resistant to faction when all or most of its members explicitly agree with one another about certain fundamentals of their political association—for example, they agree regarding who should govern in (...) the καλλίπολις.We argue that ὁμόνοια in Plato’s political philosophy has been under-analyzed and misunderstood. We show that, in Alcibiades I, rendering ὁμόνοια simply as agreement results in confusion about how expertise, political friendship, and civic unity are compossible in a well-ordered political community. In our view, Plato refines and adds philosophical depth to the concept of ὁμόνοια in the Republic. We claim that ὁμόνοια is a relation of psychological “like-mindedness” that obtains among members of different occupational classes in a political community. A community is rendered resistant to faction, then, when its members are, in some significant way, psychologically alike. Additionally, while Platonic ὁμόνοια can naturally be expected to result in substantive agreement among citizens, we argue that Platonic ὁμόνοια does not consist solely in agreement. (shrink)

I begin by picking up on Brandom’s suggestion that expressivism follows American pragmatism in seeking to advance the cause of the Enlightenment. This provides us with a first point of contrast with Taylor’s understanding of expressivism, since Taylor takes expressivism to be inseparably bound up with the Romantic critique of the Enlightenment and as fundamentally opposed to Enlightenment naturalism. I then distinguish two features of what we ordinarily mean by the term ‘expression’, one of which provides an intuitive basis for (...) understanding Brandom’s expressivist program, the other of which provides an interpretive key for understanding Taylor’s version of expressivism. After looking briefly at the main tenets of Taylor’s expressivism, I conclude by considering its relation to Romanticism on the one hand, and to Brandom’s expressivist renewal of the Enlightenment project on the other. (shrink)

Although the contrast between ‘economy’ and culture’ that structures the Fraser-Honneth debate derives ultimately from Weber, it has a more proximate ancestry in Habermas’ work. I begin by glancing back at Habermas’ formulation, not just because its background role in shaping the current debate has not been properly acknowledged (though I believe that is the case), but because Fraser and Honneth’s original responses to it provide a nice segue into their current positions. After briefly reviewing what those responses were, I (...) then offer a critical analysis of the conceptions of economy and culture they now propose. (shrink)

Even though Husserl’s thinking has received a remarkable amount of attention over the last decades, the full extent of many of its central aspects still remains surprisingly unknown. It is in particular the development of genetic phenomenology that is at stake here, as it plunges ever deeper into “originary constitution” ferreting out the structural relations between inner time-consciousness, affectivity and intersubjectivity, while at the same time never giving up static phenomenology and a certain prioritizing of Cartesian subjectivity. In the following (...) I would like to point to a reading of Husserl’s philosophy of time and subjectivity that is based on material that was never examined by Derrida. A general problem for interpreting this theme is that Husserl never succeeded in presenting a systematic overview of a phenomenological “transcendental aesthetics”. As a consequence, the co-originality and mutual interdependence of the constitution of space and time, of originary spacing as flesh (Urleib) and originary temporization (Urzeitigung), which first enables a comprehensive grasp of the originary processes in the living streaming present, has remained virtually unknown. In order to reach these themes, the interaction between the radicalized and the universal reductions has to be outlined. (shrink)

Scholars have argued that Plato's decision to include women in the ruling class was either intended as a joke, or else was forced on him by other political commitments. In tis paper, I argue that the arguments he offers for including women in positions of power can and should be taken as sincere.

The aim of this article is to situate Arendt’s account of labour as a critical response to humanisms of labour, or put otherwise, to situate it as an anti-humanism of labour. It compares Arendt’s account of labour with that of the most prominent humanist theorist of labour at the time of the composition of The Human Condition: Georges Friedmann. Arendt’s and Friedmann’s accounts of labour are compared specifically with respect to the range of capacities, social relations, and possibilities of fulfilment (...) at stake in the activity of labour. The comparison provides a previously unexplored context for understanding Arendt’s account of labour and her distinction between labour and work. The relevance of Arendt’s and Friedmann’s theories of labour for the contemporary debate about the meaning of work in an age of automation is also briefly discussed. (shrink)

This chapter takes a critical look at universities from the perspective of the neopragmatist philosophy of education outlined by Richard Rorty. The chapter begins with a discussion of Rorty’s view of the ends that educational institutions properly serve in a liberal democracy. It then considers the kind of culture that Rorty takes to be conducive to those ends and the kind that is antithetical to them. Rorty sometimes characterizes the latter as a culture of ‘egotism’. After describing the main aspects (...) of such a culture, the chapter uses it as an interpretive key for understanding the ‘dark side’ of the contemporary university. Our thesis is that within a Rortyan, neo-pragmatist philosophy of higher education, the ends that universities are meant to serve in a liberal democracy are vulnerable to frustration and corruption by a culture of egotism. (shrink)

In this text I would like to show two things. Firstly, that the so-called “timelessness” of the Freudian unconscious can be elucidated through an interpretation of the concept of Nachträglichkeit, and showing thereby that there is indeed a temporality specific to the workings of the unconscious. Freud’s analysis of early psychic trauma related to sexual phenomena pointed to a serious complication for all believers in the immediate transparency of consciousness. For the “wound” itself was constituted over time, and the possibility (...) of coming to understand the trauma (thereby achieving a certain freedom from its repercussions) was again only possible after the event had passed. The Nachträglichkeit involved in the psychoanalytical understanding of sexual trauma thus hinges on a threefold temporal process at work in subjective life. Secondly, I wish to show that Husserl, in his analyses of time and intersubjectivity, delivered the materials with which a phenomenological clarification of Nachträglichkeit can be given. Since Nachträglichkeit is essentially tied to the structure of repression (and thus the very constitution of the unconscious), what I am suggesting is a prolegomenon to a phenomenological clarification of Freudian repression. This clearly suggests the need for further investigations into the phenomenology of sexual life. (shrink)

The essay reflects on Gadamer’s ambiguous legacy for the philosophy of work. On the one hand, there are times when Gadamer reproduces the problematic distinction between language and labor which short-circuits the very idea of a hermeneutics of work. This is particularly evident in Gadamer’s reflections on technique and craftsmanship in the central sections of Truth and Method, as well as in his descriptions of the “art” of dialogue and the tasks of hermeneutics that separate them emphatically them from the (...) sphere of “making.” I raise some questions about the adequacy of the distinction Gadamer draws between techne and phronesis that structures this account. I argue here that Gadamer’s characterization of the learning process involved in the mastery of a technique, as well as his conception of the instrumentality and monologicality of technical knowledge, is difficult to sustain, especially in view of recent research in the psychology and anthropology of work. I then go on to point out that elsewhere in his oeuvre Gadamer himself is critical of the conception of work that emerges through the lens of the techne / phronesis distinction. Indeed, on these occasions he hints at a conception of work that points beyond the Arendt / Habermas conception towards a critical hermeneutics of working life. This alternative approach to work is particularly apparent in Gadamer’s appropriation of Hegel’s dialectic, in his understanding of play, and in some of his later diagnostic reflections on the spirit of the age. In section four, I offer some suggestions for explaining how the tensions evident in Gadamer’s approach to work came about. Here I am interested in what prevented Gadamer from embracing whole-heartedly the project of a hermeneutics of work that he himself helped to lay the foundations for. I conclude with some brief remarks on why we should seek to build upon these foundations and renew the project of a critical hermeneutics of work today. (shrink)

It has been argued that Plato sought to make his rulers invulnerable to any kind of wrongdoing. In this paper we argue that this (humanly impossible) claim misunderstand the ways in which Plato shapes his state precisely in order to make the rulers safe from what could corrupt them.

In this paper we argue that Socrates is a cognitivist about emotions, but then ask how the beliefs that constitute emotions can come into being, and why those beliefs seem more resistant to change through rational persuasion than other beliefs.

BioPortal is a Web portal that provides access to a library of biomedical ontologies and terminologies developed in OWL, RDF(S), OBO format, Protégé frames, and Rich Release Format. BioPortal functionality, driven by a service-oriented architecture, includes the ability to browse, search and visualize ontologies (Figure 1). The Web interface also facilitates community-based participation in the evaluation and evolution of ontology content.

In this book review, I discuss Smith’s new interpretation of Socrates' epistemology of virtue, according to which (a) Socratic virtue knowledge is craft knowledge (knowing how to live well), and such knowledge comes in degrees; and (b) Socrates has a certain degree of virtue knowledge, and one does not have to be an inerrant expert to have any virtue knowledge at all. I argue that Smith succeeds in presenting Socratic philosophy in a new light, while also pointing to (...) remaining questions about his account of virtue—specifically, about what exactly the craft of virtue is and how we can practice it and thereby improve ourselves. (shrink)

A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to deliver (...) a straightforward solution to the so-called “conditional fallacy.” But it faces some formidable challenges. On the face of it, it seems to be straightforwardly conceptually incoherent. And it seems to deliver a solution to the conditional fallacy at the cost of being vulnerable to what I shall call “the concessional fallacy.” I shall consider how, if at all, these challenges are to be met. I shall then conclude by considering what this might mean for the so-called “ideal/non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's rejection of prevailing interior-mirror understandings of the presumed relationship between “minds” and “nature,” along with his promotion of nonrepresentational accounts of knowledge, truth, and science, participates in a rich tradition of jointly pragmatist and constructivist views that spans the twentieth century. This contribution to the symposium “Whatever Happened to Richard Rorty?” considers Rorty's complex and ambivalent relation to that tradition, particularly to the work of his American pragmatist predecessors, William James and John Dewey, and to subsequent pragmatist-constructivist antirepresentationalism (...) in contemporary science and technology studies (STS) and “4E” (embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognitive theory. A final section on Nicholas Gaskill's contribution to the symposium questions his sense of Rorty's rhetorical recklessness and suggests that his worries over relativism, in Rorty's texts and more generally, are misplaced. (shrink)

This essay is my brief review of Nicholas Phillipson’s biography of Adam Smith. I discuss the highlights of his treatment of Smith’s fascinating life. Phillipson does a beautiful job of surveying Smith’s academic career. Especially useful is Phillipson’s discussion of the influence David Hume had on Smith’s thought, as well as the influences of Montesquieu, Samuel Johnson, Voltaire, Rousseau, and others.

The paper presents the outlines of an ontology of plans and guidelines, which is then used as the basis for a framework for implementing guideline-based systems for the management of workflow in health care organizations. The framework has a number of special features, above all in that it enables us to represent in formal terms assignments of work-items both to individuals and to teams and to tailor guideline to specific contexts of application in health care organizations. It is designed also (...) to enable implementations to do justice to the fact that the processes carried out in health care organizations may deviate in different ways from the norms set forth in corresponding guideline definitions. This means that implementations built in conformity with the framework will be marked by a type of flexibility that might make them more likely to be accepted by healthcare professionals than are standard guideline-based management systems. (shrink)

Report on Dagstuhl Seminar 07132, Schloss Dagstuhl, March 27-30 , 2007.

We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge (...) 3 is to test the utility of these resources for large-scale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their community-wide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data. (shrink)

In recent years, sequencing technologies have enabled the identification of a wide range of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs). Unfortunately, annotation and integration of ncRNA data has lagged behind their identification. Given the large quantity of information being obtained in this area, there emerges an urgent need to integrate what is being discovered by a broad range of relevant communities. To this end, the Non-Coding RNA Ontology (NCRO) is being developed to provide a systematically structured and precisely defined controlled vocabulary for the (...) domain of ncRNAs, thereby facilitating the discovery, curation, analysis, exchange, and reasoning of data about structures of ncRNAs, their molecular and cellular functions, and their impacts upon phenotypes. The goal of NCRO is to serve as a common resource for annotations of diverse research in a way that will significantly enhance integrative and comparative analysis of the myriad resources currently housed in disparate sources. It is our belief that the NCRO ontology can perform an important role in the comprehensive unification of ncRNA biology and, indeed, fill a critical gap in both the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Library and the National Center for Biomedical Ontology (NCBO) BioPortal. Our initial focus is on the ontological representation of small regulatory ncRNAs, which we see as the first step in providing a resource for the annotation of data about all forms of ncRNAs. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the two versions of divided line create problems that cannot be solved — with or without the hypothesis that the objects belonging to the level of διάνοια on the divided line are intermediates. I also argue that the discussion of arithmetic and calculation does not fit Aristotle’s attribution of intermediates to Plato and provides no support for the claim that Plato had such intermediates in mind when he talked about διάνοια in the Republic. The (...) upshot of my argument is negative: even if Aristotle’s report about Plato and intermediates is correct, there is no evidence for such objects provided in the passages I review from the Republic. If they are to be found in Plato, it will have to be elsewhere that they are found. (shrink)

The Planteome project provides a suite of reference and species-specific ontologies for plants and annotations to genes and phenotypes. Ontologies serve as common standards for semantic integration of a large and growing corpus of plant genomics, phenomics and genetics data. The reference ontologies include the Plant Ontology, Plant Trait Ontology, and the Plant Experimental Conditions Ontology developed by the Planteome project, along with the Gene Ontology, Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, Phenotype and Attribute Ontology, and others. The project also provides (...) access to species-specific Crop Ontologies developed by various plant breeding and research communities from around the world. We provide integrated data on plant traits, phenotypes, and gene function and expression from 95 plant taxa, annotated with reference ontology terms. (shrink)

Research has indicated that microRNAs (miRNAs), a special class of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), can perform important roles in different biological and pathological processes. miRNAs’ functions are realized by regulating their respective target genes (targets). It is thus critical to identify and analyze miRNA-target interactions for a better understanding and delineation of miRNAs’ functions. However, conventional knowledge discovery and acquisition methods have many limitations. Fortunately, semantic technologies that are based on domain ontologies can render great assistance in this regard. In our (...) previous investigations, we developed a miRNA domain-specific application ontology, Ontology for MIcroRNA Target (OMIT), to provide the community with common data elements and data exchange standards in the miRNA research. This paper describes (1) our continuing efforts in the OMIT ontology development and (2) the application of the OMIT to enable a semantic approach for knowledge capture of miRNA-target interactions. (shrink)

A realist theory of truth for a class of sentences holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar, we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The core of our theory is the (...) account of truthmaking for atomic sentences, in which we expose a pervasive ‘dogma of logical form’, which says that atomic sentences cannot have more than one truthmaker. In contrast to this, we uphold the mutual independence of logical and ontological complexity, and the authors outline formal principles of truthmaking taking account of both kinds of complexity. (shrink)

The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is a consortium that comprises leading informaticians, biologists, clinicians, and ontologists, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Roadmap, to develop innovative technology and methods that allow scientists to record, manage, and disseminate biomedical information and knowledge in machine-processable form. The goals of the Center are (1) to help unify the divergent and isolated efforts in ontology development by promoting high quality open-source, standards-based tools to create, manage, and use ontologies, (2) to create (...) new software tools so that scientists can use ontologies to annotate and analyze biomedical data, (3) to provide a national resource for the ongoing evaluation, integration, and evolution of biomedical ontologies and associated tools and theories in the context of driving biomedical projects (DBPs), and (4) to disseminate the tools and resources of the Center and to identify, evaluate, and communicate best practices of ontology development to the biomedical community. Through the research activities within the Center, collaborations with the DBPs, and interactions with the biomedical community, our goal is to help scientists to work more effectively in the e-science paradigm, enhancing experiment design, experiment execution, data analysis, information synthesis, hypothesis generation and testing, and understand human disease. (shrink)

We describe a prototype ontology-driven information system (ODIS) that exploits what we call Portion of Reality (POR) representations. The system takes both sensor data and natural language text as inputs and composes on this basis logically structured POR assertions. The goal of our prototype is to represent both natural language and sensor data within a single framework that is able to support both axiomatic reasoning and computation. In addition, the framework should be capable of discovering and representing new kinds of (...) situations and thematic roles, (e.g., roles such as agent, patient and instrument), based on new compositions of existing representations. We applied our prototype in an intelligence analysis use case to test the hypothesis that a framework of this sort can produce usefully structured information from combined natural language and sensor data inputs. We further tested our hypothesis by adding an enhanced US Air Force ontology framework to our ODIS in order to (1) process a collection of sensor data, intel reports, and mission plans; (2) build composite POR representations from these data; and (3) machine analyze the fused results to infer mission threats. (shrink)

A meaningful life, we shall argue, is a life upon which a certain sort of valuable pattern has been imposed by the person in question - a pattern which involves in serious ways the person having an effect upon the world. Meaningfulness is thus a special kind of value which a human life can bear. Two interrelated difficulties face ths proposal. One concerns responsiblity: how are we to account for the fact that a life that satisfies the above criteria can (...) have more meaning than a life with the same positive outcomes but which lacks responsiblity on the part of the agent? The other turns on these outcomes themselves: how can the meaningfulness engendered by actions you perform now be affected by what those actions go on to produce in the future, perhaps even after your death? We provide a response to both of these difficulties. (shrink)

We propose a modular ontology of the dynamic features of reality. This amounts, on the one hand, to a purely spatial ontology supporting snapshot views of the world at successive instants of time and, on the other hand, to a purely spatiotemporal ontology of change and process. We argue that dynamic spatial ontology must combine these two distinct types of inventory of the entities and relationships in reality, and we provide characterizations of spatiotemporal reasoning in the light of the interconnections (...) between them. (shrink)

A number of logicians and philosophers have turned their attention in recent years to the problem of developing a logic of interrogatives. Their work has thrown a great deal of light on the formal properties of questions and question-sentences and has led also to interesting innovations in our understanding of the structures of performatives in general and, for example, in the theory of presuppositions. When, however, we examine the attempts of logicians such as Belnap or Åqvist to specify what, precisely, (...) a question is, or what it is to ask or raise a question, then what we are offered is somewhat less illuminating. Two alternative reductionist accounts seem in particular to have gained most favor: questions are identified either as special sorts of statements, or as special sorts of requests. As we hope will become clear in what follows, neither of these accounts is even nearly adequate; and matters are not improved if questions are identified, by force majeure, as combinations of statements and requests. (shrink)

Philosophy in the West divides into three parts: Analytic Philosophy (AP), Continental Philosophy (CP), and History of Philosophy (HP). But all three parts are in a bad way. AP is sceptical about the claim that philosophy can be a science, and hence is uninterested in the real world. CP is never pursued in a properly theoretical way, and its practice is tailor-made for particular political and ethical conclusions. HP is mostly developed on a regionalist basis: what is studied is determined (...) by the nation or culture to which a philosopher belongs, rather than by the objective value of that philosopher’s work. Progress in philosophy can only be attained by avoiding these pitfalls. (shrink)

Intelligent defence support systems are confronted with the need to manage ever-increasing floods of data in a way that raises significant challenges because the data are described and presented using different terminologies and formats. How, on this basis, is it possible to reach a common understanding of the information content of these data among people and software agents? How is it possible to ensure that domain knowledge is reused in consistent fashion in a way that makes this information available for (...) integration and analysis? How can we support the identification, selection, composition, and orchestration of services based on such diverse data providing homogeneous support by a service-oriented architecture? This collection is devoted to the use of ontologies to answer questions such as these. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with certain ontological issues in the foundations of geographic representation. It sets out what these basic issues are, describes the tools needed to deal with them, and draws some implications for a general theory of spatial representation. Our approach has ramifications in the domains of mereology, topology, and the theory of location, and the question of the interaction of these three domains within a unified spatial representation theory is addressed. In the final part we also consider (...) the idea of non-standard geographies, which may be associated with geography under a classical conception in the same sense in which non-standard logics are associated with classical logic. (shrink)

Historical research has recently made it clear that, prior to Austin and Searle, the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1884-1917) developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts under the heading of what he called "social acts". He we consider a second instance of a speech act theory avant la lettre, which is to be found in the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Reid’s s work, in contrast to that of Reinach, lacks both a unified approach and the detailed analyses of (...) pertinent examples. But his writings leave no doubt that he is acutely aware of the very problems concerning language structure and use out of which contemporary speech act theory has evolved and that he goes a good way towards solving these problems in the spirit of the modern theory. (shrink)

Sam Harris is a contemporary illustration of the difficulties standing in the way of coherent interdisciplinary thinking in an age where science and the humanities have drifted so far apart. We are here with Harris’s views on AI, and specifically with his view according to which, with the advance of AI, there will evolve a machine superintelligence with powers that far exceed those of the human mind. This he sees as something that is not merely possible, but rather a matter (...) of inevitability. If, however, we look carefully at what intelligence is, and at how computers really work on the basis of mathematical models, then we can see that it is forever impossible to emulate inside a computer even the intelligence of crows or rabbits, let alone that of human beings. (shrink)

The Unified Medical Language System and the Gene Ontology are among the most widely used terminology resources in the biomedical domain. However, when we evaluate them in the light of simple principles for wellconstructed ontologies we find a number of characteristic inadequacies. Employing the theory of granular partitions, a new approach to the understanding of ontologies and of the relationships ontologies bear to instances in reality, we provide an application of this theory in relation to an example drawn from the (...) context of the pathophysiology of hypertension. This exercise is designed to demonstrate how, by taking ontological principles into account we can create more realistic biomedical ontologies which will also bring advantages in terms of efficiency and robustness of associated software applications. (shrink)