Mark your calendar:
“Identifiable Individuals and Reality: What Do We Describe and Why”
Dr. Martin Doerr, from Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH)
A talk from the Center for Spatial Studies Fall 2020 series, Knowledge Representation and GeoHumanities
Tuesday, September 17 | 11:00 am
The virtual talk will argue “that only a smaller part of the features in our environment is sufficiently distinct over a useful time-span to form ‘identifiable individuals’. Different ontological categories can provide specific criteria about how parts of reality can be subdivided into ‘identifiable individuals’ that turn out to be useful for modelling the behaviour of reality as a result of observation, rather than convention, the so-called ontological individuation.” After identifying cases where “individuality is undecidable” and properties that “make phenomena not suited for individuation,” Dr. Doerr will propose “that the description of delimited situations in such systems, be it after observation or in prediction, needs to relate to identifiable individuals as reference[,]” and follow with an example of how “…adequate individuation criteria can substantially reduce the ambiguity of spatiotemporal gazetteers.”
From the Center: For the semester Fall 2020-2021, the Center for Spatial Studies will host a lecture series under the theme: Knowledge Representation and GeoHumanities. This series of spatial events will study the impact of Knowledge Representation and GIScience in the Geospatial Turn of Humanities.