We introduce and formalize the key elements of a recent approach [1] to function definition that covers both biological and artefact functions. The paper concentrates on the steps from informal definitions to formal expressions and aims to show how to develop an ontological module for generic function representation. This part is done assuming the YAMATO ontology as background system. The secon...

The i* framework is a renowned Requirements Engineering approach. This work is part of an ongoing effort to provide ontological interpretations for the i* core concepts. With this, we aim at proposing a more uniform use of the language, in a way that it can be more easily learned by newcomers and more efficiently transferred to industry. Our approach is based on the application of a foundationa...

This article undertakes the anthropology of an equation that constitutes the essence of an algorithm that underlies a variety of computational technologies—most notably spam filters, but also data-mining tools, diagnostic tests, predictive parsers, risk assessment techniques, and Bayesian reasoning more generally. The article foregrounds the ways ontologies are both embodied in and transformed ...

Concept development is a significant form of inquiry to expand and develop the knowledge base in caring science. The authors’ aim in this article is to illuminate the possibility of working with concept development, based on a life world perspective, especially Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of language, wherein phenomenological, semiological, and pragmatic dimensions are included. The theoretical ...

Shingo's (1988) seminal innovation in the theory of production management can be seen as a re-conceptualization of production as flow rather than transformation (Koskela 1992). These alternatives can in turn be regarded as reflections of opposing ontological positions which have dominated Western philosophy, holding respectively that reality is constituted of either temporal process, or atempor...

The scientific classification of human psychopathology raises a host of important philosophical issues ranging over all major areas of philosophical inquiry; logic, semantics, ontology, epistemology and ethics. The paper focuses on the major views of the ontological status of our psychodiagnostic constructs; idealism, nominalism and finally, neoaristotelian realism. Idealism holds that our psyc...

Given the strong interdisciplinary character of Agent-Based Social Simulation (ABSS), and the difficulties related to ambiguous terminological and methodological assumptions, there is an increasing need to make more explicit the modelling paradigm underlying each research paper or project. In this paper we propose a classification of paradigmatic models in ABSS, which characterise different ont...

Formalisms and axiomatic theories are designed to support reasoning, they are often intended with a preferred interpretation and a targeted ontology. Questions of proper interpretations and of the possible challenge of an intended interpretation arise when integrating a particular theory in pre-existing formal and ontological settings. This paper reports on an instance of this general problem o...

UML is used for at least two purposes: OO software design, and conceptual modeling. However, UML's origins in software engineering may limit its appropriateness for conceptual modeling. Evermann and Wand [5,6,7] have developed a set of formal ontological rules that constrain the construction of UML diagrams to reflect underlying ontological assumptions about the real world. This paper examines ...