This paper raises an open critical discussion on some key notions in Michael Ruse’s philosophy. These include the conceptual elements of scientific explanation, the difference between epistemic and cultural values, the epistemological status of science and religion in explaining nature, the compatibility or incompatibility between Darwinian thought and Christian thought, and especially between evolutionary theory and creationism, the key importance of admitting or not admitting supernatural causality when qualifying an explanation as scientific, the role played by the divinity in the (...) argumentation about the compatibility or incompatibility between science and religion, the convenience of not understanding the Abrahamic god from an ontological perspective but from a psychological one, etc. It ends by proposing certain conclusions that could perhaps contribute to contrast and enrich his philosophy. (shrink)

The Damasian concept of emotion and the self fits within the emotivist tradition, viewing mind and reason as embodied realities linked to the body and its social and natural interactions. Emotion, for Damásio, creates the context for reason to operate effectively, aligning with anti-Cartesian ideas. Due to the role of emotions, this may be used to suggest that living beings are not just skin-bound entities but processes integrating body and environment. Therefore, we examine both his relevance to contemporary philosophy of (...) mind and self, and his possible contribution to naturalized metaphysics, particularly within Developmental Systems Theory. (shrink)

En este acercamiento a la segunda edición de Conciencia histórica y tiempo histórico, llega el pasado con fuerza. Las clases de Agoglia, repleta de ávidos estudiantes, estaban impregnadas de la exigencia de acción. La filosofía era, toda ella, filosofía de la historia, pues no había forma de evadirla. La historicidad nos había envuelto y tornaba nuestros cuerpos y nuestras mentes hacia el futuro. Con la filosofía comprendimos, que siempre estaríamos en la tensión que resume el presente, impedidos –por su fuerza (...) propia originaria- a pensar, y en esa medida, a existir en el tiempo, el que trajo al maestro y nos lo dejó para siempre. (shrink)

Das primäre Ziel dieses Open-Access-Buches besteht in der Entwicklung einer Theorie pluraler epistemischer Autoritäten. Epistemische Autoritäten spielen in unserer durch Spezialisierung geprägten und hochgradig arbeitsteilig organisierten modernen "Informations-" oder "Wissensgesellschaft" eine zentrale Rolle. Die Philosophie hat diesem Umstand in den letzten Jahren durch eine zunehmend intensive Diskussion Rechnung getragen. Ein entscheidendes Defizit dieser Debatte besteht nach Diagnose des Autors allerdings darin, dass sie sich fast ausschließlich auf individuelle epistemische Autoritäten konzentriert hat. In unserer epistemischen Praxis sind plurale epistemische Autoritäten - (...) d.h. wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaften, Expertengremien, Geschworenenjurys usw. - aber mindestens genauso bedeutsam. Wir berufen uns auf "wissenschaftlichen Konsens", orientieren uns an "herrschenden Meinungen" usw. und stützen uns damit auf plurale epistemische Autoritäten. Das Buch möchte die Potentiale, aber auch die Herausforderungen und Fallstricke analysieren, die diese Praxis des Sich-Stützens auf plurale epistemische Autoritäten mit sich bringt. Der Autor Rico Hauswald ist Privatdozent am Institut für Philosophie der TU Dresden und Teilprojektleiter im BMBF-geförderten interdisziplinären Forschungsvorhaben "Verantwortungsvoller Umgang mit künstlicher Intelligenz in der Medizin". Arbeitsschwerpunkte liegen u. a. in der Wissenschafts-, Erkenntnis- und Medizintheorie. (shrink)

In a number of papers, Kit Fine introduced a theory of embodiment which distinguishes between rigid and variable embodiments, and has been successfully applied to clarify the ontological nature of entities whose parts may or may not vary in time. In particular, he has applied this theory to describe a process such as the erosion of a cliff, which would be a variable embodiment whose manifestations are the different states of erosion of the cliff. We find this theory very powerful, (...) and especially appropriate to capture the intuition that the same process may go on at different times. However, its formal principles have been subject to some criticisms, mainly concerning the mereological structure of a variable embodiment. Moreover, since the notion of variable embodiment is very general, simply saying that processes are variable embodiments is not enough to understand their ontological nature. To address these concerns, in this paper we proceed in two phases: first, we propose a revised version of Fine’s original theory adapted to the case of processes, which adopts a classical mereology instead of Fine’s hylomorphic mereology, and a temporalized constitution relation in place of Fine’s function of variable embodiment; second, we go deeper into the ontological nature of processes by revisiting the notions of homogeneity, intentionality, and telicity discussed in the literature, and propose an account based on ontological principles and not on semantic properties of predicates. This allows us to organize processes into a novel taxonomy based exclusively on their unity and individuation principles. (shrink)

In 2005, IOS Press published the first issue of applied Ontology. At the time, we argued that, at the core of the journal, there was “a desire to understand the nature of reality and how people construe their world”. We declared that ontology was both “fundamental to human thought” and “to translating our thoughts into computational artifacts” (Guarino & Musen,2005). With an editorial board of distinguished scholars representing the fields of computer science, informatics, information science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and social (...) science, we had the firm belief that applied Ontologywould fulfill an important academic niche, becoming an essential forum for discussion on topics such as ontological analysis, conceptual modeling, and the role of domain models in building and managing information systems. The facts now show that we were correct. (shrink)

In general, we know that gesture accompanying spoken instruction can help children learn. The present study was conducted to better understand how gesture can support children’s comprehension of spoken instruction and whether the benefit of teaching though speech and gesture over spoken instruction alone depends on differences in cognitive profile – prior knowledge children have that is related to a to-be-learned concept. To answer this question, we explored the impact of gesture instruction on children’s analogical reasoning ability. Children between the (...) ages of 4 and 11 years solved scene analogy problems before or after speech alone or speech and gesture instruction while their visual attention was monitored. Our behavioral results suggest a marginal benefit of gesture instruction over speech alone, but only 5-year-old children showed a distinct advantage from speech+gesture instruction when solving the post-instruction trial, suggesting that at this age, children have the cognitive profile in place to utilize the added support of gesture. Furthermore, while speech+gesture instruction facilitated effective visual attention during instruction, directing attention away from featural matches, and towards relational information, was pivotal for younger children’s success post instruction. We consider how these results contribute to the gesture-for-learning literature and consider how the nuanced impact of gesture is informative for educators teaching tasks of analogy in the classroom. (shrink)

In a world that is overflowing with journals and other outlets for scientific publication, the appearance of any new periodical requires some justification. There are already more journals than we can read and more conferences than we can attend. In the case of applied Ontology, we believe that the creation of anew journal not only is completely justifiable, it is downright exciting. For too long, workers in computer science have assumed that content comes for free. “Theory” in computer science has (...) always meant the theory of processes and of computation. We measure the complexity of computer programs in terms of how long it takes machines to execute them, not in terms of how long it takes people to understand and to represent the data on which those programs might operate. We typically describe computer code in terms of algorithms that operate on formal parameters, often without pausing to discuss where the data that might satisfy those parameters come from. This journal was founded on the premise that workers in computer science, informatics, and information science are overdue in paying as much attention to contents as they do to algorithms. (shrink)

En la filosofía de J. Rancière es posible poner en evidencia una voluntad recurrente por afirmar y verificar la «igualdad de las inteligencias» que pasa, inicialmente, por el campo de la educación en su investigación sobre los postulados de J. Jacotot, un singular pedagogo francés del siglo XIX, y que desemboca en la política en su vínculo con la estética. En este artículo nos vamos a centrar en sus primeros trabajos, sobre todo, en su libro El maestro ignorante, para plantear (...) de qué manera puede hablarse de una «emancipación estética» en su filosofía para, luego, pasar a dilucidar las relaciones que este filósofo contemporáneo establece entre el arte, la estética y la política.Palabras clave: J. Rancière, Teorías de la emancipación, Estética y política, Educación estética, Políticas estéticas, Arte crítico o político. (shrink)

Informally speaking, a truthmaker is something in the world in virtue of which the sentences of a language can be made true. This fundamental philosophical notion plays a central role in applied ontology. In particular, a recent nonorthodox formulation of this notion proposed by the philosopher Josh Parsons, which we labelled weak truthamking, has been shown to be extremely useful in addressing a number of classical problems in the area of Conceptual Modeling. In this paper, after revisiting the classical notion (...) of truthmaking, we conduct an in depth analysis of Parsons’ account of weak truthmaking. By doing that, we expose some difficulties in his original formulation. As the main contribution of this paper, we propose solutions to address these issues which are then integrated in a new precise interpretation of truthmaking that is harmonizable with. (shrink)

This volume considers contingency as a historical category resulting from the combination of various intellectual elements – epistemological, philosophical, material, as well as theological and, broadly speaking, intellectual. With contributions ranging from fields as diverse as the histories of physics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, mechanics, physiology, and natural philosophy, it explores the transformation of the notion of contingency across the late-medieval, Renaissance, and the early modern period. Underpinned by a necessitated vision of nature, seventeenth century mechanism widely identified apparent natural irregularities (...) with the epistemological limits of a certain explanatory framework. However, this picture was preceded by, and in fact emerged from, a widespread characterization of contingency as an ontological trait of nature, typical of late-Scholastic and Renaissance science. On these bases, this volume shows how epistemological categories, which are preconditions of knowledge as “historically-situated a priori” and, seemingly, self-evident, are ultimately rooted in time. Contingency is intrinsic to scientific practice. Whether observing the behaviour of a photon, diagnosing a patient, or calculating the orbit of a distant planet, scientists face the unavoidable challenge of dealing with data that differ from their models and expectations. However, epistemological categories are not fixed in time. Indeed, there is something fundamentally different in the way an Aristotelian natural philosopher defined a wonder or a “monstrous” birth as “contingent”, a modern scientist defines the unexpected result of an experiment, and a quantum physicist the behavior of a photon. Although to each inquirer these instances appeared self-evidently contingent, each also employs the concept differently. (shrink)

question that concerns the way in which religious belief is grounded in human nature. David Hume is one of the seminal figures in philosophy who developed critiques of religious belief that address each of these compelling questions. In this seminar, we will focus on Hume’s writings on religion, examining themes both in epistemology and in cognitive psychology, and examine the merits of Hume’s arguments and the way in which they have helped shape the contemporary debate about the reasons and the (...) causes of religious belief. (shrink)

There is growing worldwide concern that the rampant spread of digital fake news via new media technologies is detrimentally impacting Democratic elections. However, the actual influence of this recent Internet phenomenon on electoral decisions has not been directly examined. Accordingly, this study tested the effects of attention to DFN on readers’ Presidential candidate preferences via an experimental web-survey administered to a cross-sectional American sample. Results showed no main effect of exposure to DFN on participants’ candidate evaluations or vote choice. However, (...) the perceived believability of DFN about the Democratic candidate negatively mediated evaluations of that candidate—especially amongst far-right ideologues. These results suggest that DFN may at worst reinforce the partisan dispositions of mostly politically conservative Internet users, but does not cause or induce conversions in these dispositions. Overall, this study contributes novel experimental evidence, indicating that the potential electoral impact of DFN, although concerning, is strongly conditional on a reciprocal interaction between message receptibility and a pre-existing right-wing ideological orientation. The said impact is, therefore, likely narrow in scope. (shrink)

A survey of the similarities and differences between BFO and DOLCE, and of the mutual interactions between Nicola Guarino and Barry Smith.

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 ⟨ o, P, t ⟩, 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 ⟨ o, (...) q, t ⟩, 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. (shrink)

CONTENIDO: Vestigios protodemocráticos en la Edad Media tardía: Marsilio de Papua, Nicolás de Cusa / Matthias Vollet / - La concepción normativa de la democracia: un aporte neokantiano / Rodolfo Arango / - El concepto de lo político y la razón pública en Schmit y Rawls / Miguel Vatter / - Democracia y liberación pública / Cristina Lafont / - La democracia desde la teoría de las emociones / Viviana Quintero / - Ontología y democracia en spinoza y Negri (...) / Amalia Rey / - Reconocimiento y redistribución: el rol de un teoría crítica de la democracia / Nicolás Espejo / - La contribución de Haberman a la crítica de la tecnocratización de la democracia / Luis Javier Orjuela / - Libertad, derecho y democracia: aspectos teóricos y pragmáticos, con énfasis en la competencia / Joachim Lege / - Democracia representativa y democracia deliberativa: reflexiones a partir de la situación peruana reciente / David Sobrevilla. (shrink)

This is a short editorial to introduce the double issue of Applied Ontology that celebrates the journal's tenth anniversary. At a time when information technology of all kinds depends on the use of explicit ontologies, our journal addresses the modeling issues that underlie the next generation of computational systems. As the editors of Applied Ontology, we are excited by how far we have come in the past decade and by the opportunities that await our research community.

Pyrrhonian skepticism is usually understood as a form of quietism, since it is supposed to bring us back to where we were in our everyday lives before we got disturbed by philosophical questions. Similarly, the ‘therapeutic’ and ‘resolute’ readings of Wittgenstein claim that Wittgenstein’s ‘philosophical practice’ results in the dissolution of the corresponding philosophical problems and brings us back to our everyday life. Accordingly, Wittgenstein is often linked to Pyrrhonism and classified as a quietist. Against this reading, I will employ (...) Laurie Paul’s notion of epistemically transformative experience and argue that Pyrrhonian skepticism and Wittgenstein’s philosophy can be interpreted as a philosophical practice that changes our self-understanding in significant ways. I will argue that this practice can evoke transformative experiences and is thereby able to yield a non-propositional insight into the finitude of the human condition. This shows that Pyrrhonian skepticism and Wittgenstein’s philosophy go beyond quietism. (shrink)

El problema de la relación causal entre el cuerpo y la mente parece merecer, por su importancia y el tiempo a él dedicado, un capítulo aparte en la teoría del conocimiento, en la filosofía de la mente y en las ciencias cognitivas. El dualismo cuerpo-mente dificulta enormemente la explicación teórica de un nexo causal entre uno y otro, problema central en la filosofía de Descartes, más fácilmente rastreable en autores anteriores como san Agustín o Platón. En el presente trabajo analizaremos (...) el desarrollo efectuado por John Searle con el fin de superar este problema mediante una reformulación teórica de los conceptos involucrados en su descripción y conceptuación. Su tratamiento se basa en el reemplazo del concepto tradicional de causalidad por uno más complejo, mediante la introducción teórica de diferentes niveles de observación y del concepto de realización, integrante de este nuevo concepto de causalidad. (shrink)

In the present paper we study the relationship between the notions of force, cause and subject of motion in Leibniz’s early dynamics. First, we specify the role that the problem of the subject and cause of motion played in the development of his dynamics. Second, we analyze the distinction between force and quantity of motion and the validity and limits of his proof. Third, we study and evaluate the limits of the arguments for establishing that forces are inherent to bodies. (...) Our main goal is to show that between 1678 and 1686 Leibniz dissociates the problem of the subject from the problem of the cause of motion and, furthermore, that even though the problem of establishing that force is inherent to particular bodies played a major role in the discovery of his dynamics, it has no place in its justification. (shrink)