Related papers: The relevance of ontological commitments
This article explores the following methodological principle for theory construction in physics: if an ontological theory predicts two scenarios that are ontologically distinct but empirically indiscernible, then this theory should be…
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for…
Real-valued logics underlie an increasing number of neuro-symbolic approaches, though typically their logical inference capabilities are characterized only qualitatively. We provide foundations for establishing the correctness and power of…
The SemanticWeb emerged as an extension to the traditional Web, towards adding meaning to a distributed Web of structured and linked data. At its core, the concept of ontology provides the means to semantically describe and structure…
Bohmian mechanics grounds the predictions of quantum mechanics in precise dynamical laws for a primitive ontology of point particles. In an appraisal of the de-Broglie-Bohm theory, the paper discusses the crucial epistemological and…
We begin by surveying the historical positions in different attempts to understand the material world since the rise of modern science, with specific focus on the role of Cartesian primary qualities in explanatory conceptualisation.…
Basic pairs and their morphisms are the most elementary framework in which standard topological notions can be defined. We present here a new interpretation of topological concepts as those which can be communicated faithfully between the…
Lexical semantics theories differ in advocating that the meaning of words is represented as an inference graph, a feature mapping or a vector space, thus raising the question: is it the case that one of these approaches is superior to the…
Existential rules are an expressive knowledge representation language mainly developed to query data. In the literature, they are often supposed to be in some normal form that simplifies technical developments. For instance, a common…
The best mathematical arguments against a realistic interpretation of quantum mechanics - that gives definite but partially unknown values to all observables - are analysed and shown to be based on reasoning that is not compelling. This…
In this research paper we are briefly presenting current major web problems and introducing semantic web technologies with the claim of solving existing web's problems. Furthermore we are describing Ontology as the main building block of…
This paper describes a new technique, called "knowledge patterns", for helping construct axiom-rich, formal ontologies, based on identifying and explicitly representing recurring patterns of knowledge (theory schemata) in the ontology, and…
General acceptance of a mathematical proposition $P$ as a theorem requires convincing evidence that a proof of $P$ exists. But what constitutes "convincing evidence?" I will argue that, given the types of evidence that are currently…
Mechanistic interpretability is the program of explaining what AI systems are doing in terms of their internal mechanisms. I analyze some aspects of the program, along with setting out some concrete challenges and assessing progress to…
In this essay, I argue that modern science is not the dichotomous pairing of theory and experiment that it is typically presented as, and I offer an alternative paradigm defined by its functions as a human endeavor. I also demonstrate how…
I consider the "Quantum Bayesian" view of quantum theory as expounded in a 2006 paper of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. I argue that one can accept a generally personalist, decision-theoretic view of probability, including probability as…
I argue that, on a judicious reading of two existing criteria--one syntactic and the other semantic--dual theories can be taken to be empirically equivalent. The judicious reading is straightforward, but leads to the surprising conclusion…
Applied ontology is a relatively new field which aims to apply theories and methods from diverse disciplines such as philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics and formal logics to perform or improve domain-specific tasks. To support the…
Quantum theory describes our universe incredibly successfully. To our classically-inclined brains, however, it is a bizarre description that requires a re-imagining of what fundamental reality, or "ontology", could look like. This thesis…
Operational frameworks are very useful to study the foundations of quantum mechanics, and are sometimes used to promote antirealist attitudes towards the theory. The aim of this paper is to review three arguments aiming at defending an…