Ontological Theory Research Articles

De Se Modal Illusions

AbstractResearch on personal identity often relies on imaginary cases and tends to theorize about our nature from the first‐person perspective. In this paper, I argue that a problem arises when we combine the two methods and assess imaginary cases from the first‐person perspective. The problem is that the link between de se imagination and modality is broken. De se imagination regularly gives rise to de se modal illusions. De se modal illusions come in two varieties: there are de se illusions of possibility and de se illusions of impossibility. I present a systematic account of the two types of illusion. I further make the case that the proposed account is compatible with maintaining a general link between imaginability and possibility. I apply the account to two concrete cases and use it to undercut the motivation behind a central theory of personal ontology, Dualism, and a central account of personal persistence, Lockeanism.

Heidegger's argument for fascism

AbstractHeidegger's ontological theories, his observations about liberalism and fascism, and his evaluation of Being are three premises of an argument for fascism. The ontological premise is that integrated wholes and instruments or objects of will are ontologically superior, as Being and Time suggests in discussing Being‐a‐whole and using tools. The social premise is that fascist societies are wholes integrated by dictatorial will, while liberal societies are looser aggregates of free individuals, as Heidegger describes in his 1930s seminars. The evaluative premise, shared with the medieval tradition and expressed in his notebook remarks about war, is that ontological superiority makes things better. The conclusion that fascism is better than liberalism should be rejected along with the evaluative premise.

Advancing mechanistic explanations through natural and artificial embodied cognitive systems.

Mougenot and Matheson propose that mechanistic models can explain behavior by describing the complex interactions among components of the brain, body, and environment as an integrated system, which aligns with embodied cognition. However, we suggest incorporating cognitive ontology theory and addressing degeneracy and neuronal reuse. We also recommend studying natural embodied cognition through artificial systems to develop a comprehensive mechanistic framework.

Construction of user experience model iniImmersive virtual environment based on ontology

With the rapid development of virtual immersion technology, immersive virtual environment (IVE) has shown its unique application potential in many fields. The purpose of this study is to explore and construct a user experience model in immersive virtual environment based on ontological theory. The key factors affecting user experience include sensory experience, interaction control, distraction factors, realism perception, ownership, motion control and location. Environmental dimension and physical dimension are the two core aspects of user experience. Sensory experience and sense of ownership have a significant positive impact on users' sense of existence in a specific environment, while control dimension, sensory dimension and realism dimension play an important role in enhancing users' sense of ontology. The different dimensions of the sense of ontology have a significant positive impact on the user's sense of immersion and presence, which verifies the central role of the sense of ontology in enhancing the user's immersion experience. We look forward to further enhancing the user's immersion experience and promoting the application of immersive virtual environment in a wider range of fields

Projections on (re)designing pedagogical pathways towards decolonial praxis in postgraduate literacy education

What would it mean to teach a postgraduate course about literacy education in South Africa in a way attuned to place, bodies, ways of being, and decolonial knowledge making? In this paper, we engage with this question through reflections and projections on our ongoing work of curriculum re-design of a master’s level course on literacy theories. This course, which we have taught three times since 2018, seeks to place the existing theoretical architecture of sociocultural literacy under pressure, asking whether these various frameworks still hold relevance for literacy education in South Africa in this post-Fallist and, more recently, post-Covid-19 reality. In each iteration of the course, we have invited students to think together with us about how literacy education in the Global South might respond to the opposing forces of globalisation and decolonisation. Yet, each time, the course has flowed differently as the configuration of bodies, identities, languages, knowledges, dispositions, affects, and materialities of learning mode has changed year by year. We aim to map the pedagogical pathways, in the sense of “configurations that guide the constraints and potentialities shaping the movement of pedagogy” (Madden, 2015:2) of the course. We draw on decolonial theory and transhumanist ideas of relational ontologies to explore selected incidents when significant discursive, affective, institutional, and material elements crystallised into patterns revealing of the ways in which coloniality can be either reproduced or challenged within our particular context. Emerging insights relate to assessment issues, multimodal tasks, article selection, and student reflections across time, and gesture towards a decolonial praxis. We conclude by projecting the lessons learned into the course’s future redesign.

Modeling action: Recasting the causal theory

AbstractContemporary action theory is generally concerned with giving theories of action ontology. In this paper, we make the novel proposal that the standard view in action theory—the Causal Theory of Action—should be recast as a “model,” akin to the models constructed and investigated by scientists. Such models often consist in fictional, hypothetical, or idealized structures, which are used to represent a target system indirectly via some resemblance relation. We argue that recasting the Causal Theory as a model can not only accomplish the goals of causal theorists, but also give the theory greater flexibility in responding to common objections.

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 semantic reasoning-based emergency rescue assistant decision method for maritime accidents involving chemicals

Maritime accidents involving chemicals (MAICs) constitute a unique category of marine emergency characterized by low frequency, high risk, and complex disposal challenges. These accidents often entail fires, explosions, and pollutant leakage, demanding effective emergency responses. The success of MAICs rescue operations relies on multiple factors, encompassing the structural features of the involved vessel, personnel, cargo, marine environment, and the availability of resources and response procedures. Proficiency in various professional fields, including ship transportation, chemistry, firefighting, and environmental science, is essential for informed decision-making. This paper addresses the need for a standardized description of knowledge in the MAICs emergency rescue decision-making process, aiming to enhance practical application frequency and decision-making efficiency. Employing ontology theory, the approach involves structurally modeling the knowledge of MAICs emergency rescue, constructing an ontology model, and establishing a decision rule base. Validating the proposed method, the emergency response to the “Longqing 1″ accident is examined as a case study, illustrating its potential for supporting MAICs emergency rescue decision-making. The application of ontology theory in this context holds both theoretical and practical significance. It facilitates the sharing, reuse, and expansion of knowledge in the emergency rescue field, providing crucial technical support for intelligent decision-making in MAICs emergencies.

Theories and Methods of Consciousness

This work explores the ontological theories, and their methodologies, regarding the origins and nature of consciousness in the multiverse. The paper critically assesses Mocombe’s consciousness field theory within the larger body of contemporary ontological debates, and their methodologies, regarding the nature, origin, and constitution of consciousness, especially human consciousness, in the world.

STATEMENT OF THE QUESTION ABOUT IDENTITY IN ANCIENT GREEK PHILOSOPHY

The article analyses the formulation of the question of identity at the early stage of the formation of philosophy. The problem of self-identity first arises among the pre-Socratics. Already Heraclitus of Ephesus formulates the problem in the aphoristic expression “everything flows, everything changes”. The paradox of the variability of existence and the ability of our perception of the world as a whole and stable also appeared in the teachings of the sophists. However, the breakthrough in solving the problem of self-identity occurs only in the philosophy of Plato. It is in Plato that we see the revelation of the social and philosophical dimension of the previously purely ontological theory of identity.

Sex, Gender, and Devotional Desire: Refiguring Bodily Identities in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Discourse

Many of the debates among theorists of the body in feminist and gender studies center on the gendered body and its relation to the sexed body, with the validity of the sex/gender distinction itself a topic of contention. On the one hand, feminist advocates of social constructionism tend to distinguish between sex and gender, in which sex (male or female) is identified with the biological body as a “natural” datum and gender (masculine or feminine) is a second-order sociocultural construction that is superimposed as an ideological superstructure on this “natural” base. On the other hand, feminist advocates of sexual difference such as Judith Butler call into question the sex/gender distinction and insist that the sexed body, like gender, is socially constructed. This article brings these contemporary feminist interlocutors into conversation with sixteenth-century Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava authorities who developed a distinctive discourse of embodiment in which they frame the categories of sex and gender in relation to devotional desire in their ontological theories of bodily identities. The Gauḍīya discourse of embodiment explodes notions of the relationship between embodiment, personhood, materiality, and gender on both the human and divine planes and challenges prevailing body theories by positing bodies beyond matter, personhood beyond matter, and gender beyond sex.

Towards an explanatory critique of social reality: how critical realism can frame the application of critical discourse analysis in educational research

ABSTRACT Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is known for its capacity to reveal ideology reproduced through discourse, but when applied to educational research, its focus on mere language constrains its utility for understanding and improving social reality. In this paper, through the example of a textbook study, we explore how CDA can be strengthened by critical realism. As a theory of ontology and epistemology, critical realism seeks to explain how causal mechanisms in society constrain and enable the emergence of human agency. As a practical framework, it can offer a research design for the textbook study, featured by a stratified ontology, a dialectic epistemology and a methodological requirement for self-reflexivity. Such a design can overcome the limitations of positivism and interpretivism. It can enable CDA to demonstrate both criticalness and a higher level of explanatory power, with the potential to identify real (rather than Utopian) possibilities for human emancipation.

Ontology-based security modeling in ArchiMate

Enterprise Risk Management involves the process of identification, evaluation, treatment, and communication regarding risks throughout the enterprise. To support the tasks associated with this process, several frameworks and modeling languages have been proposed, such as the Risk and Security Overlay (RSO) of ArchiMate. An ontological investigation of this artifact would reveal its adequacy, capabilities, and limitations w.r.t. the domain of risk and security. Based on that, a language redesign can be proposed as a refinement. Such analysis and redesign have been executed for the risk elements of the RSO grounded in the Common Ontology of Value and Risk. The next step along this line of research is to address the following research problems: What would be the outcome of an ontological analysis of security-related elements of the RSO? That is, can we identify other semantic deficiencies in the RSO through an ontological analysis? Once such an analysis is provided, can we redesign the security elements of the RSO accordingly, in order to produce an improved artifact? Here, with the aid of the Reference Ontology for Security Engineering (ROSE) and the ontological theory of prevention behind it, we address the remaining gap by proceeding with an ontological analysis of the security-related constructs of the RSO. The outcome of this assessment is an ontology-based redesign of the ArchiMate language regarding security modeling. In a nutshell, we report the following contributions: (1) an ontological analysis of the RSO that identifies six limitations concerning security modeling; (2) because of the key role of the notion of prevention in security modeling, the introduction of the ontological theory of prevention in ArchiMate; (3) a well-founded redesign of security elements of ArchiMate; and (4) ontology-based security modeling patterns that are logical consequences of our proposal of redesign due to its underlying ontology of security. As a form of evaluation, we show that our proposal can describe risk treatment options, according to ISO 31000. Finally, besides presenting multiple examples, we proceed with a real-world illustrative application taken from the cybersecurity domain.

What Kind of Group Is Antifa?

In the United States, the first presidential debate of 2020 featured a discussion about Antifa. While Biden argued that Antifa is “an idea, not an organization,” Trump portrayed it as a “dangerous, radical group.” The nature of Antifa sparks disagreements not only in politics but also in scholarly circles. Some view it as a loosely defined label for a fragmented collective. Others perceive it as a gang or a radical social movement. This article identifies four key factors that make it difficult to define Antifa: the anonymity of its members, the lack of identifiable representatives, the ambiguous affiliation boundaries, and the influence of external agents (including reporters, pundits, and detractors) shaping its identity. Faced with this challenge, I propose stepping back to reevaluate the underlying assumptions of the debate. I seek to complement current theories of social ontology and collective action by introducing an alternative approach centered around the concept of personification.

Writing Time: The Shufa of Fung Ming Chip

Fung Ming Chip (馮明秋, b. 1951) is a contemporary artist based in Hong Kong who practices shufa (書法, lit. “the way of writing”). Traditionally, shufa is the art of writing Chinese characters with a brush on paper or silk; it is deeply connected to the arts of poetry and painting. However, the theories of making and viewing that undergird traditional shufa, as well as the stakes of its contemporary practice, remain largely unknown to Western audiences. This essay is a response to Fung’s latest solo exhibition, entitled NumberS Series. It considers how Fung Ming Chip’s latest works have moved beyond traditional shufa practice and language itself to examine the relationship between art and time. Unlike previous critical works that contextualize Fung’s art with respect to Euro–North American art and art history, this article uses Fung’s writings and early Chinese theories of aesthetics and ontology to establish that his art works in a distinctly non-Western manner that has its own relevance and perspective for a contemporary, global audience.

Exploring the Guerrilla Warfare of the National Government Navy Behind Enemy Lines in the Yangtze River Basin during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression

Abstract The guerrilla warfare behind enemy lines of the national government is still a weak link in the study of the history of the war of resistance, and the naval guerrilla warfare on the Yangtze River is even less specifically discussed. This paper first analyzes the change in the national government’s naval operational thinking after the July 7 Incident and up to the Battle of Wuhan and divides the naval operations in the Yangtze River Basin during the period of total war of resistance into four stages. Then, combined with the ontology theory and taking various archives, museums, libraries, and memorial halls as sources, after fusing heterogeneous data, it adopts the relevant writings, notes, diaries, speeches, photographs, objects of the Navy’s Yangtze River Resistance as well as the results of the archive compilation formed later to construct the Navy’s Yangtze River Resistance Archives Knowledge Graph Model. After the reasoning and searching of the knowledge map, it is concluded that in 1938 and 1940, the Yangtze River Bray Guerrilla Group killed 950 and 3020 enemies, respectively, destroyed 20,400 tons and 118,400 tons of warships, strongly supported the Battle of Wuhan and two Battles of Xiangbei, and prevented the Japanese army from invading to the west along the river, and in 1940, it destroyed the Japanese large-scale transports and merchant ships of a total of 58,700 tons, which dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese army on the Yangtze River and the Yangtze River. Heavy blows to the Japanese water transport capacity of the Yangtze River delayed its front and rear troops, weapons, supplies, and transportation plans so that its ability to expand received a major limitation, unable to continue the attack on the Yangtze River west of Wuhan, to defend the safety of Chongqing and Sichuan. This paper makes up for the research gaps in the history of the National Government’s naval resistance and the history of guerrilla battles in the Bray of the Yangtze River Basin and provides a useful exploration of the combination of resistance history research and information technology.

Object-Oriented Animals

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those of Matthew Calarco and other scholars, I aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO.

Blended Learning Environment Affecting the Socio-Emotional Skills of the BEED Students

The pandemic has impacted the global educational system, leading to the longest school closing that created a setback for the students and school institutions. Using a descriptive-correlational design, the researchers gathered the needed data to describe the level of blended learning environment and socio-emotional skills and explain the relationship between blended learning and socio-emotional skills. Random sampling was used to determine the sample size of the study. The adapted questionnaire was tested and was proven to be reliable. Moreover, the questionnaire used a five-point Likert scale that measured the following indicators: Independent Variable – performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions; Dependent Variable – psychological impact and social impact. Upon analysis of the data, it shows no significant relationship between the two variables. However, indicators such as social influence and social impact, facilitating conditions together with psychological impact and social impact show a significant relationship. The results explain how there was less interaction during the independent learning sessions. This finding correlates to the Engagement Theory, which emphasizes the need for students to collaborate with their peers to lessen the tendency of having communication lags. Engaging learners in their learning process through collaboration greatly helps their academic progression. To relate this to the theory of Site Ontology it supports the findings that if collaboration is always practiced and encouraged among students, the tendency of students being unable to express through their interpersonal skills will likely be avoided.

Development of a 3-Step theory of suicide ontology to facilitate 3ST factor extraction from clinical progress notes

ObjectiveSuicide risk prediction algorithms at the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) do not include predictors based on the 3-Step Theory of suicide (3ST), which builds on hopelessness, psychological pain, connectedness, and capacity for suicide. These four factors are not available from structured fields in VHA electronic health records, but they are found in unstructured clinical text. An ontology and controlled vocabulary that maps psychosocial and behavioral terms to these factors does not exist. The objectives of this study were 1) to develop an ontology with a controlled vocabulary of terms that map onto classes that represent the 3ST factors as identified within electronic clinical progress notes, and 2) to determine the accuracy of automated extractions based on terms in the controlled vocabulary. MethodsA team of four annotators did linguistic annotation of 30,000 clinical progress notes from 231 Veterans in VHA electronic health records who attempted suicide or who died by suicide for terms relating to the 3ST factors. Annotation involved manually assigning a label to words or phrases that indicated presence or absence of the factor (polarity). These words and phrases were entered into a controlled vocabulary that was then used by our computational system to tag 14 million clinical progress notes from Veterans who attempted or died by suicide after 2013. Tagged text was extracted and machine-labelled for presence or absence of the 3ST factors. Accuracy of these machine-labels was determined for 1000 randomly selected extractions for each factor against a ground truth created by our annotators. ResultsLinguistic annotation identified 8486 terms that related to 33 subclasses across the four factors and polarities. Precision of machine-labeled extractions ranged from 0.73 to 1.00 for most factor-polarity combinations, whereas recall was somewhat lower 0.65–0.91. ConclusionThe ontology that was developed consists of classes that represent each of the four 3ST factors, subclasses, relationships, and terms that map onto those classes which are stored in a controlled vocabulary (https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/THREE-ST). The use case that we present shows how scores based on clinical notes tagged for terms in the controlled vocabulary capture meaningful change in the 3ST factors during weeks preceding a suicidal event.

Axiomatizing SNOMED CT Disorders: Should There Be Room for Interpretation?

SNOMED CT is a large concept-based terminology designed according to epistemic, semantic and pragmatic principles relevant to clinicians. Its goal is structured clinical reporting in electronic healthcare records (EHRs). The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is an ontology designed on the basis of types claimed to exist in reality based on a domain-independent ontological theory. Its goal is faithful representation of reality within that theory. The Ontology for General Medical Science (OGMS) extends the BFO by providing definitions for types relevant within the clinical domain. Combining SNOMED CT with the ontological rigor of BFO and OGMS might improve clinical reporting by, f.i., preventing data entry mistakes and inconsistencies, and make EHRs more comparable. To that end, we are developing a logical framework capable of exploiting what SNOMED CT offers terminologically and realism-based ontologies such as the BFO and the OGMS ontologically by means of bridging axioms compatible with the BFO, and expressed in the same CLIF-dialect as used in its axiomatization in first order logic. In this paper, we report on our attempts to detect in the combinations of binary relations that are used in the definition of SNOMED CT's definitions of disorder concepts patterns which might at least partially automate the construction of such axioms. Our findings suggest that this partial automation is indeed possible, but to a smaller extent than we had hoped for. We compare our approach with a recent proposal that seeks to bring SNOMED CT and BFO closer together by reinterpreting SNOMED CT disorders as clinical occurrents. The proposal has its merit in providing a realist underpinning for that part of SNOMED CT's concept model in terms of the BFO, but is not discriminatory enough for an automatic translation into OGMS. Key problem is the lack of face validity of SNOMED CT disorder terms as compared to the formal definitions they are given and this in absence of textual definitions.