Hierarchies Ontological and Ideological

Hierarchies Ontological and Ideological

Gödel claimed that Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory is ‘what becomes of the theory of types if certain superfluous restrictions are removed’. The aim of this paper is to develop a clearer understanding of Gödel’s remark, and of the surrounding philosophical terrain. In connection with this, we discuss some technical issues concerning infinitary type theories and the programme of developing the seman...

Ontological Investigation of Ecosystem Hierarchies and Formal Theory for Multiscale Ecosystem Classifications

This paper presents a formalized ontological framework for the analysis of multiscale classifications of geographic objects. We propose a set of logical principles that guide such geographic classifications. Then we demonstrate application of these principles on a practical example of the “National Hierarchical Framework of Ecological Units”. The framework has a potential to be used to facilita...

Ideological Strategy

Ideological parsimony

The theoretical virtue of parsimony values the minimizing of theoretical commitments, but theoretical commitments come in two kinds: ontological and ideological. While the ontological commitments of a theory are the entities it posits, a theory’s ideological commitments are the primitive concepts it employs. Here, I show how we can extend the distinction between quantitative and qualitative par...

Ideological Segregation Online and Offline∗

We use individual and aggregate data to ask how the Internet is changing the ideological segregation of the American electorate. Focusing on online news consumption, offline news consumption, and face-to-face social interactions, we define ideological segregation in each domain using standard indices from the literatureonracial segregation. Wefindthat ideological segregationofonlinenews consump...