Tropes, Causal Processes, and Functional Laws

My earlier attempt to develop a trope nominalist account of the relation between tropes and causal processes. In accordance with weak dispositional essentialism (Hendry & Rowbottom 2009), I remain uncommitted to full-blown necessity of causal functional laws. Instead, the existence of tropes falling under a determinable and certain kind of causal processes guarantee that corresponding functional laws do not have falsifying instances

Instantiation and Characterization: Problems in Lowe's Four-Category Ontology

According to Lowe’s Four-Category Ontology, the general nature of the entities belonging to the four fundamental categories is determined by the basic formal ontological relations (instantiation and characterization) that they bear to other entities. I argue that, in closer analysis, instead of one formal relation of characterization, this category system introduces two, one connecting particulars and another universals. With regard to the characterization relation connecting particulars, it remains an open issue whether it would need further analysis. By contrast, the status of instantiation as an internal relation is comparatively clear. Nevertheless, because of holding by virtue of the essences of particulars, the holding of instantiation between universals and particulars rules out the possibility of kind change and entails that particulars are essentially rigidly dependent on universals. Finally, Lowe’s analysis of necessary exemplification gives us some reasons to suspect that some property universals need not have any instances in order to exist

A Trope Theoretical Analysis of Relational Inherence

The trope bundle theories of objects are capable of analyzing monadic inherence (objects having tropes), which is one of their main advantage. However, the best current trope theoretical account of relational tropes, namely, the relata specific view leaves relational inherence (a relational trope relating two or more entities) primitive. This article presents the first trope theoretical analysis of relational inherence by generalizing the trope theoretical analysis of inherence to relational tropes. The analysis reduces the holding of relational inherence to the obtaining of certain other facts about entities of the trope theoretical category system. Moreover, I show that the analysis can deal with asymmetric and non-symmetric relations by assuming that all relation-like tropes are quantities. Finally, I provide an account of the spatial location of tropes in the difficult case in which tropes contribute to determining of the location of other entities

Kind Instantiation and Kind Change - A Problem for Four-Category Ontology

In Lowe’s Four-Category Ontology, instantiation is a basic formal ontological relation between particulars (objects, modes) and their kinds (kinds, attributes). Therefore, instantiation must be considered as a metaphysically necessary relation, which also rules out the metaphysical possibility of kind change. Nevertheless, according to Lowe, objects obtain their identity conditions in a more general level than specific natural kinds, which allows for kind change. There also seems to be actual examples of kind change. The advocate of Four-Category Ontology is obliged to resolve the tension between these mutually incompatible claims. In this article, we argue that the only viable option for the advocate of Four-Category Ontology is to bite the bullet and stick to the necessity of each of the most specific natural kind to the object instantiating it. As a major drawback, the four-category ontologist does not have any credible means to allow for kind change or determination of the identity conditions in a more general level

Quantity Tropes and Internal Relations

In this article, we present a new conception of internal relations between quantity tropes falling under determinates and determinables. We begin by providing a novel characterization of the necessary relations between these tropes as basic internal relations. The core ideas here are that the existence of the relata is sufficient for their being internally related, and that their being related does not require the existence of any specific entities distinct from the relata. We argue that quantity tropes are, as determinate particular natures, internally related by certain relations of proportion and order. By being determined by the nature of tropes, the relations of proportion and order remain invariant in conventional choice of unit for any quantity and give rise to natural divisions among tropes. As a consequence, tropes fall under distinct determinables and determinates. Our conception provides an accurate account of quantitative distances between tropes but avoids commitment to determinable universals. In this important respect, it compares favorably with the standard conception taking exact similarity and quantitative distances as primitive internal relations. Moreover, we argue for the superiority of our approach in comparison with two additional recent accounts of the similarity of quantity tropes

Kinds of Tropes without Kinds

In this article, we propose a new trope nominalist conception of determinate and determinable kinds of quantitative tropes. The conception is developed as follows. First, we formulate a new account of tropes falling under the same determinates and determinables in terms of internal relations of proportion and order. Our account is a considerable improvement on the current standard account (Campbell 1990; Maurin 2002; Simons 2003) because it does not rely on primitive internal relations of exact similarity or quantitative distance. The internal relations of proportion and order hold because the related tropes exist; no kinds of tropes need be assumed here. Second, we argue that there are only pluralities of tropes in relations of proportion and order. The tropes mutually connected by the relations of proportion and order form a special type of plurality, tropes belonging to the same kind. Unlike the recent nominalist accounts, we do not identify kinds of tropes with any further entities (e.g. sets) or abstractions from entities (e.g. pluralities of similar tropes)

Valmistautuminen EU:n yleiseen tietosuoja-asetukseen

Opinnäytetyön tilaajana toimi Koillis-Suomen kehittämisyhtiö Naturpolis Oy. Yhtiö toimii Kuusamon ja Taivalkosken alueilla ja sen tehtävänä on edistää näillä alueilla yritysten toimintaedellytyksiä ja toimintaympäristöä, uusien työpaikkojen syntymistä ja alueellista elinkeinoyhteistyötä. Opinnäytetyön tavoitteena oli perehtyä EU:n yleiseen tietosuoja-asetukseen ja avustaa Naturpolis Oy:tä valmistautumaan tietosuoja-asetuksen mukanaan tuomiin vaatimuksiin. Opinnäytetyö toteutettiin kehittämistyönä, jonka tavoitteena oli perehtyä Naturpolis Oy:n toimintaan tietosuoja-asetuksen vaatimusten kannalta ja tuottaa ohjeistuksia tietosuoja-asetuksen eri vaatimusten täyttämiseksi. Teoriaosuus aloitettiin perehtymällä opinnäytetyöhön liittyviin peruskäsitteisiin, kuten tietosuoja, tietoturva ja henkilötietojen käsittely. Nämä käsitteet ovat olennainen osa EU:n tietosuoja-asetusta, joten niihin perehtyminen oli hyvä lähtökohta työn toteuttamiselle. Teoriaosuus jatkui tietosuoja-asetuksen olennaisen sisällön esittelyllä. Päätavoitteena oli käydä tietosuoja-asetuksen sisältöä läpi ja löytää sieltä vaatimukset, jotka pitää tulevaisuudessa huomioida Naturpolis Oy:n toiminnassa. Opinnäytetyön tuloksena syntyi joukko suosituksia ja ohjeistuksia tietosuoja-asetuksen vaatimuksiin liittyen. Lisäksi tämän opinnäytetyön sisältöä ja tietosuoja-asetukseen liittyviä vaatimuksia esitellään Naturpolis Oy:n henkilökunnalle tietosuoja-asetukseen liittyvässä kokoustilaisuudessa.This thesis was commissioned by Naturpolis Oy which is a business development company that operates in Kuusamo and Taivalkoski region. Its task is to develop and promote operational preconditions and environment for businesses, the creation of new jobs and regional business cooperation. The purpose of this thesis was to study the GDPR and help Naturpolis Oy prepare for the upcoming requirements of the GDPR. The thesis was done as a development work. The goal was to get acquainted with Naturpolis Oy’s activities, compare the activities with GDPR requirements and develop instructions for meeting the requirements. The theoretical part began with studying and introducing some basic concepts related to the thesis, such as data protection, information security and processing of personal data. These concepts are highly relevant to the GDPR so studying and introducing them was a good starting point for the thesis. After that the theoretical part continues with the introduction of the GDPR itself. Main goal was to study the content of GDPR and find all the requirements that would be relevant for Naturpolis Oy in future. The result of the thesis was a group of recommendations and instructions regarding the requirements of GDPR. The content of this thesis and requirements of GDPR will also be introduced to the staff of Naturpolis Oy in a GDPR-related meeting at a later date

Obtaining Memory-Efficient Solutions to Boolean Equation Systems

AbstractThis paper is concerned with memory-efficient solution techniques for Boolean fixed-point equations. We show how certain structures of fixed-point equation systems, often encountered in solving verification problems, can be exploited in order to substantially improve the performance of fixed-point computations. Also, we investigate the space complexity of the problem of solving Boolean equation systems, showing a NL-hardness result. A prototype of the proposed technique has been implemented and experimental results on a series of protocol verification benchmarks are reported

Trooppiteoriat ja relaatiossa olemisen analyysi

Trope theories aim to eschew the primitive dichotomy between characterising (properties, relations) and characterized entities (objects). This article (in Finnish) presents a new trope theoretical analysis of relational inherence as the best way out of the impasse created by the alleged necessity to choose between an eliminativist and a primitivist ("relata-specific") view about relations in trope theory