Semantics, Ontology and Explanation

The terms 'semantics' and 'ontology' are increasingly appearing together with 'explanation', not only in the scientific literature, but also in organizational communication. However, all of these terms are also being significantly overloaded. In this paper, we discuss their strong relation under particular interpretations. Specifically, we discuss a notion of explanation termed ontological unpacking, which aims at explaining symbolic domain descriptions (conceptual models, knowledge graphs, logical specifications) by revealing their ontological commitment in terms of their assumed truthmakers, i.e., the entities in one's ontology that make the propositions in those descriptions true. To illustrate this idea, we employ an ontological theory of relations to explain (by revealing the hidden semantics of) a very simple symbolic model encoded in the standard modeling language UML. We also discuss the essential role played by ontology-driven conceptual models (resulting from this form of explanation processes) in properly supporting semantic interoperability tasks. Finally, we discuss the relation between ontological unpacking and other forms of explanation in philosophy and science, as well as in the area of Artificial Intelligence

Filsafat Ilmu sebagai Landasan Pengembangan Ilmu Pendidikan

The philosophy of science clarify the existence of science to the other science that requires knowledge as a medium of thinking and means of scientific communication. These are language, logic, mathematics, statistics, and other data analysis techniques. Specifications and independency science faced by the increasing number problems that can not be answered by science, therefore, philosophy appears as the answer. Philosophy gives an explanation or an answer onthat problems substantial and radical, while the science continues to develop it self- in its limit , while still radically criticized, process or the interaction basically is a field of philosophy of science. Philosophy of science therefore can be put as an attempt to bridge the gap between the philosophy and science, so that science does not despise the philosophy, and the philosophy does not see science as a superficial understanding of nature . Reality is “what is naturally “ or existence , while the appearance is that “artificially real“. Also how the relationship to both with subject /human. Epistemology is considered synonymous with the theory of knowledge. At the present time theory of knowledge can not be ignored. Epistemology of education science related to know how science education obtaining gain processing, what is the procedure to get the true scientific knowledge. Axiologiy related to what is the advantages of science education, what ethical relationship with science and its application science education in daily life . Key words : the philosophy of science, education, ontology, epistemology, axiology

Ontological Investigations of a Pragmatic Kind? A Reply to Lauer

This paper is a reply to Richard Lauer’s “Is Social Ontology Prior to Social Scientific Methodology?” (2019) and an attempt to contribute to the meta-social ontological discourse more broadly. In the first part, I will give a rough sketch of Lauer’s general project and confront his pragmatist approach with a fundamental problem. The second part of my reply will provide a solution for this problem rooted in a philosophy of the social sciences in practice

Epistemological Realism and Onto-Relations

The traditional concept of knowledge is a justified true belief. The bulk of contemporary epistemology has focused primarily on that task of justification. Truth seems to be a quite obvious criterion—does the belief in question correspond to reality? My contention is that the aspect of ontology is far too separated from epistemology. This onto-relationship of between reality and beliefs require the epistemic method of epistemological realism. This is not to diminish the task of justification. I will then discuss the role of inference from the onto-relationships of free invention and discovery and whether it is best suited for a foundationalist or coherentist model within a theistic context

Patterns, Information, and Causation

This paper articulates an account of causation as a collection of information-theoretic relationships between patterns instantiated in the causal nexus. I draw on Dennett’s account of real patterns to characterize potential causal relata as patterns with specific identification criteria and noise tolerance levels, and actual causal relata as those patterns instantiated at some spatiotemporal location in the rich causal nexus as originally developed by Salmon. I develop a representation framework using phase space to precisely characterize causal relata, including their degree of counterfactual robustness, causal profiles, causal connectivity, and privileged grain size. By doing so, I show how the philosophical notion of causation can be rendered in a format that is amenable for direct application of mathematical techniques from information theory such that the resulting informational measures are causal informational measures. This account provides a metaphysics of causation that supports interventionist semantics and causal modeling and discovery techniques