Ludger Jansen

In order to develop the ontology of tendencies for use in the representation of medical knowledge, tendencies are compared with other kinds of entities possessing the realizable-realization-structure, specifically: dispositions, propensities, abilities and virtues. The peculiarities of tendencies are discussed and a standard schema of tendency ascription is developed in order to represent the relations between the ascriptions of tendency tokens to particulars and the ascriptions of tendency types to universals. Two non-standard cases and their epistemic variants are discussed.

Being an "untimely review", this paper reviews Aristotle's 'Categories' as if they were published today, in the era of computerised information, where categorisation becomes more and more essential for information retrieval. I suggest a systematic ordering of Aristotle's list of categories and argue that Aristotle's discussion of ontological dependency and his focus on concrete entities are still a source of new insight and can indeed be read as a contribution to the emerging field of applied ontology and ontological engineering.

The 2013 Rostock Symposium on Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Aging Research was again dedicated to dissecting the aging process using in silico means. A particular focus was on ontologies, as these are a key technology to systematically integrate heterogeneous information about the aging process. Related topics were databases and data integration. Other talks tackled modeling issues and applications, the latter including talks focussed on marker development and cellular stress as well as on diseases, in particular on diseases of kidney and skin.

Is a bank note identical with the piece of paper of which it consists? On the one hand, John Searle, in his reply to Barry Smith, suggests that they are “one and the same object” that is a social or non-social object only under certain descriptions. On the other hand, Lynne Rudder Baker puts forward the claim that bank note and paper are distinct entities that are bound together by the relation of material constitution. I suggest two possible analyses for Searle’s description relativity claim, the Alternative Subject Analysis and the Predicate Modification Analysis. On both accounts his identity claim gets into serious trouble. While Baker’s definition of material constitution deals well with the bank note example, it fails to account for the constitution of bearerless social entities and groups. I point out five respects in which social constitution can differ from Baker’s account of material constitution and discuss compositional, institutional and interactional constitution as additional varieties of social constitution.

Taking Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of the prologue of St John's gospel (in his Lectura super loannem Evangelium) as example, I first discuss eight differences between medieval biblical interpretation and modern exegesis, especially Aquinas's frequent use of philosophical opinions in interpreting the Bible, taken mostly from Aristotle. Second, I account for these differences by reconstructing Aquinas's hermeneutics, hinging, as is shown, upon the assumption that scripture was authored by God infallible and, therefore, only contains true statements. From this starting point Aquinas is lead to a holistic hermeneutics: The interpretation of a biblical statement can be judged on only within the context of an entire theory of God, the world, and of the interpretation of the other biblical statements. Thirdly, this view is discussed systematically and critically.

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 dispositional predication with hôs epi to poly statements about what is normally or mostly the case

Like the doctrine of the categories in general, Aristotle’s category of the relative fulfils disparate functions: On the one hand, the category of the pros ti fulfils a dialectic or logical function that aims at the avoidance of fallacies. On the other hand, the category respects the peculiar mode of being of the relative. Taking these two different functions into consideration helps with the interpretation of Aristotle’s two definitions of the relative and his treatment of the properties of the relative in Cat. 7, with the question whether corresponding relatives are of equal priority or ontologically independent, with the genus-species problem , and with the categorical classification of potency and act

Starting from the early treatise "On Being and Essence", I review issues concerning substances composed of matter and form: their hylomorphic composition, individuation, essence as part and as whole, and the analogy between genus/difference and matter/form. Then I discuss substances separated from matter, which may range from human souls and angels (or intelligences) to God. I then turn to Aquinas's later 'Summa Theologica', where he argues that in the end God cannot possibly belong to the category of substance and discuss possible reasons for Aquinas conflicting accounts on this question.

Statements about the behavior of biochemical entities (e.g., about the interaction between two proteins) abound in the literature on molecular biology and are increasingly becoming the targets of information extraction and text mining techniques. We show that an accurate analysis of the semantics of such statements reveals a number of ambiguities that have to be taken into account in the practice of biomedical ontology engineering: Such statements can not only be understood as event reporting statements, but also as ascriptions of dispositions or tendencies that may or may not refer to collectives of interacting molecules or even to collectives of interaction events.

Statements about the behavior of biological entities, e.g. about the interaction between two proteins, abound in the literature on molecular biology and are increasingly becoming the targets of information extraction and text mining techniques. We show that an accurate analysis of the semantics of such statements reveals a number of ambiguities that is necessary to take into account in the practice of biomedical ontology engineering. Several concurring formalizations are proposed. Emphasis is laid on the discussion of biological dispositions.

Zuweilen werden der Geschichtsschreibung der Wissenschaftscharakter und historischen Aussagen die Wahrheitsfähigkeit abgesprochen. Ich werde erstens zeigen, dass Aussagen über Vergangenes nicht nur wahrheitsfähig sind, sondern dass einige Aussagen über Vergangenes tatsächlich wahr sind. Zweitens argumentiere ich dafür, dass weder die Gebundenheit an Quellen und die Möglichkeit des Irrtums, noch die Zeit- und Standortgebundenheit historischer Aussagen und eine eventuelle Werthaltigkeit historischer Urteile eine zwingende Gefahr für den Wissenschaftscharakter der Geschichtsschreibung sind. Sie stellen aber besondere Ansprüche an die wissenschaftlichen Tugenden, die ein guter Historiker besitzen muss. Drittens zeige ich, dass die Suche nach historischer Wahrheit nicht nur möglich, sondern für ein funktionierendes gesellschaftliches Zusammenleben auch von größter Bedeutung ist

There are group-actions, and if actions are intentional, there should also be group-intentions. Who has got these intentions? The groups? This seems to be the natural answer. But then: Groups do not have a mind or brain of there own to form any mental attitude. Different kinds of individualistic analyses of group-intentions have been suggested in the literature. On the one hand there are suggestions to reduce group intentions to a complex of different Iattitudes. John Searle, on the other hand, suggests a special social kind of attitudes, namely we-intentions. We-intentions are being had by individual persons, though they have the form “We intend to do such-and-such”. However, because of the fallibility of Searlian we-intentions and the possibility of ignorance this concept is of no help: We-intentions are neither necessary nor sufficient for group-intentions. In this respect, Margaret Gilbert’s approach is much more successful, though it covers only a special case, namely small-scale informal groups. I suggest a generalised solution in order to cover also large-scale and formal groups.

In "On Social Facts" (1989) and subsequent works, Margaret Gilbert has suggested a plural subject account of the semantics of ‘we’ that claims that a central or standard use of ‘we’ is to refer to an existing or anticipated plural subject. This contrasts with the more general approach to treat plural pronouns as expressions referring to certain pluralities. I argue that (i) the plural subject approach cannot account for certain syntactic phenomena and that (ii) the sense of intimacy, which Gilbert cites as evidence for her plural subject account, has a different source than the existence of joint commitments constituting a respective plural subject. Moreover, (iii) there is a wide varie-ty of phenomena in the linguistic record, which, while not constituting conclusive evidence against the plural subject account, nevertheless, are dealt with better by the plurality account. ‘We’ thus refers to pluralities, which may or may not be plural subjects. The precise analysis of ‘we’ thus reveals a multi-layered ontology of groups.

Es gibt Staaten und Fußballmannschaften, Fakultäten und Punkbands. Und mansollte meinen, daß diese Entitäten etwas gemeinsam haben, daß sie zu ein und derselben ontologischen Kategorie gehören. Und daß sie sich unterscheiden von Elektronen, Tischen, Grizzlybären, einem Zehn-Euro-Schein, dem neuen Präsidenten, der Amtseinführung des neuen Präsidenten und der Tatsache, daß ich einen Vortrag halte. Mein Ziel ist es, zu zeigen, daß die Kategorie, die alle Beispiele der ersten Gruppe umfaßt, aber keines der zweiten Gruppe, die Kategorie der vereinten Pluralpersonen ist. Um diese These stark zu machen, muß ich zunächst eine Reihe ontologischer Unterscheidungen diskutieren. Zunächst werde ich die Begriffe des Statusobjekts und des Pluralobjekts einführen, zwei relativ neue ontologische Kategorien. Sodann werde ich die traditionellen Kategorien der Substanz und der Person diskutieren, wobei ich mit Hilfe der zuvor eingeführten Begriffe des Statusobjekts und des Pluralobjekts verschiedene Arten von Personen unterscheiden werde. Die natürlichen Personen bilden nur eine dieser Arten, wenn auch die Art von Personen, zu der wir selber als Individuen gehören. Nach diesen Vorarbeiten stehen die Hilfsmittel bereit, die zu Beginn angeführten Beispiele zu kategorisieren.

In order to strengthen RI in the private sector, it is imperative to understand how companies organise this process, where it takes place, and what considerations and motivations are central in the innovation process. In this chapter, the questions of whether and where normative considerations play a role in the innovation process, and whether dimensions of RI are present in the innovation process, are addressed. In order answer these research questions, a theoretical framework is developed based on Jones’s theory of ethical decision making and Cooper’s stagegate model of innovation management. In order to answer the research questions, a specific case of innovations that contribute to public health is explored, namely, that of food companies that participate in a Front-of-Pack logo for healthier food. As the use of healthy food logos does not necessarily have a positive impact on sales and profits, it is expected that in the decision-making process, as part of their innovation process, companies make several trade-offs between economic, technical and moral factors. As the social-ethical values at stake in corporate innovation processes have remained to a large extent unexplored in research on innovation management, the aim of this chapter is to identify the motivations and barriers for companies embracing and continuing a FoP logo for healthier food, and to assess whether ethical considerations play a role in this innovation process. From the findings in this research, it will become clear that although the studied companies participated in a programme for healthy food and thus are responsive to the needs of society, and although the companies feel responsible for public health, ethical considerations do not play a central role in the operational innovation process. Instead, technical and economic considerations seem to prevail in the operational innovation process. Furthermore, none of the procedural dimensions of RI seems to be present at this level in the innovation trajectory. It is argued that this may be an indication that the ethical decision-making process for RI is not located at the level of the operational innovation process itself, but is something that might be located on a higher strategic level in the company. It is at this level that the moral decision is taken to adopt the FoP logo and to engage in the RI process. The findings cast a new light on the discourse on RI in general, and in the private sector in particular.