Relational Ontology Research Articles

Hospitality and Ontology

Open to the arrival of the other, ready to receive the other unconditionally, the responsibility is born as a response to the eventful arrival of the other. Hospitality, understood in this way, is thus an unconditional condition of possibility for meeting the other, even before any legal institution. In this sense, ethics is more original than law, and the hospitality relationship is more fundamental than any social, political, or legal relationship. This primordiality also means that Derrida reinterprets hospitality as an ontological relation, which now becomes an openness to the arrival of the arrivant, and a readiness to encounter the other. In coexistence, the absolute presence always poses a question to all beings and expects an answer from all beings. Still, in a certain sense, our ontological relation to all beings is also a responsive and responsiblerelationship.

Experience without essentialism: on ‘posting’ phenomenology

ABSTRACT In contemporary qualitative research, phenomenology is often dismissed by postqualitative inquiry (PQI) for clinging to a view of reality as fixed, self-evident, and containing inherent essences. The purpose of this article is to ask how committed phenomenologists might respond to these charges. Employing a somewhat paradoxical defense strategy, the article jumps to phenomenology’s defense by conceding most of PQI’s criticism, but arguing that these deficiencies are contingent theoretical assumptions that can (and should) be developed through dialogue with poststructuralist traditions like PQI. The article then delves into the process of ‘posting’ phenomenology. More specifically, it introduces postphenomenology, a contemporary approach that seeks to reconcile phenomenological insights with poststructuralist concerns and is explicitly anchored in an antiessentialist, relational ontology. Finally, the article argues that the inclusion of postphenomenological insights in PQI would enable a deeper comprehension of the intricate dynamics between humans, technologies, and the worlds that they inhabit.

Introduction to Hiromatsu Wataru's "relational ontology"

Introduction to Hiromatsu Wataru's "relational ontology"

Developing a computational representation of human physical activity and exercise using open ontology-based approach: a Tai Chi use case.

Many studies have examined the impact of exercise and other physical activities in influencing the health outcomes of individuals. These physical activities entail an intricate sequence and series of physical anatomy, physiological movement, movement of the anatomy, etc. To better understand how these components interact with one another and their downstream impact on health outcomes, there needs to be an information model that conceptualizes all entities involved. In this study, we introduced our early development of an ontology model to computationally describe human physical activities and the various entities that compose each activity. We developed an open-sourced biomedical ontology called the Kinetic Human Movement Ontology that reused OBO Foundry terminologies and encoded in OWL2. We applied this ontology in modeling and linking a specific Tai Chi movement. The contribution of this work could enable modeling of information relating to human physical activity, like exercise, and lead towards information standardization of human movement for analysis. Future work will include expanding our ontology to include more expressive information and completely modeling entire sets of movement from human physical activity.

Enhanced agency and the visual thinking of design

Abstract Visual thinking is a systematic way to produce knowledge in design by means of mental imagery, spatial reasoning, and the use of an array of visual representations. Pictorial representations such as sketches are crucial for the activity of designing at the early stage of the creative process. Designers see more information in sketches than was actually drawn. The ability to see more information than is sketched out can be seen as an enhanced visual capacity of human agency. Enhanced agency is the prosthetic incorporation of artifacts to improve the original agentive capacities. The incorporation of artifacts to draw raises some fundamental questions: Is the pencil an extension of the mind? Can we think with our hands? What agentive capacities are increased with the use of the pencil? What is the representational status of sketching? The chapter is structured around these key questions to suggest some answers inspired by the work of Göran Sonesson. Using the notion of enhanced agency and the layered model of agency, I explore the way in which the pencil improves the visual thinking of design. In doing so I found that it is important to maintain the principle of asymmetry in cognitive systems to reconsider relational ontology in favor of ecological relationships.

Knowledge-based query system for the critical minerals

Critical minerals are increasingly used in advanced, modern technologies. Exploration for these minerals require efficient mechanisms to search for the latest geological knowledge about the petrogenesis and spatial distribution of these essential resources. Although the current text-based deposit classification schemes help geoscientists to understand how and where these critical minerals form, they cannot easily be queried by software without extensive natural language processing and knowledge modeling. Ontologies can explicitly specify the knowledge scattered in the texts and tables of these schemes and the Critical Minerals Mapping Initiative (CMMI) database by way of logical structures whose results can automatically be processed and queried. They can also draw new knowledge by inference from the ones that are explicitly specified in them. These qualities make ontologies a perfect choice for digital knowledge storage, search, and extraction. The Critical Minerals Ontology (CMO) is described herein by reusing the logical class and property structures of the top-level Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and mid-level Common Core Ontologies (CCO) and Relation Ontology (RO). The CMO formally models the knowledge about the critical mineral systems using the latest deposit classification scheme and the CMMI database schema. The ontology specifies the geochemical and geological processes that operate in various geotectonic environments of mineral systems to form the critical minerals in different deposit types. It models the properties of both the host minerals that contain the rare-earth elements and those that bear other types of elements. The CMO also represents uses of specific critical minerals in the manufacturing of industrial products, their alternate substitutes, and countries that produce, import, and export them. A query system, applying the Python programming language, accesses the knowledge modeled in the CMO and allows users through interactive web pages to query the ontology and extract different types of information from it. The ontology and the query system are useful for research in ore mineralogy and critical mineral prospecting. The information modeled by the ontology and served by the query system allows users to classify their ore specimen data into specific deposit types.

KBPT: knowledge-based prompt tuning for zero-shot relation triplet extraction

Knowledge representation is increasingly recognized as an effective method for information extraction. Nevertheless, numerous studies have disregarded its potential applications in the zero-shot setting. In this article, a novel framework, called knowledge-based prompt tuning for zero-shot relation triplet extraction (KBPT), was developed, founded on external ontology knowledge. This framework serves as a catalyst for exploring relation triplet extraction (RTE) methods within low-resource scenarios, warranting further scrutiny. Zero-shot setting RTE aims to extract multiple triplets that consist of head entities, tail entities, and relation labels from an input sentence, where the extracted relation labels are those that do not exist in the training set. To address the data scarcity problem in zero-shot RTE, a technique was introduced to synthesize training samples by prompting language models to generate structured texts. Specifically, this involves integrating language model prompts with structured text methodologies to create a structured prompt template. This template draws upon relation labels and ontology knowledge to generate synthetic training examples. The incorporation of external ontological knowledge enriches the semantic representation within the prompt template, enhancing its effectiveness. Further, a multiple triplets decoding (MTD) algorithm was developed to overcome the challenge of extracting multiple relation triplets from a sentence. To bridge the gap between knowledge and text, a collective training method was established to jointly optimize embedding representations. The proposed model is model-agnostic and can be applied to various PLMs. Exhaustive experiments on four public datasets with zero-shot settings were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared to the baseline models, KBPT demonstrated enhancements of up to 14.65% and 24.19% in F1 score on the Wiki-ZSL and TACRED-Revisit datasets, respectively. Moreover, the proposed model achieved better performance compared with the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) model in terms of F1 score, precision-recall (P–R) curves and AUC. The code is available at https://Github.com/Phevos75/KBPT.

The Representational Challenge for Designing and Managing 5P Medicine Ecosystems.

Health and social care systems around the globe currently undergo a transformation towards personalized, preventive, predictive, participative precision medicine (5PM), considering the individual health status, conditions, genetic and genomic dispositions, etc., in personal, social, occupational, environmental and behavioral context. This transformation is strongly supported by technologies such as micro- and nanotechnologies, advanced computing, artificial intelligence, edge computing, etc. For enabling communication and cooperation between actors from different domains using different methodologies, languages and ontologies based on different education, experiences, etc., we have to understand the transformed health ecosystems and all its components in structure, function and relationships in the necessary detail ranging from elementary particles up to the universe. That way, we advance design and management of the complex and highly dynamic ecosystem from data to knowledge level. The challenge is the consistent, correct and formalized representation of the transformed health ecosystem from the perspectives of all domains involved, representing and managing them based on related ontologies. The resulting business view of the real-world ecosystem must be interrelated using the ISO/IEC 21838 Top Level Ontologies standard. Thereafter, the outcome can be transformed into implementable solutions using the ISO/IEC 10746 Open Distributed Processing Reference Model. Model and framework for this system-oriented, architecture-centric, ontology-based, policy-driven approach have been developed by the first author and meanwhile standardized as ISO 23903 Interoperability and Integration Reference Architecture.

Bewildering the legacy effects of Gail Melson’s wild things/animals/children

ABSTRACT This article bewilders dominant discourses about child-animal relations by acknowledging and challenging the work of Gail Melson who positions animals as providing emotional, social and pedagogical support for children. Melson’s psychological approach rests upon implicit assumptions that shape and support anthropocentrism whilst also critiquing a utilitarian approach to animals in educational learning spaces. The legacy effects of this approach are steeped in neoliberal discourse that entangle with pedagogy and practice. Unless modified these effects pass through generations as sticky webs of knowability that are difficult to contest. Research from Australia and Finland, framed by critical posthuman and relational ontologies, unsettles these effects to reconfigure child-animal relations as fluid and situated. ‘Bewildering education’ grants insights into historical political legacies that can be traced in education policy, practice and theory preoccupied with knowledge development, relations and meaning-making around the productive ‘good’ human subject. Child-animal relations expose complex and far-reaching effects of early childhood because processes of becoming and being human with other animals provides spaces for knowing ‘difference’ as a constituting force that disrupts anthropocentric relations with the world. Building a political history of animals that pays attention to agency and ethical relations reconfigures and reconstitutes animal species, not as objects of pedagogical inquiry, but rather as subjects and fellow earth dwellers.

Re-thinking mathematical connections with theories of difference

ABSTRACT In this theoretical article, we explore the possibility that instead of a mathematical connection arising “in-between” two (or more) pre-existing ideas or objects, which have presumably been known or understood, that connection is itself the motor of understanding. The standard view of connection, in which two existing ideas or concepts are brought together, is based on a philosophy of identity which seeks to establish objects and their properties and then compare them. In contrast, a philosophy of difference sees objects as “becoming” through difference. We explore this new way of conceptualising connection not only because it reflects our commitment to a relational ontology, but because it enables us to better handle the enmeshment of affect in mathematical learning without subordinating it to the cognitive. We draw on illustrative data to show what analysing connections as acts of differencing might look like and how it involves affective, social and technical dimensions.

The creation of the Muraka, a Maldivian underwater hotel: A story of sea life, more-than-human architecture, and alloútopic tourism.

Answering Huijbens and Jóhannesson's call to investigate tourist destination development through a relational ontology marked by a vital materialism, this paper focuses on the creation of the Muraka. The Muraka is the underwater villa of the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island-an ultra-luxury resort located in Alifu Dhaalu Atoll. No social scientific research has ever been conducted at underwater hotels. Drawing upon fieldwork at the Muraka-part of a broader project on three underwater hotels (conducted in Singapore, Tanzania, and the Maldives), we aim to contribute original knowledge to more-than-human geographies and tourist studies by bringing attention to the architectural relations that entangle underwater hotels with their environments. In doing so we become attuned to more-than-human lives and create narratives that can help us imagine new relations with the planet both within and beyond the realm of tourist encounters. By focusing in particular on the creation of the Muraka through the lens of the original concept of alloutopia, we contribute to non-representational and more-than-human perspectives on tourism.

Abstract PO5-08-06: Metabolic shift to serine pathway induced by lipids confers oncogenic properties in non-transformed breast cells

Abstract Introduction. Oncogenic factors that are local/in-breast are of great interest as they may be more specifically targetable for breast cancer prevention than systemic factors. We have identified a lipid metabolism gene signature that is enriched in breast tissue at risk for estrogen negative breast cancer (ER- BC). Utilizing the medium chain fatty acid Octanoic acid (OA) to probe lipid metabolism in non-transformed breast epithelial cells, we observed increased flux through several metabolic reactions and altered histone methylation with consequent changes in gene expression (e.g. neural genes). Neuronal signaling and regulatory circuits are observed in cancer cells of multiple origins, not just ones with ontological relationships to neurons. We hypothesize that the first and rate limiting step in the de novo serine pathway, which is catalyzed by Phosphoglycerate Dehydrogenase (PHGDH) is key to these observations. In the forward direction, PHGDH participates in the serine, one-carbon, glycine (SOG) and methionine pathways that produce the methyl donor S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) and in the reverse direction produces the oncometabolite 2-Hydroxyglycerate (2-HG). Methods. Non-transformed MCF-10A cells exposed to OA were utilized for U13C-glucose tracing. SAM and 2-HG concentrations following treatment with OA ± PHGDH inhibitor were measured by liquid chromatography. CUT&RUN for H3K4me3 was performed and genes affected by OA (PMID: 28263391) were compared with OA-responsive peaks. Single cell RNA-sequencing was carried out using breast microstructures derived from reduction mammoplasty tissue exposed to vehicle or OA. Microstructures were dissociated into single cells and sequenced using the 10x Genomics platform. The digital expression matrix file containing UMIs were analyzed with Seurat. Alkaline comet assay was performed to detect DNA breaks. Results. U13C-glucose tracing in presence of OA revealed that one-carbon-THF was redirected to the methionine cycle increasing flux to methylation. Concentrations of SAM and 2-HG increased after 15- and 30-min OA exposure, respectively; PHGDH inhibitor blocked these increases. H3K4me3 CUT&RUN revealed 661 differential peaks (FDR < 0.05) comparing OA to control. 73% of H3K4me3 OA-associated peaks were in regulatory regions of OA-induced genes (FDR < 0.01), these genes are involved in neural pathways, EMT and ER- BC. Motif analysis revealed an overrepresentation of binding sites for transcription factors ATF3/4 (p < 0.05), which are regulators of the serine pathway. Single cell RNA-sequencing revealed OA not only affected the distribution of cell subpopulations but also modulated the expression of many genes within each subcluster. The percentage of luminal progenitor subcluster 3 increased upon OA from less than 1% to about 13%. Within basal subcluster 3, OA drives the expression of ATF3, along with two of the enzymes in the de novo serine pathway: PHGDH and PSAT1. Alkaline comet assay showed DNA breaks in OA- and control 2-HG- treated cells. Conclusions. Metabolism of OA in preference to glucose and glutamine results in a metabolic shift toward the serine pathway increasing the production of SAM and 2-HG, with implications for oncogenesis: 1. SAM production results in epigenetic fostered plasticity leading to reprogramming/selecting cells that express genes consistent with a neural/neural crest-like state. These co-opted neuronal regulatory mechanisms can make critical contributions to the acquired functional capabilities that drive cancer development. 2. 2-HG exposure results in appearance of DNA breaks, which are likely consequent to the inhibition of the alpha-ketoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases KDM 4A/B by 2-HG. Their catalytic activity is required for homologous recombination repair; inhibition results in metabolic “BRCAness”. Citation Format: Mariana Bustamante Eduardo, Gannon Cottone, Shiyu Liu, Maria Paula Zappia, Elizaveta V. Benevolenskaya, Abul Bashar Mir Md. Khademul Islam, Maxim V. Frolov, Seema Khan, Susan Clare. Metabolic shift to serine pathway induced by lipids confers oncogenic properties in non-transformed breast cells [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2023 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2023 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(9 Suppl):Abstract nr PO5-08-06.

Framing social movements: A geographical perspective

AbstractThe geographical concepts of scale, space and place have informed and refined the theory of “framing” in the social movement literature. Going beyond the conventional approach of understanding social movements, this article aims to bring discussions on relational ontology into conversation with the geographical literature on scale and spatial strategies in social movements, proposing a theoretical framework that goes beyond established approaches in the literature on collective action framing. This article proposes for a holistic cross‐disciplinary dialog among political and development geographers and with activists and scholars from other cognate disciplines of social science to understand the complexities of framing in social movements.

Buddhist Fundamental Ontology

With the aim of bring Vaibhāṣika’s distinctive fundamental ontology into clearer view, here I argue that the Vaibhāṣika describe two general kinds of ontological dependence relations that generate different kinds of ontological structure: (1) ordering relations that generate hierarchical ontological structure and (2) existential dependence relations among the dharmas that co-temporaneously bundle or asynchronously causally relate them. Ordering relations are defined in terms of the distinction between ultimately real and conventionally real entities. Existential dependence relations among dharmas are defined in terms of dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda): the view that all phenomena that occur in time are dependent on other phenomena for their occurrence in the present moment. The Vaibhāṣika position is worthy of our philosophical attention because it challenges two commonly held views (1) that fundamentality is to be understood in terms of ontological independence and (2) that causal dependence is distinct from ontological dependence.

Study on bearing capacity and damage mode of carbon fiber composite J-type structures in oilfield completion tool connections

Carbon fiber composite structures have a broad application prospect in oilfield completion tool module connection. However, the material failure mechanism is still unclear. In this paper, the mechanical properties and failure mode of T700/7901 composite J-type structure are investigated from experimental and finite element perspectives. Firstly, the load-carrying and failure properties of the structure were analyzed through typical mechanical property experiments such as tensile, bending, and compression, and the fiber, matrix damage, and delamination damage are the main reasons for the failure of the mechanical properties of the material. Secondly, a numerical model of the progressive damage ontological relationship of the composite material was established, and the accuracy of the model was verified by combining the experimental results. Based on the above study, this paper proposes the failure mechanism and optimization of composite J-type, which provides useful guidance for the design of fiber composite structures for oilfield completion tool types in the future.

Conquering illusions: Don Quixote and the educational significance of the novel

Abstract In this article we want to rethink the educational significance of the novel from the perspective of a ‘metanovelistic’ reading of Don Quixote, often acclaimed as the ‘first modern novel’. Our point of departure is two-fold: on the one hand, there is the controversial contemporary phenomenon of de-reading, and all the educational discussions it entails; on the other hand, there is the existing tradition of literary education, which has already extensively reflected upon the (moral, epistemological, ontological) relations between novel reading, education, and subjectification, but which perhaps also has exhausted its means for doing so. To problematize this double starting point in a new way, we propose to revisit the ‘origins’ of the (Western) novel and novel reading, at the dawn of modernity. Exploring the differences between the narratives of subjectification represented by the Cartesian cogito and Cervantes’ Don Quixote—which were near-contemporaries—we strongly argue for an educational–philosophical rehabilitation of the latter. In a first movement, and in dialogue with novelists Milan Kundera and Carlos Fuentes, we do so by focusing on the novel as a particular form or configuration of knowledge—one that is by nature experimental and pluralist. In a second movement, we link this to Jean Baudrillard’s famous distinction between ‘simulation’ and ‘illusion’, claiming that novel reading qua educational subjectification always involves a quixotic practice of adventurous, ‘playful’, and public negotiation between reality and its more or less illusory alternatives.

The Gift of Intelligence and the Sacramentality of Real Presence: Overcoming the Dataist Metaphysics of Modern Cognitivism

AbstractIn the last twenty‐five years scientific research on embodied cognition and related discussions in the philosophy of technology and science have led to two groundbreaking insights: 1. Perceptions, memories, meanings, and volitions are neither located in the brain nor reducible to intentional acts of ‘autonomous subjects’. 2. Human intelligence is always embedded in an embodied, simultaneously natural and artificial environment that is charged with meaning. These insights are compatible with holistic, relational concepts of embodied intelligence in the tradition of sapiential thinkers like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa, and related sacramental ontologies. The modern break with this tradition was inspired by the dataist metaphysics of the ‘Gutenberg revolution’ and culminated in the thesis that human cognition is a kind of pattern extraction or the upshot of the synthesis of elementary sensory data. By contrast, the fact that the business of pattern‐extraction has become replaceable by the work of ‘artificial intelligences’ calls two things to mind: First, the late‐modern confusion of human with ‘artificial intelligence’ is the upshot of a reductionist metaphysics that provoked an unhealthy assimilation of human cognition to the way machines work. Second, in order to strengthen what distinguishes human intelligence from ‘artificial intelligences’, we need to recover the premodern unity of being, truth, beauty and the good, starting from a holistic, trinitarian anthropology. As the most recent research on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) shows, this requires a revision of our modern, instrumental attitude toward technical artifacts which emerged in the Age of the Reformation. Seen from this angle, the recovery of the sacramental ontology of premodernity has become a matter of urgency not primarily in terms of theological developments but in terms of the very innovations that provoked its modern ‘disenchantment’.

Meeting the musician-teacher halfway: a Baradian perspective on identity research in music education

ABSTRACT This theoretical paper explores how researching the identities of musician-teachers can be differently conceptualised through a critical posthuman lens. Wider calls to action demand an expanded professionalism of musician-teachers, but when such recommendations are combined with fixed notions of identity as self-contained and producible, they risk becoming essentialistic and exclusionary. Foregrounding the intricacies and tensions in locating the teacher subject therefore posits a need for theories of complexity and becoming. Barad’s agential realism provides an onto-epistemological shift, such that the musician-teacher is not separable from the world, but intra-actively comes into being through a relational ontology, exposing identity as a mechanism of capture through series of agential cuts. These material-discursive entanglements and performativity of the dichotomous musician-teacher role are then discussed. By thinking difference differently and addressing relations of power, these have ethical implications for research and what comes to matter, drawing on non-representationalism and signalling post-qualitative methodologies. This philosophical framing does not serve to reduce complexity, to figure out what works, but rather stays with the trouble – the messiness – by arguing for future empirical work that is inclusionary in the widest sense and grounded in the embodied, affective experiences of musician-teachers themselves.

‘We’ instead of ‘me’: How Buen Vivir Indigenous cosmopraxes allow us to conceive security differently and face insecurities together

Abstract Although Critical Security Studies (CSS) has done much to advance security debates, some shortcomings remain. Its excessive focus on the individual – which we term ‘me’ – reduces CSS' capacity to propose solutions to current global security problems such as pandemics and climate change. This paper contributes to the emerging scholarship on the potential of relational ontologies in Security Studies by introducing Buen Vivir Indigenous cosmopraxes into the debate. Indigenous cosmopraxes such as Sumak Kawsay, Suma Qamaña, and Teko Kavi, we argue, can inform CSS by providing alternative considerations to the pluriverse of ideas that address security crises. These cosmopraxes, which make up the broad notion of Buen Vivir, provide a way to think and enact security from a collective perspective, one that emphasises ‘we’ instead of the liberal self. In that sense, these cosmopraxes allow us to conceive security differently and face insecurities together.

A Strategy for Happiness, in the Wake of Spinoza

Abstract This article investigates the anthropology of Spinoza as a strategy for happiness, political, as well as individual. Inspired by the readings, comments, and perspectives of Matheron, Deleuze, and Balibar, I will analyze Spinoza’s theory of the affects as the basis for this strategic anthropology. These authors all share an ontological and political vision organized around the concepts of multitude and the transindividual which result directly from Spinoza’s analysis of the human affects in books III and IV of the Ethics, and his theory of political dynamics developed in the Political treatise. They consider Spinoza a contemporary and share with him the idea of a relational ontology and an inextricable and mutual interdependence of the individual and the community which is captured in the concept of the transindividual. With Matheron/Spinoza I will focus on the question of anthropology and the structure of thought, with Deleuze/Spinoza on the kinds of knowledge in relation to the human mind and body, and with Balibar/Spinoza on the transindividual, productive, active, and thus strategic nature of our thinking. These three analyses of human thought and affects all proceed from the hypothesis of conatus/desire as human essence and aim not just at theoretical knowledge but rather at the effective improvement of our well-being and lives, that is, at happiness.