How Can Reasoner Performance of ABox Intensive Ontologies Be Predicted?

Reasoner performance prediction of ontologies in OWL 2 language has been studied so far from different dimensions. One key aspect of these studies has been the prediction of how much time a particular task for a given ontology will consume. Several approaches have adopted different machine learning techniques to predict time consumption of ontologies already. However, these studies focused on capturing general aspects of the ontologies (i.e., mainly the complexity of their TBoxes), while paying little attention to ABox intensive ontologies. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose to improve the representativeness of ontology metrics by developing new metrics which focus on the ABox features of ontologies. Our experiments show that the proposed metrics contribute to overall prediction accuracy for all ontologies in general without causing side-effects

Predicting reasoner performance on ABox intensive OWL 2 EL ontologies

In this article, the authors introduce the notion of ABox intensity in the context of predicting reasoner performance to improve the representativeness of ontology metrics, and they develop new metrics that focus on ABox features of OWL 2 EL ontologies. Their experiments show that taking into account the intensity through the proposed metrics contributes to overall prediction accuracy for ABox intensive ontologies

Semantic Management of Location-Based Services in Wireless Environments

En los últimos años el interés por la computación móvil ha crecido debido al incesante uso de dispositivos móviles (por ejemplo, smartphones y tablets) y su ubicuidad. El bajo coste de dichos dispositivos unido al gran número de sensores y mecanismos de comunicación que equipan, hace posible el desarrollo de sistemas de información útiles para sus usuarios. Utilizando un cierto tipo especial de sensores, los mecanismos de posicionamiento, es posible desarrollar Servicios Basados en la Localización (Location-Based Services o LBS en inglés) que ofrecen un valor añadido al considerar la localización de los usuarios de dispositivos móviles para ofrecerles información personalizada. Por ejemplo, se han presentado numerosos LBS entre los que se encuentran servicios para encontrar taxis, detectar amigos en las cercanías, ayudar a la extinción de incendios, obtener fotos e información de los alrededores, etc. Sin embargo, los LBS actuales están diseñados para escenarios y objetivos específicos y, por lo tanto, están basados en esquemas predefinidos para el modelado de los elementos involucrados en estos escenarios. Además, el conocimiento del contexto que manejan es implícito; razón por la cual solamente funcionan para un objetivo específico. Por ejemplo, en la actualidad un usuario que llega a una ciudad tiene que conocer (y comprender) qué LBS podrían darle información acerca de medios de transporte específicos en dicha ciudad y estos servicios no son generalmente reutilizables en otras ciudades. Se han propuesto en la literatura algunas soluciones ad hoc para ofrecer LBS a usuarios pero no existe una solución general y flexible que pueda ser aplicada a muchos escenarios diferentes. Desarrollar tal sistema general simplemente uniendo LBS existentes no es sencillo ya que es un desafío diseñar un framework común que permita manejar conocimiento obtenido de datos enviados por objetos heterogéneos (incluyendo datos textuales, multimedia, sensoriales, etc.) y considerar situaciones en las que el sistema tiene que adaptarse a contextos donde el conocimiento cambia dinámicamente y en los que los dispositivos pueden usar diferentes tecnologías de comunicación (red fija, inalámbrica, etc.). Nuestra propuesta en la presente tesis es el sistema SHERLOCK (System for Heterogeneous mobilE Requests by Leveraging Ontological and Contextual Knowledge) que presenta una arquitectura general y flexible para ofrecer a los usuarios LBS que puedan serles interesantes. SHERLOCK se basa en tecnologías semánticas y de agentes: 1) utiliza ontologías para modelar la información de usuarios, dispositivos, servicios, y el entorno, y un razonador para manejar estas ontologías e inferir conocimiento que no ha sido explicitado; 2) utiliza una arquitectura basada en agentes (tanto estáticos como móviles) que permite a los distintos dispositivos SHERLOCK intercambiar conocimiento y así mantener sus ontologías locales actualizadas, y procesar peticiones de información de sus usuarios encontrando lo que necesitan, allá donde esté. El uso de estas dos tecnologías permite a SHERLOCK ser flexible en términos de los servicios que ofrece al usuario (que son aprendidos mediante la interacción entre los dispositivos), y de los mecanismos para encontrar la información que el usuario quiere (que se adaptan a la infraestructura de comunicación subyacente)

Becoming What We Are: Virtue and Practical Wisdom as Natural Ends

This dissertation is about ethical naturalism. Philippa Foot and John McDowell both defend contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics but each represents a rival expression of the same. They are united in the affirmation that virtue is ‘natural goodness’ for human beings. Nevertheless, they are divided in their rival conceptions of ‘nature.’ McDowell distinguishes second nature or the space of reasons from first nature or the “realm of law.” Foot rejects this division. On Foot\u27s naturalism, natural goodness is just as much a feature of first nature as health is, even though human practical reasoning is unique in the biological world. I defend Foot’s view by appealing to “generic propositions,” a little-utilized feature of linguistic theory. Life forms and functions described in generic statements are intrinsically normative and yet just as scientifically respectable as other naturalistic concepts. Hence, the generic proposition that humans are practical, rational primates has both descriptive and normative content. It follows that the ethical and rational norms defining a good human life are a subset of natural norms which can be known as such from an “external” scientific point of view as well as from an “internal” ethical point of view. Going beyond Foot’s views, I present a new interlocking neo-Aristotelian account of virtue and practical reason. Virtues are excellences of practical reasoning and rational practice. Virtues enable and partly constitute a good life for human beings. Practical reasoning is the ability to pursue perceived goods and avoid perceived evils in every action. Practical wisdom, which is excellence in practical reasoning, is the master virtue that enables one to succeed in becoming truly human, despite varying abilities and life circumstances. In short, all of us ought to pursue virtue and practical wisdom because of who and what we are; virtue and practical wisdom are natural ends. I aim to secure the naturalistic credentials of my view by examining three influential conceptions of ‘nature,’ criticizing McDowell\u27s conception and showing how my view is consistent with the remaining two. The resulting view is called \u27recursive naturalism\u27 because nature recurs within nature when natural beings reason about nature, about themselves, and about their own reasoning

How Many Minds Do We Need? Toward A One-System Account of Human Reasoning

To explain data from the reasoning and decision-making literature, dual-process theorists claim that human reasoning is divided: Type-1 processes are fast, automatic, associative, and evolutionarily old, while Type-2 processes are slow, effortful, rule-based, and evolutionarily new. Philosophers have used this distinction to their own philosophic ends in moral reasoning, epistemology, and philosophy of mind. I criticize dual-process theory on conceptual and empirical grounds and propose an alternative cognitive architecture for human reasoning. In chapter 1, I identify and clarify the key elements of dual-process and dual-system theory. Then, in chapter 2, I undercut an inference to the best explanation for dual-process theory by offering a one-system alternative. I argue that a single reasoning system can accomplish the explanatory work done by positing two distinct processes or systems. In chapter 3, I argue that a one-system account of human reasoning is empirically testable—it is incompatible with there being contradictory beliefs that are produced by simultaneously occurring reasoning processes. I further argue, contra Sloman (1996), that we do not have evidence for such beliefs. Next, in chapter 4, I argue that the properties used to distinguish Type-1 from Type-2 processes cross-cut each other (e.g. there are evolutionarily new processes that are effortless). The upshot is that even if human reasoning were divided, it would not parse neatly into two tidy categories: ‘Type-1’ and ‘Type-2.’ Finally, in chapter 5, I fill in the details of my own one-system alternative. I argue that there is one reasoning system that can operate in many modes: consciously or unconsciously, automatically or controlled, and inductively or deductively. In contrast to the dual-process theorists, these properties do not cluster. For each property pair (e.g. automatic/controlled), and for a single instance of a task, the reasoning system will operate in a definitive mode. The reasoning system is like a mixing board: it has several switches and slides, one for each property pair. As subjects work through problems, they can alter the switches and slides—they can, perhaps unconsciously, change the process they use to complete the problem

PaLM 2 Technical Report

We introduce PaLM 2, a new state-of-the-art language model that has better multilingual and reasoning capabilities and is more compute-efficient than its predecessor PaLM. PaLM 2 is a Transformer-based model trained using a mixture of objectives. Through extensive evaluations on English and multilingual language, and reasoning tasks, we demonstrate that PaLM 2 has significantly improved quality on downstream tasks across different model sizes, while simultaneously exhibiting faster and more efficient inference compared to PaLM. This improved efficiency enables broader deployment while also allowing the model to respond faster, for a more natural pace of interaction. PaLM 2 demonstrates robust reasoning capabilities exemplified by large improvements over PaLM on BIG-Bench and other reasoning tasks. PaLM 2 exhibits stable performance on a suite of responsible AI evaluations, and enables inference-time control over toxicity without additional overhead or impact on other capabilities. Overall, PaLM 2 achieves state-of-the-art performance across a diverse set of tasks and capabilities. When discussing the PaLM 2 family, it is important to distinguish between pre-trained models (of various sizes), fine-tuned variants of these models, and the user-facing products that use these models. In particular, user-facing products typically include additional pre- and post-processing steps. Additionally, the underlying models may evolve over time. Therefore, one should not expect the performance of user-facing products to exactly match the results reported in this report

The critical reputation of Defoe's novels: a reflection of changing attitudes toward the novel in England

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston UniversityDaniel Defoe's critical reputation in the tradition of the English novel rests primarily on seven works of prose fiction. Robinson Crusoe, Captain Singleton, Memoirs of a Cavalier, A Journal of the Plague Year, Colonel Jack, Moll Flanders, and The Fortunate Mistress have been objects of a renewed critical interest in recent years. This dissertation has been an attempt to relate the criticism of Defoe's novels with definitions of the form end function of the novel. The initial problem is to justify Defoe's fiction as a point of departure; the purpose then becomes an examination of subsequent criticism as an index to successive and current tastes in the novel in any given period and therefore, as a study, does not reduce itself simply to an account of Defoe's critical reputation as a novelist, but can be thought of as a commentary on taste in English fiction since the beginning of the eighteenth century to the present day--a period during which the novel, in the modern sense, became a critically recognized genre. The dissertation is divided into four parts, each of which has as its theme the central tendency dominant in the criticism of the period covered. The first part, "Traditions," involves an account of literary and sub-literary prose forms important to the eighteenth century novel. In the former tradition, the dominant theme was a striving for vraisemblance in the romance, picaresque, and novel forms--explicit in the Scudérys, Mrs. Behn, Congreve, and Mrs. Manley. In the latter, the need for an amalgam of fact and moral instruction was implicit in periodical, pamphlet, and travel literature. Two related aspects characteristic of both traditions were the rise of the middle class and the development of a native prose idiom. The second part, "Fact and Fiction," deals with three aspects of the eighteenth century novel, all related to the central problem of the emergence of a new form of the novel derived through Defoe's fiction from the literature of fact. Defoe's definition of his fiction is studied in the prefaces to his fiction. His first concern was to make fiction appear as fact; but his prefaces to Moll Flanders and Colonel Jack show positive attitudes toward fictional elements and an interest in fiction as a vehicle for social reform. Later critics found in The Fortunate Mistress dramatic elements of plot, character development, and the theme of marital status. But earlier in Serious Reflections Defoe called Robinson Crusoe an emblematic history--a term which raises the problem of critical nomenclature used to describe fiction between 1700 and 1800. In Defoe's time, the terms history, biography, memoir, or journal were applied loosely to fiction because the need for authenticity was seen to be the dominant problem. By midcentury these terms merged with an esthetic which asked simply of fictional reality that it reflect a just standard of nature. Johnson, Fielding, and Smollett wrote fictional "histories" without feeling that they were resorting to subterfuge by using the term. In the latter part of the century, as Defoe's critical reputation grew from sparse notes, critics of novels, Who tested Defoe in terms of the standard of nature--Blair, Beattie, and Reeve--began to link Robinson Crusoe with accepted classics: Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, Gulliver's Travels, and Tom Jones. These critics and others, notably Charles Gildon, felt that Defoe's personal morality of necessity and prudence and the questionable authenticity of his subject matter weakened the artistic merit of his work (even of Robinson Crusoe) and disqualified his minor fiction from serious consideration as literature. In the nineteenth century these two reservations became dominant themes in Defoe criticism. Part three, "Art and Morality," traces the acceptance of the novel as an art form in the gradual dissociation of an author's personal morality from his works. During the romantic period (1790-1830), Defoe's earliest biographers--Chalmers, Towers, and Wilson--tended to see him as an exemplary statesman-patriot, much misunderstood in his time. The reform projects, the outspoken pamphlets, the plain and easy manner, the magnitude of his activities and writings--all had enormous appeal in an age or republican reform. The romantic view accepted the novel as a form and Defoe, at his best, as comparable to the great poets. Coleridge saw in Robinson Crusoe the universal conflict or man against nature. Hazlitt said the Journal had epic grandeur. Then, Lamb and Wilson directed attention to the "secondary novels": Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, and The Fortunate Mistress. The coarse material in them was justified by Defoe's avowed purpose of effecting social reform by educating the lower classes. Scott undertook to analyze the fiction. He gave to Defoe and novel criticism a standard terminology for an esthetic. He isolated four aspects: style, structure, subject matter, and character. In a famous examen of "Mrs. Veal" he showed that Defoe fell appreciably short in all four; but that in his ability to create verisimilitude, he was unrivalled. Scott related the secondary novels to the picaresque, the memoirs and journals to rudimentary historical fictions. His edition for Ballantyne was much respected in the nineteenth century, and his view of the novels has since been echoed by numerous critics: Forster, Lee, Stephen, Minto, Raleigh, Lovett and Hughes, Baker, and Sherburn. While the picture of Defoe as a republican patriot remained intact, the question of the relation of his personal morality to works of fiction was held in abeyance. By the end of the century this generous view was curtailed. Because of Lee's discovery of Defoe's ambiguous political activity (1714-1724), the morality in his novels became subject to question. Gildon's charge of an expedient morality was renewed; and a dualistic picture of Defoe's fiction emerged in the criticism of Stephen, Minto, Raleigh, and Saintsbury. They praised his remarkable verisimilitude, but decried the superficial morality and the vulgar scenes. In the present century, this criticism bas taken the form of impugning Defoe's motives as an artist. Woolf, Cather, Anderson, Burch, and Ross find his moral sentiments the chief flaw, and his view of reality limited. Other critics point out that the morality in Defoe's fiction is consistent with his characters, and that it is an effort to reconcile conflicting realities--the demands of the spiritual and the temporal. Lee, Aitken, Wright, Secord, Roorda, and Boyce are all willing to grant Defoe a measure of sincerity. Same insist that morality in Defoe's fiction is a minor aspect, that the key to his importance lies in his method of accumulating detail to achieve verisimilitude. Part four, "Techniques of Realism," attempts to show the resolution of the moral and esthetic problem in Defoe and identify it with the problem of a definition for the modern novel. The period 1900-1950 is characterized by an effort in critical canons to see relativity in novel forms. The Defoe novel has been viewed as a distinct departure, not so much in terms of dramatic elements, but in the direction of technique. Aitken provided a pivot in Defoe criticism in that he interwove the strands of Defoe criticism and research that derived and expanded from Scott, through the period in the midcentury when novels reflected a moral and social consciousness, to the end of the century, when it became fashionable to think of the novel in terms of the tradition, the experience of the author, and the literary and social environment. Thus Aitken, working from hints in Defoe criticism from Chalmers to Lee, suggested an examination of sources in the factual literature of the seventeenth century to account for Defoe's technique of composition. Aitken's views were developed by Wackwitz, Nicholson, Secord, and Moore. From Stephen, Saintsbury, Raleigh, and Baker came definitions of the novel as an ordered presentation of a problem in life, which unified its elements of plot, character, setting, and style. It was seen as a complex artifact and Defoe as an important transitional figure, whose tone of voice--the easy style, the enumerations, the accumulations of detail-prepared the way for the novelists more in terms of technique than in the adaptation of dramatic elements to fiction. Defoe as a journeyman novelist became respectable. As he was studied within the limits of special traditions (in Morgan, Chandler, Secord, McBurney, and Peterson), his achievement and stature grew. Defoe is no longer condemned because of his superficial morality or his coarse material, but rather for hasty composition, faithlessness to his craft as a novelist, lack of insight into particular characters, or an indifferent sense of unity. Even these criticisms are vitiated by the knowledge that they are made from twentieth century dispensations of the novel. By these standards, however, Moll Flanders, Robinson Crusoe, The Fortunate Mistress, and A Journal of the Plague Year are seen as important contributions to the modern novel. In terms of technique, Defoe's method is defined as an arrangement of historical but disparate incidents fictionally fused into a set of probabilities which create a sense of the real--not real as in life experiences, but with sufficient selection and order that they appear life-like. This forms a parallel to contemporary views of technique in the novel, when writers do not have to convince their readers that their novels are not fiction. Their works are appreciated in accord with the success they achieve in convincing readers that what they describe could be. The present century demands techniques of concealment in the novel, parallel to those of Defoe; but unlike Defoe, whose view of reality depended on a one-for-one relationship of word to thing, novelists' perceptions of reality are not seen to be equivalent. For one, the mental life treated by means of the stream of consciousness. technique may constitute the significant reality; for another, the selection of material detail may be the means to reality. It is not necessarily Defoe's realism that is his contribution to the modern novel, but his ability to find a way to create fiction that appeared to be real

Teaching toward understanding: Feminist rhetorical theories and pedagogies in the college composition classroom

While recognizing the value of traditional argument, many teacher-scholars have begun to challenge the primacy of antagonistic debate in college classrooms. In Teaching Toward Understanding: Feminist Rhetorical Theories and Pedagogies in the College Composition Classroom, I maintain that the inclusion of invitational rhetoric, embodied rhetoric, and rhetorical listening as classroom content, coupled with the translation of these theories into pedagogical practice, can both challenge and expand current approaches to the teaching of writing and rhetoric. Furthermore, by offering alternatives to antagonistic debate, these rhetorical theories encourage productive and ethical forms of discourse, promoting more successful cross-cultural communication both in the classroom and in the larger civic realm