Ontology

Systematic identification and correction of spelling errors in the Foundational Model of Anatomy

by Phil Gooch

4th International Semantic Web Applications andTools for Life Sciences Workshop (SWAT4LS), December 7-9th, London, UK

The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) is a widely used reference ontology for the structure of the human body. It is... more The Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA) is a widely used reference ontology for the structure of the human body. It is incorporated into the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) and a number of linked life science data resources. While previous studies have analysed the FMA for its logical consistency, no previous work has systematically addressed the lexical consistency and correctness of terms within the FMA.
Here, we describe and evaluate a method for automatically detecting and correcting spelling errors in the FMA.

Release 3.2.1 of the FMA contains 43 spelling errors occurring in 97 terms, and 6 words of questionable or inconsistent spelling occurring in 26 terms. These errors also occur in the 2011AA release of the UMLS, leading to duplicate concepts with different CUIs, or concepts that can only be identified via the incorrect spelling.

Toward a Perdurantist Ontology of Contracts

by Sergio de Cesare

Contracts are fundamental toward characterising the very nature of a firm (or enterprise). The firm is considered by... more Contracts are fundamental toward characterising the very nature of a firm (or enterprise). The firm is considered by some economic theories as a bundle of contracts and contracts in turn are considered also as bundles of rights and obligations (commitments). As such it can be argued that the ontological relationships between the firm and its contracts can be explained through a set of mereological (or whole-part) relationships. Specifically, the relationships between a contract and its parties and between the parties and their rights/commitments are all mereological. This view of what contracts are may appear at first surprising but a perdurantist interpretation of contracts results in such an ontology. The main contribution of this paper is a perdurantist ontology of contracts which introduces the following distinctive features: (1) a differentiation between contract specification and contract execution, (2) contract executions as objects whose spatio-temporal extents intersect those of its parties and (3) a generic model of contractual commitments and fulfilment events impacting the economics of the enterprise. The ontology proposed in this paper is applied to an example scenario to demonstrate its benefits in enterprise modelling.

Making sense of adjectives: association vs. ascription in a family-resemblance model of semantic inheritance

by Todd Shore

Published in 'SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics', 2010, 7.3: 2-18.

Associative adjectives such as in 'electrical engineer' differ from ascriptive adjectives like in 'red house': They... more Associative adjectives such as in 'electrical engineer' differ from ascriptive adjectives like in 'red house': They are syntactically similar, yet they do not denote an intersective sense like ascriptive adjectives do. However, associative adjectives may (irregularly) denote ascriptive traits connected to the associated entity: The more semantically-similar two entities are, the more regular the traits are which are ascribed to them through association by a given adjective. This model of entities associated through family membership is analogous to a semantic network based on relative word similarities, in which families appear as clusters of relatively-similar entities.

The folds of a-topia (or a materialist take on Utopia)

by Constantinos Miltiadis

short paper, extended version of a competition entry. The original was written with Demetris Shammas, Vasiliki Nikoloutsou, Isavella Ines Oikonomopoulou and Daphne Oikonomopoulou

The paper tries to construct and oppose a material ontology to utopian or idealistic architectural intentions The paper tries to construct and oppose a material ontology to utopian or idealistic architectural intentions

The IMAGACT Cross-linguistic Ontology of Action. A new infrastructure for natural language disambiguation.

by Gloria Gagliardi

Co-authored with Massimo Moneglia, Monica Monachini, Omar Calabrese, Alessandro Panunzi A, Francesca Frontini & Irene Russo.
In: N. Calzolari et al. (Eds), Proceedings of the Eigth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'12), pp.2606-2613.

isbn = {978-2-9517408-7-7}

Action verbs, which are highly frequent in speech, cause disambiguation problems that are relevant to Language... more Action verbs, which are highly frequent in speech, cause disambiguation problems that are relevant to Language Technologies. This is a consequence of the peculiar way each natural language categorizes Action i.e. it is a consequence of semantic factors. Action verbs are frequently “general”, since they extend productively to actions belonging to different ontological types. Moreover, each language categorizes action in its own way and therefore the cross-linguistic reference to everyday activities is puzzling. This paper briefly sketches the IMAGACT project, which aims at setting up a cross-linguistic Ontology of Action for grounding disambiguation tasks in this crucial area of the lexicon. The project derives information on the actual variation of action verbs in English and Italian from spontaneous speech corpora, where references to action are high in frequency. Crucially it makes use of the universal language of images to identify action types, avoiding the underdeterminacy of semantic definitions. Action concept entries are prototypic scenes and allow the implementation of all possible languages in the Ontology.

Hegels Theorie der Intelligenz als Grundlegung der Unmöglichkeit des Unvernünftigen

by Hector Ferreiro

Paper read at the Conference “Irrationalität: Schattenseite der Moderne”,
7. Jahrestagung des Internationalen Forschungsnetzwerks Transzendentalphilosophie - Deutscher Idealismus, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, February 19-21, 2009.

Univocism and Monadology in Post-Avicennan Iranian Philosophy: Mulla Sadra Shirazi and the Philosophical Development of Ibn al-'Arabi's Gnosis (Spanish)

by Carlos Segovia

"Univocismo y monadología en el pensamiento iraní postaviceniano: La prosecución filosófica del 'irfan de Ibn al-'Arabi en la obra de Mulla Sadra Shirazi," Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía 18 (2001) 78-108.

Univocism and Monadology in Post-Avicennan Iranian Philosophy: Mulla Sadra Shirazi's Ishraqi Hermeneutics of Ibn 'Arabi's Gnosis and His Discussion of Avicennan Ontology

by Carlos Segovia

in: Endoxa. Series Filosóficas 16 (2002) 295-209.

Empirismo e a ontologia das ciências naturais; Empiricism and the ontology of natural sciences

by Sofia Stein

This paper examines the problem of the construction of objects in natural sciences through the analysis of texts... more
This paper examines the problem of the construction of objects in natural sciences through the analysis of texts by Hans Reichenbach and Willard Quine. Particularly, it intends to show that scientific objects are not the result of an accurate representation of reality, but of theoretical reasoning based on experience. Although 20th century empiricism does not concede to rationalism the existence of a priori structures of knowledge, it does admit, from an apparently conventionalist point of view, the empirical underdetermination of theories and the diversity of possible interpretations of experience. The analysis of Quine’s view of ontological commitments and of Reichenbach’s view of quantum mechanics leads to considerations about de problem of ontology in natural sciences. Finally, the paper discusses to what extent this ontology can be described from an empiricist point of view.

Key words: empiricism, ontology, Hans Reichenbach, Willard Quine, quantum mechanics.

Evaluation of an ontology- content-based filtering method for a personalized newspaper

by Peretz Shoval

Authors: V. Maidel, P. Shoval, B. Shapira, M. Taieb-Maimon
in: Proceedings of RecSys08, ACM Int'l Conference on Recommender Systems (2008), Lausanne, Switzerland, 91-98.

A new ontological-content-based method for ranking the relevancy of items in the electronic newspapers domain is... more A new ontological-content-based method for ranking the relevancy of items in the electronic newspapers domain is proposed. The method is being implemented in ePaper, a personalized electronic newspaper research project. The content-based part of the filtering method of ePaper utilizes a hierarchical ontology of news items. The method considers common and "close" ontology concepts appearing in the user's profile and in the item's profile, measuring the hierarchical distance between concepts in the two profiles. Based on the number of common and related concepts, and their distances from each other, the filtering algorithm computes the similarity between items and users, and rank-orders the news items according to their relevancy to each user, thus providing a personalized newspaper.

We have conducted evaluations of the filtering method, examining various parameters. A group of subjects, each having defined an initial content-based profile using the news ontology concepts, read news items from a certain electronic newspaper and expressed the relevancy of each item to them. In different runs of the algorithm on the same data, we changed several parameters of the algorithm, and compared the results with the users' ratings. We discovered that the filtering method, which considers not only common concepts but also hierarchically related concepts, yields significantly better quality of filtering compared to using only common concepts. Moreover, we were able to find optimal values of similarity scores according to the hierarchical distance between related concepts.

Tsilipakos - 2012 - Poverty of Ontological Reasoning

by Leonidas Tsilipakos

Cézanne's Vision: Confront the Sciences With the Nature From Which They Came

by Hans H. Diebner

Studia UBB. Philosophia LVII, 33-57 (1/2012)

No Impediment to Solidity as Impediment

by Stephan Blatti

Metaphysica 7 (2006): 35–41.

Quassim Cassam (1997) accepts the standard account of solidity, according to which, if S feels x as solid, then S... more Quassim Cassam (1997) accepts the standard account of solidity, according to which, if S feels x as solid, then S feels x as an imediment to his movement. Recently, Martin Fricke and Paul Snowdon (2003) have presented a battery of counter-examples designed to show that S may feel x as solid and as exerting a pressure that supports or facilitates his movement. In this note, I defend the standard account against Fricke and Snowdon’s attack. Integral to this defense is a distinction between two (sometimes overlapping) ways in which S may feel x as an impediment to his movement: as an influence on a movement state of S, or as an obstacle to the achievement of a goal that requires movement. After demonstrating the primacy of the former sense, I argue that Fricke and Snowdon’s counter-examples only undermine a version of the standard account that glosses ‘impediment’ as an obstacle to the achievement of a goal that requires movement.

The place and function of power in community psychology: philosophical and practical issues

by Scotney Evans

Adrian T. Fisher, Christopher C. Sonn, Scot D. Evans

Article first published online: 9 JUL 2007

DOI: 10.1002/casp.934

Much of the training of psychologists in the western world follows a logical positivist, scientist-practitioner model... more Much of the training of psychologists in the western world follows a logical positivist, scientist-practitioner model based in scientific objectivity and removed from politics. In this paper, we explore issues around alternative understandings of the role and place of psychologists and psychological actions. In so doing, we discuss a number of issues of ontology, epistemology and pragmatics to demonstrate that the role and function of power in our society need to be addressed more directly and more politically in order for us to successfully achieve our roles as community psychologists

Sobre uma Existentiel-Videnskab: o conceito de Inter-Esse no Pós-Escrito

by Gabriel Ferreira

On a Existentiel-Videnskab: the concept of Inter-Esse in Postscript

In an entry of Papirer, located between the years 1842-1843 (IV C 100), entitled "On the concepts of Esse and... more In an entry of Papirer, located between the years 1842-1843 (IV C 100), entitled "On the concepts of Esse and Inter-Esse," Kierkegaard makes a fundamental methodological assertion: the various sciences should be ordered and built through the accent put on being (Vaeren - Esse). Thus, the ontology and mathematics, because they develop from a ground of elemental unity between thought and being, are a particular kind of science with epistemological well-defined characteristics. However, as Kierkegaard shows in Postscript, the same plea can not be relied on what is named Inter-Esse. Thus, this paper aims to outline the general features of the concept of Inter-Esse as well as their connections with what, in that same entry, Kierkegaard calls "Existential Science" (Existentiel-videnskab).

Kierkegaard; Existence; Ontology; Epistemology.

Le Tre Maschere del Convenzionalista

by Jacopo Tagliabue

Co-authored with Marta Rossi. Published on Rivista di Estetica (June 2009).

Per un’ontologia del (post)umano

by Giacomo Pezzano

Published in “Vita pensata”, II, 12, giugno 2011, pp. 15-27

An attempt to think a "post-human" ontology, between "dynamis" and "modus" An attempt to think a "post-human" ontology, between "dynamis" and "modus"

World and Science by Ludwig von Mises: On Misesian Metaphysics (CZ)

by Petr Špecián

ŠPECIÁN, P. "Svět a věda u Ludwiga von Misese. Esej o misesovské metafyzice". FILOZOFIA 67, 2012, No 4. p. 335-346.

The paper deals with von Mises’ metaphysics and argues that his methodological dualism concerns only his epistemology.... more The paper deals with von Mises’ metaphysics and argues that his methodological dualism concerns only his epistemology. The framework of Mises´s ontology is materialistic monism. Although Mises strongly criticizes materialism, his critique does not concern metaphysical ontological materialism as long as it does not try to eliminate the specific method of the social sciences. In this sense Mises’ metaphysics is fully naturalistic – it does not include any “spiritual” agents and postulates a world consisting exclusively of elementary physical particles. The study illustrates this point on Mises’ determinism and his rejection of the free will as well as on his Darwinian account of the evolution of human mind. The specific method of the social sciences which makes use of the category of finality serves merely as an efficient heuristics and is based on a pragmatic view of science. It allows us to describe the irreducible complexity of social phenomena that cannot (at least not yet) be grasped by the physicalist vocabulary alone. Thus the argument of complexity is seen as a cornerstone of Misesian methodological dualism.

DE LA PHENOMENOLOGIE VERS LA PHENOMENOGRAPHIE « UNE THESE CONCERNANT LES POSSIBILITES DE CONDITIONS DE L’ECRITURE »

by Enis Memisoglu

Unpublished (and unedited) paper (2009)

LA POSSIBILITÉ DE LA JUSTICE CHEZ L’ONTOLOGIE D’ARISTOTE

by Enis Memisoglu

Unpublished paper