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(2006-2008)
Documentality. Ontologies and technologies for
the citizenship and the democracy
Coordinatore: Prof. Maurizio Ferraris, Università di Torino
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The fact that being "sans papier" amounts to being devoid of citizenship (and of
the associated rights) is extremely revealing as to
the significance of documents, namely of those things that we shall regard as
objects that record social events.
Nonetheless, the importance of such objects has been somehow underestimated,
and the reason for this lies in the fact that, for a rather long time, the
specific nature of social objects, namely the ontological category that
comprises documents, has gone somewhat unnoticed. In the influential social
ontology propounded by Searle (1995), social objects are still regarded as mere
higher order objects founded on physical objects, in line with the "paper money
model", i.e. the idea according to which a piece of paper acquires a social
value in certain contexts.
Following Ferraris (2005), the alternative hypothesis that motivates this
research project is that the nature of social objects, as distinct from physical
and ideal objects, is defined by the law Object = Inscribed Act: social objects
are social acts (involving at least two individuals) that have the distinctive
feature of being inscribed - on paper, on a computer file or also in people's
mind.
Differently from Searle's version, social acts and their records come to the
foreground, and if we look at what the record of a social act comes down to, we
realize that what we have found is the definition of "document". Documents are
the social objects par excellence and, at the same time, they are the matrix
lying at the foundations of social reality, providing rights, identities, and
obligations. In brief, if we look for the difference between an archaic or
underdeveloped state and a
modern one, we will immediately identify such a difference in the quality and
quantity of the documents they are able to produce.
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Unsurprisingly, an effective management of documents (in all the different forms
corresponding to the different possible supports) looks so indispensable in
realities such as those of western countries or of developing countries (which
in particular might rely on documentality to boost their development, as
suggested by de Soto, 2000) to have suggested the institution of a specific
discipline: "document engineering" (see http://cde.berkeley.edu/). In spite of
what have been said against bureaucracy, the rational production
and management of documents is indispensable both for the organization of
complex realities and for the improving of their
economies.
The engineering approach, however, looks
somewhat deficient from a theoretical point of view, since it doesn't
acknowledge the
specific nature of the objects that it is supposed to deal with, namely with
what we propose to call "documentality", and that we shall consider in its
philosophical, neuroscientific, juridical, and socio-political underpinnings.
The national research - which is preliminary to a
project that will be submitted to the European Union (Seven Framework Program:
January 2007) in the frame of the Center for Theoretical and Applied Ontology (CTAO:
www.ctaorg.org) directed by Maurizio
Ferraris - aims at answering three questions:
1. What is a document?
2. How are documents managed in a complex
society?
3. What are the technologies for documents
circulation?
These three questions - assuming that social identity has an institutional
and not merely a biological foundation - correspond to the three levels of
enquiry of the research. The first level of enquiry (philosophical and
neuroscientific) coincides with an Ontology. The second one (juridical and
philosophical) coincides with a Pragmatics. The third one, involving the overall
expertise of the Units - in particular, the one relating to information science
- coincides with a Technology.
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(2004-2006)
Ontological Canon. An Integrative Approach To Knowledge Organization
Coordinator: Prof. Maurizio Ferraris, University of Turin
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In the last twenty years new and unexpected connections have been identified between philosophical ontology and application fields, ranging from information technology to social sciences. The Ontological Canon is intended to provide: (a) an historical and theoretical overview of the results that have already been achieved in this area and (b) some innovative contributions, both theoretical and applicative, in specific areas of research.
National research is the basis for a broader project that will be submitted to the EU, as part of the activities promoted by the Centre for Theoretical and Applied Ontology (CTAO).
The units involved in the project will contribute in different ways, but in constant synergy, to the three articulations of the Canon: the Canon Book, the Canon Portal and the Institutional Canon.
The Canon Book
The philosophical units will coordinate the making of an ontology textbook, which will be edited in two paper (Italian and English) and an online version (within the Canon Portal). The textbook will be organized in three sections: History, Theory and Applications.
The units will focus both on the historical and the theoretical aspects, within the so-called ‘Object Paradigm’, a line of research whose aim is to determine the general features of objects, which are relevant for an ontological enterprise conceived as a rational system for objects classification.
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The Canon Portal
A web portal will be realized. It will be designed both to access the corpus of ontologies produced by the different units and to allow a direct interaction in the developing of the ontologies itself for the users.
A specific attention - and this is a strongly innovative feature of the project - will be devoted to the identification of criteria which can be used to build the architecture of an online environment for knowledge management, in order to improve the quality of human-machine interaction.
The Institutional Canon
The Institutional Canon has two main aims: (a) to study the connections between social objects and institutional formalizations and (b) to enhance the role of CTAO as a node of excellence within the Italian research and as a bridge between the latter and other European research labs.
It will focus on three lines of research: (a) justification and constitution of political and social theories; (b) building of juridical database; (c) ontology of intellectual property.
In order to internationalize the research, a number of meetings will be organized, such as the FOIS (Formal Ontology in Information Systems, www.fois.org) - Third International Conference (Turin, 4-6 November 2004), and the Second National Conference on Analytic Ontology (Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, 7-9 July 2005). Exchanges will also be arranged with the IFOMIS in Leipzig (http://ifomis.de), in collaboration with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Bonn), with the Jean Nicod Institute in Paris (http://www.institutnicod.org), the University of Paris-IV, and with Columbia University.
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(2002-2004)
Intellectual Property: Property of Objects, Poperty of Ideas
Coordinator: Prof. Maurizio Ferraris, University of Turin
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| Prof. Andrea Bottani, University of Bergamo |
| Prof. Ugo Mattei, University of Turin |
| Prof. Ugo Savardi, University of Verona |
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The issue of intellectual ownership (also analyzed from the peculiar point of view of a theoretical categorization of the objects belonging to this domain) is raised from the exceptional technological development and the transformations of the global market, occurred in the last twenty years. More specifically, we can observe today a widespread tendency to extend the traditional model of patents protection beyond his originary boundaries. This move can be viewed as an attempt at establishing old and familiar rules within new areas of human intellectual production (information technologies, new media, etc.)
The copyright, e.g., is the main instrument for the protection of intellectual property. Traditionally, it has been used for the protection of immaterial assets, and, also in this case, we have seen, in the last years, a systematic reinforcement of the rules defending property, also in absence (i.e. the software’s case) of remarkable announcements of relevant information (patents), or in absence (typically in the case of large databases) of an original production of the informations that has been collected.
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The expansion of markets, the development of industrial production in the so-called “emerging countries”and the consequent increase of competition, has forced many companies to adopt more aggressive strategies of protection of intellectual property.
The worldwide organization for the commerce has accepted this policy in the new rules on the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights. Indeed, if at a national level, it seems to be difficult to find a good balance between the aspects just mentioned, in the context of international markets there are evident economic problems. For example, the sharp asymmetry in the field of technical production, between industrial countries and countries in the way of development. The question of rules on a global scale about knowledge and ownership requires, thus, a new definition apt to construct a new balance between different needs.
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