1 ARTIFICIAL COMPANIONS Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. The earliest use of the term ‘ontology’ (or ‘ontologia’) seems to have been in 1606 in the book Ogdoas Scholastica by the German Protestant scholastic Jacob Lorhard. For Lorhard, as for many subsequent...

(Philosophical Aspects)—Qualitative". Here, after a general introduction and historical overview, we emphasize the role of counterfactual reasoning within the quantitative frameworks of probability theory, decision theory, and game theory. 1. Counterfactuals Counterfactuals are a species of conditionals. They are propositions or sentences, expressed by or equivalent to subjunctive conditionals ...

code). All of this evidence gives suggestive empirical support to the notion that manipulating concepts -including applying them to examples -involves perception-related cognition, which clashes with the classical picture of non-experiential, a priori cognition.

Is there a distinction between questions of fact and questions of language? Many philosophers have said no. But a version of the distinction is ubiquitous, in philosophy and elsewhere, in the notion of a verbal dispute. Intuitively, a dispute between two parties is verbal when the two parties agree on the relevant facts about a domain of concern, and just disagree about language used to describ...

Fuzzy logic has a considerable success in the area of applications. However, this active growth in the implementation in applied electronic devices has not always been accompanied by a discussion about the theoretical grounds underlying those uses. This paper deals with some theoretical aspects that seem convenient to discuss for the purpose of clarifying the status of fuzzy logic, to get into ...

Complex phrases are also brought into the categorization, so that cutlery that is in the drawer and hot water are mass phrases while tree that is in the park and tall person are count phrases. I use ‘mass term’ and ‘count term’ to cover both nouns and more complex noun phrases. (As well, some theorists admit other grammatical categories into the count/mass realm: some verb phrases and some adje...

The idea of a multiverse – an ensemble of universes or universe domains – has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our universe appears to be fine-tuned for life and consciousness. Here we carefully consider how multiverses should be defined, stressing the distinction between the...

Zarathushtra, a visionary giant, must be credited as the father of modern philosophical thought and opinions. Through his poetic hymns he transmits the prophetic notions of his Divine Revelation, leaving behind words of profound psycho-social significance, which have triggered off an endless chain of philosophical discussions on the matters of the mind and human conscious senses. The modern mea...