The relevance of ontological commitments

In this introductory note, I describe my particular view of the notion of ontological commitments as honest and pragmatic working hypotheses that assume the existence (out there) of certain entities represented by the symbols in our theory. I argue that this is not naive, in the sense that it does not entail the belief that the hypotheses could ever be proved to be true (or false), but it is nevertheless justified by the success and predictive power of the theory that contains the concepts assumed to exist. I also claim that the ontological commitments one holds (even if tacitly so) have a great influence on what kind of science is produced, how it is used, and how it is understood. Not only I justify this claim, but I also propose a sketch of a possible falsification of it. As a natural conclusion, I defend the importance of identifying, clarifying and making explicit one's ontological commitments if fruitful scientific discussions are to be had. Finally, I compare my point of view with that of some philosophers and scientists who have put forward similar notions.Comment: Submitted for peer-revie

Epistemological vs. Ontological Relationalism in Quantum Mechanics: Relativism or Realism?

In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism, relationalism and relativism in the history of both physics and philosophy. In the second part, we will address some relational interpretations of quantum mechanics, namely, Bohr's relational approach, the modal interpretation by Kochen, the perspectival modal version by Bene and Dieks and the relational interpretation by Rovelli. We will argue that all these interpretations ground their understanding of relations in epistemological terms. By taking into account the analysis on the first part of our work, we intend to highlight the fact that there is a different possibility for understanding quantum mechanics in relational terms which has not been yet considered within the foundational literature. This possibility is to consider relations in (non-relativist) ontological terms. We will argue that such an understanding might be capable of providing a novel approach to the problem of representing what quantum mechanics is really talking about.Comment: Welcome

Cognitive context and arguments from ontologies for learning

The deployment of learning resources on the web by different experts has resulted in the accessibility of multiple viewpoints about the same topics. In this work we assume that learning resources are underpinned by ontologies. Different formalizations of domains may result from different contexts, different use of terminology, incomplete knowledge or conflicting knowledge. We define the notion of cognitive learning context which describes the cognitive context of an agent who refers to multiple and possibly inconsistent ontologies to determine the truth of a proposition. In particular we describe the cognitive states of ambiguity and inconsistency resulting from incomplete and conflicting ontologies respectively. Conflicts between ontologies can be identified through the derivation of conflicting arguments about a particular point of view. Arguments can be used to detect inconsistencies between ontologies. They can also be used in a dialogue between a human learner and a software tutor in order to enable the learner to justify her views and detect inconsistencies between her beliefs and the tutor’s own. Two types of arguments are discussed, namely: arguments inferred directly from taxonomic relations between concepts, and arguments about the necessary an

Developing Ontological Theories for Conceptual Models using Qualitative Research

Conceptual modelling is believed to be at the core of the IS discipline. There have been attempts to develop theoretical foundations for conceptual models, in particular ontological models as axiomatic reference systems. Although the notion of ontology has become popular in modelling theories, criticism has risen as to its philosophical presuppositions. Taking on this criticism, we discuss the task of developing socially constructed ontologies for modelling domains and outline how to enhance the expressiveness of ontological modelling theories by developing them via qualitative research methods such as Grounded Theory

How to Find Suitable Ontologies Using an Ontology-based WWW Broker

Knowledge reuse by means of outologies now faces three important problems: (1) there are no standardized identifying features that characterize ontologies from the user point of view; (2) there are no web sites using the same logical organization, presenting relevant information about ontologies; and (3) the search for appropriate ontologies is hard, time-consuming and usually fruitless. To solve the above problems, we present: (1) a living set of features that allow us to characterize ontologies from the user point of view and have the same logical organization; (2) a living domain ontology about ontologies (called ReferenceOntology) that gathers, describes and has links to existing ontologies; and (3) (ONTO)2Agent, the ontology-based www broker about ontologies that uses the Reference Ontology as a source of its knowledge and retrieves descriptions of ontologies that satisfy a given set of constraints. (ONTO)~Agent is available at http://delicias.dia.fi.upm.es/REFERENCE ONTOLOGY