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 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 Why Happiness,Love,Knowledge,Money,Friendship and Religion, do not make a life worth living

9 This Lecture: An Introduction to Ontology

10 Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) University of Leipzig

11 Formal Ontology term coined by Husserl = the theory of those ontological structures such as part-whole, universal-particular which apply to all domains whatsoever

12 Edmund Husserl

13 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

14 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

15 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

16 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)

17 a directly depicting language ‘John’ ‘( ) is red’ Object Property Frege

18 Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Propositions States of affairs are pictures of

19 a language to map formal-ontological structures in reality how deal with dynamic entities?

20

21 a new method of 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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23 A Network of Domain Ontologies Material (Regional) Ontologies Basic Formal Ontology

24 A Network of Domain Ontologies BFO

25 A Network of Domain Ontologies BFO B(Chem)O

26 A Network of Domain Ontologies BFO B(Chem)OB(Med)O

27 A Network of Domain Ontologies BFO B(Chem)OB(Med)OB(Cell)O

28 A Network of Domain Ontologies BFO B(Chem)OB(Med)OB(Cell)OB(Gen)O

29

30 Reality

31 Reality

32

33 Reality

34 Reality is complicated

35 What is the best language to describe this complexity?

36 Anglocentric Realism We have a huge amount of knowledge of reality, at many different levels of granularity, from microphysics to cosmology

37 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

42 Natural language glues them together indiscriminately substance t i m e process

43 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)

45 The Ontology of Substances Substances form natural kinds (universals, species + genera)

46 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)

50 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

52 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)

53 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.

54 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

59 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

62

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?

68 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

69 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

74 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 t1t1 t3t3 t2t2 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 t1t1 t3t3 t2t2

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 reality contains both substances and qualities

90 each section through reality contains both substances and qualities standing to each other in a relation of one-sided ontological dependence

91

92 Basic Formal Ontology Concrete Entity [Exists in Space and Time] Entity in 3-D Ontology [Endure. No Temporal Parts] Spatial Region of Dimension 0,1,2,3 Dependent Entity Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness) [Form Quality Regions/Scales] Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations Role, Function, Power Have realizations (called: Processes) Quasi-Role/Function/Power The Functions of the President Independent Entity Substance [maximally connected causal unity] Aggregate of Substances * (includes masses of stuff? liquids?) Fiat Part of Substance * Nose, Ear, Mountain Boundary of Substance * Fiat or Bona Fide or Mixed Quasi-Substance Church, College, Corporation Entity in 4-D Ontology [Perdure. Unfold in Time] Processual Entity Process [Has Unity] Clinical trial; exercise of role Aggregate of Processes* Fiat Part of Process* Instantaneous Temporal Boundary of Process (= Ingarden’s 'Event’)* Quasi-Process John’s Youth. John’s Life Spatio-Temporal Region Dim = T, T+0, T+1, T+2, T+3

93 Basic Formal Ontology Concrete Entity Entity in 3-D Ontology Spatial Region Dependent Entity Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness) Independent Entity Substance (John, his ox) Entity in 4-D Ontology ProcessSpatio-Temporal Region 3D 4D snapshotvideo

94 Basic Formal Ontology Concrete Entity [Exists in Space and Time] Entity in 3-D Ontology [Endure. No Temporal Parts] Spatial Region of Dimension 0,1,2,3 Dependent Entity Quality (Your Redness, My Tallness) [Form Quality Regions/Scales] Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations Role, Function, Power Have realizations (called: Processes) Quasi-Role/Function/Power The Functions of the President Independent Entity Substance [maximally connected causal unity] Aggregate of Substances * (includes masses of stuff? liquids?) Fiat Part of Substance * Nose, Ear, Mountain Boundary of Substance * Fiat or Bona Fide or Mixed Quasi-Substance Church, College, Corporation Entity in 4-D Ontology [Perdure. Unfold in Time] Processual Entity Process [Has Unity] Clinical trial; exercise of role Aggregate of Processes* Fiat Part of Process* Instantaneous Temporal Boundary of Process (= Ingarden’s 'Event’)* Quasi-Process John’s Youth. John’s Life Spatio-Temporal Region Dim = T, T+0, T+1, T+2, T+3

95 Basic Formal Ontology Concrete Entity [Exists in Space and Time] Entity in 3-D Ontology [Endure. No Temporal Parts] Dependent Entity Quasi-Quality Prices, Values, Obligations Quasi-Role Function/Power The Functions of the President Independent Entity Quasi-Substance Church, College, Corporation Entity in 4-D Ontology [Perdure. Unfold in Time] Process Quasi-Process Money earning interest