JOWO 2023 Tutorial
JOWO 2024 hosted the following tutorial:
The Ontology of Parts, Wholes, and Sums
Antony Galton, slides
and look at the many different forms taken by these notions in everyday language
and thought, reviewing a number of proposals for classifying the varieties of the part/
whole relation. We follow this with a look at dependency relations between parts and
wholes, with reference to theories such as monism, pluralism, and atomism, as well
as the distinction between particular and general parthood relations.
The second part of the tutorial focuses specifically on physical parts and wholes, and
explores the classification of parts in terms of the roles they play in both the history
and functioning of a physical whole. These ideas are then applied to a range of
different types of physical wholes such as organisms, artefacts, aggregates, and
collections.
The orientation of this tutorial is more philosophical/foundational than practical, but
much of what is covered is relevant to anyone seeking to apply ontological principles
in the design of information systems. This is not a course in formal mereology, and
formal notations will be kept to a minimum; while some prior familiarity with such
notations would be useful, it is not essential.
A selection of relevant references:
*Artale, A., Guarino, N. & Keet, C. M. (2008), Formalizing temporal constraints on part whole relations, in G. Brewka & J. Lang, eds, ‘Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference (KR’08)’, AAAI Press, pp. 673–683.
*Fine, K. (1999), ‘Things and their parts’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 23(1), 61–74.
*Fine, K. (2010), ‘Towards a theory of part’, The Journal of Philosophy 107(11), 559–589.
*Guizzardi, G. (2007), Modal aspects of object types and part-whole relations and the de re/de dicto distinction, in J. Krogstie, A. Opdahl & G. Sindre, eds, ‘Advanced Information Systems Engineering’, pp. 5–20. Proceedings of 19th International Conference, CAISE 2007, Trondheim, Norway, June 11–15, 2007.
*Keet, C. M. & Artale, A. (2008), ‘Representing and reasoning over a taxonomy of part-whole relations’, Applied Ontology 3, 91–110.
*Koslicki, K. (2008), The Structure of Objects, Oxford University Press.
*Petersen, S. (2019), ‘Composition as pattern’, Philosophical Studies 176, 1119–1139.
*Schaffer, J. (2010), ‘Monism: The priority of the whole’, The Philosophical Review 119(1), 31–76.
*Schulz, S., Kumar, A. & Bittner, T. (2006), ‘Biomedical ontologies: What part-of is and isn’t’, Journal of Biomedical Informatics 39, 350–361.
*Simons, P. (1987), Parts: a Study in Ontology, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
*Simons, P. & Dement, C. (1996), Aspects of the mereology of artifacts, in R. Poli & P. Simons, eds, ‘Formal Ontology’, Vol. 53 of Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 255–276.
*van Inwagen, P. (1990), Material Beings, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London.
*Winston, M. E., Chaffin, R. & Herrmann, D. (1987), ‘A taxonomy of part-whole relations’, Cognitive Science 11, 417– 444.
*Wood, Z. & Galton, A. (2009), ‘A taxonomy of collective phenomena’, Applied Ontology 4, 267–292