The desideratum of semantic interoperability has been intensively discussed in medical informatics circles in recent years. Originally, experts assumed that this issue could be sufficiently addressed by insisting simply on the application of shared clinical terminologies or clinical information models. However, the use of the term ‘ontology’ has been steadily increasing more recently. We discuss criteria for distinguishing clinical ontologies from clinical terminologies and information models. Then, we briefly present the role clinical ontologies play in two multicentric research projects. Finally, (...) we discuss the interactions between these different kinds of knowledge representation artifacts and the stakeholders involved in developing interoperational real-world clinical applications. We provide ontology engineering examples from two EU-funded projects. (shrink)

The desideratum of semantic interoperability has been intensively discussed in medical informatics circles in recent years. Originally, experts assumed that this issue could be sufficiently addressed by insisting simply on the application of shared clinical terminologies or clinical information models. However, the use of the term ‘ontology’ has been steadily increasing more recently. We discuss criteria for distinguishing clinical ontologies from clinical terminologies and information models. Then, we briefly present the role clinical ontologies play in two multicentric research projects. Finally, (...) we discuss the interactions between these different kinds of knowledge representation artifacts and the stakeholders involved in developing interoperational real-world clinical applications. We provide ontology engineering examples from two EU-funded projects. (shrink)

Propomos uma tipologia dos artefatos de representação para as áreas de saúde e ciências biológicas, e a associação dessa tipologia com diferentes tipos de ontologia formal e lógica, chegando a conclusões quanto aos pontos fortes e limitações da ontologia de diferentes tipos de recursos lógicos, enquanto mantemos o foco na lógica descritiva. Consideramos quatro tipos de representação de área: (i) representação léxico-semântica, (ii) representação de tipos de entidades, (iii) representação de conhecimento prévio, e (iv) representação de indivíduos. Defendemos uma clara (...) distinção entre os quatro tipos de representação, de forma a oferecer uma base mais racional para o uso das ontologias e artefatos relacionados no avanço da integração de dados e interoperabilidade de sistemas de raciocínio associados. Destacamos que apenas uma pequena porção de fatos cientificamente relevantes em áreas como a biomedicina pode ser adequadamente representada por ontologias formais, quando estas últimas são concebidas como representações de tipos de entidades. Particularmente, a tentativa de codificar conhecimento padrão ou probabilístico pela utilização de ontologias assim concebidas é fadada à produção de modelos não intencionais e errôneos. (shrink)

Uncertainty is a core issue and – as I would like to argue in this article – also a generative core quality of anthropological sensory practices. Research in particular and epistemologically meaningful endeavours in general are probably not even possible if moments and aspects of uncertainty are excluded or even avoided. Therefore, this article will start in the section ‘The sensory corpus’ with one example of auditory and sensory uncertainty by US-sound artist Maryanne Amacher. This example, the piece ‘Dense Boogie (...) I’, operates directly in the body, in the physical ear of the listeners, and can prove how the listening subject’s idiosyncratic sensibility can be a crucial instrument to proceed in researching and understanding. (shrink)

The first academic overview of one of the most advanced and controversial approaches to sound studies, offering insight into its background, history, the present discourse surrounding it, and its likely future impact.

Dieser Beitrag untersucht, was es heißt, verwundet zu leben. Was auf den ersten Blick als eine mehr als gewöhnliche und kaum spektakuläre Frage erscheinen mag, wird nach Untersuchung der dominanten Phantasmen der Unverletzlichkeit als eine Grundfrage der historischen Anthropologie erkennbar: Wie entsteht und wandelt sich der tägliche Umgang mit eigener Verletzlichkeit und Verwundung im Menschenbild? Welche Wunden des Gewöhnlichen werden in den meisten Lebens- und Arbeitsumgebungen im Allgemeinen ignoriert und ausgeblendet? Worin bestehen die Idiosynkrasien eines empfindsamen Leibes, eines sensorisches Corpus? (...) Und in welchem Zusammenhang stehen die Begehren eines bestimmten Menschen zu seinen Wunden? Eine Körperanthropologie der Wunden bezieht die Verletzungen eines Menschen im Laufe seines Lebens als integraler Teil eines Menschenbildes mit ein. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag erkundet und beschreibt das anthropologische Konzept einer sensorisch und besonders klanglich bestimmten Persona. Hintergrund bilden hierbei die künstlerischwissenschaflichen Forschungsmethoden des Soundwalks nach Hildegard Westerkamp, des Sensobiographic Walking oder Sensory Memory Walks nach Helmi Järviluoma sowie Jean-Luc Nancys Körperbegriff und Mario Perniolas Entwurf einer sensorisch verankerten Ideologie unter dem Begriff der Sensologie. Am Ende des Beitrags steht der Vorschlag einer Anthropologie, die sich dezidiert anti-normalistisch und nicht-heteronormativ versteht: eine Anthropologie nicht des Posthumanen, das allzu oft reale Diversität, soziale und (...) materiale Differenzen sowie die Partikularitäten und Idiosynkrasien ignoriert und verdrängt; stattdessen argumentiert dieser Beitrag für eine Anthropologie des Inhumanen, der sogenannten „humanoid aliens“. Diese Anthropologie versteht sich dann als eine Xenologie, als eine Erforschung des Fremden. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag erkundet einige mediologische, Dispositiv-theoretische und klangkulturwissenschaftliche Anschlüsse und Deutungen der performativen dichten Beschreibung von Elise v. Bernstorffs aufgrund ihrer Feldforschung in einer inklusiven Gesamtschule.

Dieser Beitrag untersucht drei Beispiele zur Überwindung von Vergänglichkeit und Endlichkeit, einer Inversion der Vanitas-Motivik, vor allem in den Klangkünsten: Wie ist es technisch möglich und kulturell zu bewerkstelligen, dem Verwehen von Klängen entgegenzuwirken? Die transhistorische Übertragungstheorie der médiologie von Régis Debray wird hierbei genutzt, um Formen und Strategien zur ‚ewigen Übertragung’ jeweils näher zu bestimmen. Ausgehend von Edisons Bewerbung des Phonographen als eines Hilfsmittels für hörbare Testamente von Verstorbenen wird die Aufführung von John Cages ORGAN 2/aslsp in Halberstadt, das (...) Vorhaben einer Millennium Clock der Long Now Foundation von Stewart Brand und Brian Eno sowie die Pressung der kremierten Asche eines Verstorbenen in einer Vinylschallplatte durch die Firma Andvinyly untersucht. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag untersucht drei Beispiele zur Überwindung von Vergänglichkeit und Endlichkeit, einer Inversion der Vanitas-Motivik, vor allem in den Klangkünsten: Wie ist es technisch möglich und kulturell zu bewerkstelligen, dem Verwehen von Klängen entgegenzuwirken? Die transhistorische Übertragungstheorie der médiologie von Régis Debray wird hierbei genutzt, um Formen und Strategien zur ‚ewigen Übertragung’ jeweils näher zu bestimmen. Ausgehend von Edisons Bewerbung des Phonographen als eines Hilfsmittels für hörbare Testamente von Verstorbenen wird die Aufführung von John Cages ORGAN 2/aslsp in Halberstadt, das (...) Vorhaben einer Millennium Clock der Long Now Foundation von Stewart Brand und Brian Eno sowie die Pressung der kremierten Asche eines Verstorbenen in einer Vinylschallplatte durch die Firma Andvinyly untersucht. (shrink)

PurposeContinuous patient-reported outcomes to identify and address patients’ needs represent an important addition to current routine care. The aim of this study was to identify and determine important dimensions of health-related quality of life in routine oncological care.MethodsIn a cross-sectional qualitative study, interviews and focus groups were carried out and recorded. The interviewees were asked for their evaluation on HrQoL in general and specifically regarding cancer treatment. The material was transcribed and analyzed using qualitative content analysis based on Mayring. The (...) results were reviewed in an expert discussion.ResultsInterviews with patients and clinicians, as well as five focus groups with clinicians were conducted. Initially, nine deductive and two inductive categories on HrQoL were built. Four categories were excluded following the qualitative content analysis because they were hardly or not at all mentioned by participants. Following on from the analysis of the expert discussion, one dimension was added, and two further categories were excluded. The resulting system consisted of six dimensions: emotional health, physical ailments, autonomy, social functionality, dignity, and resources.ConclusionThe identified dimensions of HrQoL in routine oncological care were found to differ from those used in existing HrQoL measurements for patients. Further research is needed to test and evaluate the presented structure in a larger sample of cancer patients to further assess its psychometric properties. (shrink)

In terms of Groenendijk and Stokhof’s (1984) formalization of exhaustive interpretation, many conversational implicatures can be accounted for. In this paper we justify and generalize this approach. Our justification proceeds by relating their account via Halpern and Moses’ (1984) non-monotonic theory of ‘only knowing’ to the Gricean maxims of Quality and the first sub-maxim of Quantity. The approach of Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) is generalized such that it can also account for implicatures that are triggered in subclauses not entailed by (...) the whole complex sentence. (shrink)

In their book Unto Others, Sober and Wilson argue that various evolutionary considerations (based on the logic of natural selection) lend support to the truth of psychological altruism. However, recently, Stephen Stich has raised a number of challenges to their reasoning: in particular, he claims that three out of the four evolutionary arguments they give are internally unconvincing, and that the one that is initially plausible fails to take into account recent findings from cognitive science and thus leaves open a (...) number of egoistic responses. These challenges make it necessary to reassess the plausibility of Sober & Wilson’s evolutionary account—which is what I aim to do in this paper. In particular, I try to show that, as a matter of fact, Sober & Wilson’s case remains compelling, as some of Stich’s concerns rest on a confusion, and those that do not are not sufficiently strong to establish all the conclusions he is after. The upshot is that no reason has been given to abandon the view that evolutionary theory has advanced the debate surrounding psychological altruism. (shrink)

Finding out why we have beliefs and desires is important for a thorough understanding of the nature of our minds (and those of other animals). It is therefore unsurprising that several accounts have been presented that are meant to answer this question. At least in the philosophical literature, the most widely accepted of these are due to Kim Sterelny and Peter Godfrey-Smith, who argue that beliefs and desires evolved due to their enabling us to be behaviourally flexible in a way (...) that reflexes do not—which, they claim, is beneficial in epistemically complex environments. However, as I try to make clear in this paper, upon closer consideration, this kind of account turns out to be theoretically implausible. In the main, this is because it fails to give due credit to the powers of reflex-driven organisms, which can in fact be just as flexible in their behaviour as ones that are belief/desire-driven. In order to improve on this account, I therefore propose that beliefs and desires evolved, not due to their enabling us to do something completely different from what reflexive organisms can do, but rather due to their enabling us to do the same things better. Specifically, I argue that beliefs and desires evolved for making the generation of behaviour more efficient, since they can simplify the necessary cognitive labour considerably. I end by considering various implications of this account. (shrink)

Effective public policy to mitigate climate change footprints should build on data-driven analysis of firm-level strategies. This article’s conceptual approach augments the resource-based view of the firm and identifies investments in four firm-level resource domains to develop capabilities in climate change impact mitigation. The authors denote the resulting framework as the GISTe model, which frames their analysis and public policy recommendations. This research uses the 2008 Carbon Disclosure Project database, with high-quality information on firm-level climate change strategies for 552 companies (...) from North America and Europe. In contrast to the widely accepted myth that European firms are performing better than North American ones, the authors find a different result. Many firms, whether European or North American, do not just “talk” about climate change impact mitigation, but actually do “walk the talk.” European firms appear to be better than their North American counterparts in “walk I,” denoting attention to governance, information management, and systems. But when it comes down to “walk II,” meaning actual Technology-related investments, North American firms’ performance is equal or superior to that of the European companies. The authors formulate public policy recommendations to accelerate firm-level, sector-level, and cluster-level implementation of climate change strategies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Is uncertainty about preferences rationally possible? And if so, does it matter for rational decision? It is argued that uncertainty about preferences is possible and should play the same role in rational decision-making as uncertainty about worldly facts. The paper develops this hypothesis and defends it against various objections.

This paper explores the possibility of supplementing the suppositional view of indicative conditionals with a corresponding view of epistemic modals. The most striking feature of the suppositional view consists in its claim that indicative conditionals are to be evaluated by conditional probabilities. On the basis of a natural link between indicative conditionals and epistemic modals, a corresponding thesis about the probabilities of statements governed by epistemic modals can be derived. The paper proceeds by deriving further consequences of this thesis, in (...) particular, the logic of epistemic modals and their logical interaction with indicative conditionals are studied. (shrink)

Background: SNOMED CT is a large terminology system designed to represent all aspects of healthcare. Its current form and content result from decades of bottom-up evolution. Due to SNOMED CT’s formal descriptions, it can be considered an ontology. The Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a foundational ontology that proposes a small set of disjoint, hierarchically ordered classes, supported by relations and axioms. In contrast, as a typical top-down endeavor, BFO was designed as a foundational framework for domain ontologies in the (...) natural sciences and related disciplines. Whereas it is mostly assumed that domain ontologies should be created as extensions of foundational ontologies, a post-hoc harmonization of consolidated domain ontologies in use, such as SNOMED CT, is known to be challenging. Methods: We explored the feasibility of harmonizing SNOMED CT with BFO, with a focus on the SNOMED CT Clinical Finding hierarchy. With more than 100,000 classes, it accounts for about one third of SNOMED CT’s content. In particular, we represented typical SNOMED CT finding/disorder concepts using description logics under BFO. Three representational patterns were created and the logical entailments analyzed. Results: Under a first scrutiny, the clinical intuition that diseases, disorders, signs and symptoms form a homogeneous ontological upper-level class appeared incompatible with BFO’s upper-level distinction into continuants and occurrents. The Clinical finding class seemed to be an umbrella for all kinds of entities of clinical interest, such as material entities, processes, states, dispositions, and qualities. This suggests the conclusion that Clinical finding would not be a suitable upper-level class from an BFO perspective. On closer inspection of the taxonomic links within this hierarchy and the implicit meaning derived thereof, it became clear that Clinical finding classes do not characterize the entity (e.g. a fracture, allergy, tumor, pain, hemorrhage, seizure, fever) in a literal sense but rather the condition of a patient having that fracture, allergy, pain etc. This gives sense to the current characteristic of the Clinical Finding hierarchy, in which complex classes are modeled as subclasses of their constituents. Most of these taxonomic links are inferred, as the consequence of the ‘role group’ design pattern, which is ubiquitous in SNOMED CT and has often been subject of controversy regarding its semantics. Conclusion: Our analyses resulted in the proposal of (i) equating SNOMED CT’s ‘role group’ property with the reflexive and transitive BFO relation ‘has occurrent part’; and (ii) reinterpreting Clinical Findings as Clinical Occurrents, i.e. temporally extended entities in an organism, having one or more occurrents as temporal parts that occur in continuants. This re-interpretation was corroborated by a manual analysis of classes under Clinical Finding, as well as the identification of similar modeling patterns in other ontologies. As a result, SNOMED CT does not require any content redesign to establish compatibility with BFO, apart from this re-interpretation, and a suggested re-labeling. Regarding the feasibility of harmonizing terminologies with principled foundational ontologies post-hoc, our results provide support to the assumption that this does not necessarily require major redesign efforts, but rather a careful analysis of the implicit assumptions of terminology curators and users. (shrink)

This essay articulates and defends Aristotle’s argument in Politics 7.4 that there is a rational limit to the size of the political community. Aristotle argues that size can negatively affect the ability of an organized being to attain its proper end. After examining the metaphysical grounds for this principle in both natural beings and artifacts, we defend Aristotle’s extension of the principle to the polis. He argues that the state is in the relevant sense an organism, one whose primary end (...) is to make good reasons available to individuals and promote them as choiceworthy. The size of a polis can affect its ability to perform this function, since growth promotes anonymity among citizens, which in turn frustrates the familiarity between citizens required for the exercise of distributive and restorative justice as well as political prudence. This paper suggests several ways in which Aristotle’s argument, if sound, is important for contemporary issues in moral psychology, Ralwsian political philosophy, and big data analytics. (shrink)

We argue that the robustness analysis of idealized models can have confirmational power. This responds to concerns recently raised in the literature, according to which the robustness analysis of models whose idealizations are not discharged is unable to confirm the causal mechanisms underlying these models, and the robustness analysis of models whose idealizations are discharged is unnecessary. In response, we make clear that, where idealizations sweep out, in a specific way, the space of possibilities— which is sometimes, though not always, (...) the case—they can be holistically discharged. In turn, this can be used to show that the robustness analysis of idealized models can have confirmational force after all. (shrink)

The ‘argument from design’ plays a pivotal role in Carruthers’ recent defence of the massive modularity thesis. However, as this paper seeks to show, there are major flaws in its structure. If construed deductively, it is unsound: modular mental architecture is not necessarily the best architecture, and even if it were, this alone would not show that this architecture evolved. If construed inductively, it is not much more convincing, as it then appears to be too weak to support the kind (...) of modularity Carruthers is concerned with. The upshot of this is that whatever reason we might have for believing that the mind is massively modular, it is not based on the argument from design. (shrink)

Edith Stein’s work revolves around one central question, namely, the identity of the person. Discussions of this topic are already present in Stein’s dissertation. Iexamine her theory of identity, developed throughout her work and maturing in her magnum opus, Finite and Eternal Being, in three stages, each of which is historically relevant and original. First, Stein’s development of the question is examined phenomenologically, focusing on Stein’s early work. Second, I will show how Stein takes her early phenomenological positions concerning the (...) nature of the human person and combines them with Greek and medieval insights into ontology. Here I focus on Finite and Eternal Being. Finally, I concentrate on the meaning and value of Stein’s theory of identity as it contributes to a theory of the person in connection with Greek and medieval metaphysics, and a phenomenological philosophy of consciousness. Together, the three stages of the essay will demonstrate Stein’s systematic contribution toward a theory of personal identity, one of the most difficult problems of philosophy. (shrink)

Patients often make their own decisions about managing their medications. Pharmacists could usefully serve as patient advocates, providing information that permits patients to assess risk and enhance their autonomy.

In the past 2 decades latent variable modeling has become a standard tool in the social sciences. In the same time period, traditional linear structural equation models have been extended to include non-linear interaction and quadratic effects (e.g., Klein and Moosbrugger, 2000 ), and multilevel modeling (Rabe-Hesketh et al., 2004 ). We present a general non-linear multilevel structural equation mixture model (GNM-SEMM) that combines recent semiparametric non-linear structural equation models (Kelava and Nagengast, 2012 ; Kelava et al., 2014 ) with (...) multilevel structural equation mixture models (Muthén and Asparouhov, 2009 ) for clustered and non-normally distributed data. The proposed approach allows for semiparametric relationships at the within and at the between levels. We present examples from the educational science to illustrate different submodels from the general framework. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger hat sich in seinem Denken immer wieder mit Fragen der Logik auseinandergesetzt. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes gehen dem Verhältnis Heideggers zur Logik nach und zeigen, inwiefern es möglich ist, Heideggers gesamten Denkweg als den Denkweg eines Logikers zu bezeichnen.

The article draws a conceptual distinction the (French) structuralism of the 50’s–60’s and the post-structuralism of the 70’s, which are discussed as overlapping in their intellectual paths; their mutual dynamics is defined as a reaction of the intelligence to the pressure of depersonalized unified schemes within the logic of structuralism against free improvisation and loose interpretation instead of total explanations in the post-structuralism interpretation. The article establishes a conceptual identity of the paradoxical nature between post-structuralism (and deconstructionism, which is homogeneous (...) and identical thereto in a number of aspects), on the one hand, and constructionism with its specific process of language dismantling – social/ideological languages, social group dialects, on the other hand, which naturally leads the authors to the analysis of the paradoxicality principles, defined by post-structuralism (five principles of paradoxicality of Gilles Deleuze – paradox of regress, paradox of sterile reiteration, paradox of neutrality, paradox of absurd, paradox of Levi-Strauss); poststructuralists’ paralogisms are examined through paradoxical denotation; the late Roland Barthes’ phenomenon of paradoxicality, becoming a plot-forming principle of narration, is analyzed. Poststructuralism is conceptualized in the article as the first decisive step of post-modernism; the affinity of post-structuralist and postmodernist commitment to parody, game and irony is stated; the theory of language games in post-modern interpretation is explored; one of those games – a game of carnival – is explored within the diachronic retrospective; the affinity of parody and carnival tradition of post-structuralism and post-modernism to the romantic irony of the XIXth century and its inconsistency with the popular culture of laugh is established. The genesis of poststructuralism and post-modernism is connected with the ideological restart of the Western society before the “very end” of the Resistance ideas and the disappointment of the left European intellectuals in the “great legends” and illusions of Marxism. The blurred concepts of relativism are connected with the mutual disproportion of different layers of historical experience. (shrink)

This article is an exploration of the problem of identity in Whitehead. Both the Platonic and the nominalistic tendencies in Whitehead are analyzed. His theory of eternal objects is criticized and a process view of identity based on tropes is defended.

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 constituents (e.g., molecules to the atoms they consist of). -/- METHOD -/- (...) We distinguish between four kinds of complex entities and characterize them in first order logic. We then discuss whether similar characterizations could be given in description logics, and finally apply the results to mixtures. -/- RESULTS -/- At first sight, collectives and compounds seem to be disjoint categories. Their disjointness, however, relies on agreement about what are uniform entities, and thus on the granularity of description. For instance, the distinction between isomeric subtypes of a molecule can be important in one use case but might be neglected in another one. We demonstrate that, as implemented in the BioTop domain upper level ontology, equivalence or subsumption between different descriptions of same or similar entities cannot be achieved. Using OWL-DL, we propose a new design pattern that avoids primitive subrelations at the expense of more complex descriptions and thus supports the needed inferences. (shrink)