Ludger Jansen

It is an influential position in engineering design theory that one of the most important steps in conceptual design is the search for working principles. There is, however, no clear statement in the engineering literature about what a working principle is and how knowledge about working principles can be accounted for ontologically. We propose that dispositions are at the core of working principles, and thus that knowledge about working principles is knowledge about dispositions, their material bearers, and their triggers. Building on the engineering design framework developed by Pahl and Beitz, we suggest ontology design patterns for representing knowledge about working principles in a BFO-conformant manner. To represent trigger classes, we introduce the relation has trigger and its inverse trigger of, and discuss their limitations.

Engineering and other areas from industry are increasingly of interest from the perspective of applied ontology. While several ontological approaches have been proposed to annotate the engineering design process, alignment with the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and the principles of the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry remains largely absent. This paper addresses this gap by proposing an ontological representation of the product development process in engineering, with a particular focus on the conceptual design phase, based on Pahl and Beitz's wellknown engineering design approach. Based on the Information Artifact Ontology (IAO) and the Ontology of Biomedical Investigations (OBI), we develop a representation that accounts for the information content entities and processes central to engineering design. The paper reviews existing design ontologies, outlines our development methodology, and presents a BFO-compliant ontological representation of the conceptual design process. The proposed approach supports integration with domain ontologies that represent technical artifacts.

Over the past few years, CL diagrams have gained popularity in diagrammatic reasoning, drawing inspiration from Lange’s Cubus Logicus. The intuitive understanding of CL diagrams is based on simple structures that are straightforward both to draw and to comprehend. This structure supports embedding of information and inferencing. Furthermore, these diagrams are more than just heuristic tools; CL diagrams can actually be extended to full blown formal systems. The present paper shows that a formal system for CL diagrams can have an expressivity similar to standard Boolean algebra of propositions or propositional logic without losing their intuitive properties. It is also possible to combine this interpretation of CL with elements from the class calculus. The syntax and semantics are presented separately, and the system’s soundness and completeness are proven using a variant of bitstring semantics.

Nicht alles in der Welt unseres Handelns und Wahrnehmens ist entweder eine Substanz oder ein Akzidenz. Um diese These zu begruenden, sollen zunachst Elemente einer Ontologie des Sessels entwickelt werden. Der Sessel ist ein Artefakt, und nach ueberlieferter aristotelischer Lehre ist ein Artefakt die Summe seiner substantiellen Teile. Ein Sessel ist also eine Summe von Holz-, Leder- und Polsterstoffen, die selbst als Summen von entsprechenden Fasern oder Molekuelen aufzufassen waren, bis hin zur prima materia oder zu den sonstigen substantiellen Grundkonstituenten der materiellen Wirklichkeit.

The constituents of social entities (and of social continuants in particular) determine whether or not a social thing comes to be, persists and perishes. John Searle hints at two very different accounts for the persistence of social entities, a mere past related account and an acceptance theoretic account, whereas Margaret Gilbert's account is based on deontic entities like obligations or joint commitments. I demonstrate that Gilbert's account can also accommodate Searle's examples. While oblivion, protests or violence can be historical causes of the destruction of social entities, they cannot be considered to be the ultimate causes of the perishing from Gilbert's point of view. Social entities rather perish because of the treatises or divorces that dissolve their deontic constituents.

Was ist der Mensch? Das ist eine der "großen" philosophischen Fragen, und immer wieder werden bei der Beantwortung dieser Frage antike Denker zitiert. Das vorliegende Buch ist die erste Gesamtdarstellung des anthropologischen Denkens in der Antike. In fünfzehn Beiträgen behandelt der Band alle wichtigen antiken Philosophen und Philosophenschulen, von den Vorsokratikern bis zu Augustinus. Bewusst schaut der Band dabei über die Grenzen dessen hinaus, was wir heute "Philosophie" nennen, und wendet sich auch Denkern aus den Gebieten der antiken Literatur, Theologie und Medizin zu. Der Band richtet sich an Philosophen und Altphilologen ebenso wie Historiker und Theologen. Die Beiträge eignen sich auch als Einführung in die jeweiligen Autoren und Schulen für Studierende und interessierte Leser aus anderen Disziplinen. Speziell für diesen Leserkreis liefern die Beiträge Hinweise für die weitere Lektüre. (publisher) Mit Beiträgen von Ursula Bittrich, Yves Bossart, Jan N. Bremmer, Thomas Buchheim, Christoph Horn, Ludger Jansen, Christoph Jedan, Geurt Henk van Kooten, Zbigniew Nerczuk, Matthias Perkams, Joachim Söder, Niko Strobach, Hartmut Westermann und Jula Wildberger

In two millennia of Christianity, much has been said about the relationship between philosophy and theology. The working hypothesis of the present paper is that at least part of this controversy lies in the fact that the question is semantically ambiguous. Which Athens and which Jerusalem do we mean when we ask about their relationship? The paper first presents the poles of the controversial debate (section 2) and then asks what could be meant by ‘philosophy’ and ‘theology’ in the first place (section 3). Four different options are identified for each side of the relationship, resulting in a total of 16 pair constellations. The paper discusses the relationship for each of these 16 combinations constellation (section 4). Finally, the paper shows the relevance of the results for current discussions on the relationship between theology and philosophy (section 5).

Sustainability and environmental protection are sometimes discredited by being stylised as enemies of personal or social autonomy. The paper argues that this is a short-sighted and short-sighted view, and that sustainability should rather be seen as an enabling policy that secures the possibility of autonomy for the future. To this end, the paper first briefly explains what sustainability and autonomy are, and then use Hobbes' thought experiment of a state of nature to show the undesirable consequences of radical personal autonomy without self-commitment. From it will be deduced that meaningful autonomy goes hand in hand with self-commitment. A self-commitment to sustainability is, or so it is argued, unavoidable, in order to enable meaningful autonomous action for future generations.

How should a Christian relate to the fact that modern sciences do not speak of God? To answer this question, the paper first recalls Barbour’s four options for encounter between religion and science (section 1), and reminds of the distinction between ontological and methodological naturalism (section 2). Having considered the reasons in favour of or against the two variants of naturalism (section 3), the paper shows what possibilities there are for answering the question whether a Christian may be a (methodological) naturalist (section 4). Finally, the paper discusses how these possibilities relate to Barbour's four options and argue in favour of a critical philosophy of science (section 5).

Over the past few years, _CL_ diagrams have gained popularity in diagrammatic reasoning, drawing inspiration from Lange’s _C_ubus _L_ogicus. The intuitive understanding of _CL_ diagrams is based on simple structures that are straightforward both to draw and to comprehend. This structure supports embedding of information and inferencing. Furthermore, these diagrams are more than just heuristic tools; _CL_ diagrams can actually be extended to full blown formal systems. The present paper shows that a formal system for _CL_ diagrams can have an expressivity similar to standard Boolean algebra of propositions or propositional logic without losing their intuitive properties. It is also possible to combine this interpretation of _CL_ with elements from the class calculus. The syntax and semantics are presented separately, and the system’s soundness and completeness are proven using a variant of bitstring semantics.