Formal Ontology (Philosophy)

The digitalization of the economy and technological innovations are pushing central banks to investigate new forms of digital money. The concept and design of digital currencies have been investigated by central banks for some time. Although much progress has been made towards a convergence on definitions, the term Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is still used to refer to a number of concepts. In this paper we address this issue by extending and refining our previous work, the Reference Ontology of Money and Virtual Currencies, to provide a semantic foundation for the concept of CBDC.

I consider the metaphysics of farts. I contrast the essential-bum-origin view with a phenomenological view, and I argue in favour of the latter. Le Petomane performed at the Moulin Rouge in the 1890s to the great and good of the day, such as Sigmund Freud, the Prince of Wales, and the King of Belgium. His art was musical farting. He perfected musical farting into an art form. And there are still musical farting performances today. There is an Austrian duet, for example, who dress in formal evening wear with long coat and tails, but the trousers have a discrete hole through which the instrument can be played. But what exactly is a fart? There are two ways of thinking of farts, or two concepts of farts. A fart is either a thing or an act. We fart farts. Let us begin with farts considered as things. What are the identity conditions of fart-things? Are they proper objectsreidentifiable particulars? Suppose someone emits a series of farts in rapid succession, like a staccato trumpet call. Is that many distinct farts? But in a nearby possible world in which the emission of gas was more legato with no breaks, would there only have been one long fart, with pulsations in volume (in both senses)? Is that legato fart the same fart as the series of staccato farts? What about the origins of farts? Once one thinks of farts as objects out there in the world, it is natural to think that they have essential origins in bums. If particular farts have

The Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO) was developed over the last two decades by consistently putting together theories from areas such as formal ontology in philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, and philosophical logics. It comprises a number of micro-theories addressing fundamental conceptual modeling notions, including entity types and relationship types. The aim of this paper is to summarize the current state of UFO, presenting a formalization of the ontology, along with the analysis of a number of cases to illustrate the application of UFO and facilitate its comparison with other foundational ontologies in this special issue. (The cases originate from the First FOUST Workshop – the Foundational Stance, an international forum dedicated to Foundational Ontology research.)

Discussing the Meyler influence in Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity with specific examples of 'Relativity violations' and 'causality violations' caused by Closed Timelike Loops.  A deconstruction of Einstein's inspiration and motivation for his 'invention' of Relativity, suggesting his interest was caused by evidence and artifacts of superluminal information embedded/encrypted in Mozart's oeuvres.

My analysis of superluminally-embedded information in early Mozart symphonies led me to construct my family tree, which is, arguably, the longest in the world.  Clearly a stunning result based on information which is "impossible" according to Special Relativity.

Premessa Ormai è un dato di fatto: in Italia esiste una ben definita ontologia formale di ispirazione tomista! Per quanto queste ricerche non siano ancora state recepite né dalla filosofia italiana (tomista o meno) né tanto meno da quella estera, non si può non registrare questa realtà. Proporremo qui una formalizzazione dei concetti di SOSTANZA e ACCIDENTI che ricalca i testi principali di Tommaso e Aristotele

Published version available at : https://global.oup.com/ukhe/product/research-methods-in-the-social-sciences-an-a-z-of-key-concepts-9780198850298?cc=be&lang=en&

The word ontology comes from the ancient Greek ontos ("being"-present participle of "eimi", to be) and logos (knowledge, rational discourse). It is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of being. The classical questions addressed in ontology since the Pre-Socratics (especially Parmenides), Plato, and Aristotle are: "What is being?", "Which categories of objects exist?" or"Do social phenomena exist in the same way as physical objects?" Therefore, as a branch of metaphysics, ontology is mainly concerned with the modes of existence of different entities (tangible and intangible), such as material objects, social phenomena, concepts, mythological divinities or numbers. "Ontology" also has a second meaning. It refers to a coherent representation of the world, its fundamental elements and the relations between them. "An" ontology is a simplified or abstract depiction of being, which provides a general framework for the analysis of the different elements that have been defined, how they interact and obey general laws. In the second definition, an ontology is partial and aims to explain a single dimension of being, whereas "ontology", as the science of being, addresses the general question of being. The reflection on ontology is intrinsically linked to epistemological questions (EPISTEMOLOGY). A "world of reference" or an ontology is a set of ontological statements that specify what is and what is not. A given statement (knowledge) can be considered true or false depending on the ontology used as a reference. All scientific discourse relates to an object that is presumed to exist in this or that form according to a given ontology, which defines being and indicates whether a particular statement about an object is true or false according to the axioms of that ontology. This is particularly clear in the case of social sciences. Every sub-discipline relies on an ontology that defines which elements really matter when it comes to explaining the phenomenon they set out to elucidate.

Roman Ingarden’s theory of modes of being belongs to the most interesting and original parts of his ontology. According to Ingarden the word “being” is used with a number of different meanings. Not only have we to distinguish between existential “is” (“There is no Santa Claus”), copulative “is” (“This apple is red”) and “is” as transitive verb (“My dog is in your garden”). Also the philosophically most celebrated existential “is” can be – as another well known thinker used to say –  predicated in various ways. According to Ingarden these various ways can be analyzed into several existential moments, which basically correspond to various ways of existential dependence. Possible modes of being are obtained by combining existential moments. Finally we get a highly articulated existential ontology. Modes of being aren’t regarded as primitive and unanalysable. They have a kind of internal structure that helps us to understand ontological dependencies in which entities enjoying a given mode of being are involved. Moreover, the combinatorial idea makes it possible to construct many modes of being out of a relatively small number of existential moments, which makes the resulting dependence network ontologically transparent and cognitively accessible.

This article aims to provide a metaphysical elucidation of a specific model of the doctrine of the Trinity: Monarchical Trinitarianism, within the formal, neo–Aristotelian ontological and metaphysical framework of Jonathan Lowe (i.e. his four–category ontology and serious essentialism). Formulating the model through this ontological and metaphysical framework will enable us to explicate it in a clear and consistent manner, and the important 'multiple–natures' problem raised against the proposed model will be shown to be ineffective.

Estudiamos el cambio y la destrucción como nociones filosóficas que deben definirse y analizarse utilizando un lenguaje formal. Para lograr nuestro objetivo, presentamos algunas nociones filosóficas como individuo sustancial, propiedad y estroma. Proponemos una teoría de eventos y espacios posibles que formalizamos utilizando la teoría de categorías y en virtud de la cual podemos explicar las ideas de <<materia>> y <<forma>> tal como se utilizan en la filosofía escolástica. Luego elaboramos una teoría de cómo y cuándo se aplica el cambio a cada categoría de ser que hemos definido. Finalmente, exploramos cómo tal idea se relaciona con el conocimiento, el valor y la acción, es decir, cómo el cambio afecta y es afectado por la epistemología y la ética, términos que entendemos en el sentido más general posible.

Divulgo a versão depositada de minha tese de doutoramento no PPGFIL/UnB. O título completo é "Primeiro esboço de um tratado de metametafísica: introdução ao realismo complexo", trabalho orientado pelo professor Hilan Bensusan.

Esta tese de doutoramento se trata de uma introdução ao Realismo Complexo como metametafísica. A proposta é pagar o preço de abertura de espírito necessário para se pensar a ecologização da metafísica como tarefa de nossos dias. Isso é exercitado através de uma orientação de valores da libertação, da sofisticação, da sutileza e do pertencimento. Introduzindo a discussão na crítica decolonial ao correlacionismo filosófico, chegamos no materialismo especulativo de Quentin Meillassoux. Esta será a orientação basal para traçarmos estratégias para rejeitarmos as metafísicas da supressão da complexidade. Com um conceito operativo de filosofia e uma sucessão sequencial e entrelaçada de métodos, mapeamos como fazer filosofia num território filosófico do realismo complexo. Esta cartografia nos leva à proposição de um Esboço Categorial sobre categorias ontológicas para uma complexificação da pesquisa em metafísica. Aplicamos previamente este Esboço Categorial no estudo da ontologia da comunicação e no desenvolvimento de uma infralinguagem metametafísica. Com todo este aparato, avaliamos brevemente o estado disciplinar e institucional da metametafísica de até então, mapeando falácias, erros e provendo horizontes propositivos para pensar o fazer-se da metafísica na contemporaneidade global.

O link para o repositório da UnB é https://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/41938

La rappresentazione dei concetti è un settore centrale di ricerca in Intelligenza Artificiale (IA) e nelle Scienze Cognitive. In anni recenti, tale tematica ha ricevuto una grande attenzione nell'ambito dei formalismi per lo sviluppo delle ontologie computazionali e nel settore della ingegneria della conoscenza. Tuttavia, ad oggi, molti problemi classici (quali, ad esempio, quelli legati alla rappresentazione di informazioni prototipiche e al ragionamento non monotòno) sono rimasti irrisolti. In questo articolo si propone una analisi della situazione e, nella parte finale, viene avanzata una proposta per il superamento di tali problemi basata su alcuni suggerimenti provenienti dalle scienze cognitive.

The current text expresses my reflections on Frank Griffel's recently published book "The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam." As mentioned in the text, many intellectual aspects of philosophy became gradually integrated into the theological discourse among Muslim thinkers. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's contributions both in theology and philosophy (d. 1210) remark one of the most influential register of thought in the 6th/12th century.

George Spencer-Brown's Laws of Form is a mathematical treatise that calls for philosophical interpretation. Its core component, the calculus of indications, progresses from the simple act of drawing a distinction, through a number of levels of the indication of that distinction, until it finally reaches the level of real existence and the universe as we know it. While applicable to any special case of indication and semantic expression, this calculus is simultaneously a direct analysis of the underlying and ubiquitous substratum of creation from nothing. This means that Laws of Form should be understood as offering a theory of being (an ontology) and a theory of form (a phenomenology) on the common ground of an intuitive simplicity. The calculus of indications gives us a way of understanding everything-every possible object, every overall gestalt, every possible world, every 'thing' in both the precise literal sense and the diffuse metaphorical sense-as a form of indication, and all indication-the very 'form' codified by this calculus-as based on an original and primary distinction at the boundary between everything and nothing. This ultimate boundary, called "the first distinction," stands in a very peculiar relation to every familiar thing in our conscious experience. This singular peculiarity of the first distinction should be regarded on the basis of mathematical ontology, in terms of what is called prima philosophia, first philosophy (Greek: πρώτη φιλοσοφία), and in such terms we can determine its ontological and phenomenological status. ...

Dallueshmëria esencë-ekzistencë qe një temë qendrore në debatet metafizike mes mendimtarëve post-Avisenianë në botën Islame. Një grup ka argumentuar se ajo çfarë është një gjësend është e ndryshme nga ajo çka është veçse konceptualisht. Një pikëpamje rivale do të shprehej se dallueshmëria mes esencës dhe ekzistencës është reale. Qëllimi i këtij artikulli është të analizojë bërthamën filozofike të debatit, duke i veçuar argumentet kryesore dhe bazat e tyre metafizike. Unë do të lëvroj katër çështje qendrore të debatit esencë-ekzistencë: (1) argumenti se ekzistenca dallon nga esenca sepse esenca mund të konceptohet pa e ditur nëse ajo ekziston; (2) argumenti se nëse ekzistenca do të ishte vërtetësisht e ndryshme nga esenca, ekzistenca duhet të ekzistonte mëvetësisht, duke çuar në një regres të pafund; (3) çështja nëse Zoti është përgjegjës vetëm për ekzistencën e esencave apo edhe për brendinë e tyre esenciale (kjo lidhet me problemin e statusit ontologjik të joekzistuesit); (4) çështja nëse esencat i paraprijnë ekzistencës.

La méréologie est la théorie des parties et des touts. Littéralement le terme « méréologie » signifie la science des parties (du grec ancien μέρος, « partie »). Cette théorie décrit les différentes relations que peuvent entretenir les parties avec un tout et les parties entre elles à l'intérieur d'un tout.
Le but de cet article est de proposer une présentation la plus claire possible du système formel et axiomatisé de ce que nous appelons la méréologie extensionnelle classique. Nous présenterons les concepts basiques de la méréologie et son axiomatique complète pour en avoir une description et une compréhension claire. Cependant, nous ne devons pas perdre de vue le rôle que joue la méréologie en métaphysique. Ainsi une fois celle-ci présentée, nous analyserons certains problèmes que cette théorie pose en métaphysique contemporaine.

A critical survey of the fundamental philosophical issues in the logic and formal ontology of space, with special emphasis on the interplay between mereology (the theory of parthood relations), topology (broadly understood as a theory of qualitative spatial relations such as continuity and contiguity), and the theory of spatial location proper.

La connessione fra logica ed ontologia si puó cogliere in maniera il piú possibile precisa osservando una teoria formalizzata. In tal caso l’ontologia relativa a tale teoria è da intendersi, da un punto di vista sintattico, una teoria delle forme logiche, in quanto ha per oggetto i modi di combinare le categorie logico-grammaticali del linguaggio (formale) adottato da tale teoria. In tal modo, agendo su di esse, si puó definire e osservare il comportamento formale di tali forme e in funzione dell’ontologia che si vuole supporre in una data teoria. La definizione delle forme logiche di una teoria non é affidata all’apparato descrittivo, specifico della teoria formalizzata di cui si è in possesso – che sia l’apparato linguistico (le costanti non-logiche), che sia quello assiomatico (gli assiomi e le definizioni non-logici). Quali sono le categorie ontologiche supposte da una specifica teoria e il modo in cui è regolato il loro comportamento  dipende strettamente dalla struttura logica della teoria: mediante le distinzioni in categorie, appunto, logico-grammaticali: mediante la stipulazione delle regole e degli assiomi logici, si controllano le possibili trasformazioni simboliche fra queste categorie. A variazioni relative a tali trasformazioni corrispondono variazioni dell’ontologia di riferimento per la teoria.
In questo lavoro ci concentreremo sulle differenze fra realismo e nominalismo descritte e controllate all’interno della logica matematica, della logica classica del primo e del secondo ordine per le quali rimandiamo a (Enderton 2001)

IS PAPER EXAMINES ALL INGARDEN'S ARGUMENTS (BOTH THE FULLY EXPLICIT AND THE MERELY SUGGESTED) FOR REFUSING CATEGORICALLY TO CONSIDER THE VISUALLY INSCRIBED ASPECT OF THE TEXT AS POTENTIALLY PART OF THE LITERARY WORK. ALL THESE ARGUMENTS ARE SHOWN TO BE INCONCLUSIVE AND SOME AT ODDS WITH INGARDEN'S OWN GENERAL ONTOLOGICAL AND AESTHETIC CATEGORIES. A POSITIVE CASE IS ALSO MADE FOR THE AESTHETIC RELEVANCE OF TEXTUAL VISUALITY.

Mereological atomism is the thesis that everything is ultimately composed of atomic parts, i.e., parts lacking proper parts. Standardly, this thesis is characterized by an axiom that says, more simply, that everything has atomic parts. Anthony Shiver (2015) has argued that this characterization is satisfied by models that are not atomistic, and is therefore inadequate. I argue that Shiver’s conclusion can and ought to be resisted, for (i) the models in question are atomistic in the intended sense, and (ii) even though the standard characterization does not say that everything is composed of atoms, it implies so. If there is a sense in which the relevant models are problematic, it lies elsewhere.

Proponiamo un manuale di Logica formale concepito all'interno del più ampio progetto di Filosofia formale. Ciò significa non solo attenzione alla disciplina della logica, sviluppatasi in senso rigoroso (formalizzato) a partire dalla fine del XIX secolo, ma alla lunga tradizione speculativa occidentale sia continentale che analitica, la quale, nel XXI sec. può convergere " costruttivamente ", rispetto a questi due rami, in un percorso unitario che abbiamo appena cominciato a scrivere. Seguendo una terminologia che ormai è diffusa nel mondo accademico internazionale, chiamiamo Filosofia Formale (Ontologia Formale, Epistemologia Formale, Etica Formale) questo programma di ricerca in campo speculativo.

W monografii zaprezentowałem analizę trzech podstawowych płaszczyzn ważnych dla badań ontologicznych: płaszczyznę indywiduów, płaszczyznę przedmiotów idealnych oraz płaszczyzną pojęć. Podałem również "formalny obraz" idei (por. różnie zdefiniowane drzewa gatunków i rodzajów) oraz analizę logiczną przedmiotów indywidualnych i idei poprzez skonstruowanie ontologicznych wersji logik modalnych i temporalnych.

The orbital debris problem presents an opportunity for international cooperation toward the mutually beneficial goals of orbital debris prevention, mitigation, remediation, and improved space situational awareness (SSA). Achieving these goals requires sharing orbital debris and other SSA data. Toward this, I present an ontological architecture for the orbital debris and related domains, taking steps in the creation of an orbital debris ontology. The purpose of the ontology is to capture general scientific domain knowledge; formally represent the entities within the domain; form, structure, and standardize (where needed) orbital and SSA terminology; and foster semantic interoperability and data-exchange. In doing so I hope to offer a scientifically accurate ontological representation of the orbital domain; contribute to research in astroinformatics, space ontology, and space data management; and improve spaceflight safety by providing a means to capture and communicate information associated with space debris.

Realism refers to a range of ontological and epistemological positions within which research may be conducted. Realist ontologies (assumptions about the nature of reality) range from the view that the world of objects and social structures exist independently of human experience to the idea that, although the world exists independently of any one person, human perception is such that our reality is a pre-interpreted one. Realist epistemologies (theories about what counts as knowledge) range from view that the world can be known directly through the senses to the idea that internally consistent interpretations of reality can count as knowledge if bounded by, and revisable in light of, interactions with the world. Holding a realist ontology does not always commit a researcher to a realist epistemology.......

Ontology, as science, must not presuppose the entity as its object, but must define its constitution so as to establish what exists. The connection between logic and ontology, in a formalized theory, is perceived by considering the logical forms of that theory, that is, the ways of combining the logical-grammatical categories of a (formal) language. In this, we do not rely on the descriptive apparatus (theoretical) - both linguistic (non-logical constants) and axiomatic (axioms and non-logical definitions) - to decide which ontological categories should be used to represent entities and the way their behavior is regulated. Rather, it is through distinctions in logical-grammatical categories and through rules and the logical axioms that is possible to control symbolic transformations between such categories. It is precisely the variations of these transformations that corresponds to the various definitions of the alleged ontology. In this chapter we will focus on the differences between realism and nominalism.

I submit that epistemic progress in key areas of contemporary academic philosophy has been compromised by politically correct (" PC ") ideology. First, guided by an evolutionary account of ideology, results from social and cognitive psychology and formal philosophical methods, I expose evidence for political bias in contemporary Western academia and sketch a formalization for the contents of beliefs from the PC worldview taken to be of core importance, the theory of social oppression and the thesis of anthropological mental egalitarianism. Then, aided by discussions from contemporary epistemology on epistemic values, I model the problem of epistemic appraisal using the frameworks of multi-objective optimization theory and multi-criteria decision analysis and apply it to politically correct philosophy. I conclude that philosophy guided by politically correct values is bound to produce constructs that are less truth-conducive and that spurious values which are ideologically motivated should be abandoned. Objections to my framework stemming from contextual empiricism, the feminine voice in ethics and political philosophy are considered. I conclude by prescribing the epistemic value of empirical adequacy, the contextual value of political diversity and the moral virtue of moral courage to reverse unwarranted trends in academic philosophy due to PC ideology.

We present a new axiomatization of classical mereology in which the three components of the theory—ordering, composition, and decomposition principles—are neatly separated. The equivalence of our axiom system with other, more familiar systems is established by purely deductive methods, along with additional results on the relative strengths of the composition and decomposition axioms of each theory.

As Heidegger made apparent, the assumed telos of the human, and their uses of technology, is generated by the metaphysical understandings about what things are. In light of new genetic technologies such as CRISPR-CAS9, capable of editing the human condition towards ostensible enhancement, the question of what is and what should be screams its way to the fore. In our time, it is difficult to speak of what is, that which may be called nature. And yet, the inverse may also be true, that all is natural. In the transhuman perspective, the position that nothing is natural is the same as saying everything is natural. All that is is natural resource, raw material for the ordering force of the human will (the will to power) and the posthuman god. With such a presumption in hand (an exclusive ontology of power), the posthuman aspiration to transcend human limitation appraises itself as a theology of eternal becoming that proposes a new kind of transcendence, one not animated by gods or myths. This paper will contend, however, that such a biotechnological endeavour to transcend the human condition is one that inevitably transgresses it. Against the apparent necessity of genetic engineering, this paper will express a counter-narrative: that which is nature must first be understood as that which is gifted. Since Christianity is at its center concerned with grace, the human must comprehend that “we are not our own,” and the great things of our existence are given to us, not made by us.  Any making of our own takes place, thus, within an ultimate givenness. To embrace the givenness of human condition, in its limited and fragile state, is to embrace the gift of nature as eternally graced: all that is is gifted, and all that is is graced. Accordingly, this paper will propose a framework within which we are called to shape that which has been entrusted to us, and, consequently, will show that transhumanism is devoted to a subtle theology of mastery which trumpets willfulness over giftedness, right over responsibility, and dominion over beholding: an ontology of power that misunderstands our place in creation.

Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), developed by Barry Smith and his colleagues, is a foundational ontology used in information science for the description of entities at the highest level of generality. One of the salient features of BFO is the division of entities into continuants of so-called SNAP (or snapshot) ontology and occurents of so-called SPAN (or spanning time) ontology. The division is motivated by an apparent impasse in the endurantist/perdurantist controversy in recent analytical metaphysics. In this paper, drawing on Aristotle, I suggest a realism-supporting modification of Smith’s approach.

The Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO-A) is a foundational ontol-ogy about endurants that has been built as a foundation for conceptual modeling, and which focuses on static aspects of endurants. In addition to UFO-A, we have the Unified Foundational Ontology-Part B (UFO-B), a formal theory dealing with the interplay between endurants and the dynamic aspects of reality (e.g., events, processes, causation, dispositions, situations). Given the objective of characterizing this interplay between endurants and perdurants, these two ontologies are meant to form an integral whole. However, currently, they diverge in the way they approach modality. While UFO-A uses a general notion of alethic modality without committing to any notion of time, UFO-B is centered around temporal aspects. As an attempt to address this issue, we here define a translation of the axioms of UFO-A to FOL, and revisit an excerpt of UFO-B in order to accommodate a partial order of time points. With the goal of producing a unified theory, we interpret the alethic modalities of necessity and contingency of UFO-A in terms of this temporal structure , paying a special attention to the interplay between the determinism of a causal nexus and the existence of counterfactual situations. The revisited UFO-B is called UFO-B and the unified theory is called UFO-AB.

Jest to monografia habilitacyjna z zakresu ontologii formalnej. Omawiam w niej między innymi wybrane ontologie formalne (Wolniewicz, Perzanowski, Meixner), analizuję struktury gatunków i rodzajów, wprowadzam ontologiczne wersje logik modalnych i temporalnych. Praca liczy 282 strony.

In this paper I will discuss Barry Smith’s and Kevin Mulligan’s revision of Husserl’s phenomenology,
starting from the fact that many Italian scholars seem to follow them in a sense, by dealing
with phenomenology as a sort of a priori ontology. Therefore, I will first reconstruct Smith’s
and Mulligan’s attempt and its objectives, then I will show how it is rooted in the school of
Brentano and, in particular, in Husserl’s phenomenology. Finally, I will provide some arguments
against this attempt : first of all that it does not attain a better description of the world, secondly
that phenomenology does the job of formal ontology better than the latter.

We present in this paper a novel ontological theory of events whose central tenet is the Aristotelian distinction between the object that changes and the actual subject of change, which is what we call an individual quality. While in the Kimian tradition events are individuated by a triple ho, P, ti, where o is an object, P a property, and t an interval of time, for us the simplest events are qualitative changes, individuated by a triple ho, q, ti, where q is an individual quality inhering in o or in one of its parts. Detaching the individuation of events from the property they exemplify results in a fine-grained theory that keeps metaphysics and semantics clearly separate, and lies between the multiplicative and the unitarian approaches. We discuss then the way language refers to events, observing that, in most cases, event descriptions refer to complex, cognitively relevant clusters of co-occurring qualitative changes, which exhibit a synchronic structure depending on the way they are described. Contra Bennett, who famously argued that the semantics of event names ultimately depends on “local context and unprincipled intuitions”, we show how the lexicon provides systematic principles for individuating such clusters and classifying them into kinds. Finally, we address some open challenges in the semantics of locative and manner modifiers.

Planetary synchronicities as an axis of suspicion to overcome Cartesian dualism and the disenchantment of the world, from the scientific astronomy vs. archetypal astrology debate. By Fernando Baena Vejarano www.tumeditacion.com.co Richard Tarnas' book "Cosmos and Psyche" has moved my philosophical toolbox significantly. Ken Wilber has shown me how to expand my concept of reality, knowledge and the evolution of consciousness; but Tarnas has cleared my arguments to be able to have the right to do so.

The use of formal languages in the specification of upper ontologies helps establishing precise and unambiguous definitions for its concepts and relations. In this context, the use of formal languages with support of proof-assistant software systems has potential of aiding the specification author in various aspects. We describe a study case in which the Isabelle/HOL language and the Isabelle proof-assistant environment are used to formalize a simplified version of the UFO-A ontology of endurants, to verify and correct the original axiomatization, and to optimize the specification theory's axioms and signature.

La epigenética está llamada a descubrir muchos de los secretos que desde una simple lectura determinista de la genética no se comprenden. Aproximándonos a una definición, observamos cómo ayuda a aportar también luz en cuestiones filosóficas tales como qué es el individuo, la acción inmanente, etc. Pero como ocurre a gran parte de la ciencia moderna, carece de una fundamentación metafísica. Guiados de la mano de la metafísica de Sto. Tomás de Aquino y ayudados por la moderna ontología formal, ofrecemos una fundamentación a esta rama de la biología.

Key Words: determinismo, Darwin, evolución, epigenética, Lamarck, lógica modal, metafísica, ontología, ontología formal, santo Tomás.

Paul Hovda’s ‘What Is Classical Mereology?' has fruitfully reshaped the debate concerning the axiomatic foundations of classical mereology. Precisely because of the importance of Hovda’s work and its usefulness as a reference tool, we note here that one of the five axiom systems presented therein, corresponding to the ‘Third Way’ to classical mereology, is defective and must be amended. In addition, we note that two other axiom systems, corresponding to the ‘First Way’ and to the ‘Fifth Way’, involve redundancies.

Poster presented at International School on Applied Ontology (ISAO), June 27 - July 1, 2016, Bozen-Bolzano, Italy (http://isao2016.inf.unibz.it/).

Is about my space ontology project concept (https://purl.org/space-ontology).

Has associated papers/posters:
- "The Orbital Space Environment and Space Situational Awareness Domain Ontology -- Toward an International Information System for Space Data" (https://amostech.com/TechnicalPapers/2016/Poster/Rovetto.pdf)
- "Orbital Space Environment and Space Situational Awareness Domain Ontology" (http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1660/ecs-paper1.pdf)

Based on:
- An Ontological Architecture for Orbital Debris Data”, Robert J. Rovetto (2015) , DOI: 10.1007/s12145-015-0233-3
- “Preliminaries of a Space Situational Awareness Ontology”, (Rovetto, & Kelso, 2016)
- "Ontology Architectures for the Orbital Space Environment and Space Situational Awareness Domain” in Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2016), International Workshop on Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution.

The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns in English and many other languages.  The morpho-syntactic distinction is generally taken to have semantic content or reflect a semantic mass-count distinction. At the center of the semantic mass-count distinction is, in some way or another, a notion of unity or being a single entity, the basis of countability. There is little unanimity, however, of how that notion is to be understood and thus what the semantic mass-count distinction consists in. In this paper, I will give a very general outline of existing approaches to the mass-count distinction, distinguishing between object-based, extension-based, situation-based, and grammar-based approaches. The grammar-based approach appears to meet best certain kinds of challenges that theories of the semantic mass-count distinction face. The paper will discuss existing syntactic versions of the grammar-based approach as well as two semantic versions, an ontological one as well as a novel, truthmaker-based one, both of which, though, will refrain from giving an account of unity itself.

This paper examines whether classical extensional mereology is adequate for formalizing the whole-parts relation in quantum chemical systems. Although other philosophers have argued that classical extensional and summative mereology does not adequately formalize whole-parts relation within organic wholes and social wholes, such critiques often assume that summative mereology is appropriate for formalizing the whole-parts relation in inorganic wholes such as atoms and molecules. However, my discussion of atoms and molecules as they are conceptualized in quantum chemistry will establish that standard mereology cannot adequately fulfill this task, since the properties and behavior of such wholes are context-dependent and cannot simply be reduced to the summative properties of their parts. To the extent that philosophers of chemistry have called for the development of an alternative mereology for quantum chemical systems, this paper ends by proposing behavioral mereology as a promising step in that direction. According to behavioral mereology, considerations of what constitutes a part of a whole is dependent upon the observable behavior displayed by these entities. Thus, relationality and context-dependence are stipulated from the outset and this makes behavioral mereology particularly well-suited as a mereology of quantum chemical wholes. The question of which mereology is appropriate for formalizing the whole-parts relation in quantum chemical systems is relevant to contemporary philosophy of chemistry, since this issue is related to the more general questions of the reducibility of chemical wholes to their parts and of the reducibility of chemistry to physics, which have been of central importance within the philosophy of chemistry for several decades. More generally, this paper puts contemporary discussions of mereology within the philosophy of chemistry into a broader historical and philosophical context. In doing so, this paper also bridges the gap between formal mereology, conceived as a branch of formal ontology, and "applied" mereology, conceived as a branch of philosophy of science.