Ontological Commitments Research Articles

Avoiding Moral Commitment

ABSTRACT I argue that relaxed moral realists are not ontologically committed to moral properties. Regardless of whether we tie ontological commitment to quantification, entailment, or truthmaking, if moral properties are not explanatory (as relaxed realists claim), then moral truths do not require moral properties. This permits a nominalist form of relaxed realism that is both simpler and more ecumenical than extant formulations. The possibility of such a position places pressure on the ontology of competing views—and helps focus attention on the critical and underexplored explanatory element of the relaxed realist’s program.

Pragmatic ontology—Enhancing the philosophical foundation for critical systems thinking/practice

AbstractA sound theoretical foundation for multimethodology should be consistent across the main branches of philosophy: ontological heterogeneity, epistemological plurality and methodological multiplicity. In this light, I posit that (1) Jackson's recent embracement of pragmatism lacks a critical element: a well‐formulated ontology; (2) to overcome this shortcoming, it is necessary to bring ontology back into critical systems thinking/practice; and (3) such an urgent task has further to overcome the current indifference in systems thinking toward ontology. I shall draw intellectual insights from Quine's ‘ontological commitment’, Habermas's ‘ontological presupposition’, Xu Changfu's ‘theory of heterogeneity’, Husserl's ‘ontology layers’, Gadamer's hermeneutic notions ‘prejudice’ and ‘tradition’, as well as ‘ontology building’ practice across the natural and social sciences. I shall also use a multimethodology approach wuli–shili–renli (WSR) as an example to illustrate the working and evolving of pragmatic ontology.

Agency and structure in regional development: in search of a social science research programme

ABSTRACT As a concept, agency stretches from philosophical and meta-theoretical elaborations to studies documenting largely idiosyncratic happenings in a particular empirical context, which could be dismissed as anecdotal. In between, and the source for the recent revival of scholarly interest, lies the promise to explain transformation processes, multiplex governance, and varieties in wellbeing and development pathways, which are needed in a world overshadowed by crises. Have studies on agency and structure lived up to the promise? Only partly, we argue and suggest that we need to develop a common ontological commitment as well as adequate mid-range theories and methods coherent with such a commitment. We suggest critical realism as the backbone of such a common ontological commitment and discuss potential ways forward for a social science research programme with emancipatory potential, this is to say to contribute to our capabilities to make a difference in the world.

Feynman diagrams: visualization of phenomena and diagrammatic representation

AbstractI will argue that the development of Feynman diagrams came from the physicist’s capacity of visualizing phenomena and that such visualization-skill contributed to the forming of a narrative explanation in the sense of Wise (2011) and Morgan (2001). The second part of the paper explores the extent to which Feynman diagrams can be considered as weak representations of quantum phenomena. I will review some of the most common arguments in support of the instrumentalist view and I will suggest that a form of weak representation that does not imply ontological commitment can be applied to the diagrams. Such a form of weak representation will be characterized as non-denotative, intentional, and as conveying a physical interpretation through narrative explanations.

Minimal metaphysics in moral and political philosophy

The aim of this paper is to apply the methodology of minimal ontological commitments to moral and political philosophy. As minimal metaphysics in the philosophy of science endorses scientific realism, so we subscribe to moral realism, arguing that the presumption of liberty is the fundamental assumption defining a person. What needs to be justified then are restrictions to liberty and, in particular, the application of coercion upon persons. In examining knowledge claims about normative facts going beyond the presumption of liberty, such as, for instance, facts about a common good, we show that an ontological commitment to such normative facts is at odds with minimal metaphysics. We thus show how minimal metaphysics vindicates a Kantian deontological stance in moral and political philosophy: moral realism is limited to the obligations that follow from extending the presumption of liberty to all human beings in virtue of them being rational animals, hence to respect every person as an end in itself.

Phenomenology and the status quo: Adorno’s mediation argument

In this paper, I discuss a well-known challenge against phenomenology as a viable form of social criticism. According to this challenge—the Mediation Argument—phenomenology falls short of the requirement that any kind of critique needs a suitable medium of representation because the phenomenological account of experience prioritizes immediacy or directness. I aim to show through a reconstruction of Adorno’s version of the Mediation Argument against Husserl that this challenge fails: it distorts the phenomenological account of meaning by misattributing problematic ontological commitments as well as an overly simplistic idea of normativity to phenomenology; and it systematically underplays critical aspects of the transcendental methodology of phenomenology by ignoring crucial contrasts between phenomenology and commonsense philosophy. Contrary to what the Mediation Argument suggests, I conclude, phenomenology is well-placed to confront the ontological commitments and normative assumptions that commonly lend ideological support to the status quo.

Should psychology adopt Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy of science?

Robert Archer argues that psychology should abandon its use of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science. He recommends that psychology ought to adopt the philosophy of critical realism in its place. I put Archer’s concern with Popper to one side and provide a selective critique of mainstream critical realism, in the light of some developments in contemporary philosophy of science. I express some misgivings about the ontological commitments of Roy Bhaskar’s critical realism, and comment on the limitations of his DREI(C) model of scientific inquiry. In doing so, I also respond to a number of critical remarks Archer makes about replication in psychology.

Towards a mathematical foundation for music theory and composition: a theory of structure

This paper proposes mathematical foundations for music theory and composition. While mathematical methods have proven effective in music theory, a deficiency in rigorous mathematical foundations often leads to ad-hoc constructions and a reliance on intuitive notions with inexplicit definitions. The proposal introduces a comprehensive environment for encoding musical phenomena, as well as a theory of musical parameter. Drawing from the methodologies of (Mazzola, Guerino. 2002. The Topos of Music: Geometric Logic of Concepts, Theory, and Performance. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag), the proposed framework aims to extend his theory of forms to accommodate a wider class of musical structures. Additionally, I advocate for a framework characterized by “comprehensive comprehension” (accommodating a broad class of musical objects), “explicit encoding” (capturing essential features of objects), and “limited ontological commitments” (minimizing posited ontological primitives). These three aspects aim to ensure the framework's generality, explicit representation of structure, and economic efficiency in theoretical constructions. Minimizing ontological commitments also has the benefit of facilitating easier comparisons between entities. This approach is motivated by the desire for a highly versatile framework that enables systematic and standardized construction methods without constraining the intended domain of discourse. To achieve these goals, the paper introduces a mathematical theory of structure grounded in topos theory. By offering a unified and systematic approach, this work contributes to establishing a more rigorous and standardized basis for mathematical music theory. This, in turn, fosters a deeper understanding of musical phenomena and enables more robust theoretical constructions and compositional applications.

Understanding the Normativity of Health Technology Assessment: Ontological, Moral, and Epistemological Commitments.

The inherent normativity of HTA can be conceptualized as a result of normative commitments, a concept that we further specify to encompass moral, epistemological and ontological commitments at play in the practice of HTA. Based on examples from literature, and an analysis of the example of assessing Non-Invasive Prenatal Testing (NIPT), we will show that inevitable normative decisions in conducting an assessment commits the HTA practitioner to moral (regarding what makes a health technology desirable), ontological (regarding which effects of health technology are conceivable), and epistemological (regarding how to obtain reliable information about health technology) norms. This highlights and supports the need for integrating normative analysis and stakeholder participation, providing guidance to HTA practitioners when making normative choices. This will foster a shared understanding between those who conduct, use, or are impacted by assessments regarding what are conceivable and desirable outcomes of using health technology, and how to collect reliable information to assess whether these outcomes are (going to be) realized. It also provides more insight into the implications of different normative choices.

Explanation, semantics, and ontology

The terms ‘semantics’ and ‘ontology’ are increasingly appearing together with ‘explanation’, not only in the scientific literature, but also in everyday social interactions, in particular, within organizations. Ontologies have been shown to play a key role in supporting the semantic interoperability of data and knowledge representation structures used by information systems. With the proliferation of applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in different settings and the increasing need to guarantee their explainability (but also their interoperability) in critical contexts, the term ‘explanation’ has also become part of the scientific and technical jargon of modern information systems engineering. However, all of these terms are also significantly overloaded. In this paper, we address several interpretations of these notions, with an emphasis on their strong connection. Specifically, we discuss a notion of explanation termed ontological unpacking, which aims at explaining symbolic domain descriptions (e.g., conceptual models, knowledge graphs, logical specifications) by revealing their ontological commitment in terms of their so-called truthmakers, i.e., the entities in one’s ontology that are responsible for the truth of a description. To illustrate this methodology, we employ an ontological theory of relations to explain a symbolic model encoded in the de facto standard modeling language UML. We also discuss the essential role played by ontology-driven conceptual models (resulting from this form of explanation processes) in supporting semantic interoperability tasks. Furthermore, we revisit a proposal for quality criteria for explanations from philosophy of science to assess our approach. Finally, we discuss the relation between ontological unpacking and other forms of explanation in philosophy and science, as well as in the subarea of Artificial Intelligence known as Explainable AI (XAI).

A Logical–Algebraic Approach to Revising Formal Ontologies: Application in Mereotopology

In ontology engineering, reusing (or extending) ontologies poses a significant challenge, requiring revising their ontological commitments and ensuring accurate representation and coherent reasoning. This study aims to address two main objectives. Firstly, it seeks to develop a methodological approach supporting ontology extension practices. Secondly, it aims to demonstrate its feasibility by applying the approach to the case of extending qualitative spatial reasoning (QSR) theories. Key questions involve effectively interpreting spatial extensions while maintaining consistency. The framework systematically analyzes extensions of formal ontologies, providing a reconstruction of a qualitative calculus. Reconstructed qualitative calculus demonstrates improved interpretative capabilities and reasoning accuracy. The research underscores the importance of methodological approaches when extending formal ontologies, with spatial interpretation serving as a valuable case study.

Bloomington and Cambridge compared: varieties of ontological thinking, social positioning, and the self-governance of common-pool resources

Abstract This paper contributes to the literature on ontology and the history of economic thought by examining the ontological commitments of Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom from the vantage point of recent work on social positioning theory (SPT). The comparison highlights important features of Ostrom’s thought on common-pool resources (CPRs), most notably her emphasis on social positions and the correlative nature of the rights and duties and the role of power and authority associated with them. In addition to highlighting similarities between Ostrom and SPT, the paper also identifies differences and possible gains from trade. It is argued that Ostrom’s approach could potentially be enhanced by following SPT in allowing for the social positioning of objects as well as people and that SPT might benefit from Ostrom’s ideas about the epistemic challenges involved in deliberate attempts at social positioning and the possibility of failures in social positioning such challenges might entail.

Perdebatan Realisme-Antirealisme dalam Filsafat Agama Kontemporer

This article starts from the ontological problem in the discourse on the philosophy of religion, namely between the realist and anti-realist poles. The two are differentiated from the way of understanding the world, where realists believe that there is a world that is independent of mind and consciousness (mind-independent world) while anti-realists believe that the world, including perspectives on it, is completely dependent on the intentionality of the subject, so it is only a construction of mind and consciousness. Regarding religion, for realists, religion and its substance truly refer to objective reality, while anti-realists believe that religion is fictitious because it is only a construction of the mind and consciousness, not referring to objective reality. This debate also implies a disagreement between theism and atheism, especially in the context of the ontological status of religion and the epistemic status of religion. This article wants to explain that a believer is definitely a realist. This realist attitude is confirmed through an ontological commitment to the existence of God. However, the semantic construction of divinity is in the domain of mind and consciousness. The object of representation exists in a world independent of the mind, while the content of the representation exists within the influence and determination of the mind. This has consequences for the subject's plurality of meanings of the world. Regarding the theism-atheism dialogue pattern, this article offers a more analytical dialogue pattern, namely dialogue that is not theologically centric. This means that the debate is more directed at how to talk about God, not just about God's existence.

The Importance of Ontological Commitment and Linguistics in Relation to the Elucidation of Design Requirements

One of the design process’s earliest and most critical stages is establishing and determining requirements. Design requirements are often expressed through language, whether in written documents, diagrams, or verbal discussions in terms of the client’s “wants” and “needs” or balancing what they can “afford.” Designers use of quotes around “wants,” “needs,” and “afford” signals ambiguity or doubt in the meaning of the terms. The language used during early discourse is crucial for expressing and translating theseambiguous terms into specific unambiguous design requirements, which significantly shape and constrain possible solutions. In philosophy, this concept is known as ontological commitment. Embedded language in requirements documents, expressed through constraints, objectives, and functions, establish the ontological commitment to a specific solution space. Prior marine design research has focused on the wicked problem of requirements elucidation, with the goal visualizing potential solutions derived from language, and a more direct link to ontological commitment was developed by Andrews in the concept of style Duchateau (2016) van Ores (2011) Andrews (2012). However, the role and impact of linguistics in translating and interpreting uncertain or ambiguous terms into specific design requirements has been largely overlooked. This paper presents modern direct examples of ontological commitment from requirements development for the Littoral Combat Ship.

Problem Konsep Manusia dalam Neo-Darwinisme: Kritik atas Pemikiran Richard Dawkins

The discourse of human origin is a topic constantly being studied, because human always looking for his meaning and life purpose. One of scientist of Neo-Darwinism, Richard Dawkins, proposed the concept of human with a gene-centric view of evolution. The author uses a descriptive-analysis method to analyze the concept critically. The result is the author found some problems in the concept of human by Richard Dawkins, which human nature reduced to survival machine of replicators genes and memes only. The conclusion of this research is the concept of human by Richard Dawkins affected by naturalism worldview and his ontological commitment to the theory of evolution, made Dawkins define human only from the material side and neglected the immaterial side also other dimensions to comprehend the meaning of human itself

Toward an ontology for EA modeling and EA model quality

Models have long since been used, in different shapes and forms, to understand, communicate about, and (re)shape, the world around us; including many different social, economic, biological, chemical, physical, and digital aspects. This is also the case in the context of enterprise architecture (EA), where we see a wide range of models in many different shapes and forms being used as well. Researchers in EA modeling usually introduce their own lexicon, and perspective of what a model actually is, while accepting (often implicitly) the accompanying ontological commitments. Similarly, practitioners of EA modeling implicitly also commit to (different) ontologies, resulting in models that have an uncertain ontological standing. This is because, for the subject domain of enterprise architecture models (as opposed to the content of such models), no single ontology has gained major traction. As a result, studies into aspects of enterprise architecture models, such as “model quality” and “return on modeling effort”, are fragmented, and cannot readily be compared or combined. This paper proposes a comprehensive applied ontology, specifically geared to enterprise architecture modeling. Ontologies represent structured knowledge about a particular subject domain. It allows for study into, and reasoning about, that subject domain. Our ontology is derived from a theory of modeling, while clarifying concepts such as “enterprise architecture model”, and introduces novel concepts such as “model audience” and “model objective”. Furthermore, the relevant interrelations between these different concepts are identified and defined. The resulting ontology for enterprise architecture models is represented in OntoUML, and shown to be consistent with the foundational ontology for modeling, Unified Foundational Ontology.

A naturalist approach to social ontology

I argue that a certain kind of naturalist approach to social ontology is likely to be both philosophically fruitful and relevant to empirical social science. The kind of naturalism I employ might be called contextualism, which emphasizes the constant presence of assumed background knowledge, is suspicious of general inference rules and all or nothing claims about the ontology of the social sciences, and argues that Quine’s quantificational criterion for ontological commitment has to be supplemented with local interpretations and arguments about what specific social science research is committed to. I look at three case studies employing this perspective, one on agent based models and individualism, a second on the reality of social class, and a third on the reality of race. In all three cases work is first needed to clarifying what empirical social science is claiming, what ontology or ontologies it seems to presuppose, and then description of the kinds of evidence that supports its commitments.

Existence, Abstraction and Reference

The article is devoted to the well-known dispute between R. Carnap and W.V.O. Quine on the meaning of statements with names of abstractions, which also revealed their disagreements on the more general question of the nature of the dependence of ontology on the choice of language of knowledge. According to Quine, the choice of language carries with it certain ontological commitments – judgments of existence that must be true for anyone who appropriately uses the language in question. The language of abstractions (using appropriate names and indications) is widely used not only in philosophy and everyday communication, but also in the sciences, including natural sciences. The names of abstractions (or, alternatively, quantification by corresponding entities) cannot be completely excluded from science, as Carnap, in particular, points out. He also considers it wrong to attribute to a scientist with empiricist views the belief in the existence of something that he, as an empiricist, is not ready to consider existing. In his view, the choice of language (framework) does not carry any ontological obligations: it determines what should be the correct answer to the so-called internal questions of the theory but does not affect metaphysical questions. Carnap interprets meaningful statements about abstractions as analytical truths, while Quine believes that most references to abstractions are removable from the language of science, and those that are not removable create additional ontological obligations, which, however, for some reason say nothing about reality itself. But why this is so, if the theory implicating them claims to describe reality, is not clear. This debate about the role of judgments about abstractions in scientific knowledge gave rise to a whole branch of metaphysical and ontological research, best known as metaontology. The main parties in this dispute are realists, who interpret irreducible abstractions as part of reality and denotations of certain names, and anti-realists, who, as a rule, deny the connection of statements with such names with reality, treating them as pseudo-statements or something similar. The solution to the problem, which is proposed in this article, consists in abandoning the belief, widespread both in philosophy and in everyday thought, which can be generally called “The theory of reference” and which consists in the fact that the contribution of names and certain other types of expressions to communication is their denotations. If we assume that names have no denotations at all and their semantic contribution to statements is only their senses or something similar, then the names of abstractions in this respect will be no different from other types of names. In this case, it would be no need to either assume that they designate some “Platonic” entities in order for some statements with them being true, nor interpret these judgments as pseudo-statements or as truths of some special kind that are not related to reality. The interpretation of statements with such names and their evaluation will not pose any special problem for the empiricist with this approach.

On the Structure and Accumulation of Realist Content

Ever since the heyday of the Vienna Circle, scientific realists have worked hard to document and clarify the structure and growth of truth content in theoretical descriptions. Today, this trait is particularly intense among “selective realists” – realists focused on theory parts with high empirical corroboration rather than whole theories. From their perspective, theories with posits systematically deployed in corroborated novel predictions are, with high probability, descriptively true or contain a proper part that is. Unlike traditional realists, selectivists acknowledge that (a) radical conceptual change is a recurring scientific phenomenon and (b) empirical theories have poor reliability records at the most profound ontological level. At the same time, they point to significant descriptive continuities at intermediate theoretical levels between successful theories and their successors – i.e., a false theory can (and often does) contain parts that succeed as correct descriptions. Selectivists seek to identify those parts. Their approaches limit ontological commitment exclusively to highly confirmed theoretical descriptions; unfortunately, the selection criteria they use seemingly support many regrettable choices. One source of trouble is that extant approaches leave unclear the ontology described by the selected parts. Historical cases and scientific practice gesture toward a functional resolution of this difficulty, but the clues could be more transparent and need elaboration. Otherwise, selectivism has improved in consistency over the last three decades. Current projects emphasize the continuity of well-established scientific content (relating to how entities and processes effectively behave within a specific regime or descriptive level) instead of just the continuity of “structure”. This paper provides some clarifications that arguably clear the road for realist commitment toward functional and effective theoretical content. The proposed functional/effective turn is checked against some plausible objections.

When Zen Becomes Philosophy: The Case of Dōgen’s Uji

Abstract Dōgen is among the few authors from historic Japan who have received substantial attention in modern philosophical discourse. His thought on time figures prominently in this regard. Association between Uji 有時, the title of his short instruction on the subject, and Heidegger’s Being and Time has facilitated this integration into modern philosophical discourse. It is customary in this discourse to treat Dōgen’s writings as philosophical texts. Against this tendency, I apply the concept of ‘frames of equivalence’ from translation studies and demonstrate how the philosophical mode of reading leads to substantial shifts in all three dimensions of the semiotic process. In the pragmatic dimension, the religious impetus of Dōgen’s texts is toned down to an appeal in favor of certain epistemological and ontological commitments. In the syntactic dimension, the formal organization of his texts is ignored, obfuscating the overall structure and intent of his argument. Given the context-dependency of meaning, this leads to significant shifts in the semantic dimension as well. I argue that paying attention to frames of equivalence in reading Dōgen serves to identify creative investments and inadvertent projections. This prepares the ground for historically more accurate interpretations and prevents the misappropriation of ‘enlightened’ authority for philosophical hypothesizing.