Rapaport William J., "Intentionality and the structure of existence", 1976.
Unpublished Ph. D. thesis; available at ProQuest Dissertation Express (order number 7701930).
Rapaport William J. Thought, language, and ontology. Essays in memory of Hector-Neri Castañeda. Edited by Orilia Francesco and
Rapaport William J. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1998.
Rapaport William J., "To be and not to be," Noûs 19: 255-271 (1985).
"Since the mid-1970s, there has been a revival of interest in the
philosophy of Alexius Meinong and an attendant flurry of
Meinong-inspired theories.' One of the pioneering efforts was Terence
Parsons's 1974 article, "A Prolegomenon to Meinongian Semantics"
(Parsons, 1974), which was followed by a series of articles in which he
extended and elaborated his theory, culminating in his 1980 book,
Nonexistent Objects (Parsons, 1980).
The present essay is a critical and comparative study of Parsons's
seminal and exciting work in this area, concentrating on the informal
and formal versions of his theory as presented in his book.2 I begin
with a discussion of the nature of intentional objects, their
properties, and modes of predication as presented in Parsons's informal
version of his theory. I argue that his view of objects does not
adequately reflect our ordinary ways of speaking and thinking, and I
defend Meinongian theories that recognize two modes of predication
against Parsons's objections, which are based on his preference for two
kinds of properties. I then consider Parsons's application of his
theory to fictional objects, pointing out problems with his view that
can be avoided by maintaining (contra Parsons) that no existing
entities ever appear in works of fiction. I conclude with an outline of
one of Parsons's formal versions of his theory, raising some questions
and pointing out some difficulties and a curious consequence about
modes of predication."
Rapaport William J., "Non-existent objects and epistemological ontology," Grazer Philosophische Studien 25/26: 61-95 (1986).
"This essay examines the role of non-existent objects in
"epistemological ontology" - the study of the entities that make
thinking possible. An earlier revision of Meinong's Theory of Objects
is reviewed, Meinong's notions of Quasisein and Aussersein are
discussed, and a theory of Meinongian objects as "combinatorially
possible" entities is presented."
Rosenkrantz Gary. Haecceity. An ontological essay. Dordrecht: Kluwer 1993.
Rosenkrantz Gary. Substance among other categories. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994.
With Joshua Hoffman
Rosenkrantz Gary. Substance: its nature and existence. New York: Routledge 1997.
With Joshua Hoffman
Articles
Rosenkrantz Gary, "On objects totally out of this world," Grazer Philosophische Studien 25/26: 197-208 (1986).
"The view that a possible world is an existing abstract object implies
that all nonexistent possible individuals have a principle of
individuation in terms of existing objects, properties, and relations.
However, some individuals of this kind are totally out of this world
both in the subjective sense that nobody in this world can pick them
out, and in the ontological sense that they would neither be created by
assembling or arranging existing bits of matter nor otherwise be
generated by existing items. The only acceptable principle of
individuation for such nonexistent possibles is that they are
individuated by their unexemplified haecceities."
Rosenkrantz Gary, "The science of Being," Erkenntnis 48: 251-255 (1998).
Runggaldier Edmund. Carnap's early Conventionalism. An inquiry into the historical background of the Vienna Circle. Amsterdam : Rodopi 1984.
Runggaldier Edmund. Grundprobleme der Analytischen Ontologie. Paderborn: Schöningh 1998.
With Christian Kanzian.
Translated in Italian by Sergio Galvan as: Problemi fondamentali dell'ontologia analitica - Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 2002
Simons Peter. Parts. A study in ontology. New York: Oxford University Press 1987.
Simons Peter. Philosophy and logic in Central Europe from Bolzano to Tarski. Selected essays. Dordrecht : Kluwer 1992.
Articles
Simons Peter, "New categories for formal ontology," Grazer Philosophische Studien 49: 77-99 (1995).
"What primitive concepts does formal ontology require? Forsaking as too
indirect the linguistic way of discerning the categories of being, this
paper considers what primitives might be required for representing
things in themselves (noumena) and representations of them in a
thoroughly crafted large autonomous multi-purpose database. Leaving
logical concepts and material ontology aside, the resulting 32
categories in 13 families range from the obvious (identity/difference,
existence/non-existence) through the fairly obvious (part/whole,
one/many, sequential order) and the surprisingly familiar
(illocutionary modes, mass/count, indexical/descriptive) to the
controversial (moment/fundament, transparent/opaque) and the arcane
(modes of class delimitation, taxonomic rank, aspects of designators).
Any such list is speculative and tentative, but the test of this one
will be in its implementation, a new departure for philosophical
category theories."
Simons Peter, "Continuants and occurrents. I," Supplement to the Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 74: 59-75 (2000).
Abstract "Commonsense ontology contains both continuants and
occurrents, but are continuants necessary? I argue that they are
neither occurrents nor easily replaceable by them. The worst problem
for continuants is the question in virtue of what a given continuant
exists at a given time. For such truthmakers we must have recourse to
occurrents, those vital to the continuant at that time. Continuants
are, like abstract objects, invariants under equivalences over
occurrents. But they are not abstract, and their being invariants
enables us toinfer both their lack of temporal parts and that
non-invariant predications about them must be relativized to times."
Simons Peter, "Identity through time and Trope Bundles," Topoi.An International Journal of Philosophy 19: 147-155 (2000).
Smith Barry. Parts and moments. Studies in logic and formal ontology. Edited by Smith Barry. Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1982.
Reprinted 2001.
Smith Barry. Handbook of metaphysics and ontology. Edited by Burkhardt Hans and Smith Barry. Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991.
Two volumes; reprinted 2001.
Smith Barry. Austrian philosophy. The legacy of Franz Brentano. La Salle: Open Court 1994.
Articles
Smith Barry, "The ontogenesis of mathematical objects," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 6: 91-101 (1975).
Smith Barry and Mulligan Kevin, "A framework for formal ontology," Topoi.An International Journal of Philosophy 3: 73-86 (1983).
Smith Barry, "The ontology of epistemology," Reports on Philosophy (Jagiellonian University) 11: 57-66 (1987).
Smith Barry. Austrian philosophy. The legacy of Franz Brentano. La Salle: Open Court 1994.
Smith Barry, "Formal ontology, common sense and cognitive science," International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 43: 641-667 (1995).
Smith Barry, "On substances, accidents and universals: in defence of a constituent ontology," Philosophical Papers 26: 105-127 (1997).
Sowa John F. Conceptual structures. Information processing in mind and machine. Reading: Addison-Wesley 1984.
Sowa John F. Knowledge representation. Logical, philosophical, and computational foundations. Pacific Grove: Books Cole 2000.
Articles
Sowa John F., "Top-level ontological categories," International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 43: 669-685 (1995).
"Philosophers have spent 25 centuries debating ontological categories.
Their insights are directly applicable to the analysis, design, and
specification of the ontologies used in knowledge-based systems. This
paper surveys some of the ontological questions that arise in
artificial intelligence, some answers that have been proposed by
various philosophers, and an application of the philosophical analysis
to the clarification of some current issues in AI. Two philosophers who
have developed the most complete systems of categories are Charles
Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead. Their analyses suggest a
basic structure of categories that can provide some guidelines for the
design of Al systems."
Sowa John F. Ontological categories. In Shapes of forms. From Gestalt psychology to phenomenology to ontology and mathematics. Dordrecht:
Kluwer 1999. pp. 307-340
"Top-level categories of an ontology are derived from contrasting
features that distinguish the entities of a subject domain. Each
distinctive feature is associated with axioms that are inherited by
every entity or category of entities that have that feature. A
hierarchy of categories can then be derived as a lattice formed as a
product of the fundamental distinctions. This paper develops such a
lattice based on philosophical distinctions taken primarily from the
theories of Charles Sanders Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead.
1. Categories, distinctions, and axioms
Ontology is the study of existence, of all the kinds of entities -
abstract and concrete - that make up the world. It supplies the
predicates of predicate calculus and the labels that fill the boxes and
circles of conceptual graphs. Logic and ontology are prerequisites for
natural language semantics and knowledge representation in artificial
intelligence. Without ontology, logic says nothing about anything.
Without logic, ontology can only be discussed and represented in vague
generalities. Logic is pure form, and ontology provides the content.
The most general categories of an ontology are the framework for
classifying every thing else. Distinctions More fundamental than the categories themselves are the criteria
for distinguishing categories and determining whether a particular
entity belongs to one or another. Those distinctions are the basis for
Aristotle's method of definition by genus and differentiae. Each
distinction contributes a pair of primitive features or differentiae,
and the conjugation of all the differentiae for all the genera or
supertypes of a compound concept constitutes its definition.
In his efforts to automate Aristotle's logic, Leibniz assigned a prime
number to each primitive feature. Then he represented each composite
concept by the product of the primes in its definition. Leibniz's
method of combining primitives generates highly symmetric hierarchies
called lattices. That
symmetry, by itself, is not essential to an ontology, but it is an
important guide to knowledge acquisition: every combination that is
generated theoretically should be tested empirically to determine
whether entities of that type happen to exist. If so, then the
combinatorial method may predict new types of entities and aid in their
discovery. If no entities of the predicted type are found, then the
combinatorial method may aid in the discovery of axioms or constraints
that rule out those combinations. In either case, the method helps to
ensure completeness by directing attention to possibilities that may
have been overlooked or by suggesting new scientific principles that
explain their absence.
(...)
2. Philosophical foundations
The last two great ontological system builders were Charles Sanders
Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, both of whom were also pioneers in
the development of symbolic logic during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. Although their logic has flourished, their
ontologies have been neglected. Yet the ontologies of Peirce and
Whitehead, when combined with logic, can serve as a foundation for AI
knowledge representation and natural language semantics."
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