In the Timaeus, Plato’s Timaeus offers an account of the sensible world in terms of “images” of forms. Often, images are taken to be particulars: either objects or particular property instances (tropes). Contrary to this trend, I argue that images are general characteristics which are immanent in the receptacle, or bundles of such characteristics. Thus, the entire sensible world can be analysed in terms of immanent general characteristics, the receptacle, and forms. Hence, for Timaeus, fundamentally, there are (...) no sensible particulars. I end by arguing that my interpretation is compatible with Timaeus’ construction of sensible entities from triangles. (shrink)

St. Maximus the Confessor claims that the logos of created beings represents their essence as an icon. This claim gives us the opportunity to understand the term essence as an dynamic reality and not as a static given. Essence is not something that the being is, but what it is supposed to be. The idea of icon is herein present as ultimately ontological. The icon is no mirror of reality, but rather its eschatological realization. That which will be uncovers the (...) truth of the being. This way, St. Maxius has founded a dynamic ontology, which is a fundamental step away from the Hellenic heritage. The equalization of the essence of beings and icon is only possible in an Eucharistic view of the world, wherein the Eucharist represents in an iconic way the presence of the eschatological truth in history. (shrink)

In the first part of the paper I argue that an ontology of events is precise, flexible and general enough so as to cover the three main alternative formulations of quantum mechanics as well as theories advocating an antirealistic view of the wave function. Since these formulations advocate a primitive ontology of entities living in four-dimensional spacetime, they are good candidates to connect that quantum image with the manifest image of the world. However, to the extent that some (...) form of realism about the wave function is also necessary, one needs to endorse also the idea that the wave function refers to some kind of power. In the second part, I discuss some difficulties raised by the recent proposal that in Bohmian mechanics this power is holistically possessed by all the particles in the universe. (shrink)

The article will expose the problem of the nature of reality stablished in the first sections of Wittgenstein"s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, especially the aphorisms 1 to 2.063 seeking to show points of contact between the Aristotelian-Thomistic and Suarezian thought. Initially, (I) a distinction is made between metaphysics and ontology in order to understand why Wittgenstein, notorious for his anti-metaphysical thought, actually ends up producing a theory of reality. Subsequently, (II) the relationship between reality and language will be drawn from the (...) characteristic isomorphism of the Tractatus in which a structural similarity will appear with the Aristotelian-Thomistic thought. This relationship will be the basis for (III) the construction of an ontological image of reality as the condition of possibility for a meaningful language. With this outlook, the (IV) hypothesis of the influence of Francisco Suárez"s thought as the content behind this Wittgensteinian description of reality will be advanced. (shrink)

We describe on-going work on IAO-Intel, an information artifact ontology developed as part of a suite of ontologies designed to support the needs of the US Army intelligence community within the framework of the Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS-A). IAO-Intel provides a controlled, structured vocabulary for the consistent formulation of metadata about documents, images, emails and other carriers of information. It will provide a resource for uniform explication of the terms used in multiple existing military dictionaries, thesauri and (...) metadata registries, thereby enhancing the degree to which the content formulated with their aid will be available to computational reasoning. (shrink)

The ontology of marketing, particularly the question of what products and brands are, is still largely unexplored. The ontological status of brands hinges on their relationship with products. Idealists about brands see perceptual or cognitive acts of consumers grouped under the heading ‘brand awareness’ or ‘brand image’ as constitutive for the existence of brands so that, in their view, tools of the marketing mix can influence relevant mental dispositions and attitudes. Brand realists, on the other hand, reject the view (...) of brands as mere marks or names and interpret them as emergent products with properties that afford branding in the sense of Gibson’s ecological psychology. Brand strength is a function of the degree to which brands occupy defensible niches in product space. Branding as a process involves changing external or internal boundaries of products. Several arguments are proposed in favor of brand realism. The fragments of an ontology of marketing are developed in a broadly Aristotelian framework. Brand realism has significant implications for a new understanding of issues ranging from the effects of advertising to financial brand valuation, the nature of trademarks, and marketing strategy in general. It permits one to treat brand equity as a real phenomenon not dependent on associations, attitudinal states such as brand loyalty, or spurious constructs such as brand character or personality. (shrink)

Although better known for his phenomenology of perception and the perceived world, Merleau-Ponty’s writings also contain the outlines of a rich and unique account of the imagination and the imaginary. In this paper, I explicate the phenomenology of the image that Merleau-Ponty develops throughout his work. I show how Merleau-Ponty develops this account of the image in critical response to Sartre and in a way that follows from his own descriptions of what painters do when they paint and of what (...) we experience when we look at their paintings. The investigation of the particular mode of being of images leads to a consideration of the body and Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology. (shrink)

Ontology is one strategy for promoting interoperability of heterogeneous data through consistent tagging. An ontology is a controlled structured vocabulary consisting of general terms (such as “cell” or “image” or “tissue” or “microscope”) that form the basis for such tagging. These terms are designed to represent the types of entities in the domain of reality that the ontology has been devised to capture; the terms are provided with logical defi nitions thereby also supporting reasoning over the tagged (...) data. Aim: This paper provides a survey of the biomedical imaging ontologies that have been developed thus far. It outlines the challenges, particularly faced by ontologies in the fields of histopathological imaging and image analysis, and suggests a strategy for addressing these challenges in the example domain of quantitative histopathology imaging. The ultimate goal is to support the multiscale understanding of disease that comes from using interoperable ontologies to integrate imaging data with clinical and genomics data. (shrink)

Interoperability across data sets is a key challenge for quantitative histopathological imaging. There is a need for an ontology that can support effective merging of pathological image data with associated clinical and demographic data. To foster organized, cross-disciplinary, information-driven collaborations in the pathological imaging field, we propose to develop an ontology to represent imaging data and methods used in pathological imaging and analysis, and call it Quantitative Histopathological Imaging Ontology – QHIO. We apply QHIO to breast cancer (...) hot-spot detection with the goal of enhancing reliability of detection by promoting the sharing of data between image analysts. (shrink)

The third issue of the Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts is centered on a series of questions related to the nature of images. What properties characterize them? Do they exist also in our minds? What relationship do they have with phenomena such as perception, memory, language and interpretation? The authors participating in this issue have been asked to answer these and other questions starting from and in dialogue with the two philosophical perspectives that have (...) most enriched the study of our object of research since the second half of the twentieth century: analytical philosophy and visual culture studies. The first four essays address problems related to ontology (Didi-Huberman, Prinz, Bantinaki, Manzotti). In their pages the question will be asked not only about the nature of images but also about what it means for an image to represent an object or an action realistically. The second part contains discussions related to the topics of perception, appreciation and creation of pictures (Ferretti; Gavaler, Goldberg; Pigoni, Coraci, Carlenzi). The third section goes through the problems related to the very concept of representing by images (Biggs; Weichert; Derby). The last section of the issue is devoted to two cases in which images are used not so much and not only to represent something, but also to convey ethical-political values (Fasnacht; Olesiejuk). (shrink)

In this article, the results of conceptualization of the definition of mind as an object of interdisciplinary applied research are described. The purpose of the theoretical analysis is to generate a methodological discourse suitable for a functional understanding of the mind in the context of the problem of natural language processing as one of the components of developments in the field of artificial intelligence. The conceptual discourse was realized with the help of the author's method of structural-ontological analysis, and developed (...) in the mainstream of the system-methodological tradition of the school of G.P. Shchedrovitsky and intended for descriptive research of subject areas of interdisciplinary objects of scientific study. As a result of the structural and ontological analysis of the super-system, the relevant place and role of the directly studied system (mind) are determined, and its primary process and material are localized and structural and functional connections are described. At the basic level, the mind is conceptualized as an energy process unfolding in a spatio-temporal environment and accompanied by archetypal structuring of neural impulses into images. The genesis of the system is separately analyzed by constructing a structural-ontological matrix that reflects the initial stage of the development of the mind. The primary process is concretized with the help of hetero- and homeostatic dichotomy, and also the most significant features of the consistent transformation of the material of the system and its ascent to verbal morphology are described. The structural-ontological comparison of the functioning of the verbal intelligence with the preverbal level has been carried out. The transformation of neural impulses of needs into words, as verbal units fixing semiotic values is analyzed. Structural-ontological connections that determine the reactive and prospective characteristics of the functioning of the system are disclosed. The position of the chronological primacy of "semiotic readiness" for language with respect to the debut of the latter as an information-sign model of the environment is argued. The hypothesis of domination at the initial stage of the development of the mind of exopsychic functions over endopsychic ones is formulated. The theoretical substantiation of the hypothesis of the inevitability of the ontology of language in the functional understanding of the mind is given, corresponding structural and ontological arguments are given, including those based on the ideas about the information relationship between affects and needs, according to the views of P.V. Simonov. The arguments are presented in favor of the non-alternative methodology of A. Turing in studies of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to show that images have an ontological support by which they obtain an independent existence from the mind. In accordance with the new theories of aesthetics, we will see that the object of art is taken as an object of thought. Image has an important role in the existence of the work of art; therefore the image becomes an object of thought. To show how the image is independent from the mind or to (...) show how it is not a mind-dependent object, the analysis has to start from the pre-ontological level of the work of art in order to understand the existence of images in correlation with the work of art. At the beginning there is only the object. The object is the work of art before its concretization. It is not nature; it is the natural support of art. From this point of view, the role of the image can be explored in all ontological stages of the work of art. Firstly, it can be argued that the intuition of the artist is the image of the idea underlying the work of art. The intentional image is a subjective image. Secondly, it seems that people can see or have in mind different images (representations) referring to a work of art. This is possible in time and space and implies cultural differences, historical events and so on. A question arises: what supports the intentional image? One answer put forward is that the mind is the support of the image, but it seems that the original intentional image has something that can make other intentional images possible, an infinite number of representations, in other words an infinite number of images. The aim of this paper is to show that we can talk about an original intentional image (the first idea), intentional images (the representations of the work of art in time and space), and the transcendental image which can be defined as the ontological condition for the existence of the intentional image. At the end I will argue that the transcendental image is the support or the entity which offers the ontological conditions necessary for all intentional images. -/- Tags: intentional image, transcendental image, ontology, object and subjectivity. (shrink)

How do we find what is clinically significant in the swarms of data being generated by today’s diagnostic technologies? As electronic records become ever more prevalent – and digital imaging and genomic, proteomic, salivaomics, metabalomics, pharmacogenomics, phenomics and transcriptomics techniques become commonplace – fdifferent clinical and biological disciplines are facing up to the need to put their data houses in order to avoid the consequences of an uncontrolled explosion of different ways of describing information. We describe a new strategy to (...) advance the consistency of data in the dental research community. The strategy is based on the idea that existing systems for data collection in dental research will continue to be used, but proposes a methodology in which past, present and future data will be described using a consensus-based controlled structured vocabulary called the Ontology for Dental Research (ODR). (shrink)

The question of what ontological insights can be gained from the knowledge of physics (keyword: ontic structural realism) cannot obviously be separated from the view of physics as a science from an epistemological perspective. This is also visible in the debate about 'scientific realism'. This debate makes it evident, in the form of the importance of perception as a criterion for the assertion of existence in relation to the 'theoretical entities' of physics, that epistemology itself is 'ontologically laden'. This is (...) in the form of the assumption that things (or entities) in themselves exist as such and such determined ones (independent of cognition, autonomously). This ontological assumption is not only the basis of our naïve understanding of cognition, but also its indispensable premise, insofar as this understanding is a fundamentally passive, 'receptive' one. Accordingly, just as 'perception' is the foundation, ('objective') description is the aim of cognition, that which cognition is about. In this sense, our idea of cognition and our idea of the things are inseparably linked. Without the ontological premise mentioned we just would not know what cognition is, but it is basically just a kind of image that we have in our minds (an assumption that helps us understand 'cognition'). Epistemology not only shares this basic assumption (which it also shares with metaphysics), but it revolves (unlike metaphysics) entirely around it by making the idea and demand of 'certainty' a condition of 'real' knowledge. As 'certainty' is a subjective criterion this entails the 'remodelling' of the real, holistic cognitive situation (to which metaphysics adheres) into a linear subject-object-relation (which results in the strict 'transcendence' of the objects). And it also establishes, due to its 'expertise' in matters of cognition, the 'primacy of epistemology' over all other sciences. Now, on closer inspection, however, the expertise of epistemology seems not all that dependable, because it basically consists only of paradigms which, from the point of view of the holism of the real cognitive situation itself, are nothing more than relatively simplistic interpretations of this situation. However, we do not yet know what another conception of cognition might look like (which is not surprising given the high rank of the phenomenon of cognition in the hierarchy of phenomena according to their complexity). 'Certainty' as a criterion of cognition is thus excluded from the outset, and thus the linear relational model of cognition appears as what it is, a gross distortion of the real, holistic cognitive situation. The significance of this argumentation with regard to physics is that the linear epistemological model of cognition itself is a major obstacle to an adequate epistemological understanding of physics. This is because it is fixed 'a priori' to an object-related concept of cognition, and to 'description' as the only mode of ('real') cognition. But physics (without questioning our naïve notion of cognition on the level of epistemology) simply works past it and its basic assumptions. Its cognitive concept (alias heuristic) is fundamentally different from that of metaphysics. The acceptance of the real, holistic cognitive situation is, in my opinion, the condition for an adequate understanding of physics' heuristic access to objects, its transcendental, generalizing cognitive concept, as well as its ontological relevance and dimension of its own. (shrink)

This article explores the metaphor of Science as provider of sharp images of our environment, using the epistemological framework of Objective Cognitive Constructivism. These sharp images are conveyed by precise scientific hypotheses that, in turn, are encoded by mathematical equations. Furthermore, this article describes how such knowledge is pro-duced by a cyclic and recursive development, perfection and reinforcement process, leading to the emergence of eigen-solutions characterized by the four essential properties of precision, stability, separability and composability. Finally, this (...) article discusses the role played by ontology and metaphysics in the scientific production process, and in which sense the resulting knowledge can be considered objective. (shrink)

I analyze Deleuze’s concept of temporality in terms of its ontology and axiological (political and aesthetic) aspects. For Deleuze, the concept of temporality is non-monolithic, in the senses that it is modified throughout his works — the monographs, lectures, and those works that were co-authored with Félix Guattari — and that it is developed through reference to a dizzying array of concepts, thinkers, artistic works, and social phenomena. -/- I observe that Deleuze’s concept of temporality involves a complex (...) class='Hi'>ontology of difference, which I elaborate through reference to Deleuze’s analyses of Ancient Greek and Stoic conceptualizations of time. From Plato through to Chrysippus, temporality gradually comes to be identified as a form that comprehends the variation of particulars. Deleuze modifies the ancients’ concept of time to suggest that time obtains as a form of ceaseless ontological variation. Through reference to Deleuze’s reading of Gilbert Simondon, I further suggest that Deleuze tends to conceive of temporality as an ontogenetic force which participates in the complex process of individuation. -/- A standout feature of this dissertation involves an analysis of how Deleuze’s concept of temporality is modified in his works on cinema. In Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image, temporality comes to be characterized as something other than the measure of the movement of existents. In his detailed analyses of Bergson — in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image, Cinema 2: The Time-Image, and Bergsonism — Deleuze suggests that time involves an actualization of aspects of a virtual past as contemporaneous with the lived present. While not an outright denial of the relation of temporal succession, Deleuze’s claim implies a diminishment of this relation’s significance in an adequate elaboration of the nature of temporality. -/- Further, I observe —through reference to Deleuze’s readings of Marx, Kierkegaard, and Spinoza — that (the explicitly temporal) change of societal forms of economic organization is non-reducible to that suggested by linear evolution. The claim is that putatively discrete modes of economic organization do not enjoy temporal displacement with respect to one another. This suggests that linear evolutionary models of societal development are inadequate. This further implies that temporality is non-reducible to the relation of temporal succession. In concrete terms, societal change is characterized as immanent temporal variation. -/- Taken together, these analyses yield the conclusion that Deleuze tends to conceive of the nature of temporality as involving the ongoing realization of multiple — non-identical, sometimes contrary — aspects of a stochastic process of creation that is expressed in ontogenetic circumstances, social evolution, literary works, and filmic works. (shrink)

The Plant Ontology (PO) is a community resource consisting of standardized terms, definitions, and logical relations describing plant structures and development stages, augmented by a large database of annotations from genomic and phenomic studies. This paper describes the structure of the ontology and the design principles we used in constructing PO terms for plant development stages. It also provides details of the methodology and rationale behind our revision and expansion of the PO to cover development stages for all (...) plants, particularly the land plants (bryophytes through angiosperms). As a case study to illustrate the general approach, we examine variation in gene expression across embryo development stages in Arabidopsis and maize, demonstrating how the PO can be used to compare patterns of expression across stages and in developmentally different species. Although many genes appear to be active throughout embryo development, we identified a small set of uniquely expressed genes for each stage of embryo development and also between the two species. Evaluating the different sets of genes expressed during embryo development in Arabidopsis or maize may inform future studies of the divergent developmental pathways observed in monocotyledonous versus dicotyledonous species. The PO and its annotation databasemake plant data for any species more discoverable and accessible through common formats, thus providing support for applications in plant pathology, image analysis, and comparative development and evolution. (shrink)

A review of Tristan Garcia's The Life Intense: A Modern Obsession (2018) unravelling Garcia's process philosophy qua intensity.

This dissertation examines the relationship that exists between two distinct and seemingly incompatible bodies of scholarship within the field of contemporary philosophy of technology. The first, as argued by postmodern pragmatist Barry Allen, posits that our tools and what we make with them are epistemically important; disputing the idea that knowledge is strictly sentential or propositional, he claims instead that knowledge is the product of a performance that is both superlative and artefactual, rendering technology importantly world-constituting. The second, as argued (...) by Heidegger and his inheritors, is that technology is ontologically problematic; rather than technology being evidence of performative knowledge, it is instead existentially threatening by virtue of the fact that it changes the tenor of our relationship with the world-as-given. Despite the fact that these claims seem prima facie incompatible, I argue that they may be successfully reconciled by introducing a third body of scholarship: the philosophy of photography. For it is the case, I argue, that although we, qua human beings, occupy lifeworlds that are necessarily constituted by technology, technology also induces a kind of phenomenological scepticism: a concern that mediated action precludes us from the possibility of authentic experience. Arguing in favour of the sentiment that photographs serve as a kind of phenomenal anchor—a kind of machine for living—I claim that photographic images provide a panacea to this existential concern: despite being epistemically problematic, it is this selfsame epistemic “specialness” of photographs that forces us to phenomenologically recommit, if only temporarily, to the world in a serious way. Consequently, it is my belief that an analysis of our artefacts and the way they function is fundamentally incomplete without an analysis of the epistemic and ontological problems introduced of the photographic image; as I will demonstrate, the photographic image casts an extremely long shadow over the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

This paper aims to suggest a new approach to Plato’s theory of being in Republic V and Sophist based on the notion of difference and the being of a copy. To understand Plato’s ontology in these two dialogues we are going to suggest a theory we call Pollachos Esti; a name we took from Aristotle’s pollachos legetai both to remind the similarities of the two structures and to reach a consistent view of Plato’s ontology. Based on this theory, (...) when Plato says that something both is and is not, he is applying difference on being which is interpreted here as saying, borrowing Aristotle’s terminology, 'is is (esti) in different senses'. I hope this paper can show how Pollachos Esti can bring forth not only a new approach to Plato’s ontology in Sophist and Republic but also a different approach to being in general. -/- Keywords Plato; being; difference; image; pollachos esti; pollachos legetai 1. Being, Not-Being and Difference The three dialogues where the notion of "difference" attaches to the notion of being, namely Parmenides II, Sophist and Timaeus,and specifically the first two we try to discuss here. In these dialogues, Plato is going to achieve a new and revolutionary understanding of being which is not anymore based on the notion of "same" as it was before in Greek ontology. It was his discovery, I think, that the notion of being in the Greek ontology is attached to the notion of the "same" and it is because of this attachment that there have always been many problems understanding being especially after Parmenides. That being has always been relying on the "same" can be found out from the way most of the Presocratics understood it. It was based on such a relationship between being and "same" that a later Ionian, Heraclitus of Ephesus, rejected Being by rejecting its sameness: unable to be the same, being cannot be being anymore but becoming. Heraclitus’ criticism of his predecessors’ understanding of being was due to his discovery that what they call being is not the same but different in every moment. The relation of being and sameness reaches to its highest point in Parmenides. What Plato does in using the "difference" is nothing but the establishment of a creative relation between being and "difference". In this new relation, although he is in agreement with Heraclitus that being is not the same but different, he does not do it by use of becoming. He disagrees, on the other hand, with Parmenides that such a relation between being and difference leads to not being. At Parmenides 142b5-6 it is said that if One is, it is not possible for it to be without partaking (μετέχειν) of being (οὐσίας), which leads to the distinction of being and one: -/- So there would be also the being of the one (ἡ οὐσία του̑ ἑνὸς) which is not the same (ταὐτὸν) as the one. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be its being, nor the one would partake of it. (142b7-c1) -/- The fact that what is (ἔστι) signifies (σημαῖνον) is other (ἀλλο) than what One signifies (c4-5), is being taken as a reason for their distinction. The conclusion is that when we say 'one is', we speak of two different things, one partaking of the other (c5-7). Having repeated these arguments of the otherness of being and one at 143a-b, Parmenides says that the cause of this otherness can be neither Being nor One but "difference": -/- So if being is something different (ἕτερον) and one something different (ἕτερον), it is not by being one that the one is different from being nor by its being being that being is other than one, but they are different from each other (ἕτερα ἀλλήλων) by difference (τῷ ἑτερῳ) and otherness (ἄλλῳ). (143b3-6) -/- The fifth hypothesis, 'one is not' (160b5ff.) is also linked with the notion of difference. When we say about two things, largeness and smallness, that they are not, it is clear that we are talking about not being of different (ἕτερον) things (160c2-4). When it is said that something is not, besides the fact that there must be knowledge of that thing, we can say that it entails also its difference: 'difference in kind pertains to it in addition to knowledge' (160d8). Parmenides explains the reason as such: -/- For someone doesn’t speak of the difference in kind of the others when he says that the one is different from the others, but of that thing’s own difference in kind. (160e1-2) -/- Although the theory of being as "difference" is not fulfilled yet, an exact look at what occurs in Sophist can make us sure that this was the launching step for "difference" to get its deserved role in Plato’s ontology. The notion of the "difference" is not yet well-functioned in Parmenides because we can see that being is still attached to the same: -/- For that which is the same is being (ὄν γὰρ ἐστι τὸ ταὐτόν) (162d2-3). -/- The notion of difference in Sophist is the key element based on which a new understanding of being is presented and the problem of not being is somehow resolved. The friends of Forms, the Stranger says, are those who distinguish between being and becoming (248a7-8) and believe that we deal with the latter with our body and through perception while with the former, the real being (ὄντως οὐσίαν) with our soul and through reasoning (a10-11). Being is then bound with the "same" by adding: -/- You say that being always stays the same and in the same state (ἣν ἀεὶ κατὰ ταὐτὰ ὡσαύτως ἔχειν) but becoming varies from one time to another (δὲ ἄλλοτε ἄλλως). (248a12-13) -/- That the theory of the relation of being and capacity (247d8f., 248c4-5) matches more with becoming than with being (248c7-9) must be rejected because being is also the subject of knowledge which is kind of doing something (248d-e). It does, however, confirm that 'both that which changes and also change have to be admitted as existing things (ὄντα) (249b2-3). I believe that this is what Socrates would incline to do at Theaetetus 180e-181a, that is, putting a fight between two parties of Parmenidean being and Heraclitean becoming and then escaping. The solution is that becoming is itself a kind of being and we ought to accept what changes as being. This is what must be done by a philosopher, namely, to refuse both the claim that 'everything is at rest' and that 'being changes in every way' and beg, like a child, for both and say being (τὸὄν) is both the unchanging and that which changes (249c10-d4). This kind of begging for both is obviously under the attack of contradiction (249e-250b). For both and each of rest and change similarly are (250a11-12) but it cannot be said either that both of them change or both of them rest, being must be considered as a third thing both of the rest and change associate with (250b7-10). The conclusion is that 'being is not both change and rest but different (ἕτερον) from them instead' (c3-4). The notion of difference helps Plato to take being departed from both rest and change because it was their sophisticated relation with being that made the opposition of being and becoming. Plato is now trying to separate being from rest and, thus, from "same" by "difference". Such a crucial change is great enough to need a 'fearless' decision (256d5-6). The possibility of being of not being is resulted (d11-12) comes as the answer to the question 'so it’s clear that change is not being and also is being (ἡ κίνησις ὄντως οὐκ ὄν ἐστι καὶ ὄν) since it partakes in being?' (d8-9). It is then by the notion of difference that becoming is considered as that which both is and is not. This coincidence of being and not being about change is apparently similar to Socrates’ paradoxical statement at Republic 477a about what both is and is not. -/- Introduction The Republic 476-477 has always been a matter of controversy mainly about two interwoven points. The first problem is the meaning of being here; that whether what he has in mind is a veridical, existential or propositional sense of being. The second problem is his distinction between the objects of knowledge and opinion which seems to lead, some believe, to the Two Worlds (TW) theory. The crucial point in Republic is that what is considered between knowledge (ἐπιστήμης) and ignorance (α͗γνοιας), namely opinion, must have a different object that leads Socrates to draw the distinction of knowledge and opinion between their objects. The problem of understanding being in the fifth book of the Republic is that when it is said that the Form of F is F but a particular participating in F, both is and is not F, it sounds too bizarre and unacceptable. It cannot be imaginable how a thing can be existent and non-existent at the same time. At the first sight, the only solution seems to be the degrees of existence which is called by Annas (1981, 197) a 'childish fallacy' and a 'silly argument'. Kirwan (1974, 118) thinks that Republic V does not attribute 'any doctrine about existence' to Plato and Kahn (1966, 250) claims that the most fundamental value of einai when used alone (without predicate) is not "to exist" but "to be so", "to be the case" or "to be true". The problems of understanding being in Republic and Sophist besides the difficulties of the existential reading led scholars to the other senses of being, mostly related to the well-known Aristotelian distinctions between different senses of being. In the predicative reading, Annas, for example, refers this difference to the qualified and unqualified application. Whereas the Form of F is unqualifiedly F, a particular instance of F can be F only qualifiedly (1981, 221). Vlastos’ well-known substitution of 'degrees of reality' for 'degrees of being/existence' must be categorized as a predicative reading. Kahn thinks that the basic sense of being for Plato is 'something like propositional structure, involving both predication and truth claims, together with existence for the subject of predication' (2013, 96). Believing that the complete-incomplete distinction terminology is misleading about Plato, he thinks that semantic functions are only second-order uses of the verb and it is the predicative or incomplete function which is fundamental. Suggesting a veridical reading, Fine (2003, 70 ff) thinks that while both existential and predicative readings separate the objects of knowledge and belief, it is only her reading which does not force such separation of the objects and thus does not imply TW. Stokes (1998, 266) thinks that though Fine is right saying that Plato does not endorse TW in book V, she is wrong in rejecting existential in favor of the veridical reading. The reception of existential reading can be seen more obviously in Calvert who thinks, in agreement with Runciman, that 'it would be safer to say that Plato’s gradational ontology is probably not entirely free from degrees of existence' (1970, 46). At Sophist 254d-e Plato singles out five most important kinds (or Forms!?) in which the same (ταὐτὸν) and difference (θάτερον) are regarded besides being, rest and change. They are, therefore, neither the same nor the difference but share in both (b3). Being (τὸ ὄν) cannot be the same also because if they 'do not signify distinct things' both change and rest will have the same label when we say they are (255b11-c1). We have then four distinct kinds, being, change, rest and same, none of them is the other. The case of difference is more complicated. When the stranger wants to assess the relation of being and difference, he can say simply neither that they are distinct nor that they are not. He has to make an important distinction inside being to get able to draw the relation of being and difference: -/- But I think you'll admit that some of the things that are (τῶν ὄντων) are said (λέγεσθαι) by themselves (αὐτὰ καθ’ αὑτά) but some [are said] always referring to (πρὸς) other things (ἄλλα) (255b12-13) -/- The difference is always said referring to other things (τὸδέγ’ ἕτερον ἀεὶ πρὸς ἕτερον) (255d1). It pervades all kinds because each of them should be different from the others and is so due to the difference and not its own nature (253e3f.) After asserting that change is different from being and therefore both is and is not (256d), the difference is described as what makes all the other kinds not be, by making each different from being. Given that all of them are by being, this association of being and difference is the cause of their being and not-being at the same time, the issue that its version at RepublicV made all those controversies we discussed above: -/- So in the case of change and all the kinds, not being necessarily is (Ἔστιν ἄρα ἐξ ἀναγκης τὸ μὴ ὄν). Τhat’s because as applied to all of them, the nature of the difference (ἡ θατέρον φύσις) makes each of them not be by making it different from being. And we’re going to be right if we say that all of them are not in the same way. And conversely [we’re also going to be right if we say] that they are because they partake in being. (Sophist 256d11-e3) -/- Plato’s new construction of five distinct kinds and the role he gives to thedifference among them is aimed to resolve the old problem of understanding being which has always been annoying from the time of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Both the ontological status of becoming and that of not being were, in Plato’s mind, based on the absolute domination of the notion of the Same over being. Now, not only becoming is understandable as being but also not being which is not the contrary of being anymore but only different (ἕτερον) (257b3-4). Though I agree partly with Frede that the account of not being which is needed for false statements is more complicated than just saying, as Cropsey (1995, 101) says, that Plato is substituting 'X is not Y' with 'X is different from Y', I totally disagree with him that when we say X is not beautiful, Plato could not have thought that it is not a matter of its being different from beautiful because 'it would be different from beauty even if it were beautiful by participation in beauty' (1992, 411). Conversely, as we will discuss, it is exactly the relation of the beautiful thing, X, and the beautiful itself, in which X shares that is to be solved by the notion of not being as difference. Though it is beautiful because of sharing in beauty, X is not beautiful because it is different from beautiful itself. What the difference is to do is to show how something can both be and not be the same thing. The difference is what makes one thing both be and not be a certain other thing. This equips the difference with the ability to explain a certain thing’s not-being when it is. Thanks to the notion of difference, it is now possible to explain not only not being but also the simultaneous being and not being of a thing: 'What we call "not-beautiful" is the thing that ἕτερόν ἐστιν from nothing other than του̑ καλου̑ φύσεως' (257d10-11). The result is that not beautiful happens to be (συμβέβηκεν εἶναι) one single thing among kinds of beings (τι τῶν ὄντων τινὸς ἑνὸς γένους) and at the same time set over against one of the beings (πρός τι τῶν ὄντων αὖ πάλιν ἀντιτεθὲν) (257e2-4) and thus be something that happens to be not beautiful (εἶναί τις συμβαίνει τὸ μὴ καλόν); a being set over against being (ὄντος δὴ πρὸς ὄν ἀντίθεσις) (e6-7). Neither the beautiful is more a being (μα̑λλον ... ἐστι τῶν ὄντων) nor not beautiful less (e9-10) and thus both the contraries similarly are (ὁμοίως εἶναι) (258a1). This conclusion, it is emphasized again (a7-9), owes to θατέρου φύσις now turned out as being. Therefore, each of the many things that are of the nature of the difference and set over each other in being (τῆς τοῦ ὄντος πρὸς ἄλληλα ἀντικειμένων ἀντίθεσις) is being as being itself is being (αὐτοῦ τοῦὄν τοςοὐσία ἐστιν) and not less. They are different from, and not the contrary of, each other (a11-b3). This is exactly τὸμὴὄν, the subject of the inquiry (b6-7). Hence, not being has its own nature (b10) and is one εἶδοςamong the many things that are (b9-c3). Such far departing from Parmenides’ ontological principle is done on the basis of the nature of the difference. It was the discovery of such a notion that made the stranger brave enough to say that not being is each part of the nature of the difference that is set over against being (258d7-e3, cf. 260b7-8). That the relation of being and difference is difference is the key element of the new ontology. The difference is, only because of its sharing in being, but it is not that which it shares in but different from it (259a6-8). Not being is exactly based on this difference: ἕτερον δὲ τοῦ ὄντος ὄν ἔστι σαφέστατα ἐξ ἀνάγκης εἶναι μὴ ὄν (a8-b1). 2. Difference and the Being of a Copy We discussed above that the sense of being of particulars in Republic V made so many debates that whether being is there used in an existential sense or not. Particulars in Republic are regarded as images in the allegories of Line and Cave. The being of an image/copy makes, thus, the same problem. Plato’s analogy of original -copy for the relation of Forms and their particulars in Republic has obviously a different attitude to being. The main question is that what is the ontological status of a copy in respect of its original? Are there two kinds of being, 'real being' versus 'being' as Ketchum says (1980, 140) or only one kind? What is the difference of being in an original and its copy? Is it a matter of degrees of being or reality as some commentators have suggested? Is it a matter of being relational? By reducing the ontological issue to an epistemological one, Vlastos’ suggestion of degrees of reality in an article with the same name does neither, I think, pay attention to the problem nor resolve it. He agrees that Plato never speaks of "degrees" or "grades" of reality (1998, 219). What allows him to entitle it as such are some of Plato’s words in Republic as well as Plato’s words in some other dialogues (1998, 219). When Plato states that the Forms only can completely, purely or perfectly be real he means, Vlastos says, they are cognitively reliable (1998, 229); an obvious reduction of the issue to an epistemological one. He thinks that when in Republic we are being said that a particular’s being F is less pure than its Form, it is because it is not exclusively F, but it is and is not F and this being adulterated by contrary characters is the reason of our confused and uncertain understanding of it (1998, 222). Ketchum rightly criticizes Vlastos’ doctrine in its disparting from ontology thinking that 'to understand Plato’s talk of being as talk of reality is to obscure the close relation that exists between "being" and the verb "to be"' (1980, 213). He thinks, therefore, that οὐσία must be understοοd as being rather than reality, τὸὄν as "that which is" and not "that which is real" and … (ibid). His conclusion is that degrees of reality cannot interpret Plato correctly and we must accept degrees of being. Allen believes that a 'purely epistemic' reading of the passage in Republic is patently at odds with Plato’s text (1961, 325). He thinks that not only degrees of reality but also degrees of reality must be maintained (1998, 67). What Cooper suggests gets close to this paper’s solution: -/- Plato does not I think wish to suggest that existence is a matter of degree in the way in which being pleasant or painful is a matter of degree. Rather there are different grades of ontological status. (1986, 241) -/- A more ontological solution for the problem of understanding the being of a copy and its relation with the being of its original is suggested by the theory of copy as a relational entity. Based on this interpretation, 'the very being of a reflection is relational, wholly dependent upon what is other than itself: the original…' (Allen, 1998, 62). As relational entities, particulars have no independent ontological status; they are purely relational entities which derive their whole character and existence from Forms (ibid, 67). Although these relational entities are and have a kind of existence, we must also say that 'they do not have existence in the way that Forms, things which are fully real, do' (ibid). Allen (1961, 331) extends his theory to Phaedo where it is said that particulars are deficient (74d5-7, 75a2-3, 75b4-8), 'wish' to be like (74d10) or desire to be of its nature (75a2); an extension that, like F.C. white (1977, 200), I cannot admit. He correctly states that Plato did not start out with a doctrine of particulars as images and semblances but come to such a view after Phaedo, or perhaps after Republic V (1977, 202). Though we may not agree with him about Republic V, if we have to consider its last pages also, we must agree with him that not only the ontology of Phaedo but also that of Republic II-V (except the last pages of the latter book) are somehow different from (but at the same time appealing to) the ontology of original-copy which should exclusively assign to Sophist, Timaeus and RepublicVI-VII besides the last pages of book V. The answer to the problem of Plato’s sense of being in RepublicV can be reached only if we read Republic V based on and as following Sophist. We can find out his meaning of that which both is and is not only by the ontological status he assigns to a copy in Sophist. The kind of being of a copy in Sophist reveals as Plato’s key for the lock of the problem of not being. Let’s see how the ontological status of a copy is the critical point of Plato’s ontology. In the earlier pages of Sophist, we are still in the same situation about not being. To think that that which is not is is called a rash assumption (237a3-4) and Parmenides’ principle of the impossibility of being of not being is still at work (a8-9). At 237c1-4, the problem of "not being" is noticed in a new way which shows some kinds of a more realistic position to the problem of not being. Nevertheless, not being is still unthinkable, unsayable, unutterable and unformulable in speech (238c10). Soon after mentioning that it is difficult even to refuse not being (238d), the solution to the problem appears: the being of a copy (εἴδωλον) (239d). A copy is, says Theaetetus, something that is made referring to a true thing (πρὸς τἀληθινὸν) but still is 'another such thing (ἕτεροντοιου̑τον)' (240a8). Nevertheless, this 'another such thing' cannot be another such real or true thing. In answer to the question of the Stranger that if this 'another such thing' is the true thing (240a9), Theaetetus answers: οὐδαμῶς ἀληθινόν γε, ἀλλ’ ἐοικὸςμὲν (240b2). A copy’s being 'another such thing' does not mean another true thing but only a resemblance of it. Not only is not a copy another true thing besides the original, but it is the opposite of the true thing (b5) because only its original is the thing genuinely and being a copy is being the thing only untruly. The word ἐοικὸς is opposed to ὄντως ὄν in the next line (240b7): 'So you are saying that that which is like (ἐοικὸς) is not really that which is (οὐκ ὄντως [οὐκ] ὄν)'. But still a copy 'is in a way (ἔστι γε μήν πως)' (b9). While it is not really what it is its resemblance, it has its own being and reality because it really is a likeness (εἰκων ὄντως) (b11). The Stranger asks: -/- So it is not really what is (οὐκ ὄν ἄρα [οὐκ] ὄντως ἐστὶν) but it really is what we call a likeness (ὄντως ἣν λέγομεν εἰκόνα)? (b12-13) -/- This is Plato’s innovative ontological solution to the problem of not being. Theaetetus’ answer confirms this: 'Maybe that which is not is woven together with that which is' (c1-2). Therefore, a copy neither is what really is nor is not-being but only is what in a way is. Thanks to the ontological status of a copy, the third status intermediate between being and not being is brought forth. The essence of an image, in Kohnke’s words, does not consist 'solely in the negation of what is genuine and has real being' because otherwise 'it would be an ὄντως οὐκ ὄν,essentially and really a not being' (1957, 37). The characteristics of a copy can be summed up as folows: i) A copy is a copy by referring to a true thing (πρὸς τἀληθινὸν). ii) A copy is different from that of which it is a copy (ἕτερον). iii) A copy is not itself a true thing (ἀληθινόν) as that of which it is a copy but only that which is like it (ἐοικὸς). iv) It is not really that which really is (ὄντως ὄν) but only really a likeness (εἰκων ὄντως). The conclusion is that: v) A copy in a way (πως) is that means it both is and in not, the product of interweaving being with not being. This leads to the refutation of father Parmenides’ principle, accepting that 'that which is not somehow is (τό τε μὴ ὄν ὡς ἔστι)' and 'that which is, somehow is not (τό ὄν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι) (241d5-7). Besides copies and likenesses (εἰκόνων), we have also imitations (μιμημάτων) and appearances (φαντασμάτων) as the subjects of this new kind of being and thus false belief (241e3). In Timaeus, the world of becoming which cannot correctly be called and thus we have to call it "what is such" (τὸ τοιου̑τον) (49e5) or "what is altogether such" (τὸ διἀ παντὸς τοιου̑τον) (e6-7), consists solely of imitations (μιμημάτα) (50c5) which are identifiable only by the things that they are their imitations. The word τοιου̑τον which had been used to determine the situation of a copy in respect of its original, now becomes the definition of the world of becoming in which everything is an image of another thing, a Being, that stays always the same and is different and separated from its image. Cherniss, in my view rightly, draws attention to the very important point about the ontological status of an image that can at the same time be considered a criticism of the relational theory. What we are being said in Timaeus, he thinks,cannot be explained by saying that an image is not self-related and making its being relational. What is crucial about an image is that it 'stands for something, refers to something, means something and this meaning the image has not independently as its own but only in reference to something else apart from it' (1998, 296). This function finds its best explanation in the theory we are to suggest in the following. 3. πολλαχῶς ἔστι The best way to understand the ontological status of an image in Plato is to see first how his most clever pupil, Aristotle, resolved the same problem that Plato brought his theory of image for its sake. Aristotle’s theory of pollachos legetai is a brilliant and, at the same time, deviated version of Plato’s theory that is able, however, to help us read Plato in a better way. We discuss Aristotle’s theory to reach to a full understanding of Plato’s theory because it is, firstly, constructed in Aristotle in a more clear way and, secondly, it can also be taken as an evidence that our reading of Plato is legitimate. The phrase τὸ ὄν πολλαχῶς λέγεται, a so much repeated phrase in Aristotle’s works, is his resolution for some of the ontological problems of his predecessors all treating being as if it has only one sense. Aristotle is right in his criticism of the philosophical tradition specially Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato since all did presuppose only one sense for being and his theory is, thus, a creative and revolutionary solution for many problems that all the past philosophers were stuck in. But it is at the same time somehow a borrowed theory. As we will discuss, both the structure of the doctrine and the problems it tries to resolve are the same as Plato’s doctrine (and even is comparable in its phraseology) though it is in Aristotle, as can be expected, a more clear and better structured doctrine. 1) Associated with the theory of pros hen and the theory of substance, the theory of several senses of being provides a structure which, I insist, is the best guide to understand Plato’s theory of Being in Sophist, Timeaus and Republic. a) Although the theory of pollachos legetai is not necessarily based on the theory of pros hen, they become tightly interdependent about being: -/- Being is said in many ways/senses (τὸ δὲ ὄν λέγεται μὲν πολλαχῶς) but by reference to one (πρὸς ἕν) [way/sense] and one kind of nature (μίαν τινὰ φύσιν). (Metaphysics 1003a33-34) -/- The doctrine of pros hen which is Aristotle’s initiative third alternative besides the homonymous and synonymous application of words, is primarily a linguistic theory that tries to provide a new theory to explain the different implementations of the same word. The pros hen implementation of being is to provide an alternative for the theory of the synonymous (in Plato: homonymous) implementation of being which says being is said in one sense (kath hen) (1060b 32-33). That both the pros hen and the kath hen implementation of a word has one thing (hen) as what is common, makes them in opposition to the homonymous implementation which does not consider anything in common. Whereas both pros hen and kath hen assume a common nature, with which all the implementations of the word have some kind of relation, their difference is that while kath hen takes all the implementations of the word as the same with the common nature, pros hen makes them different. Substance is called πρῶτον ὄν because it is said to be primarily: -/- For as is (τὸ ἔστιν) is predicated of all things, not however in the same way (οὐχ ὁμοίως) but of one sort of thing primarily and of others in a secondary way. So too τὸτί ἐστιν belongs simply (ἁπλῶς) to substance but in a limited sense (πῶς) to the others [other categories] (1030a21-23). -/- The word ἁπλῶς standing against κατὰ συμβεβηκός tries to make substance different from the accidents. When we are being said that τὸ ὄν πολλαχῶς λέγεται, it means that only the substance that is simply (ἁπλῶς) the ἕν, the common nature, τὸὄν. When we use the word 'being' about a substance, the being is said differently from when we use 'being' about an accident. The distinction between the substance and the other categories is a distinction between what simply is said to be and what only with reference to (pros) the substance is said to be. The doctrine of pros hen, changing kath hen to pros hen in respect of to on, makes a distinction that wants to show that while there is a kind of implementing the word being that is simply being, there is another kind which is called being only by reference to that which is simply being. In the doctrine of pros hen it is not so that all the things that are said to be are only by reference to a common one thing, but that while one thing is called being because it is that thing itself, the other things are called so without being that thing itself but only by referring to it. At the very beginning of book Γ, it is said that: -/- Being is said in many senses but all refer to one arche. Some things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substances, others because they are a process towards substances or destructions or privations or qualities of substances … (1003b5-9, cf. 1028a18-20) -/- Substance is what really is said to be and all other things that are said to be are said only in favor of it. This difference of substance from all other senses of being is what is, I believe, primarily aimed in Aristotle’s interrelated theories of pollachos legetai,pros hen and the theory of substance. b) The difference of the implementation of being in the case of substance and the accidents goes so deep that while substance is considered as the real being, the accidents are almost not being. An accident is a mere name (Metaphysics 1026b13-14) and is obviously akin to not being (b21). Aristotle adds that Plato was 'in a sense not wrong' saying that sophists deal with not being (τὸ μὴ ὄν) because the arguments of sophists are, above all, about the accidental (1026b13-16). At the beginning of book , he says about quality and quantity (which look to be more of a being than other accidents) that they are not existent (οὐδ̕ ὄντα ὡς εἰπεῖν) in an unqualified sense (ἁπλῶς) (1069a21-22). The two above-mentioned points, Aristotle’s (a) interwoven theories of pollachos legetai, pros hen and the theory of substance and (b) taking accidents almost as not being, comparedwith substance, brings forth a structure that I shall call Pollachos Legetai (with capital first letters). What is of the highest importance in this structure for me is the difference of substance from accidents and the kind of relation which is settled between them. There is a substance that without any qualification is said to be and the accidents that are said to be only by reference (pros) to it. Adding Aristotle’s point about accidents that they are nearly not being to this relation and difference, we can obviously see how much this structure is close to Plato’s original-copy ontology. We spoke of the relation of being and difference in Plato’s model and the way Plato construes the being of a copy. A copy is a copy only by referring to (pros) a model; it is different from (ἕτερον) that of which it is a copy; it is not itself a true thing as its model and not really that which is (ὄντως ὄν) but only is in a way (πῶς). If we behold the difference of substance and accident in the context of the theory of pollachos legetai and pros hen, we can observe its fundamental similarity with Plato’s original-copy theory in its structure. Allen draws attention to the fact that the relation between Forms and particulars in Plato’s original-copy model is 'something intermediate between univocity and full equivocity' (1998, 70, n. 24) and the same as what Aristotle calls it pros hen (ibid). What made us compare the two structures was not, of course, the complete similarity of two structures (we have to agree with many possible differences of the two theories) but exactly the specific relation between an original and its copy on the one hand, and a substance and its accident on the other hand. As substance and accident do not share a common character and the substance -accident model hints that they stand in a certain relation, there is no common character between the original and copy in Plato’s model as well. Furthermore, their similarity is not confined to their structure only; they are also aimed to solve the same problem. The central point of the theory is that all the predecessors took being in one sense and this was their weakness point. Besides the mentioned above passages about the relation of pollachos legetai and presocratics’, as well as Plato’s, ontology, the relation of the theory with the problem of not being is clear in several passages. In Metaphysics, it is said: 'Being is then said in many senses… It is for this reason that we say even of not being that it is not being' (1003b5-10). Discussing the accidental sense of being, Aristotle points that it is in the accidental way that we say, for example, that not-white is because that of which it is an accident is (1017a18-19, cf. 1069a22-24). We mentioned that he thought Plato was right saying that sophistic deals with not being because sophistic deals with accidental, which is somehow not being (1026b14-16). Plato turned sophistic not-being to what both is and is not and Aristotle to what accidentally is said to be. What helps Aristotle to resolve the problem of not being is his distinction between ἁπλῶς and κατὰ σθμβεβηκός. Aristotle’s "qua" (ᾕ) which is directly linked with his distinction between καθ’ αὑτο λέγεται and κατὰ συμβεβηκός λέγεται, is used to resolve the old problem of coming to be out of not being (Physics 191b4-10). He strictly asserts that his predecessors could not solve the problem because they failed to observe the distinction of "qua itself" from "qua another thing" (b10-13). He then continues: -/- We ourselves are in agreement with them in holding that nothing can be said simply (ἁπλως) to come from not being (μὴὄντος). But nevertheless we maintain that a thing may come to be from not being in an accidental way (κατὰ συμβεβηκός). For from privation which ὅ ἐστι καθ’ αὑτο μὴ ὄν, nothing can become. (Phy. 191b13-16, cf. b19-25) . (shrink)

I argue that our direct experience and some physical facts do not go well with an understanding of perception as a mechanism producing a representation of a ''truly'' outer world. Instead, it is much more coherent to treat what is traditionally considered an image in this context as a closed structure equipped in its own ontology, replacing the ''truly'' outer one from the point of view of an agent possessing it. In such a framework, the notion of existence is (...) taken to be defined by consciousness in a way similar to qualia, making it subjective on the one hand, and reducing it to a tool on the other. This implies, in turn, that we need a form of mind-brain dualism; the best we can do in such circumstances about explaining consciousness as an epistemic device - a role intuitively imposing itself in a variety of situations - is to embed it in an abstract ontology merely serving the purpose of a ''true'' reality with the help of the mind-brain link. Obviously, the approach favors subjectivity as a foundation in the ontological sense. Objectivity is considered here only as a suitably understood product from an ''observer's'' point of view, although a functional and useful one. The paper is addressed to readers with interest in both the mind-body problem and ontological foundations of present-day physics, specifically quantum theory. The main conclusion can be absorbed without the quantum part, although it is a bit less convincing then. (shrink)

The central aim of this thesis is to confront the world-view of positivistic materialism with its nihilistic implications and to develop an alternative world-view based on process philosophy, showing how in terms of this, science and ethics can be reconciled. The thesis begins with an account of the rise of positivism and materialism, or ‘scientism’, to its dominant position in the culture of Western civilization and shows what effect this has had on the image of man and consequently on ethical (...) views. After having shown the basic weaknesses of this world-view, the positivist account of science is criticised and an alternative epistemology is developed in which the aim of disciplined inquiry is seen to be understanding. It is argued on the basis of this epistemology that science and metaphysics are indissociable, and that the materialist conception of being is open to challenge from a different ontology. Having reviewed the various conceptions of being which have been developed in the past, a version of process philosophy is outlined and it is argued that this promises to be far more effective than materialism as a foundation for the natural sciences. In particular it is shown how in terms of process philosophy it is possible to conceive of living, sentient organisms as having emerged from inanimate being. This provides the basis for the development of a conception of humanity as an emergent form of life. The human order is then seen as a process of becoming within nature with its own unique dynamics, irreducible to any other processes, involving both intentional and unintentional processes. It is shown how on the basis of this conception of humanity it is possible to develop an ethical theory and a critical social science, and in this way, to transcend the disjunction between science and ethics. -/- . (shrink)

This essay aims to appreciate the evolution of the problems regarding the ontological understanding of the photographic image and its derivative, the film, in the face of the sophistication of the apparatus of its production. The creative freedom in making images through optical machines is inversely proportional to their credibility as documents. Since its appearance in the human landscape, as a cultural object, the technology of recording images with lights has brought with it a complex of aporias about (...) what would the nature of the image produced by cameras be: a document or an artistic object, intentionally produced and with created meaning? Consequently: are they denotative or, necessarily, connotative? The development of automatic image capture in the 1980s represented the first update of the question. To what extent, and for how long, will it be possible to trust photography and film as documents through which man aims to access reality? The question now seems to be settled, definitively, in the face of the invention of artificial photography made by algorithms. (shrink)

The logos question, one of the most important among the subjects that traverse the Plato's Sophist, has in fact some different aspects: the criticism of father Parmenides' logos, that is unable to speak about the not-being, but also about the being; the relations between logos and its cognates, phantasia, doxa and dianoia; the logos’ complex structure, that is a compound with onoma and rema; the difference between naming and saying, two distinct but inseparable actions; the logical and ontological conditions that (...) make possible to say the truth, or to lie or simply to joke; the necessity of a most flexible logos that allows us to speak about the not-being, and about the being, but at the same time is a logos dangerously similar to the sophist’ one; finally, the identity between the power to produce “spoken images” and the very power to speak. The aim of the present article is giving a systematical view of the matter that grasps all these faces. (shrink)

We investigate the fundamental relationship between philosophical aesthetics and the philosophy of nature, arguing for a position in which the latter encompasses the former. Two traditions are set against each other, one is natural aesthetics, whose covering philosophy is Idealism, and the other is the aesthetics of nature, the position defended in this article, with the general program of a comprehensive philosophy of nature as its covering theory. Our approach is philosophical, operating within the framework of the ontology of (...) the process of the production of art, especially the views of Antonin Artaud, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Deleuze, and Guattari. We interrogate Dilthey and Worringer while outlining an ontology of art based on the production of nonhuman images and a nonpersonal experiential field of nature. (shrink)

This thesis articulates an analytic version of the ontology of idealism, according to which universal phenomenal consciousness is all there ultimately is, everything else in nature being reducible to patterns of excitation of this consciousness. The thesis’ key challenge is to explain how the seemingly distinct conscious inner lives of different subjects—such as you and me—can arise within this fundamentally unitary phenomenal field. Along the way, a variety of other challenges are addressed, such as: how we can reconcile idealism (...) with the fact that we all inhabit a common external world; why this world unfolds independently of our personal volition or imagination; why there are such tight correlations between measured patterns of brain activity and reports of experience; etc. The core idea of this thesis can be summarized thus: we, as well as all other living organisms, are dissociated alters of universal phenomenal consciousness, analogously to how a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) manifests multiple disjoint centers of subjectivity also called ‘alters.’ We, and all other living organisms, are surrounded by the transpersonal phenomenal activity of universal consciousness, which unfolds beyond the dissociative boundary of our respective alter. The inanimate world we perceive around us is the extrinsic appearance—i.e. the phenomenal image imprinted from across our dissociative boundary—of this activity. The living organisms we share the world with are the extrinsic appearances of other alters. (shrink)

Despite the recent advances in information and communication technology that have increased our ability to store and circulate information, the task of ensuring that the right sorts of information gets to the right sorts of people remains. We argue that the many efforts underway to develop efficient means for sharing information across healthcare systems and organizations would benefit from a careful analysis of human action in healthcare organizations. This in turn requires that the management of information and knowledge within healthcare (...) organizations be combined with models of resources and processes of patient care that are based on a general ontology of social interaction. The Health Level 7 (HL7) is one of several ANSI-accredited Standards Developing Organizations operating in the healthcare arena. HL7 has advanced a widely used messaging standard that enables healthcare applications to exchange clinical and administrative data in digital form. HL7 focuses on the interface requirements of the entire healthcare system and not exclusively on the requirements of one area of healthcare such as pharmacy, medical devices, imaging or insurance transactions. This has inspired the development of a powerful abstract model of patient care called the Reference Information Model (RIM). The present paper begins with an overview of the core classes of the HL7 (Version 3) RIM and a brief discussion of its “actcentered” view of healthcare. Central to this account is what is called the life cycle of events. A clinical action may progress from defined, through planned and ordered, to executed. These modalities of an action are represented as the mood of the act. We then outline the basis of an ontology of organizations, starting from the theory of speech Acts, and apply this ontology to the HL7 RIM. Special attention is given to the sorts of preconditions that must be satisfied for the successful performance of a speech act and to the sorts of entities to which speech acts give rise (e.g. obligations, claims, commitments, etc.). Finally we draw conclusions for the efficient communication and management of medical information and knowledge within and between healthcare organizations, paying special attention to the role that medical documents play in such organizations. (shrink)

This paper explores the ontology of the beautiful from the standpoint of competing logics, i.e., ways of speaking the Logos. The first is a theo-logic centered on the analogy of being, which uniquely regards reality as Logos—a structured hierarchy of the real, a ‘Who’ rather than a ‘What’—which provides an ontology of beauty as desirable being, and ultimately, the desirable Being. The correct response to reality is thus holiness, the sacral separateness of God imparted to, and thus borrowed (...) by and reflected through, creatures. The competing logic is what Baudrillard calls the simulacral, in which the real is suspended by its own model; the image exposes the poverty of the real and causes it to disappear altogether, revealing a transaesthetics of banality and indifference, a totalizing counterfeit of the real that is beyond real difference, beyond Logos—and therefore beyond structured hierarchy, beyond beauty and ugliness. The simulated real is thus the world of the spectacle, the world as product of consumer gaze. A way to repudiate the simulation, the murderous image, to uncover the real always and already grounding the image is to return to Logos: to emplace the image in a hierarchically relational context within Logos. The upshot is that, when so emplaced, the gaze of the image tells a different story: the world is not one of consumerist spectacle but of mutual self-gifting. Amidst the barbarism of the dislocated consumer ego, we can conscientiously commune with neighbor and turn away from what Augustine termed "fellowship with the demons.". (shrink)

Epistemic reasons are mental states. They are not propositions or non-mental facts. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 introduces the topic. Section 2 gives two concrete examples of how our topic directly affects the internalism/externalism debate in normative epistemology. Section 3 responds to an argument against the view that reasons are mental states. Section 4 presents two problems for the view that reasons are propositions. Section 5 presents two problems for the view that reasons are non-mental facts. Section 6 (...) argues that reasons are mental states. Section 7 responds to objections. (shrink)

Because climate change can be seen as the blind spot of contemporary philosophy of technology, while the destructive side effects of technological progress are no longer deniable, this article reflects on the role of technologies in the constitution of the (post)Anthropocene world. Our first hypothesis is that humanity is not the primary agent involved in world-production, but concrete technologies. Our second hypothesis is that technological inventions at an ontic level have an ontological impact and constitutes world. As we object to (...) classical philosophers of technology like Ihde and Heidegger, we will sketch the progressive contribution of our conceptuality to understand the role of technology in the Anthropocene world. Our third hypothesis is that technology has emancipatory potential and in this respect, can inaugurate a post-Anthropocene World. We consider these three hypotheses to develop a philosophical account of the ontology of technology beyond an abstract and deterministic understanding. This concept enables us to philosophically reflect on the role of technology in the Anthropocene World in general, and its contribution to the transition to the post-Anthropocene World in particular. (shrink)

Contents: Anna Lemańska, The Autonomous Philosophy of Nature ; Anna Latawiec, The Progress in the Philosophy of Nature ; Grzegorz Bugajak, Philosophy of Nature, Realism, and the Postulated Ontology of Scientific Theories ; Maria-Magdalena Weker, Multi-dimensional Image of the World ; Jarosław Kukowski, The Application of Principia Mathematica and Principia Metaphisica for Resolving the Incommensurate Paradigms. The Comparative Study in Philosophy of Physics and Philosophy of Nature ; Danuta Ługowska, The Dilemmas Concerning the Essence of Life ; Adam Świeżyński, (...) The Beginning of the Universe in the Concept of Creation and in Contemporary Cosmology. The Philosopher’s of Nature Considerations . (shrink)

The recent publication of André Bazin's Écrits complets, an enormous two-volume edition of 3000 pages which increases ten-fold Bazin's available corpus, provides opportunities for renewed reflection on, and possibly for substantial revisions of, this key figure in film theory. On the basis of several essays, I propose a drastic rereading of Bazin's most explicitly philosophical notion of “ontology.” This all too familiar notion, long settled into a rather dust-laden couple nonetheless retains its fascination. Rather than attempting to provide a (...) systematic reworking of this couple along well established lines, particularly those defined by realism and indexicality, this article proposes to shift the notion of ontology in Bazin from its determination as actual existence toward a more radical concept of ontology based on the notion of mimesis, particularly as articulated, in a Heideggerian mode, by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. This more properly ontological concept, also paradoxically and radically improper, is shown to be at work already in Bazin's texts, and it allows us to see that far from simplistically naturalizing photographic technology, Bazin does the contrary: he technicizes nature. If Bazin says that the photograph is a flower or a snowflake, he also implies that, like photographs, these are likewise a kind of technical artifact, an auto-mimetic reproduction of nature. Bazin likewise refers to film as a kind of skin falling away from the body of History, an accumulating pellicule in which nature and history disturbingly merge. This shifted perspective on Bazin's thinking is extended further in reference to Georges Didi-Huberman on the highly mimetic creatures known as phasmids, insects that mimic their environement. I extend this into the dynamic notion of eternal return, an implicit dimension of Bazin's thinking, clarified here in reference to Giorgio Agamben and the “immemorial image” which, like Bazin's “Death Every Afternoon,” presents an eminently repeatable deathly image, an animated corpse-world that can be likened to hell. (shrink)

The rapidly increasing wealth of genomic data has driven the development of tools to assist in the task of representing and processing information about genes, their products and their functions. One of the most important of these tools is the Gene Ontology (GO), which is being developed in tandem with work on a variety of bioinformatics databases. An examination of the structure of GO, however, reveals a number of problems, which we believe can be resolved by taking account of (...) certain organizing principles drawn from philosophical ontology. We shall explore the results of applying such principles to GO with a view to improving GO’s consistency and coherence and thus its future applicability in the automated processing of biological data. (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)

This dissertation aims to show the philosophical content of the ‘society of spectacle’ concept, which was elaborated by a French thinker from the second part of the 20th century, Guy Debord. The study achieves this aim by means of the history of philosophy, analyzing this concept in the context of previous and contemporary philosophical ideas. Analysis, the structural method, the hermeneutic method of interpretation, and the comparative method are prime research methods. The philosophical part of Guy Debord’s legacy is underexplored, (...) so the dissertation helps to make significant progress in its exploration, because it sheds light on the key concepts of this theoretician. -/- The topic is divided into three themes discussed in the corresponding chapters. In the first chapter the research discusses the literature on the ‘society of spectacle’ and the proper methodology for exploring the philosophical content of this concept. In the next chapter the research covers the ontological basis of this concept in the framework of the history of philosophy, and in the third chapter the study focuses on the historical and philosophical research of the portion of the content of the concept which expresses Debord’s social and political philosophy. -/- The dissertation argues that the ‘society of spectacle’ concept is rooted in Guy Debord’s ideas about discrete space and the specific ontological status of ‘image’ as a substitute for reality. Thoughts in the area of ontology distinguish Guy Debord’s concept from similar ideas of other authors; for instance, from Roland Barthes’ theories. On the contrary, the ontological basis of the ‘society of spectacle’ places this concept in close quarters with Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida’s ideas about space and reality. The dissertation particularly argues for the conceptual proximity of G. Debord’s notion of ‘image’ with Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘simulacrum’, and also of G. Debord’s notion of ‘creating of images’ with Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘deconstruction.’ The study then argues that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a more radical interpretation of the irrationality of social behavior than similar concepts of thinkers such as Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Paul-Michel Foucault. Moreover, the analysis shows that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a result of a long development of philosophical ideas which compare world, society or cognitive processes with spectacle throughout all main periods of the history of Western philosophy, primarily its modern period. -/- In contemporary research literature on G. Debord’s theoretical legacy, the dissertation primarily contributes the new idea that Debord’s thoughts have an ontological basis that opens new vistas for further researching their content and explaining their influence on contemporary culture. (shrink)

Does Anne Conway (1631–79) hold that the created world consists of a single underlying substance? Some have argued that she does; others have argued that she is a priority monist and so holds that there are many created substances, but the whole created world is ontologically prior to each particular creature. Against both of these proposals, this article makes the case for a substance pluralist interpretation of Conway: individual creatures are distinct substances, and the whole created world is not ontologically (...) prior to the individual creatures that compose it. The basic argument for such a view draws on Conway's claims about the freedom and moral responsibility of individual creatures. The pluralist reading is straightforwardly compatible with these claims, while the monistic readings are not. (shrink)

The starting point of this article is the observation that the emergence of the Anthropocene rehabilitates the need for philosophical reflections on the ontology of technology. In particular, if technological innovations on an ontic level of beings in the world are created, but these innovations at the same time create the Anthropocene World at an ontological level, this raises the question how World creation has to be understood. We first identify four problems with the traditional concept of creation: the (...) anthropocentric, ontic and outcome orientation of traditional concepts of creation, as well as its orientation of material fabrication. We subsequently develop a progressive concept of World creation with four characteristics that move beyond the traditional conceptuality: a materialistic concept of creation that accounts for the ontogenetic process and the ontic and ontological nature of creation, and is conceptualized as semantic creation of the World in which we live and act. (shrink)

In Risk Management, security issues arise from complex relations among objects and agents, their capabilities and vulnerabilities, the events they are involved in, and the value and risk they ensue to the stakeholders at hand. Further, there are patterns involving these relations that crosscut many domains, ranging from information security to public safety. Understanding and forming a shared conceptualization and vocabulary about these notions and their relations is fundamental for modeling the corresponding scenarios, so that proper security countermeasures can be (...) devised. Ontologies are instruments developed to address these conceptual clarification and terminological systematization issues. Over the years, several ontologies have been proposed in Risk Management and Security Engineering. However, as shown in recent literature, they fall short in many respects, including generality and expressivity - the latter impacting on their interoperability with related models. We propose a Reference Ontology for Security Engineering (ROSE) from a Risk Treatment perspective. Our proposal leverages on two existing Reference Ontologies: the Common Ontology of Value and Risk and a Reference Ontology of Prevention, both of which are grounded on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). ROSE is employed for modeling and analysing some cases, in particular providing clarification to the semantically overloaded notion of Security Mechanism. (shrink)

What are words? What makes two token words tokens of the same word-type? Are words abstract entities, or are they (merely) collections of tokens? The ontology of words tries to provide answers to these, and related questions. This article provides an overview of some of the most prominent views proposed in the literature, with a particular focus on the debate between type-realist, nominalist, and eliminativist ontologies of words.

Though the realm of biology has long been under the philosophical rule of the mechanistic magisterium, recent years have seen a surprisingly steady rise in the usurping prowess of process ontology. According to its proponents, theoretical advances in the contemporary science of evo-devo have afforded that ontology a particularly powerful claim to the throne: in that increasingly empirically confirmed discipline, emergently autonomous, higher-order entities are the reigning explanantia. If we are to accept the election of evo-devo as our (...) best conceptualisation of the biological realm with metaphysical rigour, must we depose our mechanistic ontology for failing to properly “carve at the joints” of organisms? In this paper, I challenge the legitimacy of that claim: not only can the theoretical benefits offered by a process ontology be had without it, they cannot be sufficiently grounded without the metaphysical underpinning of the very mechanisms which processes purport to replace. The biological realm, I argue, remains one best understood as under the governance of mechanistic principles. (shrink)

This paper defends an ontology of weak entity realism for homeostatic property cluster (HPC) theories of natural kinds, adapted from Bird’s (Synthese 195(4):1397–1426, 2018) taxonomy of such theories. Weak entity realism about HPC kinds accepts the existence of natural kinds. Weak entity realism denies two theses: that (1) HPC kinds have mind-independent essences, and that (2) HPC kinds reduce to entities, such as complex universals, posited only by metaphysical theories. Strong entity realism accepts (1) and (2), whereas moderate entity (...) realism accepts only (1). Given its commitment to (2), strong entity realism is more theoretically complex than weak entity realism, with little explanatory payoff. Given their commitment to (1), moderate and strong entity realisms cannot explain how the identity conditions of HPC kinds are to be straightforwardly knowable. I argue that weak entity realism avoids such epistemic difficulties. I further rebut two plausible criticisms of weak entity realism, namely that weak entity realism cannot account for quantification over kinds, and that weak entity realism cannot provide identity conditions for HPC kinds which are both scientifically useful and objective. Given the theoretical costs of strong and moderate entity realism, and weak entity realism’s adequate response to its most plausible challenges, weak entity realism about HPCs is to be preferred, especially for biological and chemical kinds. (shrink)

We describe a strategy for integration of data that is based on the idea of semantic enhancement. The strategy promises a number of benefits: it can be applied incrementally; it creates minimal barriers to the incorporation of new data into the semantically enhanced system; it preserves the existing data (including any existing data-semantics) in their original form (thus all provenance information is retained, and no heavy preprocessing is required); and it embraces the full spectrum of data sources, types, models, and (...) modalities (including text, images, audio, and signals). The result of applying this strategy to a given body of data is an evolving Dataspace that allows the application of a variety of integration and analytic processes to diverse data contents. We conceive semantic enhancement (SE) as a lightweight and flexible process that leverages the richness of the structured contents of the Dataspace without adding storage and processing burdens to what, in the intelligence domain, will be an already storage- and processing-heavy starting point. SE works not by changing the data to which it is applied, but rather by adding an extra semantic layer to this data. We sketch how the semantic enhancement approach can be applied consistently and in cumulative fashion to new data and data-models that enter the Dataspace. (shrink)

In this paper I focus on a passage of Plato’s Laws that so far has been the object of little study (V 731d-732b). In the Laws, the origin of all evil is neither an ontological principle, as in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, nor a simple lack of knowledge (àghnoia) or a lack of knowledge combined with the false presumption of knowledge (amathìa). Rather, in this passage amathìa itself is traced back to “excessive self-love” (sphòdra heautoû philìa). I show that this “excess” (...) has a specific “anthropological” relevance, because it is not limited to the intellectual sphere or to the will, but directly concerns the human way of loving. The thesis that I argue for in this paper is that this “excess” is a possibility implicit in the human being qua àplestos, and should therefore be interpreted in an “anthropological” sense: it does not indicate a simple “lack” of balance, but rather a possibility and a risk to which humans expose themselves when they exceed the homeostatic balance of needs typical of non-human animals. Finally, I trace the various steps of this “anthropology of excess” back to its origin: the image of the leaky jar found in the Gorgias. (shrink)

As soon as you believe an imagination to be nonfictional, this imagination becomes your ontological theory of the reality. Your ontological theory (of the reality) can describe a system as the reality. However, actually this system is only a theory/conceptual-space/imagination/visual-imagery of yours, not the actual reality (i.e., the thing-in-itself). An ontological theory (of the reality) actually only describes your (subjective/mental) imagination/visual-imagery/conceptual-space. An ontological theory of the reality, is being described as a situation model (SM). There is no way to prove/disprove (...) that there is only one reality, or there are two realities (i.e., “subjective reality” and “objective reality”). So, every ontology talk/theory/imagination about the two realities is only a talk/theory/imagination – we will never know whether it is true or not. The conventionally-called “physical/objective reality/world” around my conventionally-called “physical/objective body” is actually a geometric mathematical model (being generated/mathematically-modeled by my brain) – it's actually a subset/component/part/element of my brain’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image. Our cosmos is an autonomous objective parallel computing automaton (aka state machine) which evolves by itself automatically/unintentionally – wave-particle duality and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle can be explained under this SM of my brain. Each elementary particle (as a building block of our cosmos) is an autonomous mathematical entity itself (i.e., a thing in itself). Our cosmos has the same nature as a Game of Life system – both are autonomous objective parallel-computing automata. Cosmos (as a state machine) is indistinguishable from a digital simulation – my consciousness (as something nonphysical) is not cosmos (as a state machine). If we are happy to accept randomness/stochasticity, then it is obviously possible that all other worlds in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) actually do not exist (objectively). As one metaphysical option, we can treat all other worlds as subjective only (even if they are actually objective). Under the context of this metaphysical option, we are only living in one world (i.e., the world we are currently living in; this world) – we are not living in many worlds at the same time parallelly. Under the context of this metaphysical option, there is only one possible future. The relationship among any number of elementary particles, is governed/described by Schrodinger equation. If (in theory) Schrodinger equation can’t be used to reliably forecast whether I will go to McDonald for dinner in this world (based on the current state of all elementary particles of the cosmos), then what can Schrodinger equation do? The conventionally-called “space” does not exist objectively. “Time” and “matter” are not physical. Consciousness is the subjective-form (aka quale) of the mathematical models (of the objective cosmos) which are intracorporeally/subjectively used by the control logic of a Turing machine’s program fatedly. A Turing machine’s mind/consciousness/manifest-image or deliberate decisions/choices should not be able to actually/objectively change/control/drive the (autonomous or fated) worldline of any elementary particle within this world (i.e., the world we are currently living in, under the context of MWI). Besides the Schrodinger equation (or another mathematical equation/function which is yet to be discovered) which is a valid/correct/factual causality of our cosmos/state-machine, every other causality (of our cosmos/state-machine) is either invalid/incorrect/counterfactual or can be proved by deductive inference based on the Schrodinger equation (or the aforementioned yet-to-be-discovered mathematical equation/function) only. Closed causality entails no causality. Consciousness plays no causal role (“epiphenomenalism”), or in other words, any cognitive/behavioural activity can in principle be carried out without consciousness (“conscious inessentialism”). If the “loop quantum gravity” theory is correct, then time/space does not actually/objectively exist in the objective-evolution of the objective cosmos, or in other words, we should not use the subjective/mental concept of “time”, “state” or “space” to describe/imagine the objective-evolution of our cosmos. (shrink)

The goal of the Department of Defense Net-Centric Data Strategy is to improve data sharing throughout the DoD. Data sharing is a critical element of interoperability in the emerging system-of-systems. Achieving interoperability requires the elimination of two types of data heterogeneity: differences of syntax and differences of semantics. This paper builds a path toward semantic uniformity through application of a disciplined approach to ontology. An ontology is a consensus framework representing the types of entities within a given domain (...) and the relations between them. The construction of an ontology begins when a Community of Interest (COI) identifies its authoritative data sources (ADS), which are usually manifest in relevant doctrinal publications, glossaries, data dictionaries, and logical data models. The identified terms are then defined in relation to a common logical framework that has been designed to ensure interoperability with other ontologies created on the basis of the same strategy. As will be described, the Command and Control (C2) Ontology will include representations of a substantial number of entities within the Command and Control (C2) domain. If domain ontologies (e.g. Strike and Counterinsurgency) semantically align with the C2 Ontology, then a substantial barrier to systems interoperability is thereby crossed. (shrink)

The idea that God creates out of Himself seems quite attractive. Many find great appeal in holding that a temporally finite universe must have a cause, but I think there’s also great appeal in holding that there’s pre-existent stuff out of which that universe is created—and what could that stuff be but part of God? Though attractive, the idea of creation ex deo hasn’t been taken seriously by theistic philosophers. Perhaps this is because it seems too vague—‘could anything enlightening be (...) said about what those parts are?’—or objectionable—‘wouldn’t creating out of those parts lessen or destroy God?’ Drawing from Stephen Kosslyn and Michael Tye’s work on the ontology of mental images, I respond to the above questions by developing a theory on which God creates the universe out of His mental imagery. (shrink)

Fish Night, an episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (S01E12, 2019) based on a 1982 short story by Joe R. Lansdale, can be interpreted as an allegory of the impossibility of immersive experience: if real, it is deadly, because the images are no longer such or ghosts but living beings present in a shared environmental habitat, acting with but also against the subject, in turn no longer a spectator. Comparing the story and film, and ancient ekphrastic literature, I discuss, (...) in a trans-medial imaginary genealogical perspective, the symptoms of this cultural topos and of the regressive desire for immersion and for transparent immediacy that shapes and drives it, dwelling in particular on the ambivalent phenomenological and ontological relations between living bodies, pictures and media as deep time-bending. (shrink)

In this paper I want to show that topology has a bearing on the theory of tropes. More precisely, I propose a topological ontology of tropes. This is to be understood as follows: trope ontology is a „one-category”-ontology countenancing only one kind of basic entities, to wit, tropes. 1 Hence, individuals, properties, relations, etc. are to be constructed from tropes.

Biologists explain organisms’ behavior not only as having been programmed by genes and shaped by natural selection, but also as the result of an organism’s agency: the capacity to react to environmental changes in goal-driven ways. The use of such ‘agential explanations’ reopens old questions about how justified it is to ascribe agency to entities like bacteria or plants that obviously lack rationality and even a nervous system. Is organismic agency genuinely ‘real’ or is it just a useful fiction? In (...) this paper we focus on two questions: whether agential explanations are to be interpreted ontically, and whether they can be reduced to non-agential explanations (thereby dispensing with agency). The Kantian approach we identify interprets agential explanations non-ontically, yet holds agency to be indispensable. Attributing agency to organisms is not to be taken literally in the way we attribute physical properties such as mass or acceleration, but nor is it a mere heuristic or predictive tool. Rather, it is an inevitable consequence of our own rational capacity: as long as we are rational agents ourselves, we cannot avoid seeing agency in organisms. (shrink)

The link between human nature and human flourishing is undeniable. "A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit" (Matt. 7:18). The ontology of the human person will, therefore, ground the nature of human flourishing and thereby sanctification. Spiritual formation is the area of Christian theology that studies sanctification, the Spirit-guided process whereby disciples of Jesus are formed into the image of Jesus (Rom. 8:28-29; 2 Cor. 3:18; 2 Peter 3:18). Until the nineteenth (...) century, there was an overwhelming consensus among Christian thinkers that some form of mind-body (or soul-body) dualism is true of human beings. Recently, that consensus has eroded, and with it the availability of a shared body of knowledge about spiritual formation. Some Christian physicalists argue that dualism is incompatible with central elements of spiritual formation. Neuroscientist Warren Brown and psychologist Brad Strawn offer the only substantive account of spiritual formation from the view of Christian physicalism and its accompanying objections to dualism. It is on their arguments that this chapter focuses. We argue that Brown and Strawn fail to support their incompatibility thesis. Additionally, we argue that Christian physicalism stands in tension with important philosophical and theological foundations of Christian spiritual formation. In doing so we offer a specific form of dualism, the bodily soul view, and explain how this view illuminates the importance of embodiment, our neurological and social development, and hence the important physical aspects of Christian spiritual formation. (shrink)