Relational Ontology Research Articles

Development of an Intervention Population Ontology for specifying the characteristics of intervention participants

Background The uptake, effectiveness and generalisability of interventions are influenced by the features of the populations targeted. However, populations exposed to interventions are not consistently specified in published reports. Purpose To create an Intervention Population Ontology providing a clear, usable and reliable classification system to specify characteristics of populations exposed to interventions. Methods The Intervention Population Ontology was developed in seven main stages 1) Defining the ontology’s scope, (2) identifying key entities by reviewing existing classification systems (top-down) and 100 intervention reports (bottom-up), 3) Refining the preliminary ontology by annotating ~150 intervention reports, 4) Stakeholder review by 29 behavioural science and public health experts, 5) Assessing inter-rater reliability of using the ontology by two coders familiar with the ontology and two coders unfamiliar with it, 6) Specifying ontological relationships between entities in the ontology and 7) making the Intervention Population Ontology machine-readable using Web Ontology Language (OWL) and publishing online. Results The Intervention Population Ontology features 218 entities representing attributes of human individuals across 12 key groupings: personal attributes, geographic location, person, quality, mental capability, role, expertise, objects possessed, behaviour, personal vulnerability and personal history. It has a further 666 classes relating to how individual-level attributes are aggregated to describe groups of people. Inter-rater reliability was α=0.79 for coders familiar with the ontology and 0.85 for coders unfamiliar with the ontology. Conclusions The Intervention Population Ontology can be applied to specify precisely information from diverse sources, annotate population characteristics in existing intervention evaluation reports and guide future reporting.

RESNET-50 with ontological visual features based medicinal plants classification

ABSTRACT The proper study and administration of biodiversity relies heavily on accurate plant species identification. To determine a plant’s species by manual identification, experts use a series of keys based on measurements of various plant features. The manual procedure, however, is tiresome and lengthy. Recently, advancements in technology have prompted the need for more effective approaches to satisfy species identification standards, such as the creation of digital-image-processing and template tools. There are significant obstacles to fully automating the recognition of plant species, despite the many current research on the topic. In this work, the leaf classification was performed using the ontological relationship between the leaf features and their classes. This relationship was identified by using the swarm intelligence techniques called particle swarm and cuckoo search algorithm. Finally, these features were trained using the traditional machine learning algorithm regression neural network. To increase the effectiveness of the ontology, the machine learning approach results were combined with the deep learning approach called RESNET50 using association rule. The proposed ontology model produced an identification accuracy of 98.8% for GRNN model, 99% accuracy for RESNET model and 99.9% for the combined model for 15 types of medicinal leaf sets.

Thinking With/About/Through Music as Artful Inquiry: Collaboratively Performing the Onto-Epistemological and Ethical Flow of Inquiring

This essay presents our collective imagination of music-informed artful inquiry. Inspired by the notion that methodology can be a lifestyle choice and drawing on our experiences with collaborative music expression, we discuss three characteristics of artful thinking with/about/through music: transcendency through emotions and embodiment, connectivity for inclusivity and relationality, and resistance for reinventing decolonial beings and ethical relations. Building on these elements—and understanding artful thinking as a mode of inquiry—we attempt to envision thinking with music as artful inquiry guided by epistemological boundary-crossing, a relational ontology, and a commitment to decolonial possibilities.

A semantic approach to mapping the Provenance Ontology to Basic Formal Ontology

The Provenance Ontology (PROV-O) is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended ontology used to structure data about provenance across a wide variety of domains. Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology ISO/IEC standard used to structure a wide variety of ontologies, such as the OBO Foundry ontologies and the Common Core Ontologies (CCO). To enhance interoperability between these two ontologies, their extensions, and data organized by them, a mapping methodology and set of alignments are presented according to specific criteria which prioritize semantic and logical principles. The ontology alignments are evaluated by checking their logical consistency with canonical examples of PROV-O instances and querying terms that do not satisfy the alignment criteria as formalized in SPARQL. A variety of semantic web technologies are used in support of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles.

Relational Primitivism About the Direction of Time

ABSTRACT Primitivism about the direction of time is the thesis that the direction of time does not call for an explanation because it is a primitive posit in one’s ontology. In the literature, primitivism has generally come with a substantival view of time according to which time is an independent substance. In this paper, we defend a new primitivist approach to the direction of time—relational primitivism. According to it, time is primitively directed because change is primitive. By relying on Leibnizian relationalism, we argue that a relational ontology of time must be able to distinguish between spatial relations and temporal relations to make sense of the distinction between variation and change. This distinction, however, requires the assumption of a primitive directionality of change, which ushers in the direction of time. Relational primitivism is attractive for those who want to avoid substantivalism about time but retain a primitive direction of time in a more parsimonious ontology.

An Ethics of Care, Relational Suffering, and Contested Invisible Disability.

Suffering is an elusive aspect of healthcare, erroneously assumed to be located solely within the patient in the clinical encounter-an assumption that fails to acknowledge the pervasiveness of suffering endured by the physician. This flawed perception is morally problematic in the context of treating contested invisible disabilities (CIDs), which are often associated with medical ambiguity and uncertainty. In this paper, we argue for a relational reconceptualization of suffering in the context of CID to promote more effective care and improved physician-patient relationships. We propose, through the lens of an ethics of care, that a relational ontology of suffering makes salient certain aspects of patient-physician relationships that co-produce suffering, such as professional incompetence, empathetic distress, and epistemic and hermeneutic injustice, rendering the experience of having and treating a CID more visible. We then discuss the important implications of this understanding for this invisibly disabled identity and the therapeutic alliance between physician and patient and explore the potential of narrative-based medicine to better equip physicians with the knowledge, guidance, and skill to fulfil their ethical responsibility to care for and respond to not only the suffering of this population, but their own suffering as well.

Koinonia as Communion: Rethinking Communion in Igbo Traditional Society as Oriko

The Greek term Koinǒnia has been for everyday usage, contextually meaning many things – relationships, fellowship, participation, and communion in usages. This paper situates koinonia within the context of communion, evoking a special usage in Christendom. It applies an intercultural and interreligious linkage of the term to an agelong practice of Ndi Igbo, a practice that predates their encounter with Christianity. Ndi Igbo are people living in the Southeastern part of Nigeria, West Africa whose indigenous religion is the Igbo Traditional Religion – a subset of the African Traditional Religion. The encounter with Christianity introduced Koinǒnia from the Christian perspective, not as a new idea because there is an already existing idea of koinonia in their traditional everyday social and religious life. This paper investigates the religious and social dimensions of Koinǒnia from the Greco-Hellenistic period to the early Christian period, to the Pauline period, and the current usage of the term in the present time. This exploration is placed contextually to an age-long practice of Oriko in the Ogbako Umunna of the Igbo people that has the same meaning, effect, and practice model as the Christian communion, without an encounter between the two culture and religion. This paper explores the ontological, religious, cultural, and substantial relation of Koinǒnia as communion as reflected in Christianity and Igbo Traditional Religion. This investigation is an intercultural and interreligious exposé for enriching and fostering the ongoing mutual dialogue between Christianity and indigenous religions. A dialogue situated in bilateral and constructive exchange of experience for inculturation.

GNOme, an ontology for glycan naming and subsumption.

While GlyTouCan provides stable identifiers for referencing glycan structures, they are not organized semantically. GNOme, a glycan naming and subsumption ontology and a member of the OBOFoundry, organizes GlyTouCan accessions for automated reasoning and interactive browsing of glycan structures by subsumption. GNOme makes it quick and easy to discover glycans with a specific degree of characterization; provides a text-based table of common synonyms for specific structures and compositions; enumerates glycan subsumption relationships for automated reasoning; and assigns each glycan to well-defined categories based on their degree of characterization. As an OBOFoundry ontology, GNOme can be readily integrated with other OBOFoundry ontologies and standards initiatives that need to refer to glycans with various degrees of characterization. GNOme is integrated with GlyGen, a glycoinformatics knowledge base, providing navigation to "related glycans," and expanding the utility of species and glycan classification annotations. GNOme is available at https://gnome.glyomics.org/ and via GlyGen, the OBO Foundry, and GitHub.

Holding It, Together: Beyond Bearing Witness and Burning Out

ABSTRACTConcepts like vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury do important work in making suffering legible and enabling claims to recognition, acknowledgement, and care. Nonetheless, these conceptualizations have little to say about the nature of the suffering, the varied and ambiguous ways it is experienced, or the social, affective, political conditions that give rise to it. In this article I argue for taking up response‐ability as a lens for examining, understanding, and addressing the particular kinds of suffering experienced when registering and resisting violence, particularly in the face of complicity. Drawing on ethnographic work with activist volunteers in refugee camps, I explore what response‐ability, with its relational ontology, allows us to see, feel, understand about suffering that is otherwise out of view, obscured, or rendered unsayable, or even unfeelable. I discuss the ways in which response‐ability assumes complicity and requires grief/mourning and explore how these characteristics alter the possibilities and obligations for collective care and containment when intervening in crises and conflicts.

Rethinking Sustainability from a Gandhian Perspective: A Discourse on Cognitive Justice

It was Gandhi who gave centrality to plural ways of thinking and knowing. His entire life and work are directed against the hegemonic order of knowledge production and dissemination. The hegemonic forms of knowledge spearheaded by scientism produce hierarchies between those who possess and profess it and those who do not. Other forms of knowing and acting upon, with and within the environment are rendered illegitimate and unscientific. It is within this context that we need to rethink the concept of sustainability that has emerged as another form of bio-power. Those ontologies that result in unsustainable activities and damage to the environment are also the ones through which sustainability is understood. It is now time to rethink and reimagine the entire discourse on sustainability from a Gandhian perspective that provides an antithesis to the dominant ideologies. The alternative ways of connecting with the environment and a need for a ‘politics’ that brings these alternative debates to the centre of our consciousness are something where Gandhian philosophy shows us the way. This article tries to understand the concept of sustainability as bio-power and how the Gandhian perspective re-centres this debate around issues of relational ontology, pluriverse and cognitive justice. The utilitarian conception and an occupying ontology towards the environment led to a concept of sustainability powered by scientism. Opposed to this conception is the Gandhian perspective that gives ample space to the locals and the idea of ‘self’ in order to bring about sustainable development. The article also argues that the criticism directed against Gandhi regarding bringing up the issue of ‘moral politics’ through his idea of self is also unfounded and needs to be rejected. Gandhian ideas do not absolve the state from its responsibilities towards its people and the environment, but they bring in the active agency of the people and the ‘self’ in the process of bringing about change in the society.

Ethnic, national, and African consciousness: lessons learned from Ghanaian teachers about decolonising citizenship(s)

ABSTRACT Redefining Ghanaian citizenship has been the impetus for the new 2019 educational reform. For President Akufo-Addo, fostering a more located historic expression of citizenship in learners is central for renewing pride and innovation to move Ghana out of poverty. Teachers are seen as central to this change. Based on 26 interviews, this qualitative study explores lessons learned from government primary schoolteachers about citizenship, in relation to their learners. Primarily, their Ghanaian citizenship(s) was an interdependent definition covering their ethnic, national, and (Black) African consciousness. Inspired by the Pan-African theorist, Kwame Nkrumah, the definition was articulated as ‘Oneness;’ an African relational ontology for seeking unity in difference to disinherit colonialism. This was grounded in ‘Rootedness,’ symbiotic with how teachers located their learners’ ethnic identities and differences through indigeneity. A conceptual model for decolonising citizenship(s) is presented, offering praxis within and beyond the African classroom, highlighting Ghana’s role in the decolonial project.

Извлечение информации из текстов на основе онтологии и больших языковых моделей

The article examines the extraction of information from texts using the ontology of a subject area combined with neu-ral network-based text analysis methods, including the use of large language models. It discusses the expert's role in developing and maintaining systems, illustrated through the task of extracting information from analytical articles and constructing ontologies in computational linguistics to represent key concepts relevant to the system's user or customer. The process of ontology creation is accompanied by the development of a dictionary that forms the ontology's termi-nological core, followed by methods for extracting new terms within the specified subject area. This task is considered as a named entity recognition problem, traditionally addressed by training a neural network model on a representative dataset. The study compares this approach with a methodology leveraging large language models. For this, lexical and syntactic patterns, as well as instruction patterns for hypothesis testing regarding new term-phrases and result verifica-tion, were developed. The developed instructions for solving the problem of relation extraction also include the auto-mated generation of natural language competency assessment questions for each ontology relation. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in the integration of ontological, linguistic and neural network approaches to extract infor-mation from texts. The study demonstrates the possibility of solving tasks of text analysis and information extraction problems through a chain of large language models, with dynamically generated instructions based on the outcomes of prior analysis stages. The following F1-measure scores were achieved in the experiments: F1=0.8 for term extraction and classification and F1=0.87 for relation extraction.

Learning at graves: The living, the dead, and questions of belonging in Islamic Java

ABSTRACT Ahmad Dahlan (d. 1923) was the founder of Muhammadiyah, a modernist Islamic organization in Indonesia that is often critical of traditionalist practices like grave visitations. Although many traditionalists are likewise critical of the modernist Islam with which Dahlan is associated, some nonetheless visit his grave to pray there, thus seemingly disregarding not only Dahlan's own wishes, but also their own reservations about the modernist movement Muhammadiyah represents. To understand this seeming paradox, I focus on prayers uttered during such pilgrimages and argue that grave visitations allow today’s pilgrims to establish ontological, narrative, and ethical relationships with Muslims of the past. As an interface between the past and the present, grave visitations grant access to the imaginal realm and to different temporalities where those who remember forge more authentic ties of identity and ideological belonging that are irreducible to conventional categories of the traditionalist and the modernist Muslim.

Roar of relational peoples

Human consciousness remains an uncontested space. Listening and learning as an Aboriginal researcher to First Nations, Indigenous, African and Pacific Islander Peoples, it became apparent at a philosophical level that there is a shared view of reality. Relational ontology and connected key concepts from various international authors are presented. Demonstrating that despite the dominant Western cultural systems of thought, the earth also holds a loud roar from relational peoples, as they declare their ways of knowing in a world continually experiencing environmental loss and a lack of humanity between people. These voices come from unique and sovereign cultures, but they are also all people groups who position humans, nature and the spirit world as equal entities in their view of reality. However, to begin, this article first shifts the sociological lens onto Western cultural hierarchal thought, to understand how the Western mind became the apex entity.

Re-weaving learning ecologies: a pluriversal framework for higher education learning spaces

ABSTRACT In the context of the profound transformations in higher education learning ecologies brought about by the proliferation of postdigital environments, there is an urgent need for a more holistic, relational, and ethically responsive approach to reimagining learning spaces. This paper proposes a novel pluriversal framework, grounded in relational ontologies and pluriverse thinking, to address this need. Through a critical literature review, conceptual development, and speculative fabulation, the framework articulates four key principles for reconceptualizing learning spaces as dynamic, co-constituted ecologies: (1) entangled becomings, (2) pluriversal imaginaries, (3) sympoietic assemblages, and (4) reciprocal accountabilities. These principles challenge dominant Western-centric paradigms and offer a transformative vision for the future of learning and teaching practice ecologies. The framework has significant implications for the design of architectural, urban, and landscape configurations of learning spaces, calling for more fluid, adaptable, and responsive environments that foster inclusivity, collaboration, and transformative learning experiences. By embracing a pluriversal perspective, the framework opens up new possibilities for creating vibrant, equitable, and regenerative learning environments that nurture the development of learners as whole beings, deeply connected to themselves, each other, and the wider world.

Evolving “affordances” and “constraints” in mobile payment use: a study of Indian micro-enterprises’ UPI adoption process

PurposeThis research aims to uncover how the adoption process of a mobile payment solution unfolds in its local use. We examined micro-enterprises’ adoption of UPI-based payment system in India.Design/methodology/approachWe employed an ethnographic approach to study the micro-entrepreneurs’ daily practice and adopted a relational ontology to conduct an “in-practice” enquiry of the UPI payment adoption process.FindingsApplying the practice perspective of Technology Affordances and Constraints Theory, we found that UPI adoption was shaped through a dynamic interplay of emerging affordances and constraints. New features, such as All-in-one QR, enabled actions like cross-platform money transfer but also introduced challenges like fraud. Advancements in the technology addressed previous challenges but also created new hurdles. This cycle of evolving affordances and constraints within the contextual use of UPI payment technology shaped its adoption process.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings contribute to the existing body of mobile payment literature by elucidating the role of localized and ongoing enactment of affordances and constraints. Unlike existing adoption theories, using relational concepts of affordances and constraints revealed how the integration of mobile payment into practice leads to emergent use patterns and widespread adoption.Practical implicationsWe emphasize the need for solutions that address localized challenges and contextual needs. The study advises policymakers to consider technology’s benefits and limitations in interventions.Originality/valueThe study offers a unique view on mobile payment adoption, highlighting the role of technological materiality and temporality. It reveals how the changing materiality of technology shapes the adoption process through localized affordances and constraints.

Going upstream: a pluri-ontological analysis and proposal for Brazilian participatory water governance

ABSTRACT Despite the growing emphasis on ontological pluralism in environmental policy debates, innovation within national state environmental governance and management remains limited. This article outlines a conceptual framework for ontological inclusion and exclusion to examine constraints and opportunities in Brazilian participatory water governance. This involves an ontological policy cycle of the Suaçuí state river basin, a participatory process for water-body classification, and a water-body-classification instrument. River ontologies of the Suaçuí river basin and participatory process were found to be excluded from the water-body classification instrument through various practices and modes of exclusion. Relational ontologies, both indigenous and non-indigenous, were excluded. Building on the analysis of how ontological exclusion occurred, speculative design was engaged to critically imagine a pluralist ontological proposal. A database with diverse water inputs and outputs for more sustainable and inclusive planning is envisaged. This proposition grounds reflections on challenges for ontological inclusion in the context of political, economic, and social inequalities. Ontological inclusion and exclusion complement classic concepts of social and epistemic inclusion with distinct normative demands and propositions for established participatory environmental governance.

Ontological Relationship between Culture and Art Taste Communities

Ontological Relationship between Culture and Art Taste Communities

The Light Verse between Philosophy and Sufism: A Comparative Analysis of the Interpretations by Ibn Sīnā and al-Ghazālī

This article analyzes two treatises written from philosophical and Sufi perspectives as interpretations of the Light Verse (āyat al-nūr) (Q.24:35), namely Risāla fī Ithbāt al-Nubuwwāt and Mishkāt al-Anwār. They were authored by Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037) and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) respectively, two exceptional authoritative scholarly figures of Islamic sciences with a very high representative power with their writings in diverse dimensions of philosophical and Sufi studies. The article examines the epistemological implications of the philosophical and Sufi ontological designs expressed in the treatises and compares their contents concerning the origin and beginning of existence and the relationship between God and all other beings. The article particularly concentrates on the interpretations regarding the following fundamental questions addressed in the treatises: What is the origin and reality of existence? What kind of ontological and epistemological relationships are there between different kinds of beings? Moreover, what kind of ontological and epistemological connections are there between God and man? Ibn Sina presents masterful examples of philosophical and religious symbolism in his treatise. The central intellectual theme of this work is the possibility and necessity of prophecy. He presents expositions on this subject-matter in his other works too, but we do not witness in his other books another example of him discussing the issue in full detail by focusing on a single qur’ānic verse. The semantic horizons of his expressions in the treatise go far beyond the conventional peripatetic formulations centered on logic: he speaks of spiritual pleasures and happiness, worship, acts of worship, ascetic practices, and spiritual purification. Al-Ghazālī also wrote an independent commentary on the Light Verse. His interpretations of the verse seem to be mostly following the Sufi tradition. However, as the article illustrates with multiple examples, al-Ghazālī’s statements closely resemble Ibn Sīnā’s formulations in both the structure and arrangement of his explanations and their content. Therefore, the relationship between these two treatises appears to be one of complementarity, offering two interrelated perspectives rather than presenting opposing or contradictory ontological and epistemological theories. This study aims to make a modest contribution to the relevant academic studies in Islamic philosophy and Sufism by analyzing the philosophical and Sufi contexts and implications of the statements in these two treatises concerning the Light Verse.

Agential Guts — Care and Creativity within the Messy Multi-species Assemblage

Agential Guts was an artistic multispecies practice of care; a messy entanglement with goats, soils, microbial companions, and gardening activities. The concern over biodiversity loss and many ecological crises caused by traditional farming led me to learn about alternative soil care and goat-keeping and to invent new modes of relating and caring in a multispecies context. The fieldwork drew from rewilding practices that strive to create biodiverse conditions. Configuring the meanings of multispecies assemblage beyond instrumentalising governance of different species, I followed what I called microbial desires in our relational enactments envisioning microbial and mammalian companionship from the more-than-human standpoint. My kin-making was my object of study from an academic perspective but the companion animals and microbes, soils, and plants were collaborators from the artistic point of view. The premises of new materialist and post-anthropocentric relational ontologies were embodied in our practice, where the matter was perceived as intelligent and affective, and thus able to lead to sources of novel ethical thinking-doing and art. I drew from the arts of noticing and considering collaboration as contamination (Tsing 2015) with messy, microbially saturated milieu. Acknowledging how scientific knowledge is always shaping our affective encounters, I also tried to speculate with what we know about microbes leaking between different bodies. In producing a situated knowledge platform, Agential Guts contributed to both art-based research and social studies of microbes by introducing a speculative and embodied way to create knowledge together with nonhumans. <style> /* rules to make button only show up in META */ .download-accessible { display:none; } .meta-right-col .download-accessible { display: inline-block; padding: 9px; margin-bottom:25px; border: 1px solid black; background-color:white; } </style> <a class="download-accessible" href="/profile/download-media?work=2936353&file=3307180" title="This accessible PDF is a derivative of the original which it is meant to support and not replace.">Download Accessible PDF</a>