Beyond Concepts: Ontology As Reality Representation
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Between Dualism and Immanentism Sacramental Ontology and History
religions Article Between Dualism and Immanentism Sacramental Ontology and History Enrico Beltramini Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Notre Dame de Namur University, Belmont, CA 94002, USA; [email protected] Abstract: How to deal with religious ideas in religious history (and in history in general) has recently become a matter of discussion. In particular, a number of authors have framed their work around the concept of ‘sacramental ontology,’ that is, a unified vision of reality in which the secular and the religious come together, although maintaining their distinction. The authors’ choices have been criticized by their fellow colleagues as a form of apologetics and a return to integralism. The aim of this article is to provide a proper context in which to locate the phenomenon of sacramental ontology. I suggest considering (1) the generation of the concept of sacramental ontology as part of the internal dialectic of the Christian intellectual world, not as a reaction to the secular; and (2) the adoption of the concept as a protection against ontological nihilism, not as an attack on scientific knowledge. Keywords: sacramental ontology; history; dualism; immanentism; nihilism Citation: Beltramini, Enrico. 2021. Between Dualism and Immanentism Sacramental Ontology and History. Religions 12: 47. https://doi.org/ 1. Introduction 10.3390rel12010047 A specter is haunting the historical enterprise, the specter of ‘sacramental ontology.’ Received: 3 December 2020 The specter of sacramental ontology is carried by a generation of Roman Catholic and Accepted: 23 December 2020 Evangelical historians as well as historical theologians who aim to restore the sacred dimen- 1 Published: 11 January 2021 sion of nature. -
Duns Scotus on the Common Nature and the Individual Differentia
c Peter King, Philosophical Topics 20 (1992), 50–76 DUNS SCOTUS ON THE COMMON NATURE* Introduction COTUS holds that in each individual there is a principle that accounts for its being the very thing it is and a formally S distinct principle that accounts for its being the kind of thing it is; the former is its individual differentia, the latter its common nature.1 These two principles are not on a par: the common nature is prior to the individual differentia, both independent of it and indifferent to it. When the individual differentia is combined with the common nature, the result is a concrete individual that really differs from all else and really agrees with others of the same kind. The individual differentia and the common nature thereby explain what Scotus takes to stand in need of explanation: the indi- viduality of Socrates on the one hand, the commonalities between Socrates * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 26th International Congress on Medieval Studies, sponsored by the Medieval Institute, held at Western Michigan University 9–12 May 1991. All translations are my own. Scotus’s writings may be found in the following editions: (1) Vaticana: Iohannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilis et Mariani opera omnia, ed. P. Carolus Bali¸cet alii, Typis Polyglottis Vaticanae 1950– Vols. I–VII, XVI–XVIII. (2) Wadding-Viv`es: Joannis Duns Scoti Doctoris Subtilis Ordinis Minorum opera omnia, ed. Luke Wadding, Lyon 1639; republished, with only slight alterations, by L. Viv`es,Paris 1891–1895. Vols. I–XXVI. References are to the Vatican edition wherever possible, to the Wadding-Viv`esedition otherwise. -
A Survey of Top-Level Ontologies to Inform the Ontological Choices for a Foundation Data Model
A survey of Top-Level Ontologies To inform the ontological choices for a Foundation Data Model Version 1 Contents 1 Introduction and Purpose 3 F.13 FrameNet 92 2 Approach and contents 4 F.14 GFO – General Formal Ontology 94 2.1 Collect candidate top-level ontologies 4 F.15 gist 95 2.2 Develop assessment framework 4 F.16 HQDM – High Quality Data Models 97 2.3 Assessment of candidate top-level ontologies F.17 IDEAS – International Defence Enterprise against the framework 5 Architecture Specification 99 2.4 Terminological note 5 F.18 IEC 62541 100 3 Assessment framework – development basis 6 F.19 IEC 63088 100 3.1 General ontological requirements 6 F.20 ISO 12006-3 101 3.2 Overarching ontological architecture F.21 ISO 15926-2 102 framework 8 F.22 KKO: KBpedia Knowledge Ontology 103 4 Ontological commitment overview 11 F.23 KR Ontology – Knowledge Representation 4.1 General choices 11 Ontology 105 4.2 Formal structure – horizontal and vertical 14 F.24 MarineTLO: A Top-Level 4.3 Universal commitments 33 Ontology for the Marine Domain 106 5 Assessment Framework Results 37 F. 25 MIMOSA CCOM – (Common Conceptual 5.1 General choices 37 Object Model) 108 5.2 Formal structure: vertical aspects 38 F.26 OWL – Web Ontology Language 110 5.3 Formal structure: horizontal aspects 42 F.27 ProtOn – PROTo ONtology 111 5.4 Universal commitments 44 F.28 Schema.org 112 6 Summary 46 F.29 SENSUS 113 Appendix A F.30 SKOS 113 Pathway requirements for a Foundation Data F.31 SUMO 115 Model 48 F.32 TMRM/TMDM – Topic Map Reference/Data Appendix B Models 116 ISO IEC 21838-1:2019 -
René Descartes: Father of Modern Philosophy and Scholasticism
René Descartes: Father of Modern Philosophy and Scholasticism Sarah Venable Course: Philosophy 301 Instructor: Dr. Barbara Forrest Assignment: Research Paper For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church completely dominated European thought. It had become the most powerful ruling force, leaving monarchs susceptible to its control through the threat of excommunication. For the everyday European, contradicting or questioning any aspect of Church doctrine could result in imprisonment, or even death. Scholars were bound by fear to avoid appearing too radical. However, the modern academic need not fear such retribution today. Learning has moved from the control of the Church and has become secularized due in part to the work of such thinkers as Descartes. René Descartes, who was interested in both science and philosophy, introduced his readers to the idea of separating academic knowledge from religious doctrine. He claimed science filled with uncertainty and myth could never promote learning or the advancement of society. Descartes responded to the growing conflict between these two forces with an attempt to bring clarity. He was willing to challenge the accepted ideas of his day and introduce change. Religion had not been separate from science in the past. By philosophy and science using reason as its cornerstone, science effected a substantial increase in knowledge. After a period of widespread illiteracy, Europe began to move forward in education by rediscovering Greek and Roman texts filled with science, mathematics, and philosophy. As time progressed and learning increased, the Church began to loosen its iron grip over the people. Church officials recognized a need to educate people as long as subject material was well controlled. -
Sum, Ergo Cogito: Nietzsche Re-Orders Descartes
Aporia vol. 25 no. 2—2015 Sum, Ergo Cogito: Nietzsche Re-orders Descartes JONAS MONTE I. Introduction ietzsche’s aphorism 276 in The Gay Science addresses Descartes’ epistemological scheme: “I still live, I still think: NI still have to live, for I still have to think. Sum, ergo cogito: cogito, ergo sum” (GS 223). Ironically, Nietzsche inverts the logic in Descartes’ famous statement “Cogito, ergo sum” as a caustic way, yet poetic and stylish, of creating his own statement.1 He then delivers his critique by putting his own version prior to that of Descartes. Here, Nietzsche’s critique can be interpreted as a twofold overlap- ping argument. First, by reversing Descartes’ axiom into “Sum, ergo cogito,” Nietzsche stresses that in fact a social ontology (which includes metaphysical, logical, linguistic, and conceptual elements) has been a condition that makes possible Descartes’ inference of human existence from such pre-established values. Here, Descartes seems not to have applied his methodical doubt completely, since to arrive 1 In light of Nietzsche’s inversion, this paper seeks to analyse Descartes’ Meditation Project, in effect, the cogito as a device in itself. It does not consider the project’s metaphysical background, including the issue of Descartes’ substance dualism. For an introduction to Cartesian dualism, see Justin Skirry, “René Descartes: The Mind-Body Distinction,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Jonas Monte is a senior currently studying in a joint honors program in philosophy and political science at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His primary philosophical interests are ethics, political philosophy, Nietzsche, and early modern philosophy. After graduation, Jonas plans to pursue a PhD in philosophy. -
Framework for Formal Ontology Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan
Framework for Formal Ontology Barry Smith and Kevin Mulligan NOTICE: THIS MATERIAL M/\Y BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT LAW (TITLE 17, u.s. CODE) ABSTRACT. The discussions which follow rest on a distinction, or object-relations in the world; nor does it concern itself rust expounded by Husser!, between formal logic and formal specifically with sentences about such objects. It deals, ontology. The former concerns itself with (formal) meaning-struc rather, with sentences in general (including, for example, tures; the latter with formal structures amongst objects and their the sentences of mathematics),2 and where it is applied to parts. The paper attempts to show how, when formal ontological considerations are brought into play, contemporary extensionalist sentences about objects it can take no account of any theories of part and whole, and above all the mereology of Lesniew formal or material object·structures which may be ex ski, can be generalised to embrace not only relations between con hibited amongst the objects pictured. Its attentions are crete objects and object-pieces, but also relations between what we directed, rather, to the relations which obtain between shall call dependent parts or moments. A two-dimensional formal sentences purely in virtue of what we can call their logical language is canvassed for the resultant ontological theory, a language which owes more to the tradition of Euler, Boole and Venn than to complexity (for example the deducibility-relations which the quantifier-centred languages which have predominated amongst obtain between any sentence of the form A & Band analytic philosophers since the time of Frege and Russell. -
STUMPF, HUSSERL and INGARDEN of the Application of the Formal Meaningful Categories
Formal Ontology FORMAL ONTOLOGY AS AN OPERATIVE TOOL of theory, categories that must be referred to as the objectual domain, which is determined by the ontological categories. In this way, we IN THE THORIES OF THE OBJECTS OF THE must take into account that, for Husserl, ontological categories are LIFE‐WORLD: formal insofar as they are completely freed from any material domain STUMPF, HUSSERL AND INGARDEN of the application of the formal meaningful categories. Therefore, formal ontology, as developed in the third Logical Investigation, is the corresponding “objective correlate of the concept of a possible theory, 1 Horacio Banega (University of Buenos Aires and National Universi‐ deinite only in respect of form.” 2 ty of Quilmes) Volume XXI of Husserliana provides insight into the theoretical source of Husserlian formal ontology.3 In particular, it strives to deine the theory of manifolds or the debate over the effective nature of what will later be called “set theory.” Thus, what in § of Prolegomena is It is accepted that certain mereological concepts and phenomenolog‐ ical conceptualisations presented in Carl Stumpf’s U ber den psy‐ called a “Theory of Manifolds” (Mannigfaltigkeitslehre) is what Husserl chologischen Ursprung der Raumvorstellung and Tonpsychologie played an important role in the development of the Husserlian formal 1 Edmund Husserl, Logische Untersuchunghen. Zweiter Band, Untersuchungen zur ontology. In the third Logical Investigation, which displays the for‐ Phänomenologie und Theorie der Erkenntnis. Husserliana XIX/ and XIX/, (ed.) U. mal relations between part and whole and among parts that make Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ), hereafter referred to as Hua XIX/ out a whole, one of the main concepts of contemporary formal ontol‐ and Hua XIX/; tr. -
Why Determinism in Physics Has No Implications for Free Will
Why determinism in physics has no implications for free will Michael Esfeld University of Lausanne, Department of Philosophy [email protected] (draft 8 October 2017) (paper for the conference “Causality, free will, divine action”, Vienna, 12 to 15 Sept. 2017) Abstract This paper argues for the following three theses: (1) There is a clear reason to prefer physical theories with deterministic dynamical equations: such theories are both maximally simple and maximally rich in information, since given an initial configuration of matter and the dynamical equations, the whole (past and future) evolution of the configuration of matter is fixed. (2) There is a clear way how to introduce probabilities in a deterministic physical theory, namely as answer to the question of what evolution of a specific system we can reasonably expect under ignorance of its exact initial conditions. This procedure works in the same manner for both classical and quantum physics. (3) There is no cogent reason to subscribe to an ontological commitment to the parameters that enter the (deterministic) dynamical equations of physics. These parameters are defined in terms of their function for the evolution of the configuration of matter, which is defined in terms of relative particle positions and their change. Granting an ontological status to them does not lead to a gain in explanation, but only to artificial problems. Against this background, I argue that there is no conflict between determinism in physics and free will (on whatever conception of free will), and, in general, point out the limits of science when it comes to the central metaphysical issues. -
An Introduction to Relational Ontology Wesley J
An Introduction to Relational Ontology Wesley J. Wildman, Boston University, May 15, 2006 There is a lot of talk these days about relational ontology. It appears in theology, philosophy, psychology, political theory, educational theory, and even information science. The basic contention of a relational ontology is simply that the relations between entities are ontologically more fundamental than the entities themselves. This contrasts with substantivist ontology in which entities are ontologically primary and relations ontologically derivative. Unfortunately, there is persistent confusion in almost all literature about relational ontology because the key idea of relation remains unclear. Once we know what relations are, and indeed what entities are, we can responsibly decide what we must mean, or what we can meaningfully intend to mean, by the phrase “relational ontology.” Why Do Philosophers Puzzle over Relations? Relations are an everyday part of life that most people take for granted. We are related to other people and to the world around us, to our political leaders and our economic systems, to our children and to ourselves. There are logical, emotional, physical, mechanical, technological, cultural, moral, sexual, aesthetic, logical, and imaginary relations, to name a few. There is no particular problem with any of this for most people. Philosophers have been perpetually puzzled about relations, however, and they have tried to understand them theoretically and systematically. Convincing philosophical theories of relations have proved extraordinarily difficult to construct for several reasons. First, the sheer variety of relations seems to make the category of “relation” intractable. Philosophers have often tried to use simple cases as guides to more complex situations but how precisely can this method work in the case of relations? Which relations are simple or basic, and which complex or derivative? If we suppose that the simplest relations are those analyzable in physics, we come across a second problem. -
Integrating Ontological Knowledge for Iterative Causal Discovery and Vizualisation Montassar Ben Messaoud, Philippe Leray, Nahla Ben Amor
Integrating ontological knowledge for iterative causal discovery and vizualisation Montassar Ben Messaoud, Philippe Leray, Nahla Ben Amor To cite this version: Montassar Ben Messaoud, Philippe Leray, Nahla Ben Amor. Integrating ontological knowledge for iterative causal discovery and vizualisation. ECSQARU 2009, 2009, Verona, Italy. pp.168-179, 10.1007/978-3-642-02906-6_16. hal-00412286 HAL Id: hal-00412286 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00412286 Submitted on 17 Apr 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Integrating Ontological Knowledge for Iterative Causal Discovery and Visualization Montassar Ben Messaoud1, Philippe Leray2, and Nahla Ben Amor1 1 LARODEC, Institut Sup´erieur de Gestion Tunis 41, Avenue de la libert´e, 2000 Le Bardo, Tunisie. [email protected], [email protected] 2 Knowledge and Decision Team Laboratoire d’Informatique de Nantes Atlantique (LINA) UMR 6241 Ecole Polytechnique de l’Universit´ede Nantes, France. [email protected] Abstract. Bayesian networks (BN) have been used for prediction or classification tasks in various domains. In the first applications, the BN structure was causally defined by expert knowledge. Then, algorithms were proposed in order to learn the BN structure from observational data. -
Universal Causality Graphs: a Precise Happens-Before Model for Detecting Bugs in Concurrent Programs
Universal Causality Graphs: A Precise Happens-Before Model for Detecting Bugs in Concurrent Programs Vineet Kahlon and Chao Wang NEC Laboratories America, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA Abstract. Triggering errors in concurrent programs is a notoriously difficult task. A key reason for this is the behavioral complexity resulting from the large number of interleavings of operations of different threads. Efficient static tech- niques, therefore, play a critical role in restricting the set of interleavings that need be explored in greater depth. The goal here is to exploit scheduling con- straints imposed by synchronization primitives to determine whether the property at hand can be violated and report schedules that may lead to such a violation. Towards that end, we propose the new notion of a Universal Causality Graph (UCG) that given a correctness property P , encodes the set of all (statically) fea- sible interleavings that may violate P . UCGs provide a unified happens-before model by capturing causality constraints imposed by the property at hand as well as scheduling constraints imposed by synchronization primitives as causality con- straints. Embedding all these constraints into one common framework allows us to exploit the synergy between the constraints imposed by different synchroniza- tion primitives, as well as between the constraints imposed by the property and the primitives. This often leads to the removal of significantly more redundant in- terleavings than would otherwise be possible. Importantly, it also guarantees both soundness and completeness of our technique for identifying statically feasible interleavings. As an application, we demonstrate the use of UCGs in enhancing the precision and scalability of predictive analysis in the context of runtime veri- fication of concurrent programs. -
The Rationality of Plato's Theory of Good and Evil
Wilfrid Laurier University Scholars Commons @ Laurier Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) 1979 The Rationality of Plato’s Theory of Good and Evil Allan A. Davis Wilfrid Laurier University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Allan A., "The Rationality of Plato’s Theory of Good and Evil" (1979). Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive). 1508. https://scholars.wlu.ca/etd/1508 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive) by an authorized administrator of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT Plato has been called the "father of rational theology." This thesis is an attempt to examine in the light of contemporary Platonic scholarship five of Plato's essentially religious doctrines insofar as they support the idea that Plato's theory of good and evil is rational. Chapters 1 and 2 examine the plausibility of Plato's theory of knowledge. Chapter 3 states briefly his theory of Forms, while Chapter 4 attempts to give this doctrine credence by analysing those aspects of it which seem least convincing. Chapters 5 and 6 consider Plato's theory of soul and conclude that, although some of his beliefs in this area lack credibility, his interpretation of the nature and function of soul is basically plausible. Chapters 7 and 8 examine the rationality of Plato's Idea of the Good. Chapter 9 sketches his notion of balance and proportion and, in conclusion, Chapter 10 attempts to show how this theory provides an underlying credibility not only to all the theories discussed but also to Plato's theory of good and evil in its entirety.