Teleosemantics has an indeterminacy problem. In an earlier publication, I argued that teleosemanticists may afford to be realists about indeterminacy, pointing to the phenomenon of vagueness as a case of really‐existing semantic indeterminacy. Here, I continue that project by proposing two criteria of adequacy that a semantically indeterminate theory should meet: a criterion of theoretical adequacy and a criterion of extensional adequacy. I present reasons to think that indeterminate versions of teleosemantics can meet these criteria. I end by discussing vagueness, (...) concluding that it most likely is not the same kind of phenomenon as the semantic indeterminacy afflicting teleosemantics. (shrink)

A social conception of science -- The pursuit of forms -- Beyond the doctrine of signs -- Structures of mediation -- Signs in action -- Prospects of communication -- From a rhetorical point of view.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The teleosemantic indeterminacy problem has generated much discussion but no consensus. One possible solution is to accept indeterminacy as a real feature of some representations. I call this view “indeterminacy realism.” In this paper, I argue that indeterminacy realism should be treated as a serious option. By drawing an analogy with vagueness, I try to show that accepting the reality of indeterminacy would not be catastrophic for teleosemantics. I further argue that there are positive reasons to endorse indeterminacy realism. I (...) end the paper by arguing that indeterminacy realism need not generalize viciously to the case of propositional attitudes. (shrink)

Consider the opening sentence of Tolkien’s The Hobbit: In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. By writing this sentence, Tolkien is making a fictional statement. There are two influential views of the nature of such statements. On the pretense view, fictional discourse amounts to pretend assertions. Since the author is not really asserting, but merely pretending, a statement such as Tolkien’s is devoid of illocutionary force altogether. By contrast, on the alternative make-believe view, fictional discourse prescribes that (...) the reader make-believe the content of the statement. In this paper, we argue that neither of these views is satisfactory. They both fail to distinguish the linguistic act of creating the fiction, for instance Tolkien writing the sentence above, from the linguistic act of reciting it, such as reading The Hobbit out loud for your children. As an alternative to these views, we propose that the essential feature of the author’s speech act is its productive character, that it makes some state of affairs obtain in the fiction. Tolkien’s statement, we argue, has the illocutionary force of a declaration. (shrink)

Patients with advanced cancer often experience a reduced ability to eat, which may result in tensions between patients and family members. Often with advanced cancer diagnoses, patients’ appetites decline markedly, while family members focus on nutritional intake with the hope that this will postpone death. This hope might cause tensions between the patient and family; the family may expect healthcare professionals to encourage the patient to eat more, whereas the patient needs to be supported in their reduced ability to eat. (...) When these tensions arise, healthcare professionals can experience challenges in providing good palliative care. To address these challenges in the provision of palliative care, healthcare professionals may adopt a care ethics approach. Similar to palliative care’s focus on patient and family members’ relationships, a care ethics approach emphasizes interdependency and social relationships. Using Joan Tronto’s care ethics approach, we conducted a normative analysis of what caring for patients with reduced ability to eat and their family members should look like. Tronto’s approach includes five phases of care: caring about, taking care of, care giving, care-receiving, and caring with. Based on our analysis and empirical studies on patients with advanced cancer and family members, concerns with their lack of appetite, we assert that healthcare professionals must be mindful of the potential of tensions related to appetite and be adept in dealing with these tensions. We urge that education is needed for healthcare professionals regarding the psychosocial impact of reduced ability to eat on both patients and family members and interprofessional collaboration is of the essence. (shrink)

Merrie Bergmann Philosophical Review 100 :112-115Taking into account pragmatic considerations and recent linguistic and psychological studies, the author forges a new understanding of the relation between metaphoric and literal meaning. The argument is illustrated with analysis of metaphors from literature, philosophy, science, and everyday language.

Teleosemantics has an indeterminacy problem. In an earlier publication, I argued that teleosemanticists may afford to be realists about indeterminacy, pointing to the phenomenon of vagueness as a case of really-existing semantic indeterminacy. Here, I continue that project by proposing two criteria of adequacy that a semantically indeterminate theory should meet: a criterion of theoretical adequacy and a criterion of extensional adequacy. I present reasons to think that indeterminate versions of teleosemantics can meet these criteria. I end by discussing vagueness, (...) concluding that it most likely is not the same kind of phenomenon as the semantic indeterminacy afflicting teleosemantics. (shrink)

Are proper functions normative? In this paper, I try to answer this question. Acknowledging that the notion of normativity is too ill-defined to afford a categorical yes/no answer, I proceed by attempting to identify arguments for an affirmative answer and trying to articulate what conception of normativity they rely on: what "normativity" has to be, in order for these arguments to work. I identify three arguments for the conclusion that proper functions are *bearer* normative, i.e., normative for the things that (...) have the functions in question. I then propose that two of the arguments may be generalized to the *agentive* case, in defense of the conclusion that proper functions are also, at least in some cases, normative for agents. (shrink)

According to Ruth Millikan, some representations are hybrid: they have both descriptive and directive content, both mind-to-world and world-to-mind direction of fit. Millikan calls them “pushmi-pullyu representations,” and they play an important role in her overall framework. Marc Artiga, however, has argued that the pushmi-pullyu doctrine puts Millikan’s entire edifice at risk. It has the unfortunate implication that all representations are hybrid. I call this would-be implication “universal hybridity.” In this paper, I scrutinize Artiga’s argument, paying special heed to Millikan’s (...) recent response. I conclude that Millikan fails to defuse the objection. I then examine how the Millikanian should respond, given that Artiga is right. Is universal hybridity so bad, or can we learn to live with it? My tentative answer is that no, it’s not so bad, and yes, we can learn to live with it. (shrink)

The thinkers presented in these lectures by Bergman represent a radical departure from objectivism and subjectivism.

(2013). Sickle Cell Disease and the “Difficult Patient” Conundrum. The American Journal of Bioethics: Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 3-10. doi: 10.1080/15265161.2013.767954.

This article describes, analyzes, and advocates for management of clinical healthcare conflict by a process commonly referred to as bioethics mediation. Section I provides a brief introduction to classical mediation outside the realm of clinical healthcare. Section II highlights certain distinguishing characteristics of bioethics mediation. Section III chronicles the history of bioethics mediation and references a number of seminal writings on the subject. Finally, Section IV analyzes barriers that have, thus far, limited the widespread implementation of bioethics mediation.

1 This article examines Peirce's semiotic philosophy and its development in the light of his characterisations of "representationism" and "presentationism". In his definitions of these positions, Peirce overtly pits the representationists, who treat percepts as representatives, against the presentationists, according to whom percepts do not stand for hidden realities. The article shows that Peirce's early writings—in particular the essay "On the Doctrine of Immediate Perception" and certain key texts from the period 1868–9—advocate an inferentialist approach clearly associated with representationism. However, (...) although Peirce continues to deny the cognitive import of first impressions throughout his philosophical career, the new view of perception that emerges in the early 1900s indicates a significant move in the direction of a presentationist point of view, a development partly corresponding to changes in his theory of categories. The strongest evidence for this reading is found in Peirce's contention that the percept is not a sign. The discussion concludes with considerations of possible objections and alternatives to the proposed interpretation in addition to some reflections on the consequences and relevance of Peirce's turn toward presentationism. (shrink)

Nel Noddings is arguably one of the premier philosophers of moral education in the English‐speaking world today. Although she is outside the mainstream theory, research, and practice traditions of cognitive‐developmentalism (the Kohlberg legacy) and of character education (which is in public ascendancy), her body of work is unrivalled for originality of insight, comprehensiveness and coherence. Whilst Carol Gilligan's In a different voice (1982) introduced the ethic of caring into academic and public discourse, it is Noddings ‘who has done most to (...) outline a specific feminist position on moral education’ (McClellan, 1999, p. 104), and whose influence extends to educational practice. This essay explicates Noddings's vision in sufficient depth to make the foregoing claims credible. Thematic focus is given to her attention to the ethical self or ethical ideal. The paper also examines Noddings's perspective on character education and the need to incorporate a morality of evil into any serious educational philosophy or practice. It is less a critical appraisal of that vision and perspective than an invitation to others to more fully engage with Noddings's writings.1. (shrink)

This chapter aims to be an introduction to the philosophy of language and presents some major topics belonging to this field: the difference between use and mention, Frege’s notions of Sinn (sense) and Bedeutung (reference), Mannoury’s significs, speech acts, definite descriptions, Berry’s and Grelling’s paradox, the theory of direct reference, Kant’s notions of analytic versus synthetic, logicism, logical positivism, presuppositions, Wittgenstein on meaning, syntax - semantics - pragmatics, conversational implicature, conditionals, Leibniz, de dicto - de re distinction, and grammars. It (...) is fair to say that the Dutch mathematician Gerrit Mannoury (1867 - 1956) invented the notion of speech act long before Austin, Searle and others used this notion. In the subsection on Logicism we explain that - contrary to what many philosophers of science claim even nowadays - Kant was right in asserting that mathematical statements are not analytic, but synthetic. (shrink)

This article examines the contention that the central concepts of C. S. Peirce’s semeiotic are inherently communicational. It is argued that the Peircean approach avoids the pitfalls of objectivism and constructivism, rendering the sign-user neither a passive recipient nor an omnipotent creator of meaning. Consequently, semeiotic may serve as a useful general framework for studies of learning processes.

Teleosemantics is the view that mental content depends on etiological function. Moral adaptationism is the view that human morality is an evolved adaptation. Jointly, these two views offer new venues for naturalist metaethics. Several authors have seen, in the conjunction of these views, the promise of assigning naturalistically respectable descriptive content to moral judgments. One such author is Neil Sinclair, who has offered a blueprint for how to conduct teleosemantic metaethics with the help of moral adaptationism. In this paper, I (...) argue that the prospects for assigning descriptive content to moral judgments on the basis of teleosemantics are bad. I develop my argument in dialogue with Sinclair’s paper and argue that, although Sinclair’s account of the evolution of morality is plausible, the teleosemantic account of the descriptive content of moral judgments which he bases thereon suffers from crucial shortcomings. I argue further that, given some minimal plausible assumptions about the evolution of morality made by Sinclair, no assignment of descriptive content is possible. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, the combination of moral adaptationism and teleosemantics suggests that moral judgments lack descriptive content. (shrink)

This book introduces American readers to a philosophical and spiritual exemplar of dialogue. The author presents a way of thinking about ourselves, the world, and our relationship to God that is neither dualistic nor monistic. The thinkers presented in this book focus on a radical departure from objectivism and subjectivism. Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Herman Cohen, Ferdinand Ebner, Eugen Rosenstock, Franz Rosenzweig, and Martin Buber were all trying to find a way to allow a transaction between self, the world, and God without (...) foregoing either individuality or the experience of merging. (shrink)

Bioethics mediators manage a wide range of clinical conflict emanating from diverse sources. Parties to clinical conflict are often not fully aware of, nor willing to express, the true nature and scope of their conflict. As such, a significant task of the bioethics mediator is to help define that conflict. The ability to assess and apply the tools necessary for an effective mediation process can be facilitated by each mediator’s creation of a personal compendium of sources that generate clinical conflict, (...) to provide an orientation for the successful management of complex dilemmatic cases. (shrink)

The prior issue of Krisis (42:1) published Critical Naturalism: A Manifesto, with the aim to instigate a debate of the issues raised in this manifesto – the necessary re-thinking of the role (and the concept) of nature in critical theory in relation to questions of ecology, health, and inequality. Since Krisis considers itself a place for philosophical debates that take contemporary struggles as starting point, it issued an open call and solicited responses to the manifesto. This is one of the (...) sixteen selected responses, which augment, specify, or question the assumptions and arguments of the manifesto. (shrink)

A collection of poems by David Bergman that deal with relationships, art, religion, myth, and family.

This thesis offers a teleosemantic account of moral discourse and judgment. It develops a number of views about the function and content of moral judgments and the nature of moral discourse based on Ruth Millikan’s theory of intentional content and the functions of intentional attitudes. Non-cognitivists in meta-ethics have argued that moral judgments are more akin to desires and other motivational attitudes than to descriptive beliefs. I argue that teleosemantics allows us to assign descriptive content to motivational attitudes and hence (...) that even if the non-cognitivist is correct, moral judgments can be said to describe the world. Moreover, given further teleosemantic assumptions, this conclusion has consequences that are both surprising and interesting. First of all, while moral judgments have descriptive content, moral statements do not. The purpose of moral discourse is not to convey beliefs that are true simpliciter, but to convey attitudes that are descriptively correct when tokened by the addressee. Consequently, moral discourse requires speakers to adapt to hearers in order to secure their assent and bring them into "community of judgment" with themselves. Secondly, the descriptive content of a motivational attitude is partly a matter of the subject’s own preferences and circumstances. In particular, the descriptive correctness of a moral judgment is partly a function of the degree to which it is shared with others. Since a moral judgment also motivates the subject to spread it, it has the ability to, in a certain sense, make itself true. If regular descriptive beliefs are supposed to adapt the subject to the world, a moral judgment also has the capacity to adapt the world to the subject. (shrink)

According to internalism about rationality, the ir/rationality of a subject depends only on how things appear from her subjective perspective. According to culpabilism, rationality is a normative standard such that violations of rationality are (at least sometimes) blameworthy. According to a classical line of reasoning, culpabilism entails internalism. I argue that, to the contrary, culpabilism entails that internalism is false. The internalist cannot accommodate the possibility of culpable irrationality.

In the seminal essay “Pragmatism”, Peirce discusses the end of interpretation in terms of the ultimate logical interpretant, which is varyingly characterized as habit or habit-change. While it is broadly accepted that his conception of pragmatic meaning rests on habit, the precise role of habit-change in his account of conceptual purport has not been examined in detail. In this chapter, I address this issue, which turns out to be closely linked to the pivotal question of the purpose of Peircean pragmatism (...) itself. My primary aim is to demonstrate that Peirce’s pragmatic account of the interpretant surpasses that of mere explication of habitual meaning, something that can be teased out from an embryonic account of three logical interpretants, sketched in “Pragmatism” and supported by certain suggestive references to first, second, and third pragmatistic interpretation in other writings. This investigation not only exposes the hitherto overlooked fact that Peirce recognizes a stage of conceptual clarification beyond that of the ultimate logical interpretant; it also paves the way for a reassessment of the significance of the pragmatist approach within a broader developmental-normative framework aimed at the improvements of our habits. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 220 Seiten: 217-219.

This paper is written from a dual perspective — the author being both a policy researcher at the World Future Council and a professional musician. Building upon Arthur Schopenhauer’s view of music as a universal language, it argues that music-making is inherently a practice of relationship, capable of fostering connection across difference. Utilising Christopher Small’s concept of musicking as a verb, the paper reflects on music’s effects on social interaction, empathy, belonging, and community — through an interdisciplinary lens spanning embodied (...) musical experience, contemporary Indigenous worldview, aesthetic and sociological frameworks, and empirical insights from neuroscience and psychology. Special focus is given to the teachings of the Moriori people of Aotearoa New Zealand — who practise peace as deep listening and view artists as intrinsic to this process, as illuminators of truth and agents of community healing. While acknowledging ever-present contextual caveats of power and agency, the paper calls for greater recognition of the arts — and their powerful capacity to foster safe, non-violent communities within education and community-building policy. (shrink)

_This article examines ethical decision-making in military contexts from a longitudinal perspective, emphasising how cumulative risk factors, protective factors, and key decision points interact over time to shape outcomes. Drawing on normative ethical theories, classical social psychology, military doctrine, and historical case studies, the discussion moves beyond traditional cross-sectional approaches to consider the temporal and sequential nature of decisions. Particular attention is given to selection, training, organisational culture, and time in combat as determinants of ethical resilience or risk factors for (...) ‘moral dead ends’. The My Lai massacre is used as an illustrative case, visualised through a timeline that highlights the interaction of multiple contributory factors. The analysis suggests that ethical decision-making is rarely the result of isolated choices; rather, it emerges from a chain of preceding decisions and contextual influences. The study concludes by arguing that military ethics education should incorporate longitudinal analysis to better prepare leaders for the cumulative pressures of operational environments._ _Keywords: _Military ethics, Moral dead ends, Professional military education, Ethical resilience, Virtue ethics. (shrink)

In the United States, the traditional approach to resolving clinical ethics dilemmas in a hospital setting is the “clinical ethics consultation.” The most common structure for this kind of work is the hospital ethics committee. The traditional process employed in consults involves summoning the ethics committee, or a subset of it, to explore ethical issues, discuss the merits and drawbacks of the various positions being taken (or that might be taken) and, ultimately, offering recommendations to the clinical providers who requested (...) the consult. The authors perceive many ethical problems with this approach to the resolution of a clinical ethics conflict. In this essay, the authors highlight one – that clinical ethics consultation, in its traditional form, fails to recognize the value-pluralism that exists in even the most homogeneous communities. After examining that problem in detail, the authors argue for an innovative approach to clinical ethics referred to as “clinical ethics mediation” or “bioethics mediation.”. (shrink)

This essay describes an undergraduate course, “Christian Ethics of War and Peace,” taught for more than two decades at a Catholic university. I first situate the course within the debate between just war philosophers Michael Walzer and Jeff McMahan on the moral equivalency of soldiers and the right of conscientious objection to unjust war. The development of SCO (selective conscientious objection) in the Catholic tradition is traced from Augustine to John Paul II. The Sic et Non of Abelard is invoked (...) as a precedent for the course pedagogy, in which students are asked to develop and articulate their own personal conscience in light of the long-standing tension between arguments for pacifism and for just war. Borrowing from contemporary cognitive psychology, this task is described as one of “reflective judgment” regarding an “ill-structured problem.” The major writing assignment is described and one student’s testimony on its challenge is offered. (shrink)

The two books on which this study is based represent the two branches of linguistic philosophy. One an anthology, the other an original work, they differ also in kind. In Logic and Language A.G.N. Flew has collected and ably prefaced nine essays by British analysts, the earliest of which, Ryle's "Systematically Misleading Expressions," appeared exactly twenty years ago. Nelson Goodman's The Structure of Appearance is a new reconstruction; not to recognize its vigor and impressiveness would be most ungracious even if (...) one rejects as radically as I do this particular Aufbau. Naturally, I shall say more about Goodman's book than about the essays. Yet I shall begin with the latter and say about Ryle's as much as about all the rest together. To justify this strategy I must put my own cards on the table, indicating where I stand on this controversy or near controversy between formalists and antiformalists. To my mind, then, it is gray against gray, not white against black. Both sides agree, and I agree with them, that there is no experience or, if you please, no experiment that decides what is presumably at issue between phenomenalists and realists. In this important sense, both sides agree, and I agree with them, that all philosophical problems are verbal. But in another equally important sense they are not verbal. This sense both formalists and antiformalists have lost or stand in danger of losing if what they do is no better than what they say they do. Now for my reasons for singling out and starting off with the essay that marks Ryle's sober-eyed and reluctant conversion to the linguistic philosophy. It so happens that he there states very aptly a body of doctrine on which both sides could still agree and from which they in fact branched off at about the time the paper was first published. Also, the doubts and dissatisfactions to which he there confessed contain the starting points of the peculiar dialectics by which both formalists and antiformalists may be driven to extremes. Even better than that, I believe I can make use of these hesitancies to lend color to my own argument for a middle position which, as one is tempted to say on such occasions, does justice to both sides. That Ryle himself has in the meantime become a hero of the antiformalists is merely a piquant detail and does not deter me. (shrink)

While early modern Spain may seem a world away, it is an extremely rich and relevant context for gaining a better understanding of the Rhetoric of Health, specifically the power of metaphor, in the related spheres of policy-making and public debate. It was a time and place in which the urban populace’s physical well-being depended upon the fortunes of theatrical performances due to a system of alms for hospitals driven by ticket receipts. Anti-theatricalists argued that the immoral nature of theatrical (...) performances made them spiritually and medically detrimental to society. Pro-theatricalists argued that plays were always a public good on balance because they raised much-needed funds for hospitals. Instead of producing a conflict between morality and public health, each side reinforced their connection until the two topics became nearly inseparable in the sphere of public debate. While pro-theatricalists mainly stayed with their arguments about funding hospitals, anti-theatricalists developed a new strategy of literalising the metaphor of theatre as a “plague of the republic” and arguing that immoral entertainment brought literal disease to the populace as a punishment from God. This exemplifies Stephen Pender’s observation of how, in an early modern medical context, “Rhetoric as a way of perceiving probabilities and adjusting one’s argument to the audience and circumstance offers a model of ethical action and interaction”. This article is organised chronologically to track specific adjustments to a specific public-health debate that rely upon moral metaphors of medicine. Each side wrangled over these metaphors in an effort to break a deadlock in a public-health policy debate with entertainment, finance, and morality at its centre. By the end of the seventeenth century, anti-theatricalists finally found their best rhetorical weapon in the literalisation of the “plague of the republic” metaphor, but it only offered a short-term solution to banning theatre contingent upon the ebb and flow of epidemics. Simultaneously, the finance structure of funding hospitals began to erase the role of hospitals from the longstanding debate about the morality of public theatre. The case of early modern Spain provides valuable lessons about the power of metaphor in the Rhetoric of Healthcare that are still applicable today. (shrink)

We present and discuss a variety of Boolean algebras with operators that is closely related to the variety generated by all complex algebras of semilattices. We consider the problem of finding a generating set for the variety, representation questions, and axiomatizability. Several interesting subvarieties are presented. We contrast our results with those obtained for a number of other varieties generated by complex algebras of groupoids.

The article explains why Soviet dissidents and the reformers of the Gorbachev era chose to characterize the Soviet system as totalitarian. The dissidents and the reformers strongly disagreed among themselves about the origins of Soviet totalitarianism. But both groups stressed the effects of totalitarianism on the individual personality; in doing so, they revealed themselves to be the heirs of the tsarist intelligentsia. Although the concept of totalitarianism probably obscures more than it clarifies when it is applied to regimes like the (...) Nazi and the Soviet, the decision of the dissidents and the reformers to use the term enabled them to clarify their own values and the reasons they felt compelled to criticize the Soviet Union and to call for its radical reform. (shrink)

Of recent attempts to appropriate pragmatism for communication studies, Robert Craig’s inclusion of a pragmatist “tradition” in his influential “metamodel” of communication theories constitutes one of the most prominent proposals to date. In this model, pragmatism is principally understood by contrast to other alternatives, such as phenomenology, semiotics, and rhetoric. As a communication-theoretical tradition in Craig’s sense, the pragmatist approach is expected to provide distinctive articulations of the nature of communication and communication problems, expressed in a particular vocabulary. Useful as (...) such a partitioning may be for analytical and dialogical purposes, the delimitation of pragmatism that emerges from Craig’s efforts is in many respects problematic. After a summary of the background assumptions and disciplinary aims of Craig’s project, this article identifies three serious weaknesses in his account: its neglect of relevant intra-tradition distinctions and debates, its straightforward association of pragmatism with a strongly constitutive approach to communication, and its tendency to disconnect pragmatism from other communication-theoretical positions in ways that are not conducive to his objectives. This discussion highlights the contrast between Craig’s constructionist instrumentalism and the habit-realism of the classical pragmatisms of Peirce and Dewey. (shrink)

Hierarchies abound to help us organize our world. A hierarchy places items into a general order, where more ‘general’ is also more ‘abstract’. The etymology of hierarchy is grounded in notions of religious and social rank. This article, after a historical review, focuses on knowledge systems, an interloper of the term hierarchy since at least the 1800s. Hierarchies in knowledge systems include taxonomies, classification systems, or thesauri in information science, and systems for representing information and knowledge to computers, notably ontologies (...) and knowledge representation languages. Hierarchies are the logical underpinning of inference and reasoning in these systems, as well as the scaffolding for classification and inheritance. Hierarchies in knowledge systems express subsumption relations that have flexible variants, which we can represent algorithmically, and thus computationally. This article dissects that variability, leading to a proposed typology of hierarchies useful to knowledge systems. The article argues through a perspective informed by Charles Peirce that natural hierarchies are real, can be logically determined, and are the appropriate basis for knowledge systems. Description logics and semantic language standards reflect this perspective, importantly through their open-world logic and vocabularies for generalized subsumption hierarchies. Recent research suggests possible mechanisms for the emergence of natural hierarchies. (shrink)