Massimiliano Carrara

An ontology of meta-level categories

We focus in this paper on some meta-level ontological distinctions among unary predicates, like those between concepts and assertional properties. Three are the main contributions of this work, mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation. The first is a formal notion of ontological commitment, based on a modal logic endowed with mereological and topological primitives. The second is a formal account of Strawsons distinction between sortal and non-sortal predicates. Assertional properties like red belong to the latter category, while the former category is further refined by distinguishing substantial predicates (corresponding to types like person ) from non-substantial predicates (corresponding to roles like student ). The third technical contribution is definition of countability which exploits the topological notion of connection to capture the intended semantics of unary predicates.

A formal ontological perspective on the behaviors and functions of technical artifacts

Abstract In this paper we present a formal characterization of the engineering concepts of behavior and function of technical artifacts. We capture the meanings that engineers attach to these concepts by formalizing, within the formal ontology DOLCE, the five meanings of artifact behavior and the two meanings of function that Chandrasekaran and Josephson identified in 2000 within the functional representation approach. We begin our formalization by reserving the term “behavior” of a technical artifact as “the specific way in which the artifact occurs in an event.” This general notion is characterized formally, and used to provide definitions of actual behaviors of artifacts, and the physically possible and physically impossible behaviors that rational agents believe that artifacts have. We also define several other notions, for example, input and output behaviors of artifacts, and then show that these ontologically characterized concepts give a general framework in which Chandrasekaran and Josephsons meanings of behavior can be explicitly formalized. Finally we show how Chandrasekaran and Josephsons two meanings of artifact functions, namely, device-centric and environment-centric functions, can be captured in DOLCE via the concepts of behavioral constraint and mode of deployment of an artifact. A more general goal of this work is to show that foundational ontologies are suited to the engineering domain: they can facilitate information sharing and exchange in the various engineering domains by providing concept structures and clarifications that make explicit and precise important engineering notions. The meanings of the terms “behavior” and “function” in domains like designing, redesigning, reverse engineering, product architecture, and engineering knowledge bases are often ambiguous or overloaded. Our results show that foundational ontologies can accommodate the variety of denotations these terms have and can explain their relationships.

If engineering function is a family resemblance concept: Assessing three formalization strategies

In this paper we argue that the challenge of the formalization of functions not merely consists of analyzing and formalizing yet another concept; the challenge may also consist of formalizing a concept that is to be taken as a family resemblance concept in the Wittgensteinian sense. We focus on engineering for giving this argument and indicate briefly how the argument can also be given for biological functions. We demonstrate that in engineering there are a number of different meanings attached to the term “function”, and observe that engineers moreover seem to hold that having all these meanings is useful in their field. This observation make plausible that function indeed is to be taken as a family resemblance concept. Then we describe three strategies for the formalization of functions --the revisionary, the overarching and the descriptive strategies --and relate them to a number of the current proposals for this formalization. Assessing the strategies with the meta-ontological goals for formalizations of adequacy and minimality, we argue that if function indeed is to be taken as a family resemblance concept, then the descriptive strategy is to be preferred.

The fine-grained metaphysics of artifactual and biological functional kinds

In this paper we consider the emerging position in metaphysics that artifact functions characterize real kinds of artifacts. We analyze how it can circumvent an objection by David Wiggins (Sameness and substance renewed, 2001, 87) and then argue that this position, in comparison to expert judgments, amounts to an interesting fine-grained metaphysics: taking artifact functions as (part of the) essences of artifacts leads to distinctions between principles of activity of artifacts that experts in technology have not yet made. We show, moreover, that our argument holds not only in the artifactual realm but also in biology: taking biological functions as (part of the) essences of organs leads to distinctions between principles of activity of organs that biological experts have not yet made. We run our argument on the basis of analyses of artifact and biological functions as developed in philosophy of technology and of biology, thus importing results obtained outside of metaphysics into the debate on ontological realism. In return, our argument shows that a position in metaphysics provides experts reason for trying to detect differences between principles of activities of artifacts and organs that have not been detected so far.

Ontological commitment and reconstructivism

Some forms of analytic reconstructivism take natural language (and common sense at large) to be ontologically opaque: ordinary sentences must be suitably rewritten or paraphrased before questions of ontological commitment may be raised. Other forms of reconstructivism take the commitment of ordinary language at face value, but regard it as metaphysically misleading: common-sense objects exist, but they are not what we normally think they are. This paper is an attempt to clarify and critically assess some common limits of these two reconstructivist strategies.

Identity criteria and sortal concepts

In this paper we focus on a specific aspect of the notion ofconceptualisation, i.e. on the issue of the specification ofa certain kind of concept: sortal concept. Our startingpoint is the intuitive idea that a sortal concept cannot bespecified in isolation from a general notion of entity. We thinkthat this idea has some bearing on the way in which identitycriteria should be conceived, since they are usually taken as afundamental tool for the specification of a sortal concept. Thefirst goal of our paper is to discuss and point out somedifficulties concerning the relation between sortals and identitycriteria. In general, we think that the specification of a sortalpresupposes - in Russellian terms - a range of significance onwhich the concept is defined. It follows that the sortal cannot bestated without a specification of its range of significance. Thismeans that identity criteria for a sortal K providingconditions of identity only for objects falling under K arenot enough to specify K. Independently of this point, we arequite skeptical about the possibility of achieving a formalsatisfactory definition of sortal. We will try to show thateven Guarino and Weltys last proposal [4] does not succeed. Oursecond goal concerns which concepts are to be taken as sortals. Bythinking that identity criteria are necessary and sufficientconditions for identity, Guarino and Welty cannot accept that, say,a is S1 and a is S2, in thecase that S1 and S2 are associated withincompatible criteria. So they are lead to postulate, for example,that not a but b is S2 and a isconstituted by b. We defend the thesis that it is possibleto take some concepts - in our case S2 - as endowed onlywith necessary conditions for identity. We will argue for somespecific choices.

The design stance and its artefacts

In this paper we disambiguate the design stance as proposed by Daniel C. Dennett, focusing on its application to technical artefacts. Analysing Dennett’s work and developing his approach towards interpreting entities, we show that there are two ways of spelling out the design stance, one that presuppose also adopting Dennett’s intentional stance for describing a designing agent, and a second that does not. We argue against taking one of these ways as giving the correct formulation of the design stance in Dennett’s approach, but propose to replace Dennett’s original design stance by two design stances: an intentional designer stance that incorporates the intentional stance, and a teleological design stance that does not. Our arguments focus on descriptions of technical artefacts: drawing on research in engineering, cognitive psychology and archaeology we show that both design stances are used for describing technical artefacts. A first consequence of this disambiguation is that a design stance, in terms of interpretative assumptions and in terms of the pragmatic considerations for adopting it, stops to be a stance that comes hierarchically between the physical stance and the intentional stance. A second consequence is that a new distinction can be made between types of entities in Dennett’s approach. We call entities to which the intentional designer stance is applied tools and entities to which the teleological design stance is applied instruments, leading to a differentiated understanding of, in particular, technical artefacts.

Pragmatic and dialogic interpretations of bi-intuitionism. Part I

We consider a “polarized” version of bi-intuitionistic logic [5, 2, 6, 4] as a logic of assertions and hypotheses and show that it supports a “rich proof theory” and an interesting categorical interpretation, unlike the standard approach of C. Rauszer’s Heyting-Brouwer logic [28, 29], whose categorical models are all partial orders by Crolard’s theorem [8]. We show that P.A. Mellies notion of chirality [21, 22] appears as the right mathematical representation of the mirror symmetry between the intuitionistic and co-intuitionistc sides of polarized bi-intuitionism. Philosophically, we extend Dalla Pozza and Garola’s pragmatic interpretation of intuitionism as a logic of assertions [10] to bi-intuitionism as a logic of assertions and hypotheses. We focus on the logical role of illocutionary forces and justification conditions in order to provide “intended interpretations” of logical systems that classify inferential uses in natural language and remain acceptable from an intuitionistic point of view. Although Dalla Pozza and Garola originally provide a constructive interpretation of intuitionism in a classical setting, we claim that some conceptual refinements suffice to make their “pragmatic interpretation” a bona fide representation of intuitionism. We sketch a meaning-asuse interpretation of co-intuitionism that seems to fulfil the requirements of Dummett and Prawitz’s justificationist approach. We extend the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation to bi-intuitionism by regarding co-intuitionistic formulas as types of the evidence for them: if conclusive evidence is needed to justify assertions, only a scintilla of evidence suffices to justify hypotheses.

Two ontology-driven formalisations of functions and their comparison

In this paper, we give formalisations of two engineering concepts of technical function and present in more general terms the project of supporting functional description translation by ontological analysis. The formalisations are given within the foundational dolce ontology and the concepts formalised are as follows: (1) the function as defined in the Functional Representation approach by Chandrasekaran and Josephson and (2) the function as defined in the Functional Basis approach by Stone and Wood. These two concepts represent two main ways of understanding functions in engineering: the first by means of the behaviour of artefacts, and the second by means of operations on flows as performed by artefacts. We analyse the similarities and differences between these concepts by means of the formalisations and show how the formalisations support the automated translation between functional descriptions based on these two concepts. In addition, we compare our strategy of formalising different engineering concepts of function within one foundational ontology with other strategies in the ontology-driven formalisation, such as defining a single formalised concept of function, either for replacing existing engineering concepts, or for use as a reference by which such existing concepts can be related. We compare these strategies and sketch the merits and shortcomings of our strategy.

The Knowability Paradox in the Light of a Logic for Pragmatics

The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument showing that if all truths are knowable in principle, then all truths are, in fact, known. Many strategies have been suggested in order to avoid the paradoxical conclusion. A family of solutions—called logical revision—has been proposed to solve the paradox, revising the logic underneath, with an intuitionistic revision included. In this paper, we focus on so-called revisionary solutions to the paradox—solutions that put the blame on the underlying logic. Specifically, we analyse a possibile translation of the paradox into a modified intuitionistic fragment of a logic for pragmatics (KILP) inspired by Dalla Pozza and Garola [4]. Our aim is to understand if KILP is a candidate for the logical revision of the paradox and to compare it with the standard intuitionistic solution to the paradox.