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105HIV exceptionalism, CD4+ cell testing, and conscientious subversionJournal of Medical Ethics 31 (6): 322-326. 2005.In recent years, many states in the United States have passed legislation requiring laboratories to report the names of patients with low CD4 cell counts to their state Departments of Health. This name reporting is an integral part of the growing number of “HIV Reporting and Partner Notification Laws” which have emerged in response to recently revised guidelines suggested by the National Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Name reporting for patients with low CD4 cell counts allows for a more acc…Read more
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82Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Formal Causation (edited book)Routledge. 2021.Introducing formal causation / Ludger Jansen and Petter Sandstad -- Form, intention, information : from scholastic logic to artificial intelligence / Gyula Klima -- Formal causation : accidental and substantial / David S. Oderberg -- A non-hylomorphic account of formal causation / Petter Sandstad and Ludger Jansen -- Formal causes for powers theorists / Giacomo Giannini and Stephen Mumford -- Away with dispositional essences in trope theory / Jani Hakkarainen and Markku Keinänen -- Functional po…Read more
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69Calculus CL as a Formal SystemIn Ahti Veikko Pietarinen, Peter Chapman, Leonie Bosveld-de Smet, Valeria Giardino, James Corter & Sven Linker (eds.), Diagrammatic Representation and Inference. Diagrams 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 12169. 2020., . pp. 445-460. 2020.In recent years CL diagrams inspired by Lange’s Cubus Logicus have been used in various contexts of diagrammatic reasoning. However, whether CL diagrams can also be used as a formal system seemed questionable. We present a CL diagram as a formal system, which is a fragment of propositional logic. Syntax and semantics are presented separately and a variant of bitstring semantics is applied to prove soundness and completeness of the system.
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69Categories: The top-level ontologyIn Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds.), Applied Ontology: An Introduction, Ontos. pp. 173--196. 2008.
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68Proving God without Dualism: Improving the Swinburne-Moreland Argument from ConsciousnessMetaphysica 22 (1): 75-87. 2021.With substance dualism and the existence of God, Swinburne (2004, The Existence of God, Oxford University Press, Oxford) and Moreland (2010, Consciousness and the Existence of God, Routledge, New York) have argued for a very powerful explanatory mechanism that can readily explain several philosophical problems related to consciousness. However, their positions come with presuppositions and ontological commitments which many are not prepared to share. The aim of this paper is to improve on the Sw…Read more
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63A Plural Subject Approach to the Responsibilities of Groups and InstitutionsMidwest Studies in Philosophy 38 (1): 91-102. 2014.Margaret Gilbert has defended the claim that her plural subject theory can give a reasonable account of retrospective (or backward-looking) collective responsibility. On one occasion, publishing in this periodical, she writes that she deliberately left out the discussion of prospective (or forward-looking) collective responsibility, or the “responsibilities” of a collective. In the present paper, I want to show that plural subject theory, in fact, also allows accounting for prospective responsi…Read more
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51Peter van Inwagen: Materialism, Free Will and God (edited book)Springer. 2018.This book discusses the philosophy of influential contemporary philosopher Peter van Inwagen. Looking at perennial philosophical problems from a modern point of view, Peter van Inwagen’s philosophy masterfully combines positions that have been considered irreconcilable: incompatibilism concerning free will, materialism, organicism, theism and realism concerning fictional entities. As readers will discover, his arguments are witty, surprising and deep. The book includes Peter van Inwagen’s Münste…Read more
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51Philosophy of Science: Between the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This broad and insightful book presents current scholarship in important subfields of philosophy of science and addresses an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary readership. It groups carefully selected contributions into the four fields of I) philosophy of physics, II) philosophy of life sciences, III) philosophy of social sciences and values in science, and IV) philosophy of mathematics and formal modeling. Readers will discover research papers by Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Keizo Matsubara, Kian…Read more
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51Functions and Kinds of Art Works and Other ArtifactsGrazer Philosophische Studien 96 (1): 1-18. 2019.Currently, there is not yet a full-fledged philosophical sub-discipline devoted to artifacts. In order to establish such a general philosophical discourse on artifacts, two topics are of special importance: artifact functionality and artifact categorization. Both are central to the question of what artifacts are in general and in particular. This introduction first presents the current state of the art in the debates on functions, both in general and in the domain of artifacts in particular. It …Read more
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48Between Beneficence and Justice: The Ethics of Stewardship in MedicineJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (1): 50-63. 2013.In an era of rapidly rising health care costs, physicians and policymakers are searching for new and effective ways to contain health care spending without sacrificing the quality of services provided. These proposals are increasingly articulated in terms of an ethical duty of stewardship. The duty of stewardship in medicine, however, is not at present well understood, and it is frequently conflated with other duties. This article presents a critical analysis of the notion of stewardship, which …Read more
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48Potentialität als Grund von ModalitätDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 65 (3): 589-594. 2017.Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 65 Heft: 3 Seiten: 589-594.
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47Being a Community and Being in Community On Hans Bernhard Schmid’s study of we-intentionality (review)Metaphysica 8 (1): 101-109. 2007.
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40Disambiguating Clinical Intentions: The Ethics of Palliative SedationJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 35 (1): 19-31. 2010.It is often claimed that the intentions of physicians are multiple, ambiguous, and uncertain—at least with respect to end-of-life care. This claim provides support for the conclusion that the principle of double effect is of little or no value as a guide to end-of-life pain management. This paper critically discusses this claim. It argues that proponents of the claim fail to distinguish two different senses of “intention,” and that, as a result, they are led to exaggerate the extent to which cli…Read more
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36Teaching Good Biomedical Ontology DesignIn Ronald Cornet & Robert Stevens (eds.), International Conference for Biomedical Ontologies (ICBO 2012), KR-MED Series, Graz, Austria July 21-25, 2012, . 2012.Background: In order to improve ontology quality, tool- and language-related tutorials are not sufficient. Care must be taken to provide optimized curricula for teaching the representational language in the context of a semantically rich upper level ontology. The constraints provided by rigid top and upper level models assure that the ontologies built are not only logically consistent but also adequately represent the domain of discourse and align to explicitly outlined ontological principles. …Read more
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36Nikos Psarros, Katinka Schulte Ostermann (eds.), Facets of sociality (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 12 (3): 323-324. 2009.
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35Grains, Components and Mixtures in Biomedical OntologiesJournal of Biomedical Semantics 2 (4). 2011.BACKGROUND In biomedical ontologies, mereological relations have always been subject to special interest due to their high relevance in structural descriptions of anatomical entities, cells, and biomolecules. This paper investigates two important subrelations of has_proper_part, viz. the relation has_grain, which relates a collective entity to its multiply occurring uniform parts (e.g., water molecules in a portion of water), and the relation has_component, which relates a compound to its consti…Read more
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34Representing DispositionsJournal of Biomedical Semantics 2 (4). 2011.Dispositions and tendencies feature significantly in the biomedical domain and therefore in representations of knowledge of that domain. They are not only important for specific applications like an infectious disease ontology, but also as part of a general strategy for modelling knowledge about molecular interactions. But the task of representing dispositions in some formal ontological systems is fraught with several problems, which are partly due to the fact that Description Logics can only de…Read more
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33Gruppen und Institutionen. Eine Ontologie des SozialenSpringer. 2016.Was ist das Sein des Sozialen? Was konstituiert die Existenz von Gruppen und Institutionen, ihre Identität und Dauer in der Zeit? Dieses Buch resümiert den aktuellen Diskussionsstand der Sozialontologie und argumentiert für eine Ontologie des Sozialen, die sowohl formellen als auch informellen Institutionen gerecht wird. Es schlägt dafür eine Synthese aus Positionen vor, die in der gegenwärtigen Diskussion mit den Namen von John Searle und Margaret Gilbert verbunden sind.
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31Constructed RealityIn Katharina Neges, Josef Mitterer, Sebastian Kletzl & Christian Kanzian (eds.), Realism - Relativism - Constructivism: Proceedings of the 38th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, De Gruyter. pp. 255-268. 2017.A popular argument goes thus: This is a construction, hence it is not real. Adding an appropriate adjective (social, mental, human, …) in front of “construction” or cognate terms like “(legal) fiction” yields a whole family of related arguments, all of which, or so I will argue, are fallacious. Contrary to popular opinion, these arguments fail both on the epistemic and the ontic sense of construction. Ontic constructions exist at least at one point in time, while epistemic constructions may well…Read more
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29What is a Formal Ontology? Some Meta-Ontological RemarksIn Klaus Mainzer (ed.), ECAP10. VIII European Conference on Computing and Philosophy, Hut. pp. 256-260. 2010.
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29Warum sich Artefakte ihrer Marginalisierung widersetzenDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 61 (2): 267-282. 2013.It is widespread practice to define artefacts as entities that owe their existence to plan-based acts of production that aim at a certain use of the produced thing. According to this definition, artefacts are essentially intention-dependent. For this reason, artefacts are threatened by marginalisation within standard naturalised ontologies. I discuss three families of marginalisation strategies: elimination, reduction and supervenience. I argue that all of these strategies fail, as they lead to …Read more
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27Philosophy 101 in the alexandrian school, fifth century ad - (m.) chase (trans.) Ammonius: Interpretation of Porphyry's introduction to Aristotle's five terms. Pp. VIII + 200. London and new York: Bloomsbury academic, 2020. Cased, £85. Isbn: 978-1-350-08922-8 (review)The Classical Review 70 (2): 360-362. 2020.
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26[Friedemann Buddensiek, Die Theorie des Glücks in Aristoteles’ Eudemischer Ethik] (review)Bryn Mawr Classical Review (03.19). 2002.
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25Dispositions, Laws, and Categories A Critical Study of E. J. Lowe’s The Four-Category OntologyMetaphysica 8 (2): 211-220. 2007.After a short sketch of Lowe's account of his four basic categories, I discuss his theory of formal ontological relations and how Lowe wants to account for dispositional predications. I argue that on the ontic level Lowe is a pan-categoricalist, while he is a language dualist and an exemplification dualist with regard to the dispositional/categorical distinction. I argue that Lowe does not present an adequate account of disposition. From an Aristotelian point of view, Lowe conflates dispositiona…Read more
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25Functions, Malfunctioning, and Negative CausationIn Antonio Piccolomini D’Aragona, Martin Carrier, Roger Deulofeu, Axel Gelfert, Jens Harbecke, Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Lara Huber, Peter Hucklenbroich, Ludger Jansen, Elizaveta Kostrova, Keizo Matsubara, Anne Sophie Meincke, Andrea Reichenberger, Kian Salimkhani & Javier Suárez (eds.), Philosophy of Science: Between the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities, Springer Verlag. pp. 117-135. 2018.Functional explanations apply not only in cases of normal functioning, but also in the case of malfunctioning. According to a straightforward analysis, a bearer of the function to F is malfunctioning if and only if it does not F although it should do so. This makes malfunctions and malfunctionings analogous to negative causation and thus peculiarly problematic, because they seem to involve absent dispositions and absent processes. This analysis seems also to require that the function to F cannot…Read more
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23Gern helf’ ich dem Freunde? Pflichten in informellen SozialbeziehungenIn Karl Mertens & Jörn Müller (eds.), Die Dimension des Sozialen: Neue Philosophische Zugänge Zu Fühlen, Wollen Und Handeln, De Gruyter. pp. 333-350. 2014.
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23Tun und Können erläutert und diskutiert den Gründungstext der Modalontologie: das neunte Buch der Metaphysik des Aristoteles. Aristoteles' Thesen und Argumente werden zum ersten Mal in Gänze mit formalen analytischen Mitteln rekonstruiert und auf ihre Kohärenz und Gültigkeit geprüft. Erstmals verwendet der Autor dazu eine adverbiale Analyse von Ausdrücken des Könnens und des Vermögens als Prädikatmodifikatoren. Das Buch zeigt, dass Aristoteles' Theorie der Vermögen nicht nur eine konsistente, so…Read more
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22Proposed actions are no actions: Re-modelling an ontology design pattern with a realist top-level ontologyJournal of Biomedical Semantics 3 (2). 2012.Background Ontology Design Patterns (ODPs) are representational artifacts devised to offer solutions for recurring ontology design problems. They promise to enhance the ontology building process in terms of flexibility, re-usability and expansion, and to make the result of ontology engineering more predictable. In this paper, we analyze ODP repositories and investigate their relation with upper-level ontologies. In particular, we compare the BioTop upper ontology to the Action ODP from the NeOn …Read more
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21Formal ontologies in biomedical knowledge representationIn M.-C. Jaulent, C. U. Lehmann & B. Séroussi (eds.), Yearbook of Medical Informatics 8, . pp. 132-146. 2013.Objectives: Medical decision support and other intelligent applications in the life sciences depend on increasing amounts of digital information. Knowledge bases as well as formal ontologies are being used to organize biomedical knowledge and data. However, these two kinds of artefacts are not always clearly distinguished. Whereas the popular RDF(S) standard provides an intuitive triple-based representation, it is semantically weak. Description logics based ontology languages like OWL-DL carry a…Read more
Ludger Jansen
PTH Brixen College
Universität Rostock
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PTH Brixen CollegeProfessor
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