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New foundations for qualitative physics
Physical reality is all the reality we have, and so physical theory in the standard sense
is all the ontology we need. This, at least, was an assumption taken almost
universally for granted by the advocates of exact philosophy for much of the present
century. Every event, it was held, is a physical event, and all structure in reality is
physical structure. The grip of this assumption has perhaps been gradually weakened
in recent years as far as the sciences of mind are concerned. When it comes to the
sciences of external reality, however, it continues to hold sway, so that contemporary
philosophers B even while devoting vast amounts of attention to the language we use
in describing the world of everyday experience B still refuse to see this world as
being itself a proper object of theoretical concern.
Here, however, we shall argue that the usual conception of physical reality as
constituting a unique bedrock of objectivity reflects a rather archaic view as to the
nature of physics itself and is in fact incompatible with the development of the
discipline since Newton. More specifically, we shall seek to show that the world of
qualitative structures, for example of colour and sound, or the commonsense world
of coloured and sounding things, can be treated scientifically (ontologically) on its
own terms, and that such a treatment can help us better to understand the structures both of physical reality and of cognition
Towards an ontology of common sense
Philosophers from Plotinus to Paul Churchland have yielded to the temptation to embrace doctrines which contradict the core beliefs of common sense. Philosophical realists have on the other hand sought to counter this temptation and to vindicate those core beliefs. The remarks which follow are to be understood as a further twist of the wheel in this never-ending battle. They pertain to the core beliefs of common sense concerning the external reality that is given in everyday experience -the beliefs of folk physics, as we might call them. Just as critics of Churchland et al. have argued that the folk-psychological ontology of beliefs, desires, etc. yields the best explanation we can have of the order of cognitive phenomena conceived from the perspective of
first-person experience, so we shall argue that (1) the commonsensical ontology
of folk physics yields the best explanation we can have of our externally directed
cognitive experience and that (2) an ontology of mesoscopic things, events and
processes must play a role, in particular, in our best scientific theory of human
action
Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science
We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of āOntological Foundations for Geographic Information.ā Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods
used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of āOntological Foundations for Geographic Information Scienceā is unique
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Implementation of molecular collection theory
Hayes, in his Naive Physics Manifesto, identified two alternate ontologies for reasoning about liquids, an ontology based on the notion of a contained substance and one based on the notion of a molecular collection. Qualitative Process theory, proposed by Forbus, lends itself easily to encoding the contained substance ontology. It does not, however, provide any mechanism to perform molecular collection reasoning. The primary objective of this research is to implement a mechanism for supporting molecular collection reasoning and evaluate its usefulness in various domains
An Outline of Reality
This paper aims to provide a basic explanation of existence, fundamental aspects of reality, and consciousness. Existence in its most general sense is identified with the principle of logical consistency: to exist means to be logically consistent. The essence of the principle of logical consistency is that every thing is what it is and is not what it is not. From this principle follows the existence of intrinsic, indescribable identities of things and relations between them. There are three fundamental, logically necessary relations: similarity, composition and instantiation. Set theory, mathematics, logic and science are presented as relational descriptions of reality. Qualities of consciousness (qualia) are identified with intrinsic identities of things or at least a certain subset of them, especially in the context of a dynamic form of organized complexity
Probabilistic Knowledge as Objective Knowledge in Quantum Mechanics: Potential Powers Instead of Actual Properties
In classical physics, probabilistic or statistical knowledge has been always
related to ignorance or inaccurate subjective knowledge about an actual state
of affairs. This idea has been extended to quantum mechanics through a
completely incoherent interpretation of the Fermi-Dirac and Bose-Einstein
statistics in terms of "strange" quantum particles. This interpretation,
naturalized through a widespread "way of speaking" in the physics community,
contradicts Born's physical account of {\Psi} as a "probability wave" which
provides statistical information about outcomes that, in fact, cannot be
interpreted in terms of 'ignorance about an actual state of affairs'. In the
present paper we discuss how the metaphysics of actuality has played an
essential role in limiting the possibilities of understating things
differently. We propose instead a metaphysical scheme in terms of powers with
definite potentia which allows us to consider quantum probability in a new
light, namely, as providing objective knowledge about a potential state of
affairs.Comment: 35 pages, no figures. To be published in Probing the Meaning of
Quantum Mechanics, D. Aerts, C. de Ronde, H. Freytes and R. Giuntini (Eds.),
World Scientific, Singapore, forthcoming. More comments welcome
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