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Intersubjectivity is the proposition that human experience occurs in a world of shared and embodied understandings, mediated by culture and language. Nursing is fundamentally relational, and nursing research stems from an exchange between participants and researchers and indeed around the transaction of the patient and the nurse in the intersubjective space of clinical settings. Through the philosophical standpoints of Husserl, Merleau‐Ponty, Heidegger, and Gadamer we examine these differing philosophical constructs of intersubjectivity and the contribution of these positions to phenomenological nursing inquiry. Particular framings of intersubjectivity should influence the way researchers interact with their participants and data so that the chosen philosophy sits coherently within a research plan and methodology. This exploration of philosophical standpoints is extended through examples of, and reflections upon, the authors' experiences of intersubjectivity in our published phenomenological nursing studies and through dynamic interactions that characterise interpretive activities within a research team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for reorienting our investigation of the psychedelic zeitgeist towards the longitudinal history of psychedelia with a committed attention to its relationship to colonialism. It demonstrates that clinical psychedelic medicine appears to sustain the reproduction of modern colonial whiteness in line with Elizabeth Povinelli's theorization of late liberalism. It also challenges the notion of a restricted or segregated academic area for psychedelic studies. Instead, it is imperative to place discussions of contemporary plant medicine in line with broader contemporary discussions in cultural anthropology around political ontology and decoloniality. This paper attempts to demonstrate that doing so may challenge our understanding of whiteness—reinterpreting it—by recourse to the history of the psychedelic counterculture, as a form of complex trauma, and thus potentially demonstrating new implications for decoloniality and its praxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on assemblage theory to propose a new theoretical understanding of modernity. While the conceptual framing is meant for modernity at large, this paper locates its conceptual discussion in the context of tourism in Macao and illustrates how plasmatic thinking, the new conceptual framework proposed, advances analysis of aspiration, exploitation and freedom of its tour guides. Plasmatic thinking helps examinations of tourism labour to engage with the fragile and fluid nature of the sociomaterial environments. Instead of structures, networks or fluidities, plasmatic thinking sees the world as composed of 'plasmas' – 'charged' sociomaterial clustering of objects, humans and the processes between them. Plasmas are a form of charged matter falling outside solid, liquid and gaseous states and metaphorises the fragility and impermanence of sociomaterial situations for plasmas disintegrates when discharged. The attention to charges and fragility of plasmas helps describes both pandemic levels shocks and everyday disruptions. Through a plasmatic analysis of the falling apart and coming together of such plasmas and how they bring about significant consequences to Macao's tourism, I showcase plasmatic thinking as a theoretical approach which vividly uncovers the fragility and fluidity of modernity and the workings of power in our sociomaterial worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on the paradigmatic assumptions and ideologies that have shaped algorithmic management research. We identify two sets of assumptions: one about the "ontology of algorithms" (which holds that human resource management [HRM] algorithms are non‐human entities with material agency) and one about the "ontology of management" that HRM algorithms afford (which understands algorithmic management as a form of control for maximizing economic/shareholder value). We explain how these core assumptions underpin existing research of HRM algorithms, causing blind spots that hinder new ways of understanding and studying algorithmic management. After identifying and unpacking the assumptions and blind spots, we offer avenues to overcome these blind spots, allowing for future research based on new ideological assumption grounds that will help move algorithmic management scholarship further in significant ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses an ontological question about the nature of health and challenges some underpinning assumptions in western healthcare. In its analysis, health in its various statuses, is framed as a naturally occurring complex adaptive system made up of dynamically interacting subsystems that include the physiological, psychological, and social realms. Furthermore, openness in complex systems such as health, is necessary for the exchange of energy, information, and resources. Yet, within healthcare much effort is invested in constraining systems' behaviours, whether they be systems of knowledge, health, healthcare, and more. This paper draws on the complexity sciences and Levinasian philosophy to explicate the essential role of system openness in individual, population, and systemic viability. It highlights holism to be "not whole‐ism", and system openness to be, not just a reality, but a critical feature of viability. Hence requisite openness is advocated as essential to efficacious and ethical healthcare practice and strategy, and vital for health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through appropriate operations and policies, such as green processes and product development process (PDP), companies can respond to environmental sustainability. To remain competitive, one such approach, Design for X (DFX), involves considering different environment and sustainable strategies through different factors Xs. With regard to the availability of different DFX techniques that consider environmental issues, the decision as to which approach needs to be adopted remains absent. This paper aims at presenting an overview from 1980 to 2020 of the developed research, applications, and DFX techniques for assessing green issues. Selected DFX techniques are linked with strategies used in organizations. Following a literature analysis, a collaborative knowledge‐based framework that addresses the design concepts needed to assess environmental, safety, and health concerns in the development of green products is proposed. Furthermore, as a pillar for considering the Semantic Web and an evolving approach linked with natural language processing (NLP) and artificial intelligence (AI), an ontology‐based knowledge management model for green assessment is developed for the representation, acquisition, organization, and capitalization of knowledge in a computer interpretable manner. The findings are useful for both managers and practitioners as they provide a coherent domain ontology that can help them manage knowledge, improve teamwork, and make decisions in a collaborative green PDP. Besides, an understanding of the essential design considerations that are required to implement environmental, safety, and health issues, as well as competencies used in the PDP is presented. Key barriers, managerial and strategic implications, and mitigation actions are also identified in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an examination of identity in and as practice as it relates to a group of educational practitioners known as middle leaders. Drawing on the theory of practice architectures as a site‐ontological approach for conceptualising educational leading, the paper considers an individual's identity as being informed by, and accomplished amidst, the sayings, doings and relatings of practice. Although theorising the connections between identity and practice is not new, a central argument presented is that identity occurs at the nexus of the individual and social practices. Data are drawn from an empirical study of the practices of nine middle leaders responsible for facilitating a district‐wide initiative aiming to improve literacy pedagogy in their particular primary schools. Thematic analysis of semi‐structured interviews with the middle leaders revealed 11 identity–practice framings which evolve over time and space, negotiated in response to site‐based conditions. Findings contribute to understandings about the dynamic multifaceted nature of middle leaders' identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Hector‐Neri Castañeda's significant contributions to metaphilosophy. In his 1980 work, On Philosophical Method, Castañeda articulates a unique perspective, characterizing philosophy as fundamentally a dia‐philosophical activity. By asserting the supremacy of synthesis over analysis within the metaphilosophical hierarchy, his account provides a purely theoretical defense of philosophical pluralism devoid of any relativistic inclinations. Despite Castañeda's enduring influence and profound impact on ongoing discussions in ontology, logic, and the philosophy of language, his metaphilosophical insights have largely been neglected. In the context of today's increasingly diverse philosophical landscape, this paper posits that Castañeda's pluralist metaphilosophy retains substantial theoretical relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key scientific publication demonstrates that the bio‐physical composition of the broiler chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) represents a signal of the Anthropocene. This finding contributes to a wider body of evidence that locates the beginning of the Anthropocene in the mid‐20th century, and is part of a broader intellectual project that seeks to establish and demarcate the Anthropocene as a new geological era. This paper takes a different tack. Treating Gallus gallus as an objective corollary for the Anthropocene, it positions the broiler chicken and the Anthropocene as an ontologically emergent nexus comprised of social–spatial relations, materialities, and practices. The paper then adopts critical nexus thinking to trace out the key relations and materialities, and their points of convergence, and underpinning extractivist ontologies that assemble into the chicken's body. Relations of particular concern include the processes that embody surplus value into the corporality of the chicken; the rationalisation and transformation of territories and landscapes into productive units of space, and the tightly coupled, interconnected flows of relations, materials, and coordinating technologies that comprise the 'supply chain'. It argues that by using critical nexus thinking to identify and articulate these relations that assemble into Gallus gallus, it renders the Anthropocene legible. Such legibility in turn fosters geographical awareness and responsibility that might lead to the changes necessary to address the large‐scale spatial inequalities from which the era stems and redress the consequences that the era might otherwise engender. Paper positions Gallus Gallus Domesticus ('The Broiler Chicken') as an objective corollary for the Anthropocene. It then employs critical nexus thinking to trace out its constituent relations and to fashion a geography of the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many contemporary metaphysicians believe that the existence of a contingent object such as Socrates metaphysically explains the existence of the corresponding set {Socrates}. This paper argues that this belief is mistaken. The argument proposed takes the form of a dilemma. The expression "{Socrates}" is a shorthand either for the expression "the set that contains all and only those objects that are identical to Socrates" or for the expression "the set that contains Socrates and nothing else". However, Socrates' existence does not explain the existence of the set that contains all and only those objects that are identical to Socrates, because there is such a set no matter whether or not Socrates exists. And although Socrates' existence does explain that of the set that contains Socrates and nothing else, this explanation is a conceptual rather than a metaphysical one. Both these claims rely on a deflationary account of the use of set theoretic vocabulary that is explained, though not properly justified, in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconstructing ancestral states for discrete characters is essential for understanding trait evolution in organisms. However, most existing methods are limited to individual characters and often overlook the hierarchical and interactive nature of traits. Recent advances in phylogenetics now offer the possibility of integrating knowledge from anatomy ontologies to reconstruct multiple discrete character histories. Nonetheless, practical applications that fully harness the potential of these new approaches are still lacking.This paper introduces ontophylo, an R package that extends the PARAMO pipeline to address these limitations. Ontophylo enables the reconstruction of phenotypic entities composed of amalgamated characters, such as anatomical regions or entire phenomes. It offers three new applications: (1) reconstruction of evolutionary rates of amalgamated characters using phylogenetic non‐homogeneous Poisson process (pNHPP) that allows modelling rate variation across tree branches and time; (2) reconstruction of morphospace dynamics; and (3) visualization of evolutionary rates on vector images of organisms. Ontophylo incorporates ontological knowledge to facilitate these applications.Benchmarking confirms the accuracy of pNHPP in estimating character rates under different evolutionary scenarios, and example applications demonstrate the utility of ontophylo in studying morphological evolution in Hymenoptera using simulated data.Ontophylo can be easily integrated with other ontology‐oriented and general‐purpose R packages and offers new opportunities to examine morphological evolution on a phenomic scale using new and legacy data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The wrongness of Albert's action causally explains why Jane judged that his action was wrong". This type of causal moral explanation has been extensively discussed in the recent metaethical literature. This paper motivates the following claims about this type of moral explanation. First, a typical defence of this type of moral explanation suggested in the literature does not work because it predicts inaccurate modal information. Second, focusing on different aspects of the ways moral judgements are generated provides better chances for the defender of this type of moral explanation. Third, the strategy mentioned in the previous point leads us to the following alternative evaluative explanation: The property of being a harmful action explains a recognisable pattern of moral judgements observed in the relevant empirical studies. One crucial implication the paper alludes to is a localist approach to the debates concerning moral realism: We should consider each moral property's ontological genuineness separately, referring to specific empirical findings that are particularly relevant to the target moral property in question. Such a localist approach can provide solid resources for realists to respond to various anti‐realist challenges, such as an influential evolutionary debunking argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, we are held to live in the Anthropocene, bringing to an end modern binary imaginaries, such as the separation between Human and Nature, and with them Western assumptions of progress, linear causality and human exceptionalism. Much Western critical theory, from new or vital materialism to post‐ and more‐than‐human thinking, unsurprisingly reflects this internal crisis of faith in Eurocentric or Enlightenment reasoning. At the same time, a radically different critique of modernity has gained prominence in recent years, emerging from critical Black studies, which places the Caribbean at the centre of the development of a new and distinct mode of critical thought. In attempting to grasp the ways in which Caribbean thought and practice have been seen to enable a distinctive alternative non‐Eurocentric imaginary, this paper heuristically sets out a paradigmatic framing of 'abyssal geography'. We emphasize two key points. The first is that abyssal thought is not grounded in abstract and timeless philosophical assumptions but figuratively draws upon aspects of Caribbean practices of resistance and survival, for example, from the Middle Passage, Plantation, carnival, creolization, dance forms and speculative fiction. The second is that abyssal work engages the legacies of modernity and coloniality by explicitly seeking to question the lure of ontology: seeking to disrupt, suspend and to problematize the modern project of the human and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws a distinction between the existential quantifier and the symbol '∃' used to express it, on the one hand, and existence and 'exists', on the other. It argues that some popular arguments in metaphysics, including arguments against vague existence and arguments against deflationary metaontology (which views ontological disputes as lacking substance), are guilty of fudging this distinction. The paper draws some lessons for metaphysical debate about existence and highlights some heretofore ignored and attractive positions in logical space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to learn from Stoke‐on‐Trent by asking questions about the ontologies of cities. It does so by counterposing two accounts of Stoke‐on‐Trent: one grounded in a critique of neoliberal urban development (or rather post‐industrial decline), and the other grounded in the experiences of Spiritualists. Placed side‐by‐side, Stoke‐on‐Trent demonstrates that cities accommodate more than one lived reality or mode of existence (ontology). The coexistence of multiple ontologies has been observed elsewhere, as a discussion of the work of Tariq Jazeel and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro shows. The important point, then, is that Stoke‐on‐Trent highlights the ontological heterogeneity of a city that seems to have only one story to tell: post‐industrial decline. This raises further questions: in part, about ontological alterity; in part, about the production of new ontologies; but, significantly, about the politics of coexisting ontologies – which ontologies count, and which do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Ontologies are ways of representing information that improve clarity and the ability to connect different data sources. This paper proposes an initial version of an ontology of tobacco, nicotine and vaping products with the aim of reducing ambiguity and confusion in the field. Methods: Terms related to tobacco, nicotine and vaping products were identified in the research literature and their usage characterised. Basic Formal Ontology was used as a unifying upper‐level ontology to describe the domain, and classes with definitions and labels were developed linking them to this ontology. Labels, definitions and properties were reviewed and revised in an iterative manner until a coherent set of classes was agreed by the authors. Results: Overlapping, but distinct classes were developed: 'tobacco‐containing product', 'nicotine‐containing product' and 'vaping device'. Subclasses of tobacco‐containing products are 'combustible tobacco‐containing product', 'heated tobacco product' and 'smokeless tobacco‐containing product'. Subclasses of combustible tobacco‐containing product include 'cigar', 'cigarillo', 'bidi' and 'cigarette' with further subclasses including 'manufactured cigarette'. Manufactured cigarettes have properties that include 'machine‐smoked nicotine yield' and 'machine‐smoked tar yield'. Subclasses of smokeless tobacco product include 'nasal snuff', 'chewing tobacco product', and 'oral snuff' with its subclass 'snus'. Subclasses of nicotine‐containing product include 'nicotine lozenge' and 'nicotine transdermal patch'. Subclasses of vaping device included 'electronic vaping device' with a further subclass, 'e‐cigarette'. E‐cigarettes have evolved with a complex range of properties including atomiser resistance, battery power, properties of consumables including e‐liquid nicotine concentration and flavourings, and the ontology characterises classes of product accordingly. Conclusions: Use of an ontology of tobacco, nicotine and vaping products should help reduce ambiguity and confusion in tobacco control research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communitarianism has been the dominant disposition of many African scholars towards ubuntu. The nature of the concept somewhat limits how one can theorise about ubuntu. However, I argue that there is still a lot more that can be harnessed from the ubuntu concept, especially as it pertains to the ontology of radical escape. I use radical escape as an ontological character of every human being whereby to exist is to escape. In this paper, I argue that ubuntu does not provide the possibility for radical escape. The nature of escape that ubuntu provides is limited to the confines of its communitarian outlook. In this paper, I bring on board the works of Mogobe Ramose, Thaddeus Metz, Kwame Gyekye, Emmanuel Levinas, and Thomas Lear, among others, to substantiate my position. I hope to demonstrate the need to accommodate the concept of radical escape in theorising about ubuntu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines legal efforts to criminalize same‐sex sexualities between consenting adults by conservative Muslim movements in Indonesia, epitomized by the Constitutional Court of Indonesia's 2016 Judicial Review on the Indonesian Penal Code, continuous resistance to the Sexual Violence Law, and the current Indonesian Penal Code. Based on my ethnography of the Judicial Review's court transcript and other legal archives, I argue that the conservative Muslim movements' legal effort to criminalize sexuality in Indonesia is an exercise of Islamic political theology revolving around a certain ontology of personhood concerning the relationships between "the human" and God, the state, and the nation. This ontology is apparent in their assertion about the intrinsic difference between sexual violence ("kekerasan seksual") vs. sexual crime ("kejahatan seksual"). This paper aims to: (1) demonstrate that anthropological inquiries of ontologies can further develop the conceptual framework of political theology, especially in elucidating how ontological imposition of "the human" and its personhood plays a pivotal part in conservative movements' repertoires in criminalizing sexuality; and (2) make use of Southeast Asian studies' scholarships and cases to speak back to the broader discussion on the fissures in/of secular imaginaries and secularization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Radiation Oncology Learning Health System (RO‐LHS) is a promising approach to improve the quality of care by integrating clinical, dosimetry, treatment delivery, research data in real‐time. This paper describes a novel set of tools to support the development of a RO‐LHS and the current challenges they can address. Methods: We present a knowledge graph‐based approach to map radiotherapy data from clinical databases to an ontology‐based data repository using FAIR concepts. This strategy ensures that the data are easily discoverable, accessible, and can be used by other clinical decision support systems. It allows for visualization, presentation, and data analyses of valuable information to identify trends and patterns in patient outcomes. We designed a search engine that utilizes ontology‐based keyword searching, synonym‐based term matching that leverages the hierarchical nature of ontologies to retrieve patient records based on parent and children classes, connects to the Bioportal database for relevant clinical attributes retrieval. To identify similar patients, a method involving text corpus creation and vector embedding models (Word2Vec, Doc2Vec, GloVe, and FastText) are employed, using cosine similarity and distance metrics. Results: The data pipeline and tool were tested with 1660 patient clinical and dosimetry records resulting in 504 180 RDF (Resource Description Framework) tuples and visualized data relationships using graph‐based representations. Patient similarity analysis using embedding models showed that the Word2Vec model had the highest mean cosine similarity, while the GloVe model exhibited more compact embeddings with lower Euclidean and Manhattan distances. Conclusions: The framework and tools described support the development of a RO‐LHS. By integrating diverse data sources and facilitating data discovery and analysis, they contribute to continuous learning and improvement in patient care. The tools enhance the quality of care by enabling the identification of cohorts, clinical decision support, and the development of clinical studies and machine learning programs in radiation oncology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central tenet of truthmaker theory is that necessitation is necessary for truthmaking (nec). This paper defends nec in a novel, piecemeal way, namely by responding to a potential counterexample involving a changing past. If Carter won a race at t1 but is later disqualified at t2, then Carter no longer won at t1. A wholly past event seems to have changed in the future. The event makes 'Carter won the race at t1' (race) true between t1‐2 but fails to make it true at t2. So, we have a potential counterexample to necessitation: a truthmaker of race fails in another context to make the same truthbearer race true. I argue that the best solution to this challenge is not that there are different truthbearers at t1‐2 and t2 (the semantic response), or that race was never true because of the future disqualification or will always be true despite the future disqualification. The best solution is to accept that the past can change: past events can change based on what happens in the future (e.g., via their effects). This paper's novel defence of necessitation will illustrate the importance of utilising explicitly ontological and commonsensical tools in accounting for truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that vulnerability as conceptualized by Judith Butler is a useful lens to study organizations. Judith Butler conceptualizes vulnerability as both universally shared human condition and individually experienced, thereby describes how vulnerability is both a bodily ontology (we are all vulnerable due to our human bodies being dependent on each other to support us), and an epistemic frame (through vulnerability we can know), resulting in an ethical response‐ability (to not hurt one another). Vulnerability, though universally shared, is individually experienced and unequally distributed, because it depends on what Judith Butler calls "social infrastructures". Organizations and their organizing practices constitute such social infrastructures and at the same time depend on them. Using a vulnerability lens makes it possible to study how organizations co‐constitute vulnerability and the positionality that they inhabit toward vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital economy era, efficiently leveraging the vast amount of sensor data generated by the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is essential. This paper presents an innovative semantic annotation method for industrial sensor data, designed to optimize data processing and enhance system efficiency. Our method combines cluster analysis, ontology development, and rule‐based reasoning to automatically annotate IIoT sensory data. By utilizing data aggregation and filtering mechanisms, which incorporate the DBSCAN (Density‐Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) algorithm and a rule engine, we significantly reduce the data volume required for annotation. The Semantic Web Rule Language aids in naming new concepts and properties identified through clustering, contributing further to the automation of data processing. Experimental results, using public datasets, validate the effectiveness of our method, showing a reduction in data volume by about 20% and underscoring its potential in enhancing industrial systems' automation and overall efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emergence is central to critical realism, but there has been little attempt to develop a systematic account of this concept within the tradition. Two notable exceptions are seen in the work of Dave Elder‐Vass and Tony Lawson. However, both face problems in responding to reductionist claims and accounting for downward causation. This paper proposes contextual emergence as a robust alternative that overcomes these issues and provides a better justification for critical realism's stratified worldview. Contextual emergence explains that while properties at a lower 'level' offer necessary conditions, for emergence to obtain, there must also be contingent conditions at a higher 'level'. This approach maintains many of critical realism's intuitions about emergence, providing a robust account of ontological stratification and downward causation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the thesis known as 'Composition as Identity' ('CAI'), every entity is identical to the parts it fuses. Many authors in the literature acknowledge that, in spite of its controversial character, one attractive virtue of CAI is its apparent ability to give a straightforward account of the innocence of mereology. In this paper I will present a simple argument according to which CAI entails that no composite entity can be said to be ontologically innocent in the relevant sense. After having shown that said argument is independent from the problems surrounding the infamous 'Collapse Principle', I will conclude that CAI‐theorists should endorse a suitably 'restricted' version of CAI. In the final part of the paper I will then argue that the best restricted version of CAI is the theory according to which every composite entity is identical to the plurality of its atomic parts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anscombe distinguishes two notions of "self‐conscious": the philosophical notion, which refers to the special form of awareness one has of oneself as oneself, and the ordinary notion, which we employ when we speak of "feeling self‐conscious before another". My aim in this paper is to show that ordinary self‐consciousness cannot be understood in terms of either of the forms of intersubjective relation standardly acknowledged in the philosophical literature. It cannot be understood reductively, in terms of the psychological states of each subject nor can it be understood in terms of an irreducible second personal relation. Instead, I argue that in order to understand the phenomenological structure of ordinary self‐consciousness, we must rehabilitate Sartre's thought that when I am conscious of myself as being the object of another's gaze, I experience myself as being acted upon by them, in such a way that what I experience them as doing to me and what I experience myself as thereby undergoing are two aspects of an irreducible interpersonal transaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing the practice of nurse practitioners to medical practice began almost 50 years ago and continues to this day. This comparison is curious since the founders of this movement did not indicate that these advanced practice nurses were to be interchangeable with physicians. Nevertheless, substantial literature indicates that nurse practitioners perform equally or better when measured against physician practice standards. This paper compares the ontology and epistemology of both professions and concludes that the philosophical foundations are so different that comparisons are illogical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Sider, a question is metaphysically substantive just in case it has a single most natural answer. Recently, Barnes and Mikkola have argued that, given this notion of substantivity, many of the central questions in the metaphysics of gender are nonsubstantive. Specifically, it is plausible that gender pluralism—the view that there are multiple, equally natural gender kinds—is true, but this view seems incompatible with the substantivity of gender. The goal of this paper is to argue that the notion of substantivity can be understood in a way that accommodates gender pluralism. First, I claim that gender terms (at least as used in the ontology room) are referentially indeterminate, where referential indeterminacy holds in virtue of the way the world is. Second, I propose a degree‐theoretic (or scalar) account of metaphysical substantivity; genders are substantial to the degree that they are determinate. I conclude that gender is relatively, although not absolutely, substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a straightforward view of perception that has not received adequate consideration because it requires us to rethink basic assumptions about the objects of perception. In this paper, I develop a novel account of these objects—the sensible qualities—which makes room for the straightforward view. I defend two primary claims. First, I argue that qualities like color and shape are "ontologically flexible" kinds. That is, their real definitions allow for both physical objects and mental entities to be colored or shaped. Second, a single instance of these qualities can be attributed to more than one entity. Just as we attribute the same instance of a material property to a statue and to the clay that constitutes it, single instances of sensible qualities should be attributed both to the physical objects perceived and to the perceptual states that have those instances as their objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

System reconfiguration is essential in complex systems management, as it is an enabler of system flexibility and adaptability. It ensures system operation and increases reliability, availability, maintainability, testability, safety, and reuse of system entities and technologies. For the reconfiguration of a system in use, it is necessary to assess, in continuity, the system's state with regard to its context. Identifying data supporting system reconfiguration represents a major industrial challenge and is linked directly to the development of industrial reconfiguration tools. Reconfiguration tools are based on a data model, also called ontology, which represents key concepts of system reconfiguration and their relationships. A particular difficulty of developing the data model is the multi‐domain nature of reconfiguration. Furthermore, it needs to address a considerable diversity of system types. Few publications propose an ontology supporting data identification and tool development for the entire process. Hence, in this paper we propose to formalize the system reconfiguration process and propose an overarching ontology, which we call OSysRec. This ontology considers data at the management, dynamics, and structure level. The proposed ontology has been developed based upon expert knowledge and several industrial uses cases. The OSysRec ontology allowed a better understanding of the reconfiguration process, and hence it can be deployed for developing efficient and effective reconfiguration tools at the industrial scale. The ontology has been tested on an industrial case study to validate the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oystein Linnebo's book Thin Objects is partly devoted to defending the view that some objects are "thin" in that their existence does not impose any substantive demands on the world. In this paper, I discuss the concern that the defense relies on there being entities that serve as the referents of predicates. Linnebo thus seems to assume the thinness of those entities. In the course of my discussion, I also discuss what Linnebo says about the role of criteria of identity in his discussion of reference and existence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue in this paper for a critical social ontology, or an approach to theorizing social reality and social institutions that is more than descriptive of social reality, but is also able to provide practical reasoning with an ontological dimension for judgment. At the heart of this idea is a different take on social metaphysics from most standard current accounts in that it begins with empirical, phylogenetic capacities of human beings for social practices (realizing abstract thought in the world) as well as relationality (the need for attachments to others). The combination of these two essential human capacities, what I call the practical‐relational nexus, is generative of more complex social reality. The ontogeny of any social reality is the result of the ways that this practical‐relational nexus has been organized and shaped by external social structures and systems, themselves the product of certain kinds of social power. I then explore the metaphysics of social power before considering the ways that this approach to social metaphysics can inform practical reasoning with the capacity for social and political criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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It is argued that certain quantum theories of gravity — string theory, loop quantum gravity, non‐commutative field theory — do not include spacetime as part of their fundamental ontology. There is a concern in the literature that theories of this kind are physically opaque and empirically incoherent. In this paper, I clarify and amend Huggett and Wüthrich's argument against these claims. Whereas the content of this paper centres on the disappearance and re‐emergence of spacetime in quantum gravity, much of the philosophical work centres more generally on issues of (emergent) ontology and how this ontology can be extracted from formal theories, the role of formal derivations in justifying ontological relations, the nature of Kuhnian revolutions, and the application of these revolutions to quantum gravity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I sketch out and assess two readings of Bentham's theory of meaning, one reductive (Section 2), the other quasi‐pragmatist (Section 3)—both implicating Bentham's ontological and epistemological views. I focus on the way these readings would understand Bentham's analyses of claims in moral and political discourse that rely on putatively normative notions such as obligations and rights, good and bad, and what ought to be the case. I conclude the paper by suggesting tentatively that the independent merits of both readings could signal an irreconcilable tension at the heart of Bentham's thought (Section 4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Test and evaluation (TE) planning is a critical part of systems engineering. However, it has not received as much attention from digital engineering efforts as early‐stage design and analysis. Digital engineering has the potential to reduce the risk and effort associated with TE, while leveraging existing digital capabilities to add value. One aspect in particular that may benefit from such attention is the Department of Defense's Test and Evaluation Master Plan (TEMP). The purpose of the TEMP is to identify the key processes with respect to the TE of a product, and to specify the roles and responsibilities of key personnel and organizations. Concerns have been raised regarding the document‐based nature of the TEMP and the increased risk and reduced reward that this entails. In this paper, we investigate the potential benefits of digitalizing the TEMP and outline an incremental approach for achieving this. We also present a set of ontologies, collectively known as the Digital TEMP (dTEMP), and investigate potential benefits and limitations by applying the dTEMP to an example test program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of William Lane Craig's key arguments for the finitude of the past is the Successive Addition Argument (SAA). Malpass (2021) has recently developed a novel challenge to the SAA, utilising a thought experiment from the work of Fred Dretske, which is meant to show that it is possible to count to infinity, to argue that there is a counterexample to the SAA's second premise. In this paper, I contend that the Malpass‐Dretske counterexample should not worry advocates of the SAA. First, I argue that one objection Malpass considers—the Potential Infinite Objection—reveals an interesting fact: the SAA's second premise is unnecessarily strong and can be weakened whilst still yielding the same conclusion. Second, I show how another one of the objections considered by Malpass—the Accumulation Objection—is successful, provided some clarification to the SAA's premises. The upshot of both analyses is that we generate two 'new' Successive Addition arguments that not only move the dialectic forward, but shed light on deeper assumptions and motivating intuitions concerning the Kalām. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the gradual evolution of the French Régulation school (FR) for the study of capitalism through the lens of structure and agency. The analysis first segments the school into two epochs, the early Régulation, led by authors Aglietta and Lipietz, and the later Régulation, which saw the rise of Boyer. We find that the gradual progression that occurred within the FR school is linked to its authors' implicit ontic engagement with structure and agency, which, in turn, provides natural linkages to Critical Realism. In the second part of the paper, we demonstrate how the comparison between Morphogenetic Régulation and French Régulation (FR) can facilitate a much deeper reading of the structure‐agency debate pertaining to the transformation of capitalism. In so doing, it discusses the value addedness of Morphogenetic Régulation through three specific concepts by stressing their relevance for contemporary studies in international political economy. These concepts are: stratified emergence; causality and the problématique of hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At least some of your beliefs are commitments. When you believe that P as a commitment, your stance on P is such that you believe it on the basis of your considered judgement. Sometimes, you also believe that you believe P. Such self‐beliefs can also be commissive in a sense, as when they are reflective endorsements of your lower‐order commissive beliefs. In this paper I argue that one's commissive self‐beliefs ontologically constitute one's lower‐order commissive beliefs because one's commissive self‐beliefs instantiate the same inferential dispositions that are constitutive of one's lower‐order commissive beliefs. Constitutive relations between commissive self‐beliefs and first‐order commissive beliefs are maximally epistemically secure because they do not result from any epistemic procedure by which one must try (and possibly fail) to detect one's first‐order commissive beliefs. This maximal epistemic security suffices to warrant one's commissive self‐beliefs, such that one possesses commissive self‐knowledge of an especially privileged sort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many statistical methods have been applied to VAERS (vaccine adverse event reporting system) database to study the safety of COVID‐19 vaccines. However, none of these methods considered the adverse event (AE) ontology. The AE ontology contains important information about biological similarities between AEs. In this paper, we develop a model to estimate vaccine‐AE associations while incorporating the AE ontology. We model a group of AEs using the zero‐inflated negative binomial model and then estimate the vaccine‐AE association using the empirical Bayes approach. This model handles the AE count data with excess zeros and allows borrowing information from related AEs. The proposed approach was evaluated by simulation studies and was further illustrated by an application to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) dataset. The proposed method is implemented in an R package available at https://github.com/umich‐biostatistics/zGPS.AO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, semantic interoperability is a new keyword in the Internet of Things (IoT). The constant need for interaction and cooperation has resulted in the creation of the Semantic Web with the help of tools and reasoners which manage personal information. Given the significance of the IoT and the increasing use of semantic techniques in this field, the present bibliometric investigation was conducted in the domain of semantic reasoning in the IoT. In this study, through the analysis of 799 articles retrieved from the Web of Science database, distribution of topic categories, prolific and influential authors, the language of articles, publishers of articles and their geographical distribution, the most debated/researched and the most frequently cited articles, and keyword trends were studied. The results of this study shows that 10 countries produced 84% of the total documents, with China being in the lead. Other interesting findings have been reported in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many features of quantum mechanics (QM) suggest that, at the microscopic level, objects sometimes fail to determinately instantiate their properties. In recent years, many have argued that this phenomenon indicates the existence of an ontological kind of indeterminacy, often called metaphysical indeterminacy, which is supposed to affect the ontology of QM. As insisted by Glick ('Against Quantum Indeterminacy, 2017, Thought), however, once we look at the major realist approaches to QM we learn that the indeterminacy disappears from the description of the world at its most fundamental level. This absence might be taken as a good reason for adopting some form of eliminativism towards quantum mechanical indeterminacy. The aim of this paper is to distinguish three ways of defending eliminativism, and to argue that none of them eventually succeeds. The upshot is that QM does in fact suggest the existence of metaphysical indeterminacy, although only as an emergent phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Easy Ontologists, most notably Thomasson (2015), argue that ontological questions are shallow. They think that these questions can either be answered by using our ordinary conceptual competence—of course tables exist!—or are meaningless, or else should be answered through conceptual re‐engineering. Ontology thus is "easy", requiring no distinctively metaphysical investigation. This paper raises a two‐stage objection to Easy Ontology. We first argue that questions concerning which entities exist are inextricably bound up with "ontological category questions", which are questions concerning the identity of and differences between kinds of entities. We then argue that ontological category questions do not have trivial answers, are meaningful, and cannot be answered through conceptual re‐engineering. Easy Ontology hence does not constitute a comprehensive ontological methodology. While some of ontology might be easy, category questions form a central part of ontology and are not answered easily. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

SUMMARY: Within the last century, US Americans have come to humanize dogs and place a greater personal value on them than ever before. In response to this cultural change, some US Christians have begun to use therapy dogs in ministry work. For this exploratory study, six chaplains in a canine ministry share their experiences and beliefs about their use of therapy dogs. Their stories reveal a unique form of human‐animal partnership emergent in contemporary society distinguished by a faith‐based context. The chaplain and ministry dog act together as co‐instruments of God, both being subject and object simultaneously. The dogs occupy an ontologically complex position of being subordinate to humans while also embodying virtues that Christians idealize. This paper focuses on the chaplains' conceptualization of the relationality between themselves, their dogs, and God. Their accounts reveal changing perceptions of what it means to be human vis‐a‐vis our relationship with animals. [multispecies ethnography, dogs, religion, Christianity, ontology] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the relation between embodiment and intersubjectivity is often remarked upon in the literature on Fichte, it is not sufficiently acknowledged that for Fichte the two are strongly interdependent. In this paper, by elaborating on his account of the fine structure of the embodied agency, I argue that for Fichte one's relation to one's own body is socially constituted. Further, I show that the usual stricture in the literature, according to which Fichte does not allow for bodily passivity, is misleading. Indeed, as I argue, Fichte's account of embodied agency is sufficiently nuanced as to be able to explain "passive bodily expressions," that is, those bodily expressions that are not under direct control of the agent. And related to that, contrary to the commonly held view, Fichte does offer a satisfactory account of the more sentient bodily phenomena, such as pain, hunger, and fatigue, which happen to the agent without her being capable of controlling their happening. Indeed, as I will show, for Fichte, these latter phenomena, rather than being simply restrictive of agency, may positively contribute to the exercise of agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work argues that engaging Africa's cultural and epistemic resources as social imaginaries, and not as metaphysical or ontological "essences," could help practitioners of African philosophy overcome the cluster of shortcomings and undesirable features associated with "ethnophilosophy." A number of points are outlined to buttress this claim. First, the framework of social imaginaries does not operate with the false assumption that Africa's cultural forms and epistemic resources are static and immutable. Second, this framework does not lend itself to sweeping generalizations about Africa or large swathes of it. Third, the framework of social imaginaries remedies ethnophilosophy's problem of collectivism. Fourth, unlike ethnophilosophy, it does not romanticize and canonize a supposedly "idyllic" African past, which militates against a realistic and forward‐looking philosophizing. Finally, with the framework of social imaginaries, Africa's indigenous cultural and epistemic resources become amenable to being engaged with critical philosophical rigor. This not only enhances their potential for cross‐cultural philosophical conversation but also enhances their usefulness for addressing current sociopolitical issues affecting Africa. The discussion in this paper somewhat touches upon the question of method in African philosophy, using the ethnophilosophy problem to navigate the vast gamut of issues involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, critical realists have increasingly engaged with the thought of Charles S. Peirce (1839‐1914), the founder of the American pragmatist tradition. But the engagement has been mostly narrow in focus and at times misinformed. This paper examines points of continuity between Peircean thought and critical realism with respect to causation, ontology, and truth. Its purpose is to lay the groundwork for further and more fruitful engagement between the traditions by bringing attention to some things critical realists may not have known, and to correct some inaccurate things they thought they knew, about Peirce's philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti‐dualistic social ontologies, those highlighting the intrinsic interdependency of agency and structure as two sides of the same coin, are sometimes criticized for failing to provide a satisfactory account of autonomous – capable and free – agency, or even denying the reality of such agency. This paper contests these claims, arguing that anti‐dualistic ontologies only conflict with autonomous agency when the latter is understood in a highly voluntaristic sense, whose ideational roots go to what philosophers of free will call "incompatibilist" intuitions of freedom. Those intuitions suggest that actions (intentions, decisions) ultimately determined by extrinsic causes lack the kind of freedom presupposed by moral responsibility, so when agentive autonomy is presumed to involve such freedom, it does indeed cohere poorly with the anti‐dualistic picture of intrinsically structured agency. Herein, however, an alternative, "compatibilist" notion of autonomy is advanced, such that does not conflict with extrinsic determination and is therefore congruent with anti‐dualistic social ontologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term function currently features prominently in outlines of social positioning theory but a sustained account of the view of function informing social positioning theory has yet to be supplied. In the absence of a fuller articulation of the theory's underlying view of function confusion and misinterpretation are likely to be encouraged especially among those committed to one or other of the numerous alternative accounts of function available. In this paper key features of the concept of function as it now appears in social positioning theory are identified and the similarities and differences between it and selected other views of function explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is important for success in the 21st century, especially for teamwork and communication in technology‐enhanced environments. Measurement of CPS skills has emerged as an essential aspect in educational assessment. Modern research in CPS relies on theory‐driven measurements that are usually carried out as manual annotations over recorded logs of collaborative activities. However, manual annotation has limited scalability and is not conductive towards CPS assessments at scale. Objective: We explore possibilities for automated annotation of actions in collaborative‐teams, especially chat messages. We evaluate two approaches that employ machine learning for automated classification of CPS events. Method: Data were collected from engineering, physics and electronics students' participation in a simulation‐based task on electronics concepts, in which participants communicated via text‐chat messages. All task activities were logged and time stamped. Data have been manually classified for the CPS skills, using an ontology that includes both social and cognitive dimensions. In this article, we describe computational linguistic methods for automatically classifying the CPS skills from logged data, with a view towards automating CPS assessments. Results: We applied two machine learning methods to our data. A Naïve Bayes classifier has been previously used in CPS research, but it is only moderately successful on our data. We also present a k‐nearest‐neighbours (kNN) classifier that uses distributional semantic models for measuring text similarity. This classifier shows strong agreement between automated and human annotations. The study also demonstrates that automatic spelling correction and slang normalization of chat texts are useful for accurate automated annotation. Implications: Our results suggest that a kNN classifier can be very effective for accurate annotation of CPS events. It achieves reasonably strong results even when trained on only half of the available data. This shows a promise towards reduction of manual data annotation for CPS measurement. Lay Description: What is already known about this topic: Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is important for success in the 21st century, especially when teamwork and communication occur in technology‐enhanced environments.Measurement of CPS skills requires classification and annotation of team interactions, in particular their communications, such as chat messages. What this paper adds: We explore possibilities for automated classification of CPS activities using machine learning approaches. Implications for practice: One of the approaches we explored is particularly effective and can help reduce the amount of manual annotations needed for CPS measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]