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This paper seeks to contribute with a philosophical approach to a more consitent foundation of Environmental Education, in order to make possible the improvement of public health in communities through disease-prevention practices. Firstly, the text shows the relationship between public health and environmental education; next, it brings a philosophical and historical comprehension of the man-nature relationship, claiming that nature is an intrinsic aspect of the human condition. Lastly, it supports the idea that the emergence of attitudes of human sensitization towards nature is not antagonistic with an ontology that has always been present in human history and that approximates man and physis. The thesis supported in the paper is that the acceptance of human sensibility can bring together three fields of knowledge (public health, environmental education and philosophy) and might be a bridge to restore elements which have been lost, repressed or forgotten with the man-nature split that took place more expressively with modern science, which clearly dichotomized the subject and the object of knowledge.

In this paper the theory of logical types will be examined, and certain departures from it will be suggested. Though the purpose of the paper is not primarily expository, an approach has been possible which presupposes no familiarity with special literature. Matters at variance with such an approach have been confined to appendices and footnotes.In the early pages the logical paradoxes will be considered—an infinite series of them, of which Russell's paradox is the first. Then Russell's simple theory of types will be formulated, in adaptation to a minimal set of logical primitives: inclusion and abstraction. Two aspects of the theory will be distinguished: an ontological doctrine and a formal restriction. It will be found that by repudiating the former we can avoid certain unnatural effects of the type theory—notably the reduplication of logical constants from type to type, and the apparent dependence of finite arithmetic upon an axiom of infinity. But the formal restriction itself has unnatural effects, which survive, even in an aggravated form, after the type ontology has been dropped. A liberalization of the formal restriction will be proposed which removes the more irksome of these anomalies.

Some philosophers have claimed that one must be acquainted with the elements of one's ontology. Also, believing that substrata and universals are required in an adequate ontology, these philosophers have claimed acquaintance with such objects. This paper attempts to analyze what is involved in such claims and to argue that they result from a number of confusions. The paper deals largely with the claim that substrata, or bare particulars, are presented since numerical difference is a simple fact that is presented. It further attempts to argue that while neither substrata nor universals, as such, are objects of acquaintance, there are some distinctions to be drawn between talk of universals as presented objects and talk of substrata being presented.

This paper describes how to improve the search engine using the ontology for the semantic web technology, the case study on a prototype Hua Hin tourism web page. The methodology contains two parts. First, we describe a way to compute query complexity between the relational database (RDB) and web ontology language (OWL). We present the original RDB, convert to the OWL, and consider the query complexity with the searching time of the prototype system. A number of facts in the ontology, and a number of conjuncts in the conjunctive queries are considered as parameters. The goal is to improve the search engine by reducing the query complexity. Second, the SPARQL queries in web application are considered from the classification and realization of the reasoner. We study from the existing ontology, increasing OWL DL rules, and consider the expressivity. We then compare the searching time between top-down and bottom-up approaches. The advantages are to select the appropriate inference problems for query response through the web application. The prototype Hua Hin semantic web is used to present our methodology throughout the paper.

This paper is intended to present a detailed syst?matisation of the open part, i.e. without bound variables, of what is called in [3] the ontology of L. Wittgenstein. This is the content of sections 4?15 where a particular open theory of kind W is described and developed. It contains an extensional theory of modality. The three initial sections 1?3 serve as an introduction and involve a discussion of the Fregean axiom, basic logical notions and the general description of open theories of kind W. The second part of this paper, sections 16?26, contains certain metatheoretical investigations of some restricted theories of kind W. The author is indebted to his collaborators at Stevens Institute of Technology, S. L. Bloom, D. J. Brown, J. D. Kagan, R. W. Quackenbush for comments on an earlier version of this paper.

This paper will examine the concept of subjective truth, indicating what it can and can not sensibly mean. Although the paper is centrally concerned with this concept, it also will serve to establish a point of textual interpretation. Many critics of Kierkegaard have claimed he maintains a subjectivist position on truth claims, that somehow what is true or false is simply a matter of individual decision. H. J. Paton, for example, in The Modern Predicament interprets Kierkegaard in this way. 1 This interpretation is mistaken and we can see why it is mistaken if we compare what Kierkegaard says about truth and subjectivity with some interpretations of what subjective truth might mean. The concept of subjective truth has no established use and, thus, a discussion of it is an exploration of possibility rather than fact. Or more accurately, it is implied by attitudes which are very extensively found but that implication has not been systematically formulated by the owners of those attitudes. These attitudes collectively express the position of subjectivism and subjective truth is the view on truth implied by, although not confined to, that position. The importance of the concept of subjective truth lies as much in its intertwining in these attitudes as it does in its status as a theoretical possibility. Simply as a concept it seemingly could be at home in any area where truth is a relevant issue since it suggests a possibility of how truth could be found in any area where truth can be found. But it is more pressing as a problem related to actual beliefs and attitudes. Subjectivism is a position which has never lacked for adherents and it surely is not currently in a fallow period either. But seemingly few philosophers have been among these advocates; it is a view of the layman and not the professional. This situation complicates a discussion of the related concept of subjective truth. Since the concept's adherents have lacked the analytic and argumentative tools needed for its philosophical formulation, one who would discuss it philosophically is required to be, in a sense, both advocate and critic. He must both define the problem, formulate the position, explore its meanings, and then present the criticisms of his own work. This paper is such an attempt. Because the concept is found inchoate, I have given considerable space simply to the ordering of the various possible meanings of the concept. And to put order into the exploration I have adopted a division of the paper into four sections. First, I shall

In this paper I shall speak about the place of consciousness and action in the structure of man according to the views of Roman Ingarden. The paper consists of four parts. In Part II shall try to show the development of Ingarden’s views on pure consciousness as it has been described by Edmund Husserl, and to ask some questions about the actual possibility of using the concept of pure consciousness in the framework of Ingarden’s ontology.

This paper formulates a basic system of ontology that has several interesting qualities: (1) it is suggested very strongly by the most naive and simplest consideration of certain perplexities involving psychological states; (2) the system does justice to several apparently conflicting insights that have been debated by many philosophers; (3) the system separates the a priori from the empirical elements of the world very nicely and neatly; (4) indeed, the system concentrates all the empirical elements of the world on two irreducible dyadic predicates; (5) for this reason the system seems to be a nice formulation of a conception of the world that was started by Plato, was envisioned by Leibniz, guided Frege, at least in part, and was defended by Meinong. The system appears, therefore, to have the historico-philosophical value of illuminating the long and important abstractist and rationalist tradition. I motivate its development with an initial discussion of a problem widely discussed nowadays. This is meant to honor those great metaphysicians by suggesting how contemporary their insights into the problems were, even if their solutions are not followed. Among other things, the system accomplishes the following: (i) provides an account of possible objects; (ii) provides

T BHE DECLINE OF THE CARTESIAN WORLDVIEW in the early decades of the eighteenth century has been described from several vantage points.' As a metaphysical system it reflected the failure of the ontology of substance philosophy.2 The categories substance and modification were too limited in scope; the essences extension and thought so different in kind as to forbid causal interaction. As a methodological system it failed because certain knowledge of the temporal phenomenal world could not be deduced from its logical axioms.3 As a planetary explanation its vortical aethereal motions were shown by Newton to be inconsistent with Kepler's laws, while the gradual demise of these aethereal hypotheses has been recently documented by E. J. Aiton.4 My purpose in this paper is to indicate the inadequacies of the Cartesian worldview in handling problems in terrestrial mechanics. I shall show that although Cartesian presuppositions were used in mechanical problems, the mathematical results supported Leibnizian or Newtonian conclusions. Cartesianism was unable to maintain

IN THIS paper I shall argue that moral language is conceptually tied to an objectivist meta-ethic, and that there are no logical impediments to such a meta-ethic. As it is often claimed that there are serious logical difficulties in the way both of the objectivist epistemology and also of its ontology, I shall examine the nature of the activity of intuitive apprehension and explore the nature of the objective commitment of an objectivist meta-ethic. I shall not be claiming to show that ethical objectivism is true, for that would involve showing that all alternative accounts-in particular, theories such as subjectivism and relativism-are false. As I have endeavored elsewhere to show how arguments against such theories would proceed, I shall not attempt to set them out here.' Again, I shall not engage in normative ethics and will confine myself to two moral truths: that the elimination of avoidable suffering is right and obligatory, and that the killing of human beings is wrong. Again, I have indicated elsewhere how I should argue in support of a pluralist, deontological ethic, akin to that of Ross, against any form of ethical monism.2

This paper will attempt to integrate (1) some new reflections on the implications for ontology of Monistic interpretations of formulae in quantification theory, with (2) a review of earlier material that I have published on such implications, and with (3) a sketch of several points made by others which bear on related issues. I hope that a review of these moves and issues might indirectly help the reader in dealing with two strange questions. (A) Does the development of modern quantification theory with its ways of systematically formalising relational inferences throwany light on Ontology, on the question of What There Is for scientists and applied mathematicians to study? (B) Are there any analogies between Monist interpretations of quantification theory and the attraction of holding down the number of basic entities in physics by viewing some as mere modes of other more ‘really basic’ ones? More directly I try to throw sympathetic light on more traditional philosophers of science like Leibniz and Spinoza.

What one is acquainted with has always been important for the rejection or acceptance of any ontological description. Yet the relevance of acquaintance to ontology has not always been clearly stated. Some philosophers have held that they were acquainted with the simple entities of ontological analysis. They also held that if they were not acquainted with such entities, their analysis would be inadequately supported. In this paper I argue that acquaintance with ontological simples cannot be a reason for accepting or rejecting any ontological analysis. At the same time, I examine what I believe to be the relevance of acquaintance to ontological description.

This paper examines four arguments in support of Frege's theory of incomplete entities, the heart of his semantics and ontology. Two of these arguments are based upon Frege's contributions to the foundations of mathematics. These are shown to be question-begging. Two are based upon Frege's solution to the problem of the relation of language to thought and reality. They are metaphysical in nature and they force Frege to maintain a theory of types. The latter puts his theory of incomplete entities in the paradoxical position of maintaining that it is no theory at all. Moreover, his metaphysics rules out well-known suggestions for avoiding this difficulty.

The recent philosophy of physics is confronted with the new ontology, as it emerges after philosophy proper has fully articulated the linguistic turn. The classical ontologists asserted or denied, controversially, that certain entities “existed.” Rather than adding to these controversies, the new ontology uncovers their dialectics. The ontologically problematic entities of physics are of two kinds, represented by forces and particles, respectively. The dialectics has been dominated by eight patterns. Two of these, independence and realism, belong to philosophy proper. The latter is here considered in order to relieve the philosophy of physics of a burden only philosophy proper can bear. That leaves six patterns: concreteness (including the orbit feature), acquaintance, simplicity, significance, process, and model. The paper sketches how each of these may be used and probably has been used, either explicitly or implicitly, in the recent controversies.

Fiction has been of concern to both the aesthetician and the ontologist. The former is concerned with the criteria or standards by which we judge the aesthetic worth of a fictional work, the latter with whether our ontology must be enlarged to include possible or imaginary worlds in which are housed the characters and incidents referred to and depicted in such works. This is a paper on the ontology of fiction. It will attempt to answer these ontological questions concerning truth and reference in fiction by clarifying the use of language. Our paradigm case of the fictive use of language will be one in which the story-teller orally relates the fictional story in the presence of his audience, rather than one in which he inscribes his story so that it may be read at a later date. The value of considering the use of language in a face-to-face situation is that it brings before us in their full explicitness all of the different facets of a speech act, many of which often lie dormant in non-face-to-face uses and therefore are hard to discover from a consideration of such uses.

In a series of articles1 Paul K. Feyerabend has attacked what he calls the standard view of observation sentences, the view that they, together with their descriptive constituents, are invariant in meaning from theory to theory. He also claims that this goes hand in hand with (or perhaps is equivalent to) the view that the ontology of the observational domain is fixed independently of scientific theories. This attack is thus of interest to those2 who, like myself, hold to a principle of acquaintance that serves both as a tool of ontological analysis and as a central constituent of an empiricist epistemology. In this paper I wish to examine both Feyerabend's attack and his own position from the point of view of a proponent of such a principle of acquaintance. Feyerabend's strategy in this series of articles appears to be the follow ing. He specifies criteria for being an observation sentence which are neu tral to the issues of meaning and reference. He then points out that there are sentences which qualify as observation sentences on these criteria but which cannot be understood by one who does not know a particular theory. He infers from this that such observation sentences gain meaning from the theories in whose context they are made. He then attempts to attack the fundamental presuppositions of the standard view which would seek to qualify other sentences that meet his criteria as being epistemolog ically more basic than those which are theory-laden. This is intended to show by elimination that all observation sentences are dependent for their meaning on the theories in whose context they are made. Feyerabend's attack upon the standard view turns upon the following thesis

easy to state: such disciplines include logic, mathematics, linguis? tics, and esthetics. In this paper it is proposed to indicate the larger outlines of a possible approach to esthetics in terms of the theory of signs x). From this point of view the work of art is conceived as a sign which is, in all but the simplest limit case, itself a structure of signs. The problem then becomes that of stating the differentia of the esthetic sign ; such differentia may be found either in the kind of things which function as esthetic signs or in the kind of objects which are designated, or (as will here be suggested) in a combi

In his studies of scientific method P o i n c a r ? noted the employ? ment of fundamental principles as definitions which are postulated by convention, and therefore are freed from control by experience. The role of conventions in physical theory was investigated in an early work by Carnap, who set forth the necessity of postulates concerning space, time, and force. C. I. Lewis in his doctrine of conceptual pragniatism has recently emphasized the constitutive function of concepts in experience. Perception, for example, is inter? pretation of a sense-datum by the application of a concept. Lewis accordingly argues that there are a priori factors in experience. But the conventional or a priori constituents of science are relative and variable. In this paper I propose to exhibit the genesis of Poincarc's conventions and C. I. Lewis' a priori in physical theory. The discussion will exemplify what I have called the process of successive definition of the terms of a scientific language. Through its recognition we may take account of elements of truth in traditional rationalism and empiricism. The unified view of scientific method which is thereby provided should contribute to the unity of science.

This paper is intended to sort out some problems in the philosophical foundations of biology. For the reader’s convenience, the questions referred to in the text are listed here: (1) Is a one-level ontology adequate to account for the major areas of human experience, both in and out of science? (2) If not, how can we formulate adequately a many-levelled ontology ? (3) Is biology reducible to physics and chemistry? (4) Is biology a molecular science ? (5) Are all biological explanations mechanical or are some irreducibly teleological? (6) Did life in its present form originate from non-life and by what means ? (7) Is all biology molecular science? i. e., is every biological discipline in principle molecular? (8) Is some biology molecular? Or is every biological discipline in principle non-molecular? (9) Meta-question: Are questions seven and eight philosophical or empirical? (10) Are physics and chemistry molecular sciences? (11) Is the distinction between the living and the non-living primarily morphological or functional?

In Chapter I of his Some Main Problems of Philosophy G. E. Moore tells us that the first and most important problem of philosophy is to give a general description of the whole Universe.' Now, a general description of reality should, according to Moore, provide the answer to the following fundamental question: what kinds of things are there? There is little doubt that Moore did not use the notion of thing as co-extensive with the notion of material object. Thus, he would probably agree that for all a, if a is anything at all then a is a thing, but he would most certainly deny that for all a, if a is anything at all then a is a material object. But if he used the notion of thing as a sort of most general designation then what did he mean by kinds of things? Is his fundamental question synonymous with the one that asks: what sub-classes of things are there? And if not, in what sense does the latter question differ from the former? In particular, one would like to know how to distinguish between two assertions: the one which says that for some a, and for some b, a's and b's are two different sub-classes of one kind of things, and the one which maintains that for some a, and for some b, a's and b's are two different kinds of things. As regards this problem, we do not get a great deal of help from Moore. Sure enough he discusses a number of answers given to his fundamental question by various philosophers, and from his discussion one could compile a list of what he would be prepared to regard as different kinds of things, but it would be very difficult, if at all possible, to extrapolate from the list general criteria adopted by Moore in his attempts at categorizing reality. However, it would seem to be appropriate to make it clear at this stage that the problem to be dealt with in the present paper is not in fact ontological. I shall not be concerned with propounding arguments either for or against a unicategorial ontology, according to which there is only one kind of things, or a bicategorial ontology, which holds that there are two kinds of things, either kind enjoying a different mode of existence, or any other multicategorial ontology. And although in the end my own

As a knowledge representation tool, ontologies have been widely applied in many fields such as knowledge management and information integration, etc. Ontology measurement is an important challenge in the field of knowledge management in order to manage the development of ontology based systems and reduce the risk of project failure. This paper proposes a generic implementation framework for stable semantic ontology measurement. Through this framework, an ontology will be measured according to its semantic enriched representation model (SERM). The SERM model of an ontology can be used for stably measuring the semantics of the ontology. Then ontology metrics are integrated into the framework to measure candidate ontologies according to its SERM model. The related experiments are made to show that the framework can effectively measure the semantics of ontologies.

El relativismo de Thomas Kuhn se suele exponer en términos de sus consecuencias subjetivistas e irracionalistas y, por tanto, como una contribución más a una postura anti-científica. En este artículo se presenta su postura pluralista en sus aspectos ontológico y semántico y se defiende que su relativismo no tiene esas consecuencias. También se muestra que, pese a ello, la versión no es cercana al realismo científico ni converge al empirismo. Thomas Kuhn’s relativistic position is usually expounded in terms of its subjectivist and irrationalist consequences and, accordingly, as a contribution to anti-scientificism. This paper explains his pluralism in semantics and ontology and shows in it a kind of relativism from which those consequences do not follow. It is also argued that, despite that, this version does not converge to empiricism or scientific realism.

My task in writing a paper to accompany Milton Fisk’s complex and provocative one is unusually difficult. His argument is so condensed and at such a high level of abstraction that I could easily devote my entire discussion to a single paragraph of his, to his very first one for example. Instead of doing this, I thought it would be more helpful to say something about the historical background from which his essay derives, and then go on to raise some difficulties regarding his central claim that nature is something over and above part and property. I will end with some suggestions on my own part as to how the categories of capacity and nature might best be related.

In his review of a paper by Ajdukiewicz [1], Quine makes the following comments on Leśniewski’s version of the membership connective ‘∈’: One way of viewing Leśniewski’s logic of ‘∈’ (which he called “ontology”) would seem to be this: the variables stand in places appropriate to general terms, the notion of general term being construed broadly enough to include terms which are true of fewer than two objects as well as terms which are true of two or more. Then, where ‘a’ and ‘b’are thought of as general terms, ‘a ∈ b’ is construed as true if, and only if, ‘a’ is true of one and only one object and ‘b’ is true of that object. Leśniewski, and others who have found this part of his logic useful (Kotarbinski, Ajdukiewicz), have entertained an amiable distaste for abstract entities and hence have liked to appeal to general terms, more or less as above, rather than to classes. Too little significance, however, has been attached to the fact that the variables which have been said to stand in places appropriate to general terms are subjected in Leśniewski’s theory to quantification. Such quantification surely commits Leśniewski to a realm of values of his variables of quantification; and all his would-be general terms must be viewed as naming these values singly. If quantification as Leśniewski used it did not commit him squarely to a theory of classes as abstract entities, then the present reviewer is at a loss to imagine wherein such commitment even on the part of a professing Platonist can consist [2].

Recent advances in semantics have reopened certain ontological problems that have lain dormant since the heyday of logical atomism. More specifically, interest has been rekindled in the problem of facts, their nature and function, especially as related to theories of truth. For examples, see [1] and [2]. In the light of this, it seems very instructive to reconsider Bertrand Russell's views concerning facts from the viewpoint of modern semantic theory. The main things at issue, from a contemporary point of view, are, first, whether the semantic conception of truth, or any other aspects of modem semantics require a fact ontology at all, and second, if they do, what sort of facts are required. Russell had things to say on both points, but this paper will concern itself only with his views on the second. All of Russell's views considered here are to be found in, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism,"' and must be contrasted with both his earlier and later views. In short, he argued that in addition to the need for facts to correspond to true atomic sentences, special facts were also needed to correspond to negative, universal and existential sentences. The alleged existence of these three types of facts seemed objectionable to many at the time and caused considerable controversy. It seems likely that the failure of Russell and his followers to satisfactorily resolve this controversy was one of the main reasons why the ontological problems involved in logical atomism, particularly those concerning facts, fell slowly into disrespect. It was not so much that Russell's theory, or those of

The inaugural conference of The Association of Critical Heritage Studies, on the theme of re-theorising heritage studies, took place in Gothenburg, Sweden in June 2012. It aimed to start interdisciplinary conversations that will serve to develop relevant theory across national borders and move away from the conventional understanding of heritage as objectively given places, objects and traditions. Instead heritage is to be regarded as something created in the interaction between different interests and power relations. This perspective was relatively consistent throughout the conference, where a wide range of topics were presented in more than 400 different papers. Concepts such as representation, “the other” and post-colonialism reflected the development of theory in this field over recent years, while considerations of relational ontology, body, affect and connection-seeking theorising were a signal of the development to come.

Strawson, in Chapter 1 of Individuals,' had argued that physical objects are ontologically prior to all other particulars. I believe that there is some truth to the position that he advances, but that there are also many false aspects to it. I also believe that there are immense weaknesses in Strawson's argument for his position but that it is possible to construct an alternative argument for the true aspects of it. This paper will argue for these beliefs. What is meant by "ontological priority"? We shall say that an entity a is in a given person's ontology if and only if there is some object b identical with a such that that person believes that b exists and there is no object c identical with a such that that person believes that c does not exist.2 And we shall say that entities of type a are in a given person's ontology if and only if there is a type [ identical with a such that that person believes that entities of type [ exist and there is no type X identical with a such that that