Showing papers on "Ontology (information science) published in 1988"

Temporal ontology and temporal reference

Abstract: A semantics of temporal categories in language and a theory of their use in defining the temporal relations between events both require a more complex structure on the domain underlying the meaning representations than is commonly assumed. This paper proposes an ontology based on such notions as causation and consequence, rather than on purely temporal primitives. A central notion in the ontology is that of an elementary event-complex called a "nucleus." A nucleus can be thought of as an association of a goal event, or "culmination," with a "preparatory process" by which it is accomplished, and a "consequent state," which ensues. Natural-language categories like aspects, futurates, adverbials, and when-clauses are argued to change the temporal/aspectual category of propositions under the control of such a nucleic knowledge representation structure. The same concept of a nucleus plays a central role in a theory of temporal reference, and of the semantics of tense, which we follow McCawley, Partee, and Isard in regarding as an anaphoric category. We claim that any manageable formalism for natural-language temporal descriptions will have to embody such an ontology, as will any usable temporal database for knowledge about events which is to be interrogated using natural language.

On the Nature of Health: An Action-Theoretic Approach

Abstract: Foreword to Second Edition. Introduction. 1: Some Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Health. 2: An Analytic Theory of Health: the Biostatistical Theory (BST). 3: Towards a Holistic Theory of Health. 4: On the Factors which Compromise Health. 5: On Some Societal and Scientific Consequences of the Welfare Notion of Health. 6: Conclusions and Summary of the Welfare Theory of Health. Appendix: On the Ontology of Diseases. Notes. Supplementary Bibliography. Bibliography. Postscript 1994. Index.

Vagueness and the Standard Ontology

Abstract: In this paper I use a version of the Sorites paradox to justify rejecting our standard ontology.' I do not argue that there is no true ontology. For instance, an ontology according to which every filled region of spacetime contains a four dimensional hunk of matter (and according to which every such object has all of its non-relational properties essentially) is not susceptible to the paradox.2 The objects of our standard ontology, on the other hand, would have vague persistence conditions and essential properties. The Sorites paradox shows that there can be no such objects. I will demonstrate that any attempt to account for the phenomenon of vagueness while accepting the standard ontology would force us into contradictions, obvious falsehoods, or unavoidable ignorance of any diachronic identity. I conclude, therefore, that there are no such things as, for instance, tables, toadstools, or tax collectors. Someone might prefer to continue saying that there can be such things, concluding from my arguments only that if there are, they cannot have the persistence conditions and essential properties that we normally attribute to them.3 It seems to me that in this case, it is no longer the standard ontology being defended. I grant that, at first, such a conclusion sounds less extreme than mine. However, I am sure that, if it can be plausibly worked out in detail, it will come to much the same as my conclusion. We will be able to cling to our words "table", "toadstool", and "tax collector" but we will be using them to refer to the objects of our replacement ontology. I have nothing in principle against saying that there are tables, so long as tables are understood as certain kinds of four dimensional hunks of matter with very different persistence conditions and essential properties than we typically assign to tables.

Teleology, consequentialism, and the past

Abstract: Peter Vallentyne

Intelligent simulation environments: identification of the basics

Abstract: A problem exists in efficiently combining a non-deterministic decision capability with a current discrete event simulation language for use by the simulationist (programmer and in the future the user). This paper explores this problem in the context of the discrete event simulation problem domain implemented in Siman [tm]. The purpose is (1) to provide an ontological definition of abstract ideas from data to wisdom, (2) identify a taxonomy of simulation and artificial intelligence combination dialects, and (3) establish the need for and then introduce a "decide node" which will assist the simulationist in incorporating a broader spectrum of the ontology more easily than current dialects allow.

Designing an inference engine: from ontology to control

Abstract: The author has proposed a method called ontological analysis to help beginning knowledge engineers identify and formalize the core concepts of the task under study. Ontological analysis begins with the construction of a semantic grammar that captures regular features of the expert articulations. From the grammar, a more rigorous analysis proceeds to define the knowledge structures and the primitive fragments of the inference engine using domain equations as a formal notation tool. The author develops a method for proceeding from an identification of the knowledge structures to an inference strategy that exploits these knowledge structures to perform the task at hand. He introduces the techniques of analyzing expert articulations and organizing them into a semantic grammar; shows how this analysis can be formalized into domain equations and discusses the design of inference strategies based on the analysis of expert articulations. The task of trouble shooting an oscilloscope is used as an example to illustrate the methodology. >

Empiricism and ontology in ancient medicine.

Abstract: It is a remarkable fact about the ancient Greek doctors that they not only read, but also did, philosophy. Nor was this merely an avocation, like the modern doctor's pursuit of tax-law: from the fourth century BC at least until the time of Galen, philosophy was considered to be an essential part of the doctor's education. And doctors contributed to philosophy too: Geoffrey Lloyd points out for example that it is in a Hippocratic treatise On Airs, Waters, Places that we first find an explicit statement of the thesis (which was no doubt implict in pre-Socratic methodology) that 'each thing has its nature, and nothing happens without a natural cause/ and that another Hippocratic treatise On the Art is the first to examine the consequences of this thesis for the distinction between things that are caused and things that originate spontaneously. The doctors' interest in philosophy was reciprocated: Alcmaeon, Democritus, Empedocles, and Aristotle were philosophers who were deeply interested in and well informed about medicine. Each of these philosophers was philosophically influenced by the medical knowledge of the time. And it is now widely believed that the Stoic and Epicurean study of signs had its origins in a problem that was much discussed by doctors, namely the question of how visible symptoms can justify inferences to claims about the underlying invisible reality which is supposed to be responsible. (Sextus Empiricus' accounts of these theories makes use of medical examples: 'If a woman bears milk, she has conceived' is an illustration of a conditional in which the antecedent is a sign of the consequent.)

Temporal ontology and temporal reference

Abstract: A semantics of temporal categories in language and a theory of their use in defining the temporal relations between events both require a more complex structure on the domain underlying the meaning...