1 An Introductory Course in Ontology and the Forms of Social Organization

1

An Introductory Course in Ontology

and the Forms of Social Organization

2

1. The Meaning of Life

2. The Tools of Ontology

3. A Unified Theory of Granularity and Vagueness (UMCS)

4. Partitions of Reality: How Can We Live in Several Worlds at Once

5. John Searle's Ontology of Social Reality and Its Problems

6. The Ontology of the Environment: Objects and Their Settings

7. The Ontology of Geography

8. The Ontology of Social Reality: What Sorts of Objects are Social Wholes

9. The Metaphysics of Real Estate: Economics, Politics and History

10.Concluding Lecture: Social Reality and the Meaning of Life

3

The Meaning of Life

The Tools of Ontology

A Unified Theory of Granularity and Vagueness (UMCS)

Partitions of Reality: How Can We Live in Several Worlds at Once

John Searle's Ontology of Social Reality and Its Problems

The Ontology of the Environment: Objects and Their Settings

The Ontology of Geography

The Ontology of Social Reality: What Sorts of Objects are Social Wholes

The Metaphysics of Real Estate: Economics, Politics and History

Concluding Lecture: Social Reality and the Meaning of Life

4

Why

happiness happiness

does not make a life worth living

5

The Meaning of Life

The Tools of Ontology

A Unified Theory of Granularity and Vagueness (UMCS)

Partitions of Reality: How Can We Live in Several Worlds at Once

John Searle's Ontology of Social Reality and Its Problems

The Ontology of the Environment: Objects and Their Settings

The Ontology of Geography

The Ontology of Social Reality: What Sorts of Objects are Social Wholes

The Metaphysics of Real Estate: Economics, Politics and History

Concluding Lecture: Social Reality and the Meaning of Life

6

The Meaning of Life

The Tools of Ontology

A Unified Theory of Granularity and Vagueness (UMCS)

Partitions of Reality: How Can We Live in Several Worlds at Once

John Searle's Ontology of Social Reality and Its Problems

The Ontology of the Environment: Objects and Their Settings

The Ontology of Geography

The Ontology of Social Reality: What Sorts of Objects are Social Wholes

The Metaphysics of Real Estate: Economics, Politics and History

Concluding Lecture: Social Reality and the Meaning of Life

7

The Meaning of Life

The Tools of Ontology

A Unified Theory of Granularity and Vagueness (UMCS)

Partitions of Reality: How Can We Live in Several Worlds at Once

John Searle's Ontology of Social Reality and Its Problems

The Ontology of the Environment: Objects and Their Settings

The Ontology of Geography

The Ontology of Social Reality: What Sorts of Objects are Social Wholes

The Metaphysics of Real Estate: Economics, Politics and History

Concluding Lecture: Social Reality and the Meaning of Life

8

WhyHappiness,Happiness,

Love,Love,

Knowledge,Knowledge,

Money,Money,

FriendshipFriendship

and Religion,and Religion,

do not make a life worth living

9

This Lecture:An Introduction to Ontology

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Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science

(IFOMIS)

University of Leipzig

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Formal Ontology

term coined by Husserl

= the theory of those ontological structures

such as part-whole, universal-particular

which apply to all domains whatsoever

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Edmund Husserl

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Logical Investigations¸1900/01

– Aristotelian theory of universals

– the theory of part and whole

– the theory of dependence

– the theory of boundary, continuity and contact

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Formal Ontology vs. Formal Logic

Formal ontology deals with the interconnections of things

with objects and properties, parts and wholes, relations and collectives

Formal logic deals with the interconnections of truths

with consistency and validity, or and not

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Formal Ontology vs. Formal Logic

Formal ontology deals with formal ontological structures

Formal logic deals with formal logical structures

‘formal’ = obtain in all material spheres of reality

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for Frege, Russell, Lesniewski,

Wittgenstein, Quine, Woodger:

Logic is a ‘Zoology of Facts’

Formal theories are theories of reality

with one intended interpretation

= the world

Better: formal ontology is a zoology of facts (or of entities in general)

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a directly depicting language

‘John’ ‘( ) is red’

Object Property

Frege

18

Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Propositions

States of affairs

are pictures of

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a language to map

formal-ontological structures in reality

how deal with dynamic entities?

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21

a new methodof constituent ontology

to study a domain ontologically

is to establish the parts and moments of the domain

and the interrelations between them

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A Network of Domain Ontologies

Material (Regional) Ontologies

Basic Formal Ontology

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A Network of Domain Ontologies

BFO

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A Network of Domain Ontologies

B(Chem)O

BFO

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A Network of Domain Ontologies

B(Med)O

B(Chem)O

BFO

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A Network of Domain Ontologies

B(Cell)O

B(Med)O

B(Chem)O

BFO

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A Network of Domain Ontologies

B(Gen)O B(Cell)O

B(Med)O

B(Chem)O

BFO

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Reality

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Reality

32

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Reality

34

Reality

is complicated

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What is the best language to describe this complexity?

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Anglocentric Realism

We have a huge amount of knowledge of reality,

at many different levels of granularity,

from microphysics to cosmology

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Sources of Ontological Knowledge

the study of ancient texts

the construction and testing of formal theories

the consideration of difficult counterexamples

the results of the natural sciences

technically extended English

38

Anglocentric Realism

TEE = Technically Extended English

= English extended by the technical vocabularies of

chemistry, genetics, medicine, astronomy, etc.

39

Anglocentric Realism

Our knowledge of reality as expressed in Technically Extended English

is increasing by the hour

40

Unfortunately

… there are problems with TEE as a formal representation language

(cf. Tarski)

41

Nouns and verbs

Substances and processes

Continuants and occurrents

In preparing an inventory of reality

we keep track of these two different categories of entities in two different ways

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Natural language

glues them together indiscriminately

substance

t i m

e

process

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Snapshot vs. Video

substance

t i m

e

process

44

Mesoscopic reality

is divided at its natural joints

into substances:

animals, bones, rocks, potatoes

(This applies also at other levels of granularity – atoms, molecules, cells, planets, galaxies)

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The Ontology of Substances

Substances form natural kinds

(universals, species + genera)

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Processes

t i m e

47

Processes

merge into one another

Process kinds merge into one another

… few clean joints either between tokens or between types

48

Processes

t i m e

49

Some clean joints

derive from the fact that processes are dependent on substances

(my headache is cleanly demarcated from your headache)

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Some clean joints

in realms of artefactual processes:

weddings

chess games

dog shows

ontology tutorials

some sharp divisions imputed via clocks, calendars

51

Clean joints

also through language

= fiat demarcations

Quinean gerrymandering ontologies are attractive for processes

not for substances

Quine: there are no substances

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Two sorts of dependent entities

processes: unfold in time

individual qualities, roles, functions, powers: like substances: they exist in toto at any instant of time when they exist at all)

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Processes and qualities, like substances, are concrete denizens

of reality

My headache, like this lump of cheese, exists here and now,

and both will cease to exist at some time in the future.

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Substances and processes

t i m

e

process

demand different sorts of inventories

55

Substances demand 3-D partonomies

space

56

Processes demand 4D-partonomies

t i m e

57

Processes and qualities

tropes, individual properties

Examples of processes

a whistling, a blushing, a speech, a run,

Examples of qualities:

my knowledge of French

the whiteness of this cheese

the warmth of this stone

58

Processes may have temporal parts

The first 5 minutes of my headache is a temporal part of my headache

The first game of the match is a temporal part of the whole match

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Substances and qualities do not have temporal parts

The first 5-minute phase of my existence is not a temporal part of me

It is a temporal part of that complex Process which is my life

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61

Substances have spatial parts

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63

64

How do we glue these two different sorts of entities together mereologically?

How do we include them both in a single inventory of reality?

How do we fit these two entities together within a single system of representations?

65

You are a substance

Your life is a process

You are 3-dimensional

Your life is 4-dimensional

66

Substances and processes form two distinct orders of being Substances exist as a whole at every point in time at which they exist at all

Processes unfold through time, and are never present in full at any given instant during which they exist.

When do both exist to be inventoried together?

67

John spent the first 25 years of his life in Kansas

when does a truthmaker for this sentence exist?

what do ‘John’ and ‘Kansas’ refer to?

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Main problem

English swings back and forth between two distinct depictions of reality

… imposing both 3-D partitions (yielding substances) and 4-D partitions (yielding processes) at the same time

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Main problem

There is a polymorphous ontological promiscuity of the English sentence,

which is inherited also by the form ‘F(a)’

70

Solution: two complementary basic ontologies

Four-dimensionalism

Presentism

71

1. Four-dimensionalism

All entities are spatio-temporally extended portions of an atemporal four-dimensional whole called reality

(God’s eye perspective)

Problem:

change does not exist

72

2. Presentism

Both substances and processes exist, but only what exists now exists at all.\

(Perspective of mortal man)

Problem:

‘Napoleon ruled before Clinton’

‘John lived in Kansas for 25 years’

73

Neither of these solutions is completely adequate

Hence

a good formal ontology must somehow contain them both

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A good formal ontology

must divide into two sub-ontologies:

1. a four-dimensionalist ontology (of processes)

cf. Quine

2. a modified presentist ontology

cf. Brentano, Aristotle, Chisholm

(takes tense seriously)

75

These represent two views

of the same rich and messy reality, the reality captured promiscuously by TEE

76

The Four-Dimensionalist Ontology

t i m e

77

boundaries are mostly fiat

t i m e

everything is flux

78

mereology works without restriction everywhere here

t i m e

clinical trial

79

here time exists as part of the domain of the ontology

80

The Time-Stamped Ontology

t1

t3t2

here time exists outside the ontology, as an index or time-stamp

81

mereology works without restriction in every instantaneous 3-D section through

reality

82

Three views/partitions of the same reality

83

all contain huge amounts of knowledge of this reality

against Kant

84

The Time-Stamped (3-D) Ontology

t1

t3t2

85

ontology as a sequence of filmed images

86

each section through reality is to be conceived in presentist terms

each section includes everything which exists, including everything which is happening,

at the corresponding now

87

the two ontologies can be glued together as a video is

glued together out of snapshots

88

89

each section through realitycontains both substances

and qualities

90

each section through realitycontains both substances

and qualities

standing to each other in a relation of one-sidedontological dependence

91

92

Basic Formal OntologyConcrete Entity

[Exists in Space and Time]Concrete Entity

[Exists in Space and Time]

Entity in 3-D Ontology[Endure. No Temporal Parts]

Entity in 3-D Ontology[Endure. No Temporal Parts]

Entity in 4-D Ontology[Perdure. Unfold in Time]Entity in 4-D Ontology

[Perdure. Unfold in Time]

Processual EntityProcessual EntitySpatio-Temporal Region

Dim = T, T+0, T+1, T+2, T+3Spatio-Temporal Region

Dim = T, T+0, T+1, T+2, T+3

Spatial Regionof Dimension 0,1,2,3

Spatial Regionof Dimension 0,1,2,3 Dependent EntityDependent Entity

Independent EntityIndependent Entity

Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness)[Form Quality Regions/Scales]

Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness)[Form Quality Regions/Scales]

Role, Function, PowerHave realizations (called: Processes)

Role, Function, PowerHave realizations (called: Processes)

Substance[maximally connected causal unity]

Substance[maximally connected causal unity]

Boundary of Substance *Fiat or Bona Fide or MixedBoundary of Substance *

Fiat or Bona Fide or Mixed

Aggregate of Substances * (includes masses of stuff? liquids?)

Aggregate of Substances * (includes masses of stuff? liquids?)

Fiat Part of Substance * Nose, Ear, Mountain

Fiat Part of Substance * Nose, Ear, Mountain

Process [Has Unity]Clinical trial; exercise of role

Process [Has Unity]Clinical trial; exercise of role

Fiat Part of Process*Fiat Part of Process*

Aggregate of Processes*Aggregate of Processes*

Instantaneous Temporal Boundary of Process (= Ingarden’s 'Event’)*

Instantaneous Temporal Boundary of Process (= Ingarden’s 'Event’)*

Quasi-ProcessJohn’s Youth. John’s Life

Quasi-ProcessJohn’s Youth. John’s Life

Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations

Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations

Quasi-SubstanceChurch, College, Corporation

Quasi-SubstanceChurch, College, Corporation

Quasi-Role/Function/PowerThe Functions of the PresidentQuasi-Role/Function/Power

The Functions of the President

93

Basic Formal Ontology

Concrete EntityConcrete Entity

Entity in 3-D OntologyEntity in 3-D OntologyEntity in 4-D OntologyEntity in 4-D Ontology

ProcessProcessSpatio-Temporal

Region Spatio-Temporal

Region Spatial RegionSpatial Region Dependent EntityDependent Entity Independent EntityIndependent Entity

Quality (Your Redness,

My Tallness)

Quality (Your Redness,

My Tallness)

Substance(John, his ox)Substance

(John, his ox)

3D 4Dsnapshot video

94

Basic Formal OntologyConcrete Entity

[Exists in Space and Time]Concrete Entity

[Exists in Space and Time]

Entity in 3-D Ontology[Endure. No Temporal Parts]

Entity in 3-D Ontology[Endure. No Temporal Parts]

Entity in 4-D Ontology[Perdure. Unfold in Time]Entity in 4-D Ontology

[Perdure. Unfold in Time]

Processual EntityProcessual EntitySpatio-Temporal Region

Dim = T, T+0, T+1, T+2, T+3Spatio-Temporal Region

Dim = T, T+0, T+1, T+2, T+3

Spatial Regionof Dimension 0,1,2,3

Spatial Regionof Dimension 0,1,2,3 Dependent EntityDependent Entity

Independent EntityIndependent Entity

Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness)[Form Quality Regions/Scales]

Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness)[Form Quality Regions/Scales]

Role, Function, PowerHave realizations (called: Processes)

Role, Function, PowerHave realizations (called: Processes)

Substance[maximally connected causal unity]

Substance[maximally connected causal unity]

Boundary of Substance *Fiat or Bona Fide or MixedBoundary of Substance *

Fiat or Bona Fide or Mixed

Aggregate of Substances * (includes masses of stuff? liquids?)

Aggregate of Substances * (includes masses of stuff? liquids?)

Fiat Part of Substance * Nose, Ear, Mountain

Fiat Part of Substance * Nose, Ear, Mountain

Process [Has Unity]Clinical trial; exercise of role

Process [Has Unity]Clinical trial; exercise of role

Fiat Part of Process*Fiat Part of Process*

Aggregate of Processes*Aggregate of Processes*

Instantaneous Temporal Boundary of Process (= Ingarden’s 'Event’)*

Instantaneous Temporal Boundary of Process (= Ingarden’s 'Event’)*

Quasi-ProcessJohn’s Youth. John’s Life

Quasi-ProcessJohn’s Youth. John’s Life

Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations

Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations

Quasi-SubstanceChurch, College, Corporation

Quasi-SubstanceChurch, College, Corporation

Quasi-Role/Function/PowerThe Functions of the PresidentQuasi-Role/Function/Power

The Functions of the President

95

Basic Formal OntologyConcrete Entity

[Exists in Space and Time]Concrete Entity

[Exists in Space and Time]

Entity in 3-D Ontology[Endure. No Temporal Parts]

Entity in 3-D Ontology[Endure. No Temporal Parts]

Entity in 4-D Ontology[Perdure. Unfold in Time]Entity in 4-D Ontology

[Perdure. Unfold in Time]

ProcessProcessDependent EntityDependent Entity Independent Entity

Independent Entity

Quasi-ProcessMoney earning

interest

Quasi-ProcessMoney earning

interest

Quasi-Quality Prices, Values,

Obligations

Quasi-Quality Prices, Values,

Obligations Quasi-SubstanceChurch, College,

Corporation

Quasi-SubstanceChurch, College,

Corporation

Quasi-RoleFunction/PowerThe Functions

of the President

Quasi-RoleFunction/PowerThe Functions

of the President