Ontological Theory Research Articles

Research on intangible cultural heritage resource description and knowledge fusion based on linked data

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to contribute to the digital development and utilization of China’s intangible cultural heritage resources, research on the theft of intangible cultural heritage resources and knowledge integration based on linked data is proposed to promote the standardized description of intangible cultural heritage knowledge and realize the digital dissemination and development of intangible cultural heritage.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, firstly, the knowledge organization theory and semantic Web technology are used to describe the intangible cultural heritage digital resource objects in metadata specifications. Secondly, the ontology theory and technical methods are used to build a conceptual model of the intangible cultural resources field and determine the concept sets and hierarchical relationships in this field. Finally, the semantic Web technology is used to establish semantic associations between intangible cultural heritage resource knowledge.FindingsThe study findings indicate that the knowledge organization of intangible cultural heritage resources constructed in this study provides a solution for the digital development of intangible cultural heritage in China. It also provides semantic retrieval with better knowledge granularity and helps to visualize the knowledge content of intangible cultural heritage.Originality/valueThis study summarizes and provides significant theoretical and practical value for the digital development of intangible cultural heritage and the resource description and knowledge fusion of intangible cultural heritage can help to discover the semantic relationship of intangible cultural heritage in multiple dimensions and levels.

Thinking Across Worlds: Pluriversal Potentiality

Reflecting on the epistemological history of the microscope alongside theories of pluriversality and Anishinaabe mnidoo ontology, “Thinking Across Worlds” addresses the microscope as an instrument of decolonial worlding through two artworks created by the authors. We ask, “How can we think across worlds—microscopic and macroscopic, western and Indigenous, scientific and creative—to transform the present and the future, from ecological devastation and colonial violence to sustainability and decolonial justice?” The art works, titled Gathering and Resonance, are experiments in political ontology, through immersion in other worlds, other versions of reality. In these microscopic hydrospheres, Anishinaabe mnidoo reality prevails. Human viewers are dwarfed by the microscopic mnidoo that surround them. The place of humans is revealed to be a mere part within a multiplicity of relations. Our own interests are eclipsed by the dramas that play out among these minute forms of consciousness.

Ontological Theory Based on Practical Wisdom——An Exploration of the Gains and Losses of Mou Zongsan's “Metaphysics of Morality” Construction

Mou Zongsan constructed a philosophical ontology of “moral metaphysics” based on the unique practical wisdom of Confucianism. His argument for the “Moral metaphysics” not only includes the “ontological argument” in his later philosophical system, but also includes the “philosophical history argument” that reinterpreted Confucian discourse in the middle of Mou's thought. Mou emphasizes the “Cosmological approach” in “Zhongyong” and “Yizhuan” and takes it as a successful development of the “Moral approach”in “The Analects of Confucius” and “Mencius”, in order to continue the Confucian tradition of “ontology insight based on practical evidence”. However, the ontology of “Moral metaphysics” ultimately inherited the practical ontology concept of Confucianism, but failed to complete the modern transformation of the practical ontology approach corresponding to this practical ontology, resulting in a fundamental tension between the practical ontology concept of “Moral metaphysics” and its speculative ontology approach.

Has the COVID-19 Pandemic Changed Firms’ Management Discussion and Analysis Disclosure Approach? Evidence from Japan

ABSTRACT This study examines whether the COVID-19 pandemic changes Japanese firms’ approach to management discussion and analysis (MD&A) disclosure. Based on readability (text genericity) and tone, I investigate whether management obfuscate text during the pandemic or attempt to provide information. Additionally, I examine whether bad news is inherently difficult to read based on the difficulty of the text. During the pandemic, the tone value of MD&A disclosure is negative in fraudulent firms and more negative in nonfraudulent firms. Both types of firms attempt to communicate their company’s situation with honesty, thus satisfying the legitimacy criterion of communicative action theory. This result is not consistent with the results for Europe and the United States, where readability is lower. As a disaster-prone country, Japanese managers may find it easier to share deteriorating firm performance with investors. Nonfraudulent firms also increase textual difficulty during the pandemic, which supports ontology theory. Data Availability: Data are available from sources identified in the paper. JEL Classifications: M41; M42.

Dialectic critical realism in business marketing: dialectic customer portfolio management

PurposeThis study aims to contribute to the field of customer portfolio management by proposing a novel approach rooted in dialectic critical realism (DCR). DCR, as an ontological theory, enables a fundamental reimagining of customer portfolio management as a dialectic process. The conceptualized dialectic portfolio management is motivated by the concept of “absence”, akin to Hegelian “antithesis”, which highlights limitations, problems and tensions in portfolio management. In essence, “absence” serves as a diagnostic tool that directs portfolio actions towards resolving problems by pursuing a more comprehensive “totality”, similar to the Hegelian notion of “synthesis”.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper theorizes DCR in business marketing and customer portfolio management.FindingsDCR conceptualizes customer portfolios as relational structures characterized by omissions and tensions. These issues are addressed through a dialectic synthesis aimed at achieving a more comprehensive “totality”. Consequently, DCR guides portfolio management to continually re-think the connections and distinctions that define a portfolio within its network context. This dialectic process is facilitated by a novel vocabulary that enhances the understanding of network and portfolio relations, incorporating concepts such as “intrapermeations”, “existential constitutions”, “intra-connections” and “intensive” and “extensive” portfolio practices.Originality/valueThis study aims to foster a fresh and process-oriented perspective on portfolio management, drawing inspiration from the growing demand for enriched dialectic theorizing within the realm of business marketing. The adoption of a dialectic process orientation based on DCR revolutionizes the comprehension of portfolio management by fundamentally reimagining the underlying ontological assumptions that underpin the existing body of literature on customer portfolios. Moreover, DCR asserts that ethical considerations are inextricably linked to human experiences and associated practices, emphasizing ethics as an integral component of customer portfolio management.

Structuralism and informal provability

Mathematical structuralism can be understood as a theory of mathematical ontology, of the objects that mathematics is about. It can also be understood as a theory of the semantics for mathematical discourse, of how and to what mathematical terms refer. In this paper we propose an epistemological interpretation of mathematical structuralism. According to this interpretation, the main epistemological claim is that mathematical knowledge is purely structural in character; mathematical statements contain purely structural information. To make this more precise, we invoke a notion that is central to mathematical epistemology, the notion of (informal) proof. Appealing to the notion of proof, an epistemological version of the structuralist thesis can be formulated as: Every mathematical statement that is provable expresses purely structural information. We introduce a bi-modal framework that formalizes the notions of structural information and informal provability in order to draw connections between them and confirm that the epistemological structuralist thesis holds.

Evaluation of Epistemic Beliefs Self-Report Questionnaires in the Czech Middle School History Classroom

Epistemic beliefs are gaining increasing importance in social science education in Czechia. Recent literature has demonstrated findings linking epistemic beliefs with various academic skills, including achievement and reading comprehension. The present study aims to explore the epistemic beliefs of adolescents specific to the domain of history. The study reviews research literature on ontological changes in students’ epistemic beliefs and their reasoning within the domain of history since the 1950s, with a particular focus on various models and measurement. The empirical part of the study investigates adapted self-report questionnaires on the epistemic beliefs of adolescents in Czech history classes in the upper grades of middle school. In the first step, the selected questionnaires were back-translated and refined by iterative sets of cognitive interviews. The finalised sets of items were administered in seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-grade classes (N = 303) in May and June 2021. The confirmatory factor analysis and follow-up correlational analysis demonstrated various degrees of support for the dimensions of the Epistemic and Ontological Cognition Questionnaire, for the dimension of Value of Integration Information, and for the dimension of Historical Methodology in Generating Historical Knowledge. Reading comprehension correlated positively with epistemic belief dimensions related to epistemic criteria of justification by multiple sources, the value of integration information, and historical methodology. Academic achievement in the form of the end-of-grade marks obtained in the subjects of history and Czech language did not show a consistent relationship with the epistemic beliefs. The potential practical and research uses of the self-report questionnaires that were investigated in regular classroom instructions are discussed. The presented study aimed to explore the domain of history that witnessed ontological changes in students’ reasoning since the 50’s (Committee on the Study of History, 1969), that gave rise to more systematic empirical studies on epistemology about history knowledge. In the 21st century, Maggioni and her colleagues (2004, 2009) constructed their self-reported questionnaire on epistemic stances on history knowledge. Ever since, following researchers further modified, advanced, and developed new measurement tools to identify student epistemic beliefs in history. Ontological theories (Kuhn et al., 2000) posited the epistemic development in college population, however, the new evidence demonstrated rudiments of epistemic reasoning in even younger population and presented its nonlinear growth (VanSledright & Reddy, 2014) contingent upon the characteristics of the learning domains (ill-structured x well-structured; Frederiksen, 1984). Since history can be viewed as an ill-structured domain, there is more room for learners to express and exchange their higher levels of epistemic beliefs compared to domains that belong among hard sciences (Barzilai & Weinstock, 2015; Kuhn & Weinstock, 2002). Therefore, history classrooms present an excellent opportunity for investigating epistemological stances of students in lower secondary education. The current study investigated the potential of epistemic beliefs measurement among the Czech history classrooms. The researchers selected assessment self-report questionnaires in the sample of students from western countries ranging from middle schools to college in the history domain (Greene et al., 2010; Stoel et al., 2017; Wiley et al., 2020). In the first step, the inspected measures were back-translated (Klassen et al., 2009) and refined by iterative sets of cognitive interviews 9/2020-5/2021 (Karabenick et al., 2007). The finalized sets of items were administered in the 7th, 8th, and 9th grade classrooms (N = 303) 5-6/2021. The confirmatory factor analysis and follow up correlational analysis demonstrated the support for the dimensions of Epistemic and Ontological Cognition Questionnaire (Greene et al, 2010), for the dimension on Value of Integration information (Wiley et al., 2020), and for the dimension focusing on Historical Methodology in generating historical knowledge (Stoel et al., 2017). The student reading comprehension was correlated to epistemic belief dimensions related to epistemic criteria of justification by multiple sources. The potential practical and research uses of the investigated self-report questionnaires in regular history classroom instructions were discussed.

Improving the classification of cardinality phenotypes using collections

MotivationPhenotypes are observable characteristics of an organism and they can be highly variable. Information about phenotypes is collected in a clinical context to characterize disease, and is also collected in model organisms and stored in model organism databases where they are used to understand gene functions. Phenotype data is also used in computational data analysis and machine learning methods to provide novel insights into disease mechanisms and support personalized diagnosis of disease. For mammalian organisms and in a clinical context, ontologies such as the Human Phenotype Ontology and the Mammalian Phenotype Ontology are widely used to formally and precisely describe phenotypes. We specifically analyze axioms pertaining to phenotypes of collections of entities within a body, and we find that some of the axioms in phenotype ontologies lead to inferences that may not accurately reflect the underlying biological phenomena.ResultsWe reformulate the phenotypes of collections of entities using an ontological theory of collections. By reformulating phenotypes of collections in phenotypes ontologies, we avoid potentially incorrect inferences pertaining to the cardinality of these collections. We apply our method to two phenotype ontologies and show that the reformulation not only removes some problematic inferences but also quantitatively improves biological data analysis.

The Influence of Renaissance Thought on Martin Luther’s View of Liberty

Abstract Scholars have long acknowledged the substantial influence of the Renaissance movement on Luther’s Reformation. However, due to the absence of comprehensive studies on Luther’s contexts, a thorough and detailed analysis of this influence in Luther’s thought and writings has been hindered. The aforementioned circumstance has resulted in the overall disregard of this contribution in the history of Western philosophy. This paper aims to analyze the distinct impact of Renaissance ideology on the evolution of Luther’s concept of liberty. The first section will discuss the background of Luther’s reform movement and the fundamental place of the humanist concept of liberty in its impact on the destruction of the religious power of the Catholic Church. The second section will examine the significant role played by humanists, such as Erasmus, in shaping Luther’s liberal ideas during his early years. The third section will examine how Luther’s understanding of liberty was developed through his polemical exchanges with Erasmus and other thinkers. This process ultimately resulted in Luther’s distinctive and paradoxical conception of freedom, which highlights Luther’s and humanists’ historical influence on the independence, emancipation, and autonomy of the individual personality in their age. The fourth section will examine the influence of Luther’s paradoxical ontological theory on the development of Western intellectual history. Additionally, it will address the misinterpretation of this intellectual history lineage by the mainstream of Western intellectual history that occurred concurrently. Finally, in the twentieth century, the revival of Luther’s thought, which was gradually revitalized by Heidegger, Karl Barth, and other contemporary scholars, also highlights the significant influence of Renaissance thought on Luther’s theory and the whole history of Western thought.

Обзор Международной научно-практической конференции «Современная онтология – XI: онтология и религия» (Санкт-Петербург, Волгоград, 26–30 июня 2023 г.)

The review of the international scientific and practical conference "Modern Ontology – XI: Ontology and Religion", which took place from June 26 to June 30 at the Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation and Volgograd State University, is presented. The speeches of the conference participants were devoted to several significant topics on the stated issues. The first thematic block consisted of theoretical issues of the relationship between ontology and religion. Within the framework of this topic, the plenary report of P.M. Kolychev's "Ontology and religion", in which theology was considered as part of ontology became the key one. The second thematic block included the problems of human existence in the context of religion. Within the framework of this topic, S.B. Tokareva in the plenary report "Ontological consequences of human and angelic freedom: a modal approach" examined the interpretations of the real, possible and necessary, analyzed the ontological consequences of human and angelic freedom. Within the framework of the third thematic block, in which the problems of the relationship between ontology and religion were discussed in a historical and philosophical retrospective, the most interesting was the plenary report of I.I. Evlampiev "The problem of creation and the status of nothing in the metaphysics of mystical Pantheism", which presented an original view on the development of the concepts of creation in the history of Christian thought. The fourth thematic block covered the problems of theory and practice of ontology. Within the framework of the conference, a fruitful discussion was held on the topic "What kind of philosophy do we need?", dedicated to the problems of teaching philosophy for non-philosophical specialties. Most of the participants supported the idea of developing a unified program of a general philosophy course based on the domestic (including Soviet period) experience of teaching this discipline. The following structure of the philosophy course is proposed: 1) ontology; 2) philosophy of natural science; 3) philosophy of socio-anthropological reality; 4) philosophy of religion.

Interview with Alessio Antonini

Dr Alessio Antonini is a research fellow at the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University (UK). He leads the "Knowledge Architectures" group that focuses on conceptual modeling for research and inter-organization infrastructures applied to, e.g., digital humanities and applied Artificial Intelligence to community and city digital innovations. His research focuses on the phenomenology and aesthetics of interactive and intelligent media, positive computing for digital healthcare and the design of ***Al-enabled health and well-being interventions. His methods focus on the scoping and design of technologies, connecting philosophy of mind, communication pragmatics, cognition and social ontology theories with information and data models, and software engineering requirements for such infrastructures. He is actively advocating and supporting the adoption of digital-informed methodologies and agenda in the Humanities, and Humanities interpretative methods in computer science.

Research on Construction and Application of Ocean Circulation Spatial–Temporal Ontology

Due to the absence of a comprehensive knowledge system for modeling ocean circulation, there is ambiguity and diversity in the semantic expression of ocean circulation. This makes it difficult to organize and share relevant spatiotemporal data effectively. This paper addresses the issue of ocean circulation by introducing ontological theory and methodology based on a comprehensive analysis of domain knowledge. Through a comprehensive analysis of the conceptual and relational characteristics of different elements, we define classes, properties, spatiotemporal relationships, and inference conditions with which to formally express concepts and relationships in ocean circulation, and finally complete the construction of ocean circulation ontology. The formal expression of the Equatorial Counter Current is presented as an example with which to validate the effectiveness of ontological construction. Additionally, an ontology-based knowledge base of ocean circulation is proposed. The construction framework is described, and several examples of knowledge base queries are also illustrated. The results demonstrate that this ontology can effectively represent the relevant knowledge within ocean circulation and provide a meaningful reference for investigating knowledge sharing and semantic integration within this field.

To the ontology of war: why warfare but not peaceful negotiations

The article is aimed at a philosophical study of the foundations/causes of war. Its background is a definition of the Russian-Ukrainian full-scale warfare as an irreconcilable existential conflict of the "Russian world" between the "Russian world" and the national world of Ukraine. Methodological specific of the article is reliance on the everydayness of a boundary situation of war to define the cultural world, as well as cultural identity as concepts that get existential meaning. Philosophy potential is used to clarify the key question for today's war discourse about why the parties to the conflict are determined to take military actions, but not to resolve the conflict through peace negotiations. The answer is sought by comparing two ontologies of the world that there are in Habermas' communicative theory of action and Heidegger's fundamental ontology. Each of them provides an alternative concept of understanding and, accordingly, different foundations for its truth theory. This also provides a perspective, firstly, to distinguish two alternative positions of participants in the discourse of war – "internal" one as "being in a culture at war" and another of an "external" observer. Secondly, this distinction helps to explain why war as a conflict of cultural worlds could be considered from different philosophical points of view, namely from the position of the philosophy of communicative action, as well as in the context of existential analysis of being. Examination of the explanatory potential of both approaches is carried out on the basis of a comparison of different concepts of the world, fundamental to each of philosophers. It is done by clarifications of basics of two ontologies of understanding and, accordingly, of their theories of truth. The article indicates that the theory of truth in communicative philosophy is based on the regulative idea of the unity of the objective world. Instead, with reference to examples from Charles Taylor and Jean-Luc Nancy, the author claims that the fundamental ontology can be reinterpreted in terms of the plurality of being-in-common of people in sovereign cultural worlds. Accordingly, the interaction of representatives of different cultural identities under certain political conditions, i.e., official propaganda can turn into a radical disagreement of different existential understandings of the meaning of being, into a war of cultural worlds that cannot be overcome by just negotiations at the level of competent communication. The article ends with an open question about searching for ways to unify the mentioned ontological approaches.

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Ontology as ideology: A critique of Butler's theory of precariousness

Conceptual Change and Education: The Neglected Potential of Developmental Teaching Approaches

Research on conceptual change (CC) has revealed that students face difficulties when learning that requires significant changes to their prior knowledge. Researchers have documented the challenges in education to promote CCs and concluded that conventional teaching does not facilitate these changes. However, while designing educational methods to address CC challenges is a central aim of CC research, it is an area of research that still requires refinement. I show that developmental teaching (DT) approaches, including El’konin-Davydov’s developmental education and Gal’perin’s method of stage-by-stage formation of mental actions and concepts, are promising for addressing CC challenges but are absent from CC research literature. I first review the CC challenges revealed in CC research, the way in which three CC research trends – framework theory, ontological theory, and knowledge-in-pieces theory – interpret them, and their educational recommendations to foster CC. Next, I present CC challenges and educational recommendations to foster CC from a DT perspective. I delineate convergences and divergences between the three CC research trends and DT research concerning both educational design and theories of CC. I conclude by suggesting articulations between DT research and CC research in general and the three CC research trends in particular.

Thomas Hobbes and the Paradoxes of Early Modern Thinking

The object of this work is the philosophy of T. Hobbes in its integrity and unity of its main parts, including logic, the so-called "first philosophy", physics, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of morality, politics and law. The subject is the internal connection of the concept of the Leviathan state with the theory of cognition and ontology in the context of a number of problems of modern epistemology, philosophy and the history of science and the history of philosophy of Modern times. Methodologically, the work is based on a comparative historical approach, hermeneutic analysis of sources, as well as general scientific methods of analogy, generalization, abstraction, systematization, and others. Results of the study: 1) T. Hobbes is not so much an experimental theorist as a popularizer of science, confident that such popularization in itself can both lead a person to the truth and help solve a number of socio-political problems; 2) Hobbes' attitude radically breaks with a number of provisions of both the philosophy of nature and socio-in the political philosophy of Antiquity, translating the aporicity of the latter into paradoxicity and, as a consequence, antinomianism; 3) T. Hobbes discovers the logically abstract world of science as an analytical-synthetic transformation of the everyday world given in sensation, while the first necessarily generates something third - a world that exists by itself, an unknowable world; this makes him to strictly approach the definitions of the boundaries of knowledge — God, soul, morality and law; 4) the concept of Leviathan solves the problem of the mutual transition of the universal and the individual in a very typical way for early Modern times — through the fundamental paradox of the interaction of the abstract scientific world of science and the "objective" world itself opposed to it; this paradox is one of essential features of philosophy and science of early modern times.

The Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue: A Philosophical Foundation

The possibility of interreligious dialogue depends, at least, on the justification for the existence of religion itself. Thus, the constructionist theory of religion becomes a fundamental problem in constructing a framework of interreligious dialogue theory because religion is expressed as an imaginary existence, in the sense that it is only the construction of scholars and academics. If the existence of religion itself cannot be justified ontologically, it means that interreligious dialogue is impossible. Hence, to answer that problem, we inevitably have to prove ontologically the existence of religion without having to reject the constructionist theory. In this paper, I use the social ontology analysis proposed by John Searle and the historical ontology theory proposed by Ian Hacking to prove that religion as a constructed social reality exists objectively. Thus, interreligious dialogue is possible within a framework of existential hermeneutics that presupposes a process of understanding that changes continuously in accordance with historical ontology as its foundation.

An ontology-based probabilistic framework for comprehensive seismic risk evaluation of subway stations by combining Monte Carlo simulation

The development of subways is currently at its peak and underground structures including subway stations are being constructed on a large scale. However, previous research on seismic risk evaluation of underground structures mainly focuses on the analysis of influencing factors and seismic fragility. There is a lack of research on comprehensive automated seismic risk evaluation from a macro perspective based on economic losses, casualties, disaster relief costs and post-earthquake recovery time etc. The emergence of semantic web technologies provides an effective way for multi-objective automated seismic risk evaluation of subway stations. This paper aims to develop a framework for comprehensive seismic risk evaluation of subway stations based on Monte Carlo simulation and ontology theory. In the developed framework, the seismic risk probabilities of subway stations are determined using Monte Carlo simulation. Taking economic losses, casualties, disaster relief costs and post-earthquake recovery time as indicators, an ontology-based model for seismic risk evaluation of subway stations is then developed by combining the knowledge base and the semantic web rules to achieve automated evaluations. A case study is also conducted to demonstrate the practicability of the proposed framework and further validate the semantic web rule language and the semantic query-enhanced web rule language

The Interpretation of Organizational Ontologies

What does it mean for an organization “to exist”? Building upon the philosophical notion of ontologies as theories of existence, I outline a theory of organizational ontology supported by the premise that organizations contain implicit existential conventions that provide their members with an understanding of what their joint existence is. This study aims to answer two questions. First, what constitutes an organizational ontology? Second, how can this be accessed and represented? Using a methodology informed by cultural interpretation, I ground this study empirically in ethnographic fieldwork at a not-for-profit organization devoted to teaching math to “left behind” children.

The Living Body: Merleau-Ponty and Zhuangzi

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) discusses the living body through the concept of intentionality. Later, Merleau-Ponty comes up with a theory of ontology based on the reversibility of the flesh. Zhuangzi (375-300 BCE) also speaks of the significant role played by our bodies in shaping our knowledge and experience. However, Zhuangzi relates the body to yi 意presented, referring to the creative coordination of bodily organs of perception and movement 眼-手-伸-通(such as eyes and hands), developed by constantly and persistently engaging with an object. The presence of yi dictates a manifestation of walking-where-all-things-have-been-walking which is Dao.