The project "A Formal Ontology of Properties and Relations", funded by the Ernest Boninchi Foundation in Geneva, aims at the completion of a monograph offering a new perspective on foundational issues regarding the metaphysics of attributes as well as its formal regimentation(s).
The ontological discourse on attributes we will mainly consider is a four-category ontology based on Aristotle?s Ontological Square which is constituted by two orthogonal distinctions: that between types and tokens on the one hand and that between attributes and their bearers on the other hand. The four-category ontology, which arguably reflects commonsense intuitions about attributes and their bearers, has been recently defended by E. J. Lowe and Brian Ellis. We will propose a formal regimentation of a four-categorial discourse, namely the so-called Kind-Instance Logic, a variant of second-order logic for which we give consistency and completeness proofs. Kind-Instance Logic is designed to provide a formal framework for applied ontologies used in knowledge representation.
Many philosophers have argued that types and attributes may be accounted for in terms of resemblances between substances. We will review possible resemblance-based assays of types and attributes. In order to demonstrate the flexibility and strength of the proposed formal regimentation of four-category ontology, we argue that various interpretations of it, realist as well as anti-realist about the categories at hand, are available.
| |
|
|
Questions and Comments
This document last modified [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
Webmaster |