Abstract Are identity criteria grounding principles? The recent debate over this issue seems to indicate a definitively negative answer. Recognising various objections as grounds for facts, one may wonder whether the former are capable of playing any salient role in ontology. I argue paper that they are, provided interprets them not ontological explanations facts but specifications thereof. att...

In a first part, I defend that formal semantics can be used as a guide to ontological commitment. Thus, if one endorses an ontological view O and wants to interpret a formal language L , a thorough understanding of the relation between semantics and ontologywill help us to construct a semantics for L in such away that its ontological commitment will be in perfect accordance with O . Basically, ...

This paper discusses the principles that should govern the construction of two components of a system for natural language generation (NLG): (1) the ontology or, rather, as the paper argues, the 'ontological' aspects of a belief system -and (2) the semantic representation of noun senses. It is an interesting fact that many ontologies bear a striking resemblance to a system network, as used in s...

JLhe most recent stage in the analysis of St. Anselm's Ontologi cal Argument is the modal-logical stage : if one wants to get clear as to what is wrong (or right) with it, one should phrase it in S5.1 I have misgivings about this maneuver, if it is claimed in the name of historical exegesis. While I think that the connnections between the Ontological Argument and modal logic are insightful and ...

Abstract Modal ontological arguments argue from the possible existence of a perfect being to actual (necessary) being. But modal have problem symmetry; they can be run in both directions. Reverse nonexistence Some familiar points about necessary posteriori, however, show that symmetry broken favour argument.