Formalizing Ontological Commitments (original) (raw)

Constructing formal semantics from an ontological perspective. The case of second-order logics

Synthese, 2013

In a first part, I defend that formal semantics can be used as a guide to ontological commitment. Thus, if one endorses an ontological view O and wants to interpret a formal language L, a thorough understanding of the relation between semantics and ontology will help us to construct a semantics for L in such a way that its ontological commitment will be in perfect accordance with O. Basically, that is what I call constructing formal semantics from an ontological perspective. In the rest of the paper, I develop rigorously and put into practice such a method, especially concerning the interpretation of second-order quantification. I will define the notion of ontological framework: it is a set-theoretical structure from which one can construct semantics whose ontological commitments correspond exactly to a given ontological view. I will define five ontological frameworks corresponding respectively to: (i) predicate nominalism, (ii) resemblance nominalism, (iii) armstrongian realism, (iv) platonic realism, and (v) tropism. In those different frameworks, I will construct different semantics for first-order and second-order languages. Notably I will present different kinds of nominalist semantics for second-order languages, thus showing how we can quantify over properties and relations while being ontologically committed only to individuals. More generally I will show in what extent those semantics differ from each other; it will make clear how the disagreements between the ontological views extend from ontology to logic, and how metaphysical questions can be correctly treated, in those semantics, as simple questions of logic.

Constructing formal semantics from an ontological perspective. The case of second-order logic

Synthese, December 2013, DOI : 10.1007/s11229-013-0387-9

Ontological Commitment and Quantifiers

Routledge Handbook to Metametaphysics

This is a slightly opinionated review of three main factions in metaontology: Quineans, Carnapians, and Meinongians. Emphasis is given to the last camp, as the metaontological aspect of Meinongianism has been underappreciated. The final section then offers some general remarks about the legitimacy of ontology, touching on ideas I have developed in other publications.

Formalised Elementary Formal Ontology

2002

Formal ontology, as the science of the formal relations that structure reality as a whole, aims at a theory of categories corresponding to the most general features of possible objects, whether existing or non-existing. The present paper is an attempt to summarise and extend recent research in analytical metaphysics in a formalised theory of objects. Existence is characterised as a formal property, suggesting that the use of quantifiers alone does not involve any existential assumptions about the objects quantified over. However, the only non-existing objects allowed for in the present account are real or objective possibilities. De re modalities as well as ontological dependence are defined on the basis of a counterpart-theoretic specification of possibilia. The present framework allows for necessary and non-relative identity as well as for a granular parthood relationship satisfying the thesis of composition as partial identity. The paper culminates in the formalisation of an Aris...

The Model Theory of Onto Logic

This paper seeks to develop a rigorous categorical model theory for first-order ontological languages by using the principles and techniques of Information Flow and Formal Concept Analysis. Ontological languages represent ontologies and the terminologies of description logic.

Ontology as a Logic of Intensions

We view the content of ontology via a logic of intensions. This is due to the fact that particular intensions like properties, roles, attributes and propositions can stand in mutual necessary relations which should be registered in the ontology of a given domain, unlike some contingent facts. The latter are a subject of updates and are stored in a knowledge-base state. Thus we examine (higher-order) properties of intensions like being necessarily reflexive, irreflexive, symmetric, anti-symmetric, transitive, etc., mutual relations between intensions like being incompatible, being a requisite, being complementary, and so like. We also define two kinds of entailment relation between propositions, viz. mere entailment and presupposition. Finally, we show that higher-order properties of propositions trigger necessary integrity constraints that should also be included in the ontology. As the logic of intensions we vote for Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL), because TIL framework is smoothly applicable to all three kinds of context, viz. extensional context of individuals, numbers and functions-in-extension (mappings), intensional context of properties, roles, attributes and propositions, and finally hyper-intensional context of procedures producing intensional and extensional entities as their products.

Logic and Formal Ontology Is the Final Formal Ontology Possible

Journal of Philosophical Theological Research, 2011

Many philosophers and logicians have contemplated the relationship between ontology and logic. The author of this paper, working within a Bolzanoan-Husserlian tradition of studying both ontology and logic, considers ontology as the science of the most general features of beings and the most general relations among them. He considers logic as the science concerning the most general statements of all (natural or artificial) languages and the most general relations among them from an inferential point of view. It is possible to see logic in a broader sense as the science of all kinds of relations among all kinds of entities, acts, and processes stating some (objective, subjective, artificial, or conventional) reality. These entities, acts, and processes are not individual; rather, they are idealized, such that their universals may be instantiated at all times and in all places. In formal ontology we search for the properties of those structures of the reality that are formally similar. So we may find some formal truths applying to all things and/or properties and/or processes in different areas of objective/subjective/fictional reality. Surveying briefly the most important relations of logic and ontology in both analytic and phenomenological traditions, the author focuses on this central point: If reality is one as the unity of more or less interconnected and interactive beings of all physical, nonphysical and artificial types, the system of inference too may be one as the unity of more or less interconnected statements of all natural and artificial types. The universal system of inference may be divided into several relatively separate subsystems (having a more or less degree of connection) just as the unified reality has divided into several relatively separate fields (having a more or less degree of connection

Formalizing Ontological Commitments (original) (raw)

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