The purpose of this paper is to defend the systematic introduction of formal ontological principles in the current practice of knowledge engineering, to explore the various relationships between ontology and knowledge representation, and to present the recent trends in this promising research area. According to the "modelling view" of knowledge acquisition proposed by Clancey, the modelling activity must establish a correspondence between a knowledge base and two separate subsystems: the agent's behaviour (i.e. the problem-solving expertise ) and its own environment (the problem domain ). Current knowledge modelling methodologies tend to focus on the former sub-system only, viewing domain knowledge as strongly dependent on the particular task at hand: in fact, AI researchers seem to have been much more interested in the nature of reasoning rather than in the nature of the real world. Recently, however, the potential value of task-independent knowledge bases (or "ontologies") suitable to large scale integration has been underlined in many ways. In this paper, we compare the dichotomy between reasoning and representation to the philosophical distinction between epistemology and ontology. We introduce the notion of the ontological level, intermediate between the epistemological and the conceptual levels discussed by Brachman, as a way to characterize a knowledge representation formalism taking into account the intended meaning of its primitives. We then discuss some formal ontologic distinctions which may play an important role for such purpose.

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Formal ontology, conceptual analysis and knowledge representation

In this paper we introduce the DOLCE upper level ontology, the first module of a Foundational Ontologies Library being developed within the WonderWeb project. DOLCE is presented here in an intuitive way; the reader should refer to the project deliverable for a detailed axiomatization. A comparison with WordNet's top-level taxonomy of nouns is also provided, which shows how DOLCE, used in addition to the OntoClean methodology, helps isolating and understanding some major WordNet?s semantic limitations. We suggest that such analysis could hopefully lead to an ?ontologically sweetened? WordNet, meant to be conceptually more rigorous, cognitively transparent, and efficiently exploitable in several applications.

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Sweetening Ontologies with DOLCE

Infants represent the acts of others and their own acts in commensurate terms. They can recognize cross-modal equivalences between acts they see others perform and their own felt bodily movements. This recognition of self‐other equivalences in action gives rise to interpreting others as having similar psychological states such as perceptions and emotions. The ‘like me’ nature of others is the starting point for social cognition, not its culmination.

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'Like me': a foundation for social cognition.

ion: The grounding relations are relations of abstraction. The derivative entities, in order to be an ‘‘ontological free lunch’’ and count as no further addition, ought to be already latent within the substances. In other words, the grounding relations should just be ways of separating out aspects that are implicitly present from the start.37 Here is the sort of picture of substances that these diagnostics converge upon: Priority Monism: There is exactly one substance, the whole concrete cosmos. Insofar as there can be no difference in the world without a difference somewhere in the cosmos, priority monism delivers a complete roster of substances.38 This roster is trivially minimal, since the only proper subset of {the cosmos} is Ø, which obviously is not complete. Moreover, this roster is clearly metaphysically general—the ways the cosmos could be just are the ways the world could be.39 And this roster is empirically specifiable since advanced physics is field theoretic physics, and field theory has a natural monistic interpretation in terms of a spacetime bearing properties.40 These diagnostics also converge on: Thick Particularism: Substances are thick particulars (concrete things). 37 Scaltsas imputes a similar view to Aristotle: ‘‘for Aristotle a substance is complex, not because it is a conglomeration of distinct abstract components like matter, form, or properties; a substance is complex because such items can be separated out by abstraction, which is a kind of division of the unified substance’’ (1994: 109) 38 To see the bite of completeness, note that a pluralistic roster comprising point particles in spatiotemporal relations would fail completeness if the whole had emergent features, as are arguably present in entangled quantum systems (Schaffer forthcoming–a: §2.2). 39 In contrast, a pluralistic roster of mereological simples fails generality, since the world could be gunky. That would be a way the world that could be that is not a way that any roster of simples could be (Schaffer forthcoming–a: §2.4). 40 For instance, general relativistic models are <M, g, T> triples, where M is a four-dimensional continuously differentiable point manifold, g is a metric-field tensor, and t is a stress-energy tensor (with both g and t defined at every point of M). The obvious ontology here is that of a spacetime manifold bearing fields. Thus Norton notes: ‘‘a spacetime is a manifold of events with certain fields defined on the manifold. The literal reading is that this manifold is an independently existing structure that bears properties’’ (2004). Quantum field theory invites a similar monistic reading. As d’Espagnat explains: ‘‘Within [quantum field theory] particles are admittedly given the status of mere properties, ... But they are properties of something. This something is nothing other than space or space-time, ...’’ (1983: 84) See Schaffer (manuscript) for some further defense of the spacetime-bearing-fields view of what is fundamental. on what grounds what 379 That is, substances have both a that-aspect—the thin particular, the substratum—and a what-aspect—the thickening features, the modes (c.f. Armstrong 1997: 123–6). Plugging in priority monism, the that-aspect of the cosmos is spacetime, and the what-aspect of it is its fields. So among the derivative categories are those of substratum and mode: Substratum and Mode as Derivative: substratum and mode are abstractions from thick particulars. Another derivative category will be the partialia, abstracted via: Universal Decomposition: The cosmos may be arbitrarily decomposed into parts. From priority monism plus universal decomposition, the entirety of the actual concrete mereological hierarchy of thick particulars is generated (whether or not the world is gunky). Wholes are complete and concrete unities, and partialia their incomplete aspects, arising from a process of ‘‘one-sided abstraction’’ (Bradley 1978: 124). With the partialia thus grounded, it remains to ground abstracta (such as numbers and possibilia) in the actual concrete realm. Here matters are too complicated to discuss further within the scope of this paper. But perhaps I have said enough to illustrate how at least one of the many possible neo-Aristotelian programs might look. To conclude: metaphysics as I understand it is about what grounds what. It is about the structure of the world. It is about what is fundamental, and what derives from it.41

On What Grounds What

Imitation was tested both immediately and after a 24-hr retention interval in 6-week-old infants. The results showed immediate imitation, which replicates past research, and also imitation from memory, which is new. The latter finding implicates recall memory and establishes that 6-week-olds can generate actions on the basis of stored representations. The motor organization involved in imitation was investigated through a microanalysis of the matching response. Results revealed that infants gradually modified their behavior towards more accurate matches over successive trials. It is proposed that early imitation serves a social identity function. Infants are motivated to imitate after a 24-hr delay as a means of clarifying whether the person they see before them is the same one they previously encountered. They use the reenactment of a person’s behavior to probe whether this is the same person. In the domain of inanimate objects, infants use physical manipulations (e.g., shaking) to perform this function. Imitation is to understanding people as physical manipulation is to understanding things. Motor imitation, the behavioral reenactment of things people do, is a primitive means of understanding and communicating with people.

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Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics

In this provocative book, John Burnheim argues that there is an alternative to our current political and economic structure. In a bold and original discussion of how and why the present system fails and what we might do to bring about genuine democracy, Burnheim offers the outline of a new kind of society, forcing us to reexamine our assumptions about the limits and possibilities of modern political systems.

John Burnheim

Papers

Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics

Is Democracy Possible? The alternative to electoral politics

Philosophical Investigations: Philosophische Untersuchungen

Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950

La Doctrine de la Relation chez Saint Thomas: Exposé historique et systématique