Formal Ontology and Relationality

Rsc 205 Formal Ontology and Relationality

Class hours: 21

Credits (ECTS): 3

LM-OT – Specialization in Philosophy

Year: 1^st–2^nd

Term: 3^rd

Course held in Italian

Today’s interdisciplinary forms of activity and research call for new methods and instruments. The course is an introduction to formal ontology as efficacious in expressing basic patterns of relationality. The first part of the course presents the use of formal language in scientific modeling and the modelistic approach. There follows a brief description of the genesis and development of the academic discipline of formal ontology. The second part of the course highlights the usefulness of formal ontology in evidencing and expressing dynamic patterns of relationality.

Models and formal language. The modelistic mathematical approach.
Genesis and development of formal ontology: from E. Husserl and J. Bochenski to recent studies in view of a renewed metaphysics.
The continuum as a model of relationality and the paradigm shift from G. Cantor to C.S. Peirce.
Research in expressing a dynamic pattern of relationaltiy, beginning from the axiomatic system of E. De Giorgi.

Bibliographical references:

BASTI G., Ontologia formale. Per una metafisica post-moderna, in Il problema dei fondamenti. Da Aristotele, a Tommaso d’Aquino, all’Ontologia Formale, a cura di Strumia A., Cantagalli, Siena 2007.
BOCHENSKI J., On Analogy, in «The Thomist», XI, 1948 [traduzione integrale italiana in Analogia e autoreferenza, a cura di Basti G. – C. Testi, Marietti, Milano 2004, pp. 131-158].
DE GIORGI E. – M. FORTI – G. LENZI, Verso i sistemi assiomatici del 2000 in matematica, logica e informatica, in «Preprints di Matematica» (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), 26 (1996).
ISRAEL G., La visione matematica della realtà, Laterza, Bari 2003³.
OBOJSKA L., Primary Relations in a New Foundational Axiomatic Framework, in «Journal of Philosophical Logic», 36 (2007), pp. 641-657.
POVILUS J., Formal Ontology and Dynamic Oneness. Exploring the ontological foundations of logic, in «Sophia», 0 (2008), pp. 92-100. (versione italiana id., Numeri e luce. Sul significato sapienziale della matematica, 2013, pp. 139-157).
POVILUS J. – L. OBOJSKA, Ontologie formali e paradigma trinitario. Alla ricerca di un linguaggio base per esprimere uno specifico pattern di relazionalità dinamica, in «Sophia», 4 (2012/2), pp. 177-195.
SMITH B., Logic and Formal Ontology, in Mohanty J. N. – McKenna W. (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, Lanham: University Press of America, 1989, pp. 29-67.

Professor: Judith Povilus

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