Backwaters of Ontology: the Special Composition Question and Its
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First-Order Logic
INF5390 – Kunstig intelligens First-Order Logic Roar Fjellheim Outline Logical commitments First-order logic First-order inference Resolution rule Reasoning systems Summary Extracts from AIMA Chapter 8: First-Order Logic Chapter 9: Inference in First-Order Logic INF5390-AI-05 First-Order Logic 2 From propositonal to first-order logic Features of propositional logic: + Declarative + Compositional + ”Possible-world” semantics - Lacks expressiveness First-order logic: Extends propositional logic Keeps good features Adds expressiveness INF5390-AI-05 First-Order Logic 3 First-order logic First-order logic is based on “common sense” or linguistic concepts: Objects: people, houses, numbers, .. Properties: tall, red, .. Relations: brother, bigger than, .. Functions: father of, roof of, .. Variables: x, y, .. (takes objects as values) First-order logic is the most important and best understood logic in philosophy, mathematics, and AI INF5390-AI-05 First-Order Logic 4 Logic “commitments” Ontological commitment Ontology - in philosophy, the study of “what is” What are the underlying assumptions of the logic with respect to the nature of reality Epistemological commitment Epistemology - in philosophy, the study of “what can be known” What are the underlying assumptions of the logic with respect to the nature of what the agent can know INF5390-AI-05 First-Order Logic 5 Commitments of some logic languages Language Ontological Epistemological Commitment Commitment Propositional logic Facts True/false/unknown First-order logic -
RATES of PASSAGE James Van Cleve That Time Flows Or Passes
To appear in Analytical Philosophy. RATES OF PASSAGE James Van Cleve That time flows or passes seems to be among the most obvious and inescapable of truths, yet there is an entire camp of philosophers who deny it—upholders of what is variously called the static theory of time, the eternalist theory, the four-dimensional theory, or the B theory.1 There is an initially compelling argument for their position, expressible in a pair of rhetorical questions: If time passes, must there not be a rate at which it passes? Yet what could that rate possibly be? The very idea of such a rate seems nonsensical or absurd. To make sense of it, we would evidently need to posit a hyper-time in which ordinary time passes, but the notion of hyper-time, besides being mystifying by itself, seems to be but the second step in a preposterous infinite series of time dimensions, hyper-hyper-time and so on up.2 My aim in this paper is to defend the man in the street’s dynamic conception of time by answering this simple yet forceful argument. The sections are as follows: 1. Markosian and Prior on the passage of time 2. Markosian’s reply to the rate-of-passage arguments 3. Rates of passage and infinite regress arguments 4. Absolute lengths and absolute rates 5. An hour per hour all over again 6. Prior’s schema and the puzzle of passage 7. Summary and conclusion Appendix: Shoemaker worlds 1 For a run-down of various related “isms” and the various names in play for them, see Sider 2001 or the introduction to Gale 1967. -
Functions in Basic Formal Ontology
Applied Ontology 11 (2016) 103–128 103 DOI 10.3233/AO-160164 IOS Press Functions in Basic Formal Ontology Andrew D. Spear a,∗, Werner Ceusters b and Barry Smith c a Philosophy Department, Grand Valley State University, 1 Campus Drive, Allendale, MI 49401, USA Tel.: +1 616 331 2847; Fax: +1 616 331 2601; E-mail: [email protected] b Departments of Biomedical Informatics and Psychiatry, University at Buffalo, 77 Goodell street, Buffalo, NY 14203, USA E-mail: [email protected] c Department of Philosophy, University at Buffalo, 135 Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract. The notion of function is indispensable to our understanding of distinctions such as that between being broken and being in working order (for artifacts) and between being diseased and being healthy (for organisms). A clear account of the ontology of functions and functioning is thus an important desideratum for any top-level ontology intended for application to domains such as engineering or medicine. The benefit of using top-level ontologies in applied ontology can only be realized when each of the categories identified and defined by a top-level ontology is integrated with the others in a coherent fashion. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) has from the beginning included function as one of its categories, exploiting a version of the etiological account of function that is framed at a level of generality sufficient to accommodate both biological and artifactual functions. This account has been subjected to a series of criticisms and refinements. We here articulate BFO’s account of function, provide some reasons for favoring it over competing views, and defend it against objections. -
A Definition of Ontological Category
Two Demarcation Problems In Ontology Pawel Garbacz Department of Philosophy John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland Abstract his or her research interests. Or if not, then everything goes into the scope. In this paper I will attempt to characterise the difference be- This paper is then about the proper subject matter of ap- tween ontological and non-ontological categories for the sake of a better understanding of the subject matter of ontology. plied ontology. I will attempt to draw a demarcation line My account of ontological categories defines them as equiva- between ontological and non-ontological categories. To this lence classes of a certain family of equivalence relations that end I will search for the proper level of generality of the lat- are determined by ontological relations. As a result, the de- ter by looking at how philosophical ontology defines its sub- marcation problem for ontological categories turns out to be ject matter. I will discuss a number of attempts to capture the dependent on the demarcation problem for ontological rela- specific nature of the ontological categories, as they are used tions. in philosophy, and on the basis of this survey I outline my own proposal. The main point of my contribution is the idea Introduction that ontological categories are the most general categories that cut the reality at its joints, where cutting is provided There are a lot of ontologies out there. (Ding et al., 2005) by ontological relations. In consequence it will turn out that claim to harvest from the Internet more than 300 000 Se- this account depends on how one can draw a demarcation mantic Web documents, of which 1.5% may be unique on- line between ontological and non-ontological relations. -
Ontological Commitment of Natural Language Semantics
Ontological Commitment of Natural Language Semantics MSc Thesis (Afstudeerscriptie) written by Viktoriia Denisova (born July, 23d 1986 in Kustanay, Kazakhstan) under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Martin Stokhof, and submitted to the Board of Examiners in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MSc in Logic at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Date of the public defense: Members of the Thesis Committee: March, 23d 2012 Prof. Dr. Martin Stokhof Prof. Dr. Frank Veltman Dr. Paul Dekker Contents Acknowledgments v Abstract vi Introduction 1 1 Quine's Ontological Criterion 5 1.1 Why do we need to define the criterion of ontological commitment? 5 1.2 Why do we operate on the semantic level when talking about on- tology? . 13 1.3 What does Quine's ontological criterion bring to semantics? . 15 1.4 What is the role of logic in determination of the ontological com- mitment? . 17 1.5 Concluding remarks . 19 2 Critique of the Ontological Criterion 21 2.1 Hodges on the philosophical importance of ontological commitment 21 2.2 Evaluation of Hodges's exposition . 25 2.3 Beyond the semantics of standard first-order logic . 27 2.3.1 The difficulties concerning first-order regimentation . 27 2.3.2 Regimentation of the sentences that contain plurals . 30 2.3.3 Regimentation of modals . 31 2.4 Evaluation of Rayo's exposition . 33 3 Ontological commitment within possible worlds semantics 35 3.1 The reasons to consider ontological commitment in intensional lan- guage . 35 3.2 Ontological commitment for proper names . 37 3.3 Natural kind terms . -
Miriam Schoenfield
________________________________________________________________________ Miriam Schoenfield ________________________________________________________________________ Department of Philosophy E-mail: [email protected] New York University 5 Washington Place New York, NY 10003 Areas of Specialization and Competence AOS: Epistemology, Metaethics AOC: Philosophy of Mind, Applied Ethics, Logic, Philosophy of Race and Gender Employment Bersoff Fellow – New York University (Fall 2015-Spring 2017) Assistant Professor – The University of Texas at Austin (Fall 2012 – Present) Visiting Scholar – The University of Oxford – New Insights and Directions in Religious Epistemology (May 2013, May 2014, May 2015) Education Ph.D. in Philosophy Dissertation: Imprecision in Normative Domains Roger White (chair) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2007 – 2012) B.A. in Philosophy with Highest Honors, in Mathematics with Honors, in Neuroscience summa cum laude Brandeis University (2002 – 2006) Publications - Refereed “The Accuracy and Rationality of Imprecise Credences” Forthcoming in Noûs “Moral Vagueness is Ontic Vagueness” Forthcoming in Ethics 1 “Bridging Rationality and Accuracy” Forthcoming in The Journal of Philosophy “A Dilemma for Calibrationism” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2015) 91(2):425-455 “Permission to Believe: Why Permissivism is True and What it Tells Us About Irrelevant Influences on Belief” Noûs (2014) 48(2):193-218 “Chilling Out on Epistemic Rationality: A Defense of Imprecise Credences (and other imprecise doxastic attitudes)” -
The Dynamic Theory of Time and Time Travel to the Past
University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Philosophy Department Faculty Publication Series Philosophy 2020 The Dynamic Theory of Time and Time Travel to the Past Ned Markosian Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/philosophy_faculty_pubs The Dynamic Theory of Time and Time Travel to the Past Ned Markosian University of Massachusetts Amherst DOI: 10.2478/disp-2020-0006 BIBLID [0873-626X (2020) 57; pp.137–165] Abstract I argue that time travel to the past is impossible, given a certain meta- physical theory, namely, The Dynamic Theory of Time. I first spell out my particular way of capturing the difference between The Dynamic Theory of Time and its rival, The Static Theory of Time. Next I offer four different arguments for the conclusion that The Dynamic Theory is inconsistent with the possibility of time travel to the past. Then I argue that, even if I am wrong about this, it will still be true that The Dynamic Theory entails that you should not want to travel back to the past. Finally, I conclude by considering a puzzle that arises for those who believe that time travel to the past is metaphysically impossible: What exactly are we thinking about when we seem to be thinking about traveling back in time? For it certainly does not feel like we are thinking about something that is metaphysically impossible. Keywords Time travel, Dynamic Theory of Time, Static Theory of Time, backward causation, presentism. 1 Introduction Most people will tell you that the inexorable passage of time is a real thing, and (for better or worse) one of the more salient aspects of reality.1 For most people endorse what is sometimes called The Dynamic Theory of Time, according to which time really passes, and there are fundamental differences between the past, the present, and the future. -
GMS 6805: Introduction to Applied Ontology Location
GMS 6805: Introduction to Applied Ontology Location: Online, TBA Class Hours: Wednesdays 1:55-3:50 pm Instructor: Mathias Brochhausen, PhD Office: 3226, Clinical and Translational Science Building Email: [email protected] Phone: 501-831-3119 Office Hours: By Appointment Course Description: Applied ontology is a sub-discipline of knowledge representation that develops resources that make the meaning of terms processable by computers to improve interoperability of data and to support reasoning with digital knowledge bases. This course introduces students to the fundamentals of applied ontology and its role in biomedical informatics. Students will learn what ontologies are, how they differ from similar resources and how they are implemented in knowledge management environments. Course Prerequisites: None, but PHI 6105: Seminar in Logic, or experience with symbolic logic, is an asset. Course Objectives: • Describe the need for semantic integration of biomedical data • Identify the components of the Semantic Web technology and the goals of Semantic Web Technologies • Describe how ontologies fit into the Semantic Web paradigm and the role of Applied Ontology within in • Understand the computational principles behind ontology development and implementation • Describe how ontological artifacts differ terminologies and other semantic resources • Articulate standards and criteria for good ontologies and evaluate ontologies in light of these criteria • Illustrate common pitfalls of ontology development • Create a domain ontology in an ontology editor such as Protégé • Construct queries that demonstrate an understanding of the logical principles of ontologies and the Semantic Web Course Texts: Required Tests: Antoniou, G. (2012). A Semantic Web Primer. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Arp, R. et al. -
Ontology, Ontologies, and Science
Ontology, Ontologies, and Science Gary H. Merrill This is the “final accepted version” of the manuscript, made publicly available in accord with the policies of SpringerNature. The final publication in the journal Topoi (April 2011, Volume 30, Issue 1, pp 71–83) is available via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11245-011-9091-x ABSTRACT Philosophers frequently struggle with the relation of metaphysics to the everyday world, with its practical value, and with its relation to empirical science. This paper distinguishes several different models of the relation between philosophical ontology and applied (scientific) ontology that have been advanced in the history of philosophy. Adoption of a strong participation model for the philosophical ontologist in science is urged, and requirements and consequences of the participation model are explored. This approach provides both a principled view and justification of the role of the philosophical ontologist in contemporary empirical science as well as guidelines for integrating philosophers and philosophical contributions into the practice of science. Introduction Metaphysicians, when explaining or justifying their calling, tend to be a mournful and defensive lot while at the same time extolling the intellectual, moral, and spiritual virtues of metaphysics and its practice. A classic example is found in Russell's The Problems of Philosophy where he argues that philosophy as a discipline is not quite as fruitless as it may appear: Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge.... But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions.... It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science... -
Ontology-Based Approach for Structural Design Considering Low Embodied Energy and Carbon
This is an Open Access document downloaded from ORCA, Cardiff University's institutional repository: http://orca.cf.ac.uk/73163/ This is the author’s version of a work that was submitted to / accepted for publication. Citation for final published version: Hou, Shangjie, Li, Haijiang and Rezgui, Yacine 2015. Ontology-based approach for structural design considering low embodied energy and carbon. Energy and Buildings 102 , pp. 75-90. 10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.04.051 file Publishers page: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.04.051 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.04.051> Please note: Changes made as a result of publishing processes such as copy-editing, formatting and page numbers may not be reflected in this version. For the definitive version of this publication, please refer to the published source. You are advised to consult the publisher’s version if you wish to cite this paper. This version is being made available in accordance with publisher policies. See http://orca.cf.ac.uk/policies.html for usage policies. Copyright and moral rights for publications made available in ORCA are retained by the copyright holders. Accepted Manuscript Title: Ontology-based approach for structural design considering low embodied energy and carbon Author: Shangjie Hou Haijiang Li Yacine Rezgui PII: S0378-7788(15)00350-3 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2015.04.051 Reference: ENB 5843 To appear in: ENB Received date: 14-11-2014 Revised date: 21-4-2015 Accepted date: 28-4-2015 Please cite this article as: S. -
Introduction to Applied Ontology and Ontological Analysis
First Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis Introduction to Applied Ontology and Ontological Analysis Nicola Guarino National Research Council, Institute for Cognitive Science and Technologies (ISTC-CNR) Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA) www.loa.istc.cnr.it Applied Ontology: an emerging interdisciplinary area • Applied Ontology builds on philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics and logic with the purpose of understanding, clarifying, making explicit and communicating people's assumptions about the nature and structure of the world. • This orientation towards helping people understanding each other distinguishes applied ontology from philosophical ontology, and motivates its unavoidable interdisciplinary nature. ontological analysis: study of content (of these assumptions) as such (independently of their representation) 4 Ontological analysis and conceptual modeling Conceptual modeling is the activity of formally describing some aspects of the physical and social world around us for the purposes of understanding and communication (John Mylopoulos) Focusing on content Do we know what to REpresent? • First analysis, • THEN representation… Unfortunately, this is not the current practice… • Computer scientists have focused on the structure of representations and the nature of reasoning more than on the content of such representations Essential ontological promiscuity of AI: any agent creates its own ontology based on its usefulness for the task at hand (Genesereth and Nilsson 1987) No representation without ontological -
Musical Works: Category and Identity
1 Musical Works: Category and Identity A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) In the Faculty of Humanities 2013 Philip Letts School of Social Sciences 2 Contents Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 7 Declaration ...................................................................................................................... 8 Copyright Statement ........................................................................................................ 8 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................... 9 Part 1: Category ............................................................................................................. 10 Chapter 1: The Project ................................................................................................... 10 1: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 10 2: Answering the Categorial Question .......................................................................... 12 2.1: The Music Internal Problem ................................................................................... 14 2.2: The Central Judgments Concerning Musical Works .............................................. 17 2.3: The External Problem ............................................................................................