169,779 research outputs found
Quantum Structure in Economics: The Ellsberg Paradox
The 'expected utility hypothesis' and 'Savage's Sure-Thing Principle' are
violated in real life decisions, as shown by the 'Allais' and 'Ellsberg
paradoxes'. The popular explanation in terms of 'ambiguity aversion' is not
completely accepted. As a consequence, uncertainty is still problematical in
economics. To overcome these difficulties a distinction between 'risk' and
'ambiguity' has been introduced which depends on the existence of a
Kolmogorovian probabilistic structure modeling these uncertainties. On the
other hand, evidence of everyday life suggests that context plays a fundamental
role in human decisions under uncertainty. Moreover, it is well known from
physics that any probabilistic structure modeling contextual interactions
between entities structurally needs a non-Kolmogorovian framework admitting a
quantum-like representation. For this reason, we have recently introduced a
notion of 'contextual risk' to mathematically capture situations in which
ambiguity occurs. We prove in this paper that the contextual risk approach can
be applied to the Ellsberg paradox, and elaborate a sphere model within our
'hidden measurement formalism' which reveals that it is the overall conceptual
landscape that is responsible of the disagreement between actual human
decisions and the predictions of expected utility theory, which generates the
paradox. This result points to the presence of a quantum conceptual layer' in
human thought which is superposed to the usually assumed classical logical
layer', and conceptually supports the thesis of several authors suggesting the
presence of quantum structure in economics and decision theory.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with
arXiv:1105.1814, arXiv:1104.1459, arXiv:1105.181
On weak truthmaking
Informally speaking, a truthmaker is something in the world in virtue
of which the sentences of a language can be made true. This fundamental philosophical
notion plays a central role in applied ontology. In particular, a recent nonorthodox
formulation of this notion proposed by the philosopher Josh Parsons,
which we labelled weak truthamking, has been shown to be extremely useful in addressing
a number of classical problems in the area of Conceptual Modeling. In this
paper, after revisiting the classical notion of truthmaking, we conduct an in depth
analysis of Parsonsâ account of weak truthmaking. By doing that, we expose some
difficulties in his original formulation. As the main contribution of this paper, we
propose solutions to address these issues which are then integrated in a new precise
interpretation of truthmaking that is harmonizable wit
Oil and the Macroeconomy Since the 1970s
Increases in oil prices have been held responsible for recessions, periods of excessive inflation, reduced productivity and lower economic growth. In this paper, we review the arguments supporting such views. First, we highlight some of the conceptual difficulties in assigning a central role to oil price shocks in explaining macroeconomic fluctuations, and we trace how the arguments of proponents of the oil view have evolved in response to these difficulties. Second, we challenge the notion that at least the major oil price movements can be viewed as exogenous with respect to the US macroeconomy. We examine critically the evidence that has led many economists to ascribe a central role to exogenous political events in modeling the oil market, and we provide arguments in favor of 'reverse causality' from macroeconomic variables to oil prices. Third, although none of the more recent oil price shocks has been associated with stagflation in the US economy, a major reason for the continued popularity of the oil shock hypothesis has been the perception that only oil price shocks are able to explain the US stagflation of the 1970s. We show that this is not the case.
Anatomy primitives
ARTECH 2021. 10ÂȘ ConferĂȘncia Internacional de Artes Digitais e Interativas, realizada em Aveiro em outubro de 2021.We propose an installation that investigates the notion of the anatomical canon and its conceptual and practical role in the artistic modeling of human anatomy. This installation guides the visitor through the synthesis of a digital canon built from standard 3D primitives. Through a model that can be interactively constructed or deconstructed step-by-step, using simple controls, the visitoris invited to study, and draw, the human surface anatomy and its main features as interpreted through the natural tools of digital modeling.The authors were funded by FCT national funds through project UIDB/Multi/04019/2020.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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
Justifying design decisions with theory-based design principles
Although the role of theories in design research is recognized, we show that little attention has been
paid on how to use theories when designing new artifacts. We introduce design principles as a new
methodological approach to address this problem. Design principles extend the notion of design
rationales that document how a design decision emerged. We extend the concept of design rationales
by using theoretical hypotheses to support or object to design decisions. At the example of developing
a new conceptual modeling grammar we demonstrate two main benefits of using design principles.
First, the link between theory and design decision enables the design researcher to reason about the
resulting behavior of the IT artifact prior to instantiation. Second, design principles allow deducing
empirically testable hypotheses to foster the rigorous evaluation of IT artifacts
Endurant Types in Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling: Towards OntoUML 2.0
For over a decade now, a community of researchers has contributed
to the development of the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)
- aimed at providing foundations for all major conceptual modeling constructs.
This ontology has led to the development of an Ontology-Driven
Conceptual Modeling language dubbed OntoUML, reflecting the ontological
micro-theories comprising UFO. Over the years, UFO and OntoUML
have been successfully employed in a number of academic, industrial and
governmental settings to create conceptual models in a variety of different
domains. These experiences have pointed out to opportunities of
improvement not only to the language itself but also to its underlying
theory. In this paper, we take the first step in that direction by revising
the theory of types in UFO in response to empirical evidence. The
new version of this theory shows that many of the meta-types present
in OntoUML (differentiating Kinds, Roles, Phases, Mixins, etc.) should
be considered not as restricted to Substantial types but instead should
be applied to model Endurant Types in general, including Relator types,
Quality types and Mode types. We also contribute a formal characterization
of this fragment of the theory, which is then used to advance a
metamodel for OntoUML 2.0. Finally, we propose a computational support
tool implementing this updated metamodel
- âŠ