Abstract not found

This paper presents an application of the theory of granular partitions proposed in (Smith and Brogaard, to appear), (Smith and Bittner 2001) to the phenomenon of vagueness. We understand vagueness as a semantic property of names and predicates. This is in contrast to those views which hold that there are intrinsically vague objects or attributes in reality and thus conceive vagueness in a de re fashion. All entities are crisp, on de dicto view here defended, but there are, for each vague name, multiple portions of reality that are equally good candidates for being its referent, and, for each vague predicate, multiple classes of objects that are equally good candidates for being its extension. We show that the theory of granular partitions provides a general framework within which we can understand the relation between terms and concepts on the one hand and their multiple referents or extensions on the other, and we show how it might be possible to formulate within this framework a solution to the Sorites paradox. 1.

Abstract. We propose a modular formal ontology of the biomedical domain with two components, one for biological objects, corresponding broadly to anatomy, and one for biological processes, corresponding broadly to physiology. The result constitutes what might be described as a joint venture between two perspectives – of

The paper presents a new method for generating typologies of formal-ontological relations. The guiding idea is that formal relations are those sorts of relations which hold between entities which are constituents of distinct ontologies. We provide examples of ontologies (in the spirit of Zemach’s classic “Four Ontologies ” of 1970), and show how these can be used to give a rich typology of formal relations in a way which also throws light on the opposition between threeand four-dimensionalism. There are many candidate formal-ontological relations, for instance: identity and difference, parthood and overlap, inherence and dependence, participation and location. Our task in what follows is to provide a principle for generating the complete family of such relations. This will mean providing an account of what formal-ontological relations are, and of how they differ from relations of other types (for instance from static material relations such as lies on and fits into, from material relational events such as kisses and thumps, from comparative relations such as is taller than and is further from Witwatersrand than, and from family relations such as is the brother of and is consanguineous with). The starting point for our endeavours is a philosophical position which we call realist perspectivalism (Grenon 2003a; Smith and Brogaard 2003). This consists in the view that any given domain of reality can be viewed from a number of different ontological perspectives, all of which can have equal claim to veridicality. Compare the way in which medical science is divided into anatomy and physiology: the former tells us about the structures of the human

Formal ontology, as the science of the formal relations that structure reality as a whole, aims at a theory of categories corresponding to the most general features of possible objects, whether existing or non-existing. The present paper is an attempt to summarise and extend recent research in analytical metaphysics in a formalised theory of objects. Existence is characterised as a formal property, suggesting that the use of quantifiers alone does not involve any existential assumptions about the objects quantified over. However, the only non-existing objects allowed for in the present account are real or objective possibilities. De re modalities as well as ontological dependence are defined on the basis of a counterpart-theoretic specification of possibilia. The present framework allows for necessary and non-relative identity as well as for a granular parthood relationship satisfying the thesis of composition as partial identity. The paper culminates in the formalisation of an Aristotelian four-category ontology allowing for universals and particulars, substances and particularised properties; in this context, the redundance of higher-order material universals as well as moderate haecceitism is argued for. After a short analysis of relationality and extrinsicness, a theory of spatial and temporal objects is sketched and a temporal counterpart theory is proposed as a solution to the problem of temporary intrinsics. The paper concludes with some general remarks on the relation between ontology and the theory of subjectivity, defending a modal approach to consciousness and a counterpart theoretic analysis of intentionality.

We define a family of qualitative spatio-temporal relations such as sameplace -same-time and same-path-different-time, which describe the relative location of spatio-temporal objects within places or along paths. The relations in question are approximate, and this means that some of them are context-dependent. We explore the relationships between context, judgments that are made in certain contexts, and the spatio-temporal relations that do occur in those judgments. Understanding these relationships is important for understanding human judgments about spatio-temporal configurations as well as for the interaction of humans with spatio-temporal databases.

There are some who defend a view of vagueness according to which there are intrinsically vague objects or attributes in reality. Here, in contrast, we defend a view of vagueness as a semantic property of names and predicates. All entities are crisp, on this view, but there are, for each vague name, multiple portions of reality that are equally good candidates for being its referent, and, for each vague predicate, multiple classes of objects that are equally good candidates for being its extension. We provide a new formulation of these ideas in terms of a theory of granular partitions. We show that this theory provides a general framework within which we can understand the relation between vague terms and concepts on the one hand and correlated portions of reality on the other. We also sketch how it might be possible to formulate within this framework a theory of vagueness which dispenses with the notion of truth-value gaps and other artifacts of more familiar approaches. Categories & Descriptors --- F.m, I.m General Terms --- Theory, Human factors Keywords --- Vagueness, Ontology, Granular Partitions, Semantics 1.

Using a qualitative analysis of disagreements from a referentially annotated newspaper corpus, we show that, in coreference annotation, vague referents are prone to greater disagreement. We show how potentially problematic cases can be dealt with in a way that is practical even for larger-scale annotation, considering a real-world example from newspaper text. 1

(who also organized the workshop)

This paper discusses the role of granularity in judgments about spatio-temporal location and relations. It distinguishes three aspects of spatio-temporal granularity: the granularity with which location is approximated, the granularity which arises as a function of the degree to which we recognize or trace over changes of location, and granularity as it affects our apprehension of spatio-temporal relations. The paper shows that there is a hierarchical structure of spatio-temporal granularity that is closely related the hierarchical structure of of places in our environment and to the hierarchical structure of temporal orders such as embodied in calendars and agendas.