Riccardo Baratella

University of Genoa
  •  485
    An Ontology of Security from a Risk Treatment Perspective
    In 41th International Conference, ER 2022, Proceedings, Springer. pp. 365-379. 2022.
    In Risk Management, security issues arise from complex relations among objects and agents, their capabilities and vulnerabilities, the events they are involved in, and the value and risk they ensue to the stakeholders at hand. Further, there are patterns involving these relations that crosscut many domains, ranging from information security to public safety. Understanding and forming a shared conceptualization and vocabulary about these notions and their relations is fundamental for modeling the…Read more
  •  386
    Events, their names, and their synchronic structure
    with Nicola Guarino and Giancarlo Guizzardi
    Applied ontology 17 (2): 249-283. 2022.
    We present in this paper a novel ontological theory of events whose central tenet is the Aristotelian distinction between the object that changes and the actual subject of change, which is what we call an individual quality. While in the Kimian tradition events are individuated by a triple ⟨ o, P, t ⟩, where o is an object, P a property, and t an interval of time, for us the simplest events are qualitative changes, individuated by a triple ⟨ o, q, t ⟩, where q is an individual quality inhering i…Read more
  •  361
    On the Semantics of Risk Propagation
    with Mattia Fumagalli, Gal Engelberg, Tiago Prince Sales, Ítalo Oliveira, Dan Klein, Pnina Soffer, and Giancarlo Guizzardi
    In Research Challenges in Information Science - 16th International Conference, RCIS 2023, Springer. forthcoming.
    Risk propagation encompasses a plethora of techniques for analyzing how risk “spreads” in a given system. Albeit commonly used in technical literature, the very notion of risk propagation turns out to be a conceptually imprecise and overloaded one. This might also explain the multitude of modeling solutions that have been proposed in the lit- erature. Having a clear understanding of what exactly risk is, how it be quantified, and in what sense it can be propagated is fundamental for devising hig…Read more
  •  357
    On the adequacy of requirements for foundational ontologies
    Journal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 3 (1): 76-81. 2022.
    In this very issue, Augusto (2022) formulates two requirements upon which to evaluate the adequacy of a foundational ontology. Specifically, the ontological categories: (i) should be understood as the most general kinds of things and (ii) are organized in a non-overlapping finite hierarchy. On the basis of such constraints, he claims that most existing foundational ontologies engineered in the context of Applied Ontology, including the UFO-B ontology, are inadequate. In this article, first we sh…Read more
  •  283
    Ontological Analysis and Redesign of Security Modeling in ArchiMate
    In The Practice of Enterprise Modeling - 15th IFIP WG 8.1 Working Conference, PoEM 2022, Springer. pp. 82-98. 2022.
    Enterprise Risk Management and security have become a fundamental part of Enterprise Architecture, so several frameworks and modeling languages have been designed to support the activities associated with these areas. Archi- Mate’s Risk and Security Overlay is one of such proposals, endorsed by The Open Group. We investigate the capabilities of the proposed security-related con- structs in ArchiMate with regard to the necessities of enterprise security modeling. Our analysis relies on a well-fou…Read more
  •  180
    The Many Facets of Trust
    with Glenda Amaral, Tiago Prince Sales, Renata Guizzardi, and Giancarlo Guizzardi
    In Formal Ontology in Information Systems, Ios Press. forthcoming.
    Trust is an attitude that an agent (the trustor) has toward an entity (the trustee), such that the trustor counts upon the trustee to act in a way that is benefi- cial w.r.t. to the trustor’s goals. The notion of trust is relevantly discussed both in in- formation science and philosophy. Unfortunately, we still lack a satisfying account for this concept. The goal of this article is to contribute to filling this gap. First, we take issue with some central tenets shared by the main philosophical a…Read more
  •  163
    The theory of variable embodiments has been primarily formulated to model ordinary objects as things that change their parts over time. A variable embodiment /f/ is a sui generis whole constructed from a principle f, the principle of a variable embodiment, and it is manifested at different times by different things picked out by such a principle f. This principle is usually clarified as a function that picks out, at any given time the variable embodiment exists, its corresponding manifestation a…Read more
  •  161
    Processes and their modal profile
    Synthese 201 (3): 1-24. 2023.
    A widely debated issue in contemporary metaphysics is whether the modal profile of ordinary objects has to be explained in non-modal terms (that is, Thesis 1). However, how to solve such an issue with respect to occurrences – namely, processes and events – is a question that has been largely neglected in the current metaphysical debate. The general goal of this article is to start filling this gap. As a first result of the article, we make it plausible that, if Thesis 1 holds for objects, then i…Read more
  •  128
    Processes are occurrents that were, are, or will be happening. They endure or they perdure, i.e. they are either “fully” present at every time they happen, or they rather have temporal parts. According to Stout (2016), they endure. His argument assumes that processes may change. Then, Stout argues that, if something changes, it endures. As I show, Stout’s Argument misses its target. In particular, it makes use of a notion of change that is either intuitive but illegitimate or technical but quest…Read more
  •  100
    Processes and events as rigid embodiments
    Synthese 202 (6): 1-24. 2023.
    Monists and pluralists disagree concerning how many ordinary objects there are in a single situation. For instance, pluralists argue that a statue and the clay it is made of have different properties, and thereby are different. The standard monist’s response is to hold that there is just a single object, and that, under the description “being a statue”, this object is, e.g., aesthetically valuable, and that, under the description “being a piece of clay”, it is not aesthetically valuable. However…Read more
  •  77
    Enterprise Risk Management involves the process of identification, evaluation, treatment, and communication regarding risks throughout the enterprise. To support the tasks associated with this process, several frameworks and modeling languages have been proposed, such as the Risk and Security Overlay (RSO) of ArchiMate. An ontological investigation of this artifact would reveal its adequacy, capabilities, and limitations w.r.t. the domain of risk and security. Based on that, a language redesign …Read more
  •  47
    What are we debating about when we debate about processes and events?
    Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops. 2020.
    In recent years, there has been a raising interest in the metaphysics of processes and events. However, what are we debating about when we debate about processes and events? Such an answer has received three main answers that are mutually incompatible. The situation is worrisome: if philosophers don’t even agree on how to individuate process expressions and distinguish them from event expressions, how can one compare two metaphysical theories of processes and events? In this article, I aim to an…Read more
  •  30
    Are There Occurrent Continuants?
    Dialectica 74 (3). 2020.
    Processes are occurrents that were, are, or will be happening. They endure or they perdure, i.e. they are either "fully" present at every time they happen, or they rather have temporal parts. According to Stout (2016), they endure. His argument assumes that processes may change. Then, Stout argues that, if something changes, it endures. As I show, Stout's Argument misses its target. In particular, it makes use of a notion of change that is either intuitive but illegitimate or technical but quest…Read more
  •  21
    Objects, Events, and Property-Instances
    Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication: Vol. 13. 2019.
    The theory of events as property-instances has been considered one of the most widely accepted metaphysical theories of events. On the other hand, several philosophers claim that if both events and objects perdure, then objects must be identified with events. In this work, I investigate whether these two views can be held together. I shall argue that if they can, it depends on the particular theory of instantiation one is to adopt. In particular, I shall conclude that the theory of events as pro…Read more
  •  20
    Unity and Plurality. Logic, Philosophy, and Linguistics
    Philosophical Quarterly 70 (278): 204-206. 2020.
    Unity and Plurality. Logic, Philosophy, and Linguistics. Edited by Carrara Massimiliano, Arapinis Alexandra, Moltmann Friederike.
  •  18
    Objects and Events: an Investigation into their Identification
    Philosophia 48 (4): 1363-1380. 2020.
    John goes out for a walk. If John endures and his walk perdures, they are different entities. However, what if both John and his walk perdure? Is John’s walk identical to his relevant temporal part? Some philosophers answer in the affirmative. Their motivations rest on ontological parsimony and the quest for clear-cut identity criteria for existing things. By contrast, one of the most widely accepted theories of events – the theory of events as property-exemplifications – allows us to formulate …Read more
  •  11
    Prevention is a pervasive phenomenon. It is about blocking an effect before it happens or stopping it as it unfolds: vaccines prevent (the unfolding of) diseases; seat belts prevent events causing serious injuries; circuit breaks prevent the manifestation of overcurrents. Many disciplines in the information sciences deal with modeling and reasoning about prevention. Examples include risk and security management as well as medical and legal informatics. Having a proper conceptualization of this p…Read more
  •  10
    No Chance for the Change Argument – A Reply to Stout’s “The Category of Occurrent Continuants
    CEUR Workshop Proceedings - Vol-2518 - The Joint Ontology Workshops 2019. 2019.
    Processes are occurrents that were, are, or will be happening. Moreover, either they endure (i.e., they continue) or they perdure. Stout [11] contends that they endure. His argument – the Change Argument, hereafter – is grounded in the claims that processes may change and that something may change if and only if it endures. I shall argue that the Change Argument does not succeed. In particular, I shall show that, if the Change Argument aims at being neutral between endurantism and perdurantism, …Read more
  • Formal Ontology is a discipline whose business is to develop formal theories about general aspects of reality such as identity, dependence, parthood, truth-making, causality, etc. A foundational ontology is a specific consistent set of these ontological theories that support activities such as domain analysis, conceptual clarification, and meaning negotiation. A (well-founded) core ontology specifies, under a foundational ontology, the central concepts and relations of a given domain. Foundation…Read more