Ontological Relativity and Other Essays

Chapter 2: An Exposition of Constructivism: Why Some Like It Radical

Although service-oriented architectures go a long way toward providing interoperability in distributed, heterogeneous environments, managing semantic differences in such environments remains a challenge. We give an overview of the issue of semantic interoperability (integration), provide a semantic characterization of services, and discuss the role of ontologies. Then we analyze four basic models of semantic interoperability that differ in respect to their mapping between service descriptions and ontologies and in respect to where the evaluation of the integration logic is performed. We also provide some guidelines for selecting one of the possible interoperability models.

Models for semantic interoperability in service-oriented architectures

In his 1936 paper, On the Concept of Logical Consequence, Tarski introduced the celebrated definition of logical consequence: “The sentenceσ follows logically from the sentences of the class Γ if and only if every model of the class Γ is also a model of the sentence σ.” [55, p. 417] This definition, Tarski said, is based on two very basic intuitions, “essential for the proper concept of consequence” [55, p. 415] and reflecting common linguistic usage: “Consider any class Γ of sentences and a sentence which follows from the sentences of this class. From an intuitive standpoint it can never happen that both the class Γ consists only of true sentences and the sentence σ is false. Moreover, … we are concerned here with the concept of logical, i.e., formal, consequence.” [55, p. 414] Tarski believed his definition of logical consequence captured the intuitive notion: “It seems to me that everyone who understands the content of the above definition must admit that it agrees quite well with common usage. … In particular, it can be proved, on the basis of this definition, that every consequence of true sentences must be true.” [55, p. 417] The formality of Tarskian consequences can also be proven. Tarski's definition of logical consequence had a key role in the development of the model-theoretic semantics of modern logic and has stayed at its center ever since.

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Did Tarski commit “Tarski's fallacy”?

Philosophers have a hard enough time reconstructing the theoretical role of dead concepts like phlogiston and caloric and of living concepts like, perhaps, distance and entropy that, at least temporarily, have found their way into theories that are reasonably canonical. But the species concept poses even greater difficulties, since it is currently undergoing a transformation in its foundations. In retrospect, we realize how risky it was for philosophers to take up the epistemology and metaphysics of geometry, just when the idea of a nonEuclidean geometry was beginning to emerge. The occupational hazard then was claiming that certain propositions are a priori true, when later scientific developments showed them to be empirically false. In this case, the problem was that philosophers had too narrow a picture of what is possible. My hunch is that philosophers now face something like the opposite problem for the species concept. The danger is that we are apt to take seriously a possible interpretation of the species concept that no longer plays a role in evolutionary theorizing. It isn't that this interpretation is a priori incapable of theoretical development. It's just that it currently constitutes a mere hope and lacks any serious degree of theoretical articulation. Yet, at the same time, there is another species concept that is a going concern, presupposed by an active and inventive research program. This latter avenue of thinking is preempting the word \"species\" for itself. Even if the other idea were to make any headway, I doubt that the units identified from that perspective would be called \"species\".

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Sets, Species, and Evolution: Comments on Philip Kitcher's "Species"

The present study explores the ability of 3.5- and 4.5-year-olds to use a causal property (making a machine light up and play music) to build categories of objects, and attach a name to them. First, this use is assessed in the presence or absence of simple perceptual information (color and shape) leading to a conflicting categorization. Second, the role of language is evaluated by varying how the experimenter describes the actions of the objects on the machine. Results show that although children of both ages use causal properties to categorize objects in the absence of conflicting perceptual categorization, older children are more likely than younger children to favor the causal over the perceptual categorization when they conflict. An effect of language was also found with the older children, with explicit causal descriptions of the events enhancing causal categorizations. Finally, a memory probe showed that younger children were likely to misremember causal information when it conflicted with perceptual information. These results suggest that perceptual, linguistic and causal information are all correlated for the younger children, whereas these cues are more independent for the older children.

Ontological Relativity and Other Essays

Citations

Chapter 2: An Exposition of Constructivism: Why Some Like It Radical

Models for semantic interoperability in service-oriented architectures

Did Tarski commit “Tarski's fallacy”?

Sets, Species, and Evolution: Comments on Philip Kitcher's "Species"

A shift in children’s use of perceptual and causal cues to categorization

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