Classical Ontology Research Articles

Ontology of Substances and Ontology of Facts: back to Comparison

The purpose of this work is to characterize clearly the early Wittgenstein’s position in context of the contemporary discussions between the adherers of classical ontology, based on the notion of substance, and its detractors. The Aristotle’s ousiology is usually regarded as a locus classicus of substantial ontology. A noticeable tendency in the contemporary philosophy is the rejective stance towards the notion of substance and towards the vision of the reality as the ‘totality of things’ ( summa rerum ). This trend goes through the 20th century (B. Russell, etc.) and is prominent in the philosophy of the 21th century. Wittgenstein, who calls the world the totality of facts, not of things, is sustainably regarded in the secondary literature as a herald of a non-classical way of thought, presented in his ontology of facts - a radical alternative to substantial ontology. However, how can this claim cohere with the active usage of the classical substantialism terms, going back to Aristotle, in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”? In order to answer this question, it’s advisably to address, as the starting point of the analysis, the work of B. Wolniewicz comparing Wittgensteinian ontology to Aristotelian ontology and pointing out not only difference, but also parallelism between them. In the present paper, it’s shown that some of Wolniewicz’s remarks are valuable, but the overall view of the problem should be corrected and supplemented taking into account nuances of both Aristotelian and Wittgensteinian ontologies. Having in mind the results of this analysis, one can read the early Wittgenstein’s philosophy as a statement about the role of the classical forms of thought for a philosopher proposing a non-classical worldview, which helps to elucidate the structure of the contemporary ontological discussions.

Research on knowledge representation and modeling of health management based on fuzzy ontology

The long-term maintenance of good condition for equipment is the basis of carrying out combat missions under the high technology and fast pace of modern war. However, the knowledge in the health management field at present has the characteristics of distribution, multi-source, heterogeneity and uncertainty, which seriously affects the efficiency of knowledge sharing and reuse. In order to improve the utilization of health management knowledge, an ontology-based knowledge representation method is proposed to describe knowledge in a unified and standardized way, and the classical ontology is extended to express the uncertain knowledge in the field of health management. In addition, to improve the maintenance and knowledge updating efficiency, a global ontology model and a hierarchy, time and activity (HTA) ontology model are constructed. This paper takes the guidance subsystem of a missile as an example to illustrate the process of knowledge modeling. The results show this method realizes knowledge sharing in the health management field and can provide decision support for health management of equipment.

A semantic-based approach for hepatitis C virus prediction and diagnosis using a fuzzy ontology and a fuzzy Bayesian network

Medical decisions, especially when diagnosing Hepatitis C, are challenging to make as they often have to be based on uncertain and fuzzy information. In most cases, that puts doctors in complex yet uncertain decision-making situations. Therefore, it would be more suitable for doctors to use a semantically intelligent system that mimics the doctor’s thinking and enables fast Hepatitis C diagnosis. Fuzzy ontologies have been used to remedy the shortcomings of classical ontologies by using fuzzy logic, which allows dealing with fuzzy knowledge in ontologies. Moreover, Fuzzy Bayesian networks are well-known and widely used to represent and analyze uncertain medical data. This paper presents a system that combines fuzzy ontologies and Bayesian networks to diagnose Hepatitis C. The system uses a fuzzy ontology to represent sequences of uncertain and fuzzy data about patients and some features relevant to Hepatitis C diagnosis, enabling more reusable and interpretable datasets. In addition, we propose a novel semantic diagnosis process based on a fuzzy Bayesian network as an inference engine. We conducted an experimental study on 615 real cases to validate the proposed system. The experimentation allowed us to compare the results of existing machine learning algorithms for the Hepatitis C diagnosis with the results of our proposed system. Our solution shows promising results and proves effective for fast medical assistance.

Interpretation of the Power Phenomenon in Line with Classical Ontology by the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke

Interpretation of the Power Phenomenon in Line with Classical Ontology by the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke

God, an Event of Proximity, Narrated in Luke 10:25–37

The so-called “phenomenological turn” proposes a return to the world of lived experience, overcoming the rigidity of classical ontology. In this sense, theology also proposes to speak of God migrating from the world of the concept to life itself. Keeping in mind, then, that God gives himself in history as a Mystery of infinite love, it is necessary to find a new category that can express him, being faithful to the biblical testimony. The category chosen is “event,” as proposed by Claude Romano, who understands the event (happening) as the irruption of the unexpected that significantly affects everything that comes into contact with it. The parable of the Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) reveals God as an event of loving proximity, who mercifully bursts in through the actions of a Samaritan who saves the life of a seriously wounded man. The confirmation of the possibility of using the category “event” to speak of God is given only by means of a narrative method, for which we make use of the hermeneutical contributions of A. Wénin, who makes narrative the most appropriate language to express God’s traits, in this case, his merciful closeness.

Using type-2 fuzzy ontology to improve semantic interoperability for healthcare and diagnosis of depression

Ontology enhances semantic interoperability through integrating health data from heterogeneous sources and sharing information in a meaningful way. In the field of smart health services, semantic interoperability means the exchange and interpretation of data without ambiguity and uncertainty. However, existing classical ontologies are not able to represent vague and uncertain knowledge, especially in contexts of mental health disorders which are associated with varying degrees of uncertainty and inaccuracy of diagnosis, and in this case, the treatment is a complex and common mental process necessitating to share information accurately and unambiguously. Type-2 fuzzy set theory can offer a fruitful solution in order to control uncertainty or express ambiguous concepts in a dynamic and complex environment such as healthcare systems. Herein, a semantic framework for healthcare, and also monitoring mental health disorders using type-2 fuzzy set theory based on the Internet of Thing (IoT) is suggested, in which all depression-related concepts are semantically annotated to share detailed information with the treatment staff. This framework not only paved the way to increasing the accuracy of medical diagnosis and decision-making but also provides the possibility of inference and semantic reasoning using the languages of SPARQL query and DL query.

An interval type‐2 fuzzy ontological model: Predicting water quality from sensory data

SUMMARYWith the advent of break‐through sensing technology, performing data capturing and analysis for knowledge engineering has become more opportunistic. The task of efficiently analyzing sensor based data for effective decision making poses a significant challenge. Conventional prediction and recommender systems lack comprehensive analysis of all parameters and aspects, thus compromising prediction results. At the decision‐making level, traditional knowledge driven prediction systems deploy classical ontology for knowledge representation and analysis. However, classical ontologies are not considered as powerful tools due to their inability to handle vagueness in data for real‐world applications. On the contrary, fuzzy ontology deals with the issue of hazy and uncertain data for effective analysis to give promising results. This work presents interval type 2 fuzzy ontological knowledge model that predicts water quality of sensor based water samples and providing solutions with respect to the corresponding quality state. The proposed knowledge model constitutes of two newly developed ontologies: water sensor observations ontology (crisp ontology to model sensor observational data) and water quality ontology (interval type 2 fuzzy ontology for modeling the water quality prediction process). The inference mechanism is based on interval type‐2 fuzzy partitioning and computation. Besides water quality prediction and providing solutions, the proposed model handles the issue of interoperability and exchange of consensual knowledge among multiple disciplines. The proposed knowledge model is validated with real‐life water sensor based parameterized data captured from various geographically dispersed monitoring stations with approximately 50,000 samples at each station.

Type-2 fuzzy ontology-based semantic knowledge for indoor air quality assessment

Semantic web technology plays an increasing role in performing smart home applied programs and it has led to improve semantic interoperability among different systems. However, classical ontologies fail to illustrate ambiguous, incomplete, and uncertain knowledge often available in the real world. On the other hand, the air quality assessment carried out to determine “the degree of pollution” lacks accurately specified boundaries; therefore, the conventional approach based on classic ontology cannot extract real-valued memberships and consequently fails to support ambiguous, incomplete, and uncertain knowledge. Integrating semantic web of things technology (SWOT) and type-2 fuzzy logic improves the capability of semantic reasoning to retrieve query information. Annotation of sensor-generated data and the ability to infer and represent knowledge based on type-2 fuzzy logic are extremely essential when the available data are ambiguous and uncertain. Hence, in this paper, we have provided a framework to build an IoT-based home air quality assessment system by using type-2 fuzzy ontology so that smart home systems can make a decision and control appropriately based on predefined rules by employing the provided semantic reasoning.

Ontology of Time: explanation of the “Present” (in the context of the works and views of G.I. Chelpanov)

The article-essay will analyze several key concepts-phenomena of personal being - Individual, Social, Time. In different paradigms, they could be called modes of being, existentials, onotological constructs, etc. - mandatory and necessary dimensions, levels, the sphere of development of life - and individual potential - of a particular person. Here they will be considered both in the context of the historical past and the historical present: how they manifest themselves in the life of a particular person (or a particular generation as a whole) and how they can be used to analyze what is happening and model the future - historical and one's own. Georgy Chelpanov's teachings about the Social, the Individual and - about Time were presented as a model example of interpretive models. The methods of theorizing and modeling in this study were the principles of classical ontology, hermeneutics, historical-critical analysis, comparative analysis, meaningful reconstruction and ontologically oriented interpretation. The purpose of the study is to show the ontological relationship of these levels of development of human being, the impossibility of extracting / rejecting any of them - for a holistic attitude to one's life and living one's life as an integral entity. The second layer of the research objectives is a historical and critical analysis of the teachings of the social, individual and time - one of the founders of Russian psychological thought, the organizer of science and philosophical and psychological education - Georgy Chelpanov.

Why modern poetry could use more ‘red ink’

The article offers to look at contemporary poetry from the viewpoint of an ‘ordinary reader,’ uninvolved in the literary process and unaffiliated with the notional ‘establishment.’ The author uses his position as a bystander, on the one hand, and a training that enables expert assessment (the author teaches Russian language and literature and holds a master’s degree in cognitive research), on the other, to examine the processes behind presentday literary awards and criticism of poetry. According to Smirnov, modern poetry and modern criticism both have disintegrated into separate segments within a common literary field. The continuous erosion of language norms and dilution of criteria have pushed contemporary art, and poetry in particular, away from the rules of the classical ontology. Thus, a text cannot be identified as pertaining to ‘poetry’ by such key characteristics as rhyme, rhythm, or use of figurative language. In this situation, the author pins his hopes on the institution of criticism: unless it engages in self-reflection in order to recognise the circumstances and phenomena behind its failures, constructive changes remain unlikely.

Understanding Quantum Theory

There exist dozens of interpretations of quantum theory, but they do not seem to contribute much to understanding the theory. This paper attempts to clarify some issues that are discussed in those interpretations. The main keywords are: Classical ontology, Indeterminism, Probability, Predictions, The necessity of classical concepts, Minimal interpretation, Lattice, Physical objects, Alternatives to quantum theory?, Measurement, Realism. One of the main points of this paper is the role of predictions in understanding any theory of physics.

Anxiety and Ontology: Toward the Lacanian Materialist Metapsychology of the Affect

Notwithstanding the fact that already in his early essay “The Logical Time” Lacan suggested that the “ontological form of anxiety” is the constitutive element in the process of the constitution of subjectivity, thus far there have only been rare attempts at inquiring into the relation between the affect of anxiety and Lacan’s critique of classical ontology, which this article will try to explore. Specifically, my argument will be that Lacanian anxiety, unlike, for instance, its Heideggerian variation, is inextricably connected with the third dimension of being, which amounts to what Lacan in Seminar XI labelled “the unrealized,” i.e. to the peculiar structure of the unconscious, which distorts the classical ontological opposition between being and non-being. For Lacan, the unconscious, rather than referring simply to repressed unconscious content, is instead structured around a “pre-ontological” gap (Lacan) or “ontological negativity” (Zupančič). While anxiety notoriously “does not deceive,” it does not deceive only regarding the subject’s encounter with the real, but also – and most importantly – regarding the specific ontological structure of the unconscious, which includes the negativity as its own “material cause”. In this respect, anxiety might be regarded as an “ontological” or even objective material affect – yet not in a posthumanist sense of the affect of being/matter, but rather as the affective correlate or material signal for the fracture of being itself. In short, without this specific ontological gap/negativity, there would only be fear and frustration, not anxiety, which brings anxiety into the domain of metapsychology.

Names at the Tip of the Nose

The problem of naming is not just any philosophical problem, but rather one that is central to classical ontology, the latter depending on the notion of names (onomata) as latching onto things (pragmata) in their essential being. As such, the name has traditionally been tied to the concept of truth as adequatio or correspondence between knowledge and being, intellect and thing, or proposition and reality. Accordingly, the problem of naming lies at the core of the issues of objectivity (truth) and fiction, as addressed in this issue of Filozofski vestnik. Probing and circumventing the double trap of “transcendentalism” and “new materialism,” I propose to cast a side-glance at this massive philosophical problem, approaching it from the singular point of view of smells and their striking relationship to language.

The End of a Classical Ontology for Quantum Mechanics?

In this paper, I argue that the Shrapnel–Costa no-go theorem undermines the last remaining viability of the view that the fundamental ontology of quantum mechanics is essentially classical: that is, the view that physical reality is underpinned by objectively real, counterfactually definite, uniquely spatiotemporally defined, local, dynamical entities with determinate valued properties, and where typically ‘quantum’ behaviour emerges as a function of our own in-principle ignorance of such entities. Call this view Einstein–Bell realism. One can show that the causally symmetric local hidden variable approach to interpreting quantum theory is the most natural interpretation that follows from Einstein–Bell realism, where causal symmetry plays a significant role in circumventing the nonclassical consequences of the traditional no-go theorems. However, Shrapnel and Costa argue that exotic causal structures, such as causal symmetry, are incapable of explaining quantum behaviour as arising as a result of noncontextual ontological properties of the world. This is particularly worrying for Einstein–Bell realism and classical ontology. In the first instance, the obvious consequence of the theorem is a straightforward rejection of Einstein–Bell realism. However, more than this, I argue that, even where there looks to be a possibility of accounting for contextual ontic variables within a causally symmetric framework, the cost of such an account undermines a key advantage of causal symmetry: that accepting causal symmetry is more economical than rejecting a classical ontology. Either way, it looks like we should give up on classical ontology.

Time Materialized – Broaching the Question of Objective Historicity

The paper unfolds a preliminary theory of so-called objective or ontological historicity, that is to say, a theory of historicity which is not founded in the human subject. The article does this by deriving a notion of historicity from classical ontology by drawing upon figures such as Aristotle, Cusanus, Leibniz and Kant. One of the leading examples analysed throughout the paper is the museal object, which seems to embody a certain aporia between an immediate presence and the presence of a bygone era and time. It is argued that the historical objects qua historical objects exhibit a certain monadic quality, but that the relation between the different aspects of the object remain an irreconcilable one.

Instantiation of the multi-viewpoints ontology from a resource

ABSTRACT We are interested in the acquisition of instances of concepts from a text resource. These concepts are defined in the multi-viewpoints ontology. The multi-viewpoints ontology allows giving several definitions of a single concept. Each definition is guaranteed by a viewpoint. In the multi-viewpoints ontology, a single individual is an instance of several concepts. That is, which we call the multi-instantiations. The acquisition of the multi-instantiations from a resource requires alignment between the resource elements and the multi-viewpoints ontology elements. The structure of the multi-viewpoints ontology and the semantic constraints of the multi-viewpoints ontology concepts differ from the classical ontology’s. For that, the existing processes, which allow aligning the resource element with a classical ontological concept, cannot align the resource element with a multi-viewpoints ontology concept. Thus, we propose a new process, which offers a possibility to align resource elements with multi-viewpoints ontology concepts in order to acquire the multi-instantiations. The obtained multi-instantiations will be represented in the Multi-Viewpoints Ontology Language, in order to be integrated into the multi-viewpoints ontology.

Touch Me Not: the ethics of intimacy

ABSTRACT The article explores the relationship between intimacy and ethics on the basis of the thematic preoccupations and aesthetic processes of the film, Touch Me Not, to re-visit the meanings of the body, beauty and sexuality in this context. Based on a discussion of how the skin–body (as an ‘area before words’) distinction maps onto the ethics-ontology relationship in Levinas, the article discusses the film’s take on the skin as a semi-permeable border between the self and the ‘other’, treating touch both as a means of communication and as a metaphor for ethics. For Levinas’ anti-ocular ethics opens up the possibility for a discussion of the visual image that can move beyond the classical ontology of the cinematic image. In this context, the article discusses the significance of the film’s form in relation to the ethics of the visual in the cinematic space. Blurring the boundaries between the filmic and the non-filmic, reality and fiction, the film maker and the subject, the film disrupts the conventional spectators’ gaze, which has come to be devoid of a moral stance in contemporary society.

Philosophy Between Land and Sea

Philosophy Between Land and Sea Brian O' Keeffe (bio) Peter Sloterdijk's In the World Interior of Capital challenges philosophy to propose a theory and a history of globalization. Why has philosophy not done so? Is it because that entails the monstrous self-confidence of "grand narrative"? Philosophy has been badgered into petits récits—so much the better, perhaps. For grands récits are tainted by tendention: too much overconfident teleology, too many overblown accounts of "progress" and "destiny." Postcolonial and feminist critiques have observed that the authors of such narratives are generally European, male, and white. Only a willfully obtuse writer would supply a grand narrative that ignored "the colonialist looting of the world" (Sloterdijk 2014, 4). Preferable, therefore, is a récit that would be "polyvalent, non-totalizing, and, above all, aware of its own perspectival conditionality" (2014, 4). There's nothing objectionable here, in Sloterdijk's view, except the assumption that grand narratives are incapable of similar polyvalence and self-awareness. Globalization past and present: this is the grand narrative Sloterdijk proposes. But it's also a narrative concerning the world, and so Sloterdijk gets down to brass tacks: the world is round. One chapter of the grand narrative therefore concerns orbs, balls, and circular geometries: "classical ontology was a sphereology" (9) because it conceived creation's perfection as a harmony between the vault of the heavens and the bow of the earth. To be is to dwell in perfect encirclement, girdled by sky, heaven, and earth. Another chapter concerns "terrestrial globalization realized practically through Christian-capitalist seafaring and politically implanted through the colonialism of the Old European nation-states" (9). Historians will observe that this story has already been written. But Sloterdijk's question is why philosophy hasn't surveyed that history. If matters began with Columbus' 1492 voyage to America, or with the age of European "Discovery," and "discovery" is "the central epistemological and political word of the modern age" (2014, 46), has philosophy ever thought seriously about discovery? "As far as we know," Sloterdijk writes, "a philosophically thought-out history of discoveries, terrestrial and maritime alike, has never been considered, let alone attempted or carried out" (53). I'm not sure that's quite true, but even if partly true, the reason is simply that the welter of concepts required for such a history would defeat the keenest philosophical [End Page 349] mind. One would need "distance, extension, externality, canopies, barbarians, becoming-image, density, one-sidedness, disinhibition, dispatchability, capture, inhibition, investment, capital, mapping, medium, mission, ecumene, risk, feedback, debt, obscurity, crime, traffic, interconnection, delusional system, world system, wishful thinking, cynicism" (53). Deleuze would probably eye that list with approval, but it's evidently a long list, and the difficulty for Sloterdijk himself is harnessing already-theorized terms like "debt" or "capital" to terms he has made his own, especially "canopies"—thoughts of sky-ceilings and world-plafonds abound in his Sphereologies trilogy. But if a philosophically thought-out history of terrestrial and maritime discoveries is at stake, the matter involves gaining conceptual purchase not just on "discovery" but also on "land" and "sea," especially "sea." For the capital moment occurred when sea voyages took primacy over trips taken on land. A "damp revolution" (42), as Sloterdijk fetchingly puts it. The oceans now served global affairs, and circumnavigation of the Waterworld was the name of the game. Land The objective of this essay is to assess Sloterdijk's challenge to philosophy, one made over a decade ago, but one which still has point, I think. The challenge is this: to offer what, to invoke Carl Schmitt, would be a "world-historical meditation" on land and sea (and, I suggest, islands as well). Imagine, first of all, a philosophy that formulated what Sloterdijk calls "the world-concept of the Modern Age" (2014, 88). A "concept" that concerns Discovery, but also the sea. Imagine, therefore, a Philosophy Department attuned to the sea, contemplating docks and stevedores. It would have constituted itself "as a swimming faculty, or at least as the port authority of Old Europe" (88). Nice. The Philosophy Department as the Department for Maritime Affairs; philosophers as harbor masters and ship-chandlers; Kant and Hegel...

The Ontology of Security and its Implications for Maritime Security

A substantial number of state and non-state actors have published strategies for maritime security and governance in the last decade. These strategies have been criticized in the sense that they do not reflect the ever-changing nature of security context. The critics mostly deal with adaptation to new risks and threats from an anthropocentric perspective. This study instead focuses on the comparison of the classical and post-classical ontologies of security. It assumes that the classical ontology of security enables certain assumptions while ignoring others. Thus, an ontological critique appears to be a necessity to address the security concerns of the complex global security context adequately. With this, this paper contributes to Christian Bueger’s maritime security matrix from a paradigm-oriented approach. As a result, the paper makes a case for the post-classical ontology of security and defines its main features as diffusion, interrelation, adaptation, non-linearity, and inclusiveness. This paper concludes that the ontological turn would be an asset for sustainable maritime security governance.

The Status of Classical Physics in the Contemporary Scientific Mosaic

This paper argues that the traditional scientonomic portrayal of theories of classical physics (e.g. Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics) as merely used but no longer accepted is too simplistic. To that end, I consider the current status of the meteorological theory, which is accepted as the best available description of atmospheric phenomenon despite the fact that it is founded on the principles of classical physics, including those of Newtonian mechanics. This apparent paradox is resolved if the distinction between a theory’s ontology and its phenomenological laws is properly appreciated. The phenomenological laws of meteorology are accepted by the scientific community as the best available description of atmospheric phenomena. Yet, this acceptance does not imply that the classical ontology implicit in the current meteorological theory is also accepted. Thus, the modern meteorological theory (as well as many tenets of classical physics) can be said to be accepted as the best available description of the observable atmospheric phenomena even though its classical ontology is no longer accepted.
 Suggested Modifications
 [Sciento-2019-0012]: Accept that while the ontologies of classical theories, such as those of Newtonian mechanics, classical thermodynamics, or classical electrodynamics are no longer accepted by the physics community, their phenomenological claims are still accepted as the best available descriptions of their respective observable phenomena, i.e. as the best available answers to their respective questions.
 Consequently, reject the idea that these classical theories are no longer accepted but merely used.