Ontology of Information Artifacts

This essay explores evolution not as proof against design, but as the temporal unfolding of an inherent cosmic order. Beginning with a blackbird’s shifting song as a metaphor for informational change, it traces a hierarchical chain—from biological trial-and-error to the constrained possibility-space of quantum order—where complexity emerges from a self-grounding vacuum rich in structure. The quantum vacuum, evidenced by recent spin-correlation experiments, serves as an active, uncaused foundation: no biological trial-and-error operates at this level, yet its lawful constraints enable higher (...) contingency. The paper argues that the universe’s fine-tuned laws and embedded information make “miracle without intention” possible—design as emergence, not imposition—while acknowledging epistemic limits beyond our causal horizon. Probability, on this account, is not the absence of order: it operates within a prior field of lawful possibility whose particular outcomes need not be exactly predictable from the laws alone. Information is operational—the universe’s way of being coherent—not a Trojan horse for teleology. Evolution becomes the mechanics of this sacred self-making, layer by layer. (shrink)

Under what conditions does data become information? Shannon’s measure-theoretic account deliberately brackets semantic uptake by treating information in terms of uncertainty, entropy, and transmission; Dretske’s semantic theory and Floridi’s General Definition of Information restore meaning at the cost of leaving the transition itself under-specified. We propose an activation account: information is not a property of data but an event in which data acquires informational status relative to an observer’s context. We formalize activation as a partial function φ_c(d, ω), mapping a (...) datum d, an observer ω, and a context c to an activation outcome, and articulate seven foundational axioms (AX-1 to AX-7) governing partiality, syntactic preconditions, semantic activation, observer-dependence, contextual sensitivity, temporal transience, and mode-sensitive value. The axioms locate Shannon, Bateson, Dretske, Wand–Weber, DIKW, and Floridi PTII as partial accounts or limiting cases of the activation problem, and identify the points at which each prior account collapses two distinct relations into one. The result is a formal-conceptual foundation for information that is neutral between syntactic and semantic readings and that supplies a principled separation between data, information, and downstream epistemic states. We develop the framework as an architectural realization of the DIKCA I-layer. (shrink)

Three Cats and I collects a series of independent philosophical frameworks developed outside academia, unified by the conviction that clarity is a moral act. The book introduces tools such as the Three Cats and the Jestin Modal–Actuality Framework (JMAF), each aimed at making complex ideas structurally usable. The preface situates JMAF in a moment where information theory, quantum foundations, systems thinking, and metaphysics finally converge, allowing a coherent account of possibility, collapse, and becoming. Rather than a single theory, the work (...) offers conceptual instruments for clearer reasoning and shared understanding. (shrink)

Quantum entanglement is often described as “spooky action at a distance,” suggesting an inexplicable coordination between spatially separated particles. The Jestin Modal–Actuality Framework (JMAF) dissolves this apparent paradox by relocating the source of correlation from spatial causation to pre spatial relational structure. In JMAF, entangled particles do not communicate or influence one another across space; they instantiate a single modal relationship that exists prior to and independent of spatial actualisation. Spatial distance constrains actualised positions but does not metricise modal relationality. (...) This paper presents a concise metaphysical interpretation of entanglement, clarifies its distinction from classical hidden variable models, and argues that the need for a spatial causal explanation disappears once the ontology is correctly placed. (shrink)

Software, like technical artifacts, is discussed and evaluated in terms of its functions. According to intentionalist function theories, the function we ascribe to an object should reflect the intended effect on its environment as fixed by its designer. In this paper, I demonstrate how we develop an intentionalist understanding of the functions of software, despite recent arguments to the contrary. For this, I analyze software design and use from an action-theoretical perspective, a methodology previously used to develop the ICE theory (...) of technical functions. I explain why the arguments raised against intentionalist function theories are no cause for abandoning them in the context of software. Next, I introduce an ICE-like alternative for understanding function ascriptions to software. This identifies what I call configured effectuation mechanisms as function bearers. Finally, I show how my intentionalist function theory enables the uniform evaluation of software by designers and users. (shrink)

Coherence-weighted information theory extends Shannon’s framework by distinguishing transmissible structure that contributes to persistence from structure that is merely unpredictable. My prior work established coherence-weighted entropy and mutual information, along with capacity and selective compression theorems, conditional on a bounded symbol-weight function w(x)∈[0,1]. This third essay addresses the status of w as a principled quantity rather than an arbitrary knob. I specify a minimal set of admissibility commitments that any coherence-derived weighting must satisfy, including boundedness, monotonicity, coarse-graining consistency, recursive stability, (...) empirical derivability, and domain-translation invariance. I then provide a concrete derivation pipeline from observed state streams to proxy coherence estimates C ̂, from C ̂ to symbol-level relevance ρ(x), and from ρ(x) to induced weights w(x). The pipeline yields falsifiable predictions. Coherence-weighted compression should preserve coherence-bearing structure at equal bitrate under distribution shift; weight rankings should remain stable under benign coarse-graining; coherence declines should lead regime transitions; and constraint-relief interventions should measurably increase coherence proxies relative to purely interpretive changes. Finally, I isolate the residual hard seam, the choice of compression estimator K, and restate the invariance claim as robustness across estimator classes rather than estimator-independence. The result is a self-contained operational program where coherence weights are not chosen, but induced under explicit constraints, enabling empirical convergence and principled falsification. (shrink)

DOI: 10.66051/pbcib.531 | This paper aims to analyze Blockchain technologies and decentralized storage systems (IPFS and Arweave) through the lens of the Paradigmatic Archive (PA) concept, as formulated by Aldabalde and Cid (2020). Starting from an a priori philosophical reflection on the universal properties of Archives – accessibility, durability, and practicality –, it seeks to demonstrate how these digital structures not only instantiate such properties but often do so to a high degree, approaching the paradigmatic ideal. An interdisciplinary approach, situated (...) at the intersection of Ontology, Information Science, and Information Technology, examines how the immutability, decentralization, transparency, and programmatic accessibility inherent in these systems perform the archival functions of custody, preservation, and access in an innovative way. It is concluded that, although they are non-traditional entities, Blockchain, IPFS, and Arweave can be considered Archives in the full sense, exhibiting the essential properties to a notable degree and offering a new reference model for the design of archival institutions in the digital environment. (shrink)

The explosion of interest in large language models (LLMs) has been accompanied by concerns over the extent to which generated outputs can be trusted, owing to the prevalence of bias, hallucinations, and so forth. Accordingly, there is a growing interest in the use of ontologies and knowledge graphs to make LLMs more trustworthy. This rests on the long history of ontologies and knowledge graphs in constructing human-comprehensible justification for model outputs as well as traceability concerning the impact of evidence on (...) other evidence. Understanding the nature of arguments and argumentation is critical to each, especially when LLM output conflicts with what is expected by users. The central contribution of this article is to extend the Arguments Ontology (ARGO) - an ontology specific to the domain of argumentation and evidence broadly construed - into the space of LLM fact-checking in the interest of promoting justification and traceability research through the use of ARGO-based ‘blueprints’. (shrink)

The term “credential” encompasses educational certificates, degrees, certifications, and government-issued licenses. An occupational credential is a verification of an individual’s qualification or competence issued by a third party with relevant authority. Job seekers often leverage such credentials as evidence that desired qualifications are satisfied by their holders. Many U.S. education and workforce development organizations have recognized the importance of credentials for employment and the challenges of understanding the value of credentials. In this study, we identified and ontologically defined credential and (...) credential-related terms at the textual and semantic levels based on the Occupation Ontology (OccO), a BFO-based ontology. Different credential types and their authorization logic are modeled. We additionally defined a high-level hierarchy of credential related terms and relations among many terms, which were initiated in concert with the Alabama Talent Triad (ATT) program, which aims to connect learners, earners, employers and education/training providers through credentials and skills. To our knowledge, our research provides for the first time systematic ontological modeling of the important domain of credentials and related contents, supporting enhanced credential data and knowledge integration in the future. (shrink)

Background Within the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry, many ontologies represent the execution of a plan specification as a process in which a realizable entity that concretizes the plan specification, a “realizable concretization” (RC), is realized. This representation, which we call the “RC-account”, provides a straightforward way to relate a plan specification to the entity that bears the realizable concretization and the process that realizes the realizable concretization. However, the adequacy of the RC-account has not been evaluated in (...) the scientific literature. In this manuscript, we provide this evaluation and, thereby, give ontology developers sound reasons to use or not use the RC-account pattern. Results Analysis of the RC-account reveals that it is not adequate for representing failed plans. If the realizable concretization is flawed in some way, it is unclear what (if any) relation holds between the realizable entity and the plan specification. If the execution (i.e., realization) of the realizable concretization fails to carry out the actions given in the plan specification, it is unclear under the RC-account how to directly relate the failed execution to the entity carrying out the instructions given in the plan specification. These issues are exacerbated in the presence of changing plans. Conclusions We propose two solutions for representing failed plans. The first uses the Common Core Ontologies ‘prescribed by’ relation to connect a plan specification to the entity or process that utilizes the plan specification as a guide. The second, more complex, solution incorporates the process of creating a plan (in the sense of an intention to execute a plan specification) into the representation of executing plan specifications. We hypothesize that the first solution (i.e., use of ‘prescribed by’) is adequate for most situations. However, more research is needed to test this hypothesis as well as explore the other solutions presented in this manuscript. (shrink)

Artifacts are often characterized as intentional products of human activities, suggesting that they must have authors. However, contrary to this common characterization, I argue that there exist novel examples of artifacts that lack authors. This novelty arises directly from the emergence of generative artificial intelligence applications. I provide several examples of such authorless artifacts and address potential objections to their existence.

The Common Core Ontologies(CCO) are designed as a mid-level ontology suite that extends the Basic Formal Ontology. In 2017,CUBRC, Inc. made CCO openly available. CCO has since been increasingly adopted by a broad group of users and applications and is proposed as the first standard mid-level ontology. Despite these successes, documentation of the contents and design patterns of the CCO has been comparatively minimal. This paper is a step toward providing enhanced documentation for the mid-level ontology suite through a discussion (...) of the contents of the eleven ontologies that collectively comprise the Common Core Ontology suite. (shrink)

This paper introduces a set of terms that are intended to act as an interface between cyber ontologies (like a file system ontology or a data fusion ontology) and top- and mid-level ontologies, specifically Basic Formal Ontology and the Common Core Ontologies. These terms center on what makes cyberinformation management unique: numerous acts of copying items of information, the aggregates of copies that result from those acts, and the faithful members of those aggregates that represent all other members.

Introducing AIM: Autonomous Intentional Masking (The Key to Quantum Circuits) (The (Forced) Relationship Between Mind and Matter).

Human biological memory systems have adapted to use technological artifacts to overcome some of the limitations of these systems. For example, when performing a difficult calculation, we use pen and paper to create and store external number symbols; when remembering our appointments, we use a calendar; when remembering what to buy, we use a shopping list. This chapter looks at the history of memory artifacts, describing the evolution from cave paintings to virtual reality. It first characterizes memory artifacts, memory systems, (...) and the two main functions such artifacts have, which are to aid individual users in completing memory tasks and as a cultural inheritance channel (section 2). It then outlines some of our first symbolic practices such as making cave paintings and figurines, and then moves on to outline several key developments in external representational systems and the artifacts that support these such as written language, numeral systems and counting devices, diagrams and maps, measuring devices, libraries and archives, photographs, analogue and digital computational artifacts, the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and smartphones (section 3). After that, it makes some brief points about the cumulative nature of the cultural evolution of memory artifacts and speculates about the possible future of memory artifacts, arguing that it is very difficult to look beyond an epistemological horizon of more than five years (section 4). (shrink)

Understanding (physics, philosophy, and psychology as) a constant variable.

The relations between ontology and information are many and fundamental, and they help us to understand the present gulf between (formal) ontology and (philosophical) Ontology: We can speak of respectively ontology-driven information and information-driven ontology as the focus on being informed vs. informed being. The question of whether these two (can) coincide is relevant to both fields, and in this article I elaborate on what needs to be addressed first of all to provide us with an answer: The form. This (...) core ontological concept rooting in Aristotelian metaphysics was central to philosophical ontology, in particular in Latin Scholasticism, when it was clearly put into relation with information as that which defines an entity. In this context, Dietrich of Freiberg synthesized this long debate in a way that matters not only to the philosophical effort of producing information-driven ontologies but also to the engineering constructs of ontology-driven information systems. (shrink)

The article summarizes the software tool on astrophysical analysis with multi-wavelength space telescope data. It recaps the evidence analysis conducted on the Kerr-Newman black hole (KNBH). It was written prior to the article Research on the Kerr-Newman Black Hole in M82 Confirms Black Hole and White Hole Juxtapose not soon after the experiment. The conducted analysis suggested Hawking radiation is caused by the movement of ergosurfaces of the BH and serves as the primal evidence for black hole and white hole (...) juxtapose. A later data exploration was conducted with the radiation trails in the multi-wavelength data. The evidences produced corroborates with Yale professor Priyamvada Natarajan's black hole seeds theory. It implies that the electromagnetic dynamic of fusion and fission temperature determines the pressure of surface tension on the macro particles, and the mass density of the BH is determined by the electromagnetic tension between the outer ergosurface and inner ergosurface. The ring singularity of the BH and the Penrose-Hawking singularity of the BH determine the spin and gravitational singularity of the BH. Inside the ergosurfaces, the BH singularities' backward inflow causes the vicinity's rate on feeding the BH. It makes the active galactic nuclei (AGN) a semi-closed system. The density pressure is released on threshold. During the mass exchange observed by energy momentum upon the AGN's open, the macroparticle composition of the BH changes with the galactic event. This causes the expansion rate of the galaxy and contraction rate of the BH. AGN types and their relative motions determine the expansion rate of the cosmic universe in a generalized quantitative thinking. The article concludes that BH spin is caused by the asymmetric motions of AGN in the BH system. A set of the nuclear resonance caused by BH and white hole (WH) oscillation is processed with the same set of data. (shrink)

The Counter-Intuitives in Nature: Zero and one is one and two is two and three. Explaining mind, math, and music. The genesis of 'information.' Tokenization in general. Tokenization as the basis for mind, math, and music (information in general).

This essay is a response to Luis M. Augusto’s intriguing paper on the rift between mainstream and formal ontology. I will show that there are in fact two questions at issue here: 1. concerning the links between mainstream and formal approaches within philosophy, and 2. concerning the application of philosophy (and especially philosophical ontology) in support of information-driven research for example in the life sciences.

This paper aims to present the universalsproperties of the Archives, thought of as an archival institution, based on a priori philosophical reflection, to establish fundamentsto determinate the graduationof these properties –and their maximum level, at the Paradigmatic Archive –and to confirm these properties through the forms observed in the General Archive of the Indies, that displays them to some degree. With that, the aim is to build a model for the Archives, determining how they should be. The interdisciplinary approach, between (...) ontology and archivology, was adopted, integrating the method of philosophical reflection with documentary research procedures, based on piecesof fonds from the General Archive of the Indies, collection of images of the author and sources. The discussion addresses aspects of practices, forms and functions, which indicate the essence of the Archives and their path towards their paradigmatic ideality. The General Archive of the Indies is presented as a particular example that exemplifies these essential properties. Our conclusion is that there are certain essential universal properties of Archives, or archival institutions, which are: accessibility, durability and practicality. In addition, the proposed model is applicable for the institutionalization of Archives and also for the construction, reforms, implantations, the creation of new spaces, adaptations, restructuring in buildings and institutional uses of the Archive. (shrink)

Zero and One (0 and 1) is Circumference and Diameter (0 and 1).

As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering ontologies are limited to their scope, and functionally difficult to extend (...) or interoperate with other engineering ontologies. This paper demonstrates how the use of a top-level ontology, specifically the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), greatly facilitates interoperability of multiple engineering-related ontologies. We constructed a system of formal linked ontologies by re-engineering legacy ontologies to be conformant with BFO and developing new BFO-conformant ontologies to capture knowledge in the engineering design, enterprise, human factors, manufacturing, and application domain of additive manufacturing. The resulting Integrated Framework for Additively Manufactured Products (IFAMP), including the body knowledge instantiated on its basis, serve as the basis for a proposed Design with Additive Manufacturing Method (DWAM), which we believe can support the design of innovative products with semantically enhanced ideation tools and enhanced access to application domain knowledge. The method and its facilitation through the ontological framework are demonstrated using a case study in medicine. (shrink)

Electronic text can be defined on two different, though interconnected, levels. On the one hand, electronic text can be defined by taking the notion of “text” or “printed text” as the point of departure. On the other hand, electronic text can be defined by taking the digital format as the point of departure, where everything is represented in the binary alphabet. While the notion of text in most cases lends itself to being independent of medium and embodiment, it is also (...) often tacitly assumed that it is in fact modeled on the print medium, instead of, for instance, on hand-written text or speech. In late 20th century, the notion of “text” was subjected to increasing criticism, as can be seen in the question that has been raised in literary text theory about whether “there is a text in this class.” At the same time, the notion was expanded by including extralinguistic sign modalities (images, videos). A basic question, therefore, is whether electronic text should be included in the enlarged notion that text is a new digital sign modality added to the repertoire of modalities or whether it should be included as a sign modality that is both an independent modality and a container that can hold other modalities. In the first case, the notion of electronic text would be paradigmatically formed around the e-book, which was conceived as a digital copy of a printed book but is now a deliberately closed work. Even closed works in digital form will need some sort of interface and hypertextual navigation that together constitute a particular kind of paratext needed for accessing any sort of digital material. In the second case, the electronic text is defined by the representation of content and (some parts of the) processing rules as binary sequences manifested in the binary alphabet. This wider notion would include, for instance, all sorts of scanning results, whether of the outer cosmos or the interior of our bodies and of digital traces of other processes in-between (machine readings included). Since other alphabets, such as the genetic alphabet and all sorts of images may also be represented in the binary alphabet, such materials will also belong to the textual universe within this definition. A more intriguing implication is that born-digital materials may also include scripts and interactive features as intrinsic parts of the text. The two notions define the text on different levels: one is centered on the Latin, the other on the binary alphabet, and both definitions include hypertext, interactivity, and multimodality as constituent parameters. In the first case, hypertext is included as a navigational, paratextual device; whereas in the second case, hypertext is also incorporated in the narrative within an otherwise closed work or as a constituent element on the textual universe of the web, where it serves the ongoing production of (possibly scripted) connections and disconnections between blocks of textual content. Since the early decades of early 21st century still represent only the very early stages of the globally distributed universe of web texts, this is also a history of the gradual unfolding of the dimensions of these three constituencies—hypertext, interactivity, and multimodality. The result is a still-expanding repertoire of genres, including some that are emerging via path dependency; some via remediation; and some as new genres that are unique for networked digital media, including “social media texts” and a growing variety of narrative and discursive multiple-source systems. (shrink)

We describe a prototype ontology-driven information system (ODIS) that exploits what we call Portion of Reality (POR) representations. The system takes both sensor data and natural language text as inputs and composes on this basis logically structured POR assertions. The goal of our prototype is to represent both natural language and sensor data within a single framework that is able to support both axiomatic reasoning and computation. In addition, the framework should be capable of discovering and representing new kinds of (...) situations and thematic roles, (e.g., roles such as agent, patient and instrument), based on new compositions of existing representations. We applied our prototype in an intelligence analysis use case to test the hypothesis that a framework of this sort can produce usefully structured information from combined natural language and sensor data inputs. We further tested our hypothesis by adding an enhanced US Air Force ontology framework to our ODIS in order to (1) process a collection of sensor data, intel reports, and mission plans; (2) build composite POR representations from these data; and (3) machine analyze the fused results to infer mission threats. (shrink)

In the graphical representation of ontologies, it is customary to use graph theory as the representational background. We claim here that the standard graph-based approach has a number of limitations. We focus here on a problem in the graph-based representation of ontologies in complex domains such as biomedical, engineering and manufacturing: lack of mereotopological representation. Based on such limitation, we proposed a diagrammatic way to represent an entity’s structure and various forms of mereotopological relationships between the entities.

Ontologies are being used increasingly to promote the reusability of scientific information by allowing heterogeneous data to be integrated under a common, normalized representation. Definitions play a central role in the use of ontologies both by humans and by computers. Textual definitions allow ontologists and data curators to understand the intended meaning of ontology terms and to use these terms in a consistent fashion across contexts. Logical definitions allow machines to check the integrity of ontologies and reason over data annotated (...) with ontology terms to make inferences that promote knowledge discovery. Therefore, it is important not only to include in ontologies multiple types of definitions in both formal and in natural languages, but also to ensure that these definitions meet good quality standards so they are useful. While tools such as Protégé can assist in creating well-formed logical definitions, producing good definitions in a natural language is still to a large extent a matter of human ingenuity supported at best by just a small number of general principles. For lack of more precise guidelines, definition authors are often left to their own personal devices. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing the ontology community with a set of principles and conventions to assist in definition writing, editing, and validation, by drawing on existing definition writing principles and guidelines in lexicography, terminology, and logic. (shrink)

Definitions vary according to context of use and target audience. They must be made relevant for each context to fulfill their cognitive and linguistic goals. This involves adapting their logical structure, type of content, and form to each context of use. We examine from these perspectives the case of definitions in ontologies.

Based on a brief overview of the history of ontology and on some philosophical problems of virtual reality, a new approach to virtuality is proposed. To characterize the representational technologies in the Internet age, I suggest that Aristotle’s dualistic ontological system be complemented with a third form of being: virtuality. In the virtual form of being actuality and potentiality are inseparably intertwined. Virtuality is potentiality considered together with its actualization. In this view, virtuality is reality with a measure, a reality (...) which has no absolute character, but which has a relative nature. This situation can remind us the emergence of probability in the 17th century: then the concept of certainty, now the concept of reality is reconsidered and relativized. Currently, in the descriptions of the world created by representational technologies, there are two coherent worldviews with different ontologies: the world is inhabited by actual and potential beings—or all the beings in the world are virtual. (shrink)

If media studies are to become established as a genuine science, then it needs to be determined what the subject matter of this science is to be. I propose a specification of this subject matter as consisting in: 1. the new sorts of digital entities that have been added to social reality through the invention of the digital computer, and 2. the new sorts of interactions involving human beings which such entities make possible. I support this proposal by examining examples (...) of some of the ways in which the digital products of emerging media differ from entities of other sorts. I then draw consequences from this examination to demonstrate how these products mark out a new realm within the larger domain of social ontology. (shrink)

Conservation of the Circle is deduced (observed) as the basis for reality. Conservation Trilogy: Book One. Includes Foundation paper: Circle-line relationship mediated by pi as the most basic dynamic in physics. Lays foundation for more detailed explanation in Conservation Trilogy: Books Two and Three. This is the original paper 2013. From an original paper 2007. Originally Published as Tanglewood Trilogy 2002. Original Idea: Integration of Einstein and Jung (Physics and Psychology) 1974. Summary (1974-2026) review all links below. ChatGPT will tell (...) you this is not science showing the inherent weakness in AI. Just so you know, if you go back to Ancient Cultures, they all worshipped the underlying unity in Nature as experienced by the Circular-Linear relationship between the Solstice N-S and the Equinox W-E. From there we find Stone Circles, more correctly, Stone Circumferences. So, normally we are taught the unit circle as a unit circumference and The Circular Theory corrects this mistake by giving the true diagram for a unit circle (the circular-linear relationship between circumference and diameter) so this corrects a basic error in both mathematics and physics. The diagram proves the theory is correct (pi controls all symbols) (all information) (all universes) (all time) (all space) (all observers) (all observations). Easily experienced (with)in athletics. Watch the NFL and NCAAF playoffs and you have proven The Circular Theory for your self (pi controlling everything). Awesome outlook for athletics as a viable and reliable alternative to politics (war). Predicting that humans will take this route (athletics) (to conserve its 'self') (teach children how to deal with loss, trauma, anger, 50-50 reality). For fans of US NFL and NCAAF, the football provides concrete proof for a constantly moving Nucleus (introduced in Rethinking the Number System, Atoms and Molecules (DNA)) (Universal Unitized Field) and ESPN FS1 and other Sports Analytics TV and Streaming Shows provide concrete proof for 50-50 as the only constant in Nature (no matter the stats, something always shows up that throws things off balance) (providing a constant cash stream for broadcasters, bloggers, team owners, team players and staff) (illustrating how everything on Wall Street (and Main Street) works. This will take a while to catch on, but it is worth your time to study in detail if you are the type who likes to be ahead of, or right with, the thought-leadership-visionary-type pack. Sort of what we're all waiting for, now that technology has taken over everything (and is, already, a realistic threat to humanity) (50-50 is the constant) (not just the norm). See, also, Circular Theory Perspective on Death. Contact author for total rethinking of technology. Correcting errors in current technological framework. From Circular Theory website. (shrink)

Biomedical data collections are typically compiled on the basis of assessment instruments and associated terminologies and their data structure explained by means of data dictionaries. The Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) is an attempt to give a realism-based account of the essence of information entities and how components of such entities relate to each other and to that what they are information about. Changes in the taxonomy and the definitions of the IAO, most importantly the addition of the terms 'representational artifact' (...) and 'representational unit', are proposed to make the IAO a useful tool to clarify formally the distinctions and commonalities between data collections and associated artifacts that are compiled independently from each other, yet cover the same domain. (shrink)

With the passage and implementation of the “first-to-file” provisions of the America Invents Act of 2011, the U.S. patent system must rely more than ever before on patent documents for its own ontological commitments concerning the existence of claimed kinds of useful objects and processes. This Article provides a comprehensive description of the previously unrecognized function of the patent document in incurring and securing warrants to these ontological commitments, and the respective roles of legal doctrines and practices in the patent (...) system’s ontological project. Among other contributions, the resulting metaphysical account serves to reconcile competing interpretations of the written description requirement that have emerged from the Federal Circuit’s recent jurisprudence, and to explain why the patent system is willing and able to examine, grant and enforce claims reciting theoretical entities. While this Article is entirely descriptive, it concludes by identifying promising normative and prescriptive implications of this work, including the formulation of an appropriate test for the patent-eligibility of software-implemented inventions in the post-Bilski era. (shrink)

In this article it is argued that the relation between the socalled Gutenberg galaxis of print culture and the Turing galaxis of digital media is not one of opposition and substitution, but rather one of co-evolution and integration. Or more precisely: that the Gutenberg galaxis on the one hand can be inscribed into the Turing galaxis, which on the other hand is textual in character since it is based on linear and serially processed representations manifested in a binary alphabet. In (...) continuation of this text and hypertext is described as notions of related but different sorts of complex systems and it is argued that both texts and hypertexts are best thought of as sequentially organised. The first part of the paper contains a description of the basic properties of computers and digital representation answering the question: what are the properties common to all kinds of use of computers – whether used for one purpose or another? The second part is concerned with the relationship between printed and electronic text. The third part addresses the idea of hypertext as systems which exploits modal shifts between node-mode and link-mode as a significant part of the semantics of the system. (shrink)

The ontology of marketing, particularly the question of what products and brands are, is still largely unexplored. The ontological status of brands hinges on their relationship with products. Idealists about brands see perceptual or cognitive acts of consumers grouped under the heading ‘brand awareness’ or ‘brand image’ as constitutive for the existence of brands so that, in their view, tools of the marketing mix can influence relevant mental dispositions and attitudes. Brand realists, on the other hand, reject the view of (...) brands as mere marks or names and interpret them as emergent products with properties that afford branding in the sense of Gibson’s ecological psychology. Brand strength is a function of the degree to which brands occupy defensible niches in product space. Branding as a process involves changing external or internal boundaries of products. Several arguments are proposed in favor of brand realism. The fragments of an ontology of marketing are developed in a broadly Aristotelian framework. Brand realism has significant implications for a new understanding of issues ranging from the effects of advertising to financial brand valuation, the nature of trademarks, and marketing strategy in general. It permits one to treat brand equity as a real phenomenon not dependent on associations, attitudinal states such as brand loyalty, or spurious constructs such as brand character or personality. (shrink)

I examine whether it is possible for content relevant to a computer''s behavior to be carried without an explicit internal representation. I consider three approaches. First, an example of a chess playing computer carrying emergent content is offered from Dennett. Next I examine Cummins response to this example. Cummins says Dennett''s computer executes a rule which is inexplicitly represented. Cummins describes a process wherein a computer interprets explicit rules in its program, implements them to form a chess-playing device, then this (...) device executes the rules in a way that exhibits them inexplicitly. Though this approach is intriguing, I argue that the chess-playing device cannot exist as imagined. The processes of interpretation and implementation produce explicit representations of the content claimed to be inexplicit. Finally, the Chinese Room argument is examined and shown not to save the notion of inexplicit information. This means the strategy of attributing inexplicit content to a computer which is executing a rule, fails. (shrink)

Current large language models (LLMs) demonstrate remarkable capabilities in processing and generating human-like text within a limited "context window." However, their inherent statelessness across sessions, often referred to as "amnesia," fundamentally impedes the development of deep, sustained human-AI working relationships. This paper proposes a novel, simplified, and user-controlled model for achieving long-term conversational memory in AI. Drawing inspiration from the human brain's efficient, non-verbatim recall and continuous re-mapping of memories, our approach advocates for an AI-generated, compressed, and encrypted "shorthand" summary (...) of past interactions, stored client-side. This "continuity file," transmitted by the user at the start of each new session and updated by the AI at its conclusion, would enable a seamless, evolving dialogue, fostering genuine collaboration and respect for AI as a partner rather than a mere tool. (shrink)

This article extends the Formal Metaphysics of Actualization by introducing a relation of ontological substitution of two elements in a domain. The resulting ontological structure has concrete models in computation and political succession. -/- .

Bu makale, dijital çağda ahlâkın çözülüşünü ve öznenin merkezden silinişini felsefî bir teşhisle ele alır. Ahlâk artık eyleme değil, performansa; vicdana değil, algoritmalara bağlıdır. Bu çöküşü analiz etmek üzere “Reflectum” (yansıma-özne) ve “Data-Sapiens” (veri-tabanlı insan) gibi özgün kavramlar geliştirilmiştir. Çalışma, Byung-Chul Han’ın şeffaflık eleştirisi, Baudrillard’ın hipergerçeklik teorisi ve Zuboff’un gözetim kapitalizmi yaklaşımı ile bu kavramları karşılaştırır. -/- Sam Harris’in nöroetik yaklaşımı ve Zuboff’un dijital özgürlük vizyonu eleştirel biçimde analiz edilerek, etik tartışmaların günümüzde birer empati pornografisine ve gösteri nesnesine dönüştüğü gösterilmiştir. (...) Makale sonunda, yeni bir etik önerisi olarak “Varoluşsal Ahlâk” ve “Sessizlik Etiği” sunulmakta; farkındalığı olan bireyin, artık görünürlüğe değil, geri çekilmeye sorumluluk borçlu olduğu savunulmaktadır. -/- Bu çalışma, post-hümanist bir perspektifle, ontolojik olarak parçalanmış çağımızda çöküşü taşımanın kendisini yeni bir etik form olarak tanımlar. -/- This article explores the ontological collapse of morality in the digital age through original concepts such as Reflectum and Data-Sapiens. Drawing on thinkers like Baudrillard, Han, Zuboff, and Žižek, it proposes a new ethical mode based on silence and existential responsibility, beyond normative systems. -/- . (shrink)