Keynote Speakers

FOIS 2014 will feature keynote presentations by

Nicholas Asher, What have we learned in formal semantics about ontology?

Abstract: In this talk I want to review some recent developments in formal lexical semantics, in particular how recent theories make use of types to model meanings and meaning composition.  I will look both at model theoretic approaches to lexical semantics and explicitly type theoretic ones.  In particular, I will discuss problems of the subtyping relation in richly typed theories.  I will then speculate about the ontological foundations of the different approaches to subtyping.

Nicholas M. Asher studied Philosophy and Linguistics at Yale University and Oxford University. He is Directeur de Recherche at CNRS, Laboratoire IRIT in Toulouse, France, and previously was a Professor for Philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin, USA. His main research interests span over formal semantics, logic of discourse, and computational linguistics. He is particularly known for having created the Segmented Discourse Representation Theory, a theory of discourse extending DRT with discourse relations and a logic of the semantics-pragmatics interface. His later work focuses on the logic of complex types to account for lexical semantics within a compositional framework.

Professor Asher is a member of the American Mathematical Association, New York Academy of Sciences, and National Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as an editor to Semantics and Pragmatics, Journal of Semantics, Linguistics and Philosophy, and Series in Language, Logic and Information. He is an author of numerous publications, including:
  • N. Asher, Lexical Meaning in Context: A Web of Words, Cambridge University Press 2011.
  • N. Asher and A. Lascarides, Logics of Conversation, Cambridge University Press 2003.
  • N. Asher, Reference to Abstract Objects in Discourse: A Philosophical Semantics for Natural Language Metaphysics, Kluwer Academic Publishers 1993.
  • D. Bonevac, N. Asher, and R. Koons, Logic Sets and Functions, Kendall Hunt Publishing, 1999.



Kit Fine, A New Theory of Vagueness

Abstract: I propose a new theory of vagueness.  It differs from previous theories in two main respects.  First, it treats vagueness as a global rather than local phenomenon, i.e. vagueness always relates to a number of cases rather than a single case.  Second, it treats vagueness as a logical rather than a material matter, i.e. the vagueness can be expressed by logical means alone without the help of additional vagueness theoretic primitives.  I shall criticize alternative views, develop a logic and semantics for my own view, and explains how it deals with the sorites.



Kit Fine (B.A., Balliol College Oxford, 1967; Ph.D., Warwick, 1969) is University Professor and Silver Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics at New York University and Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Birmingham. He specialises in metaphysics, logic, and philosophy of language. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, and recently received an Anneliese Maier Award from the Humboldt Foundation. Professor Fine has served as an editor or as a member of the editorial board for Journal of Symbolic Logic, Synthese, Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, Reports on Logic, and Philosophers' Imprint. He is an author of numerous publications, including:
  • Worlds, Times and Selves (Duckworth, 1977), with A. N. Prior
  • Reasoning with Arbitrary Objects (Blackwell, 1985)
  • The Limits of Abstraction (OUP, 2002)
  • Semantic Relationism (Blackwell, 2007)


Nicola Guarino, Ontological analysis and conceptual modeling: achievements and perspectives

Abstract: One of the key tenets of Applied Ontology is that conceptual modelling – making explicit people’s assumptions about a domain structure for purposes of understanding and communication – can greatly benefit from the rigorous tools of formal ontological analysis. I this talk I will  briefly review the main achievements of what is now called “Ontology-Driven Conceptual Modeling”, from the first intuitions that originated the OntoClean methodology, to the more recent contributions concerning the ways of modeling part-of relations, roles, and generic relationships. I will focus then on some recent ideas I have been working on, emerging from practical experiences with public services and organizations, centered on the observation that current practice of conceptual modeling tends to mainly focus on endurants (a.k.a. objects) and their relationships, with less attention given to perdurants (a.k.a. events and states). I will defend a methodological approach called “Episode-centric Conceptual Modeling” that shifts the focus of attention from relationships to their truth-makers, considered indeed –in most cases– as maximal perdurants (i.e., episodes), and suggest some ways to account for the internal structure of such truth-makers, analyzing the different ways objects and their individual qualities are more or less directly involved in an episode. Finally, I will defend the vision of a new generation of conceptual modeling tools, able to perform an interactive critique of modeling choice on the basis of logical, ontological and linguistic criteria.


Nicola Guarino is research director at the Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR), where he leads the Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA), a section of the Institute located in Trento. A graduate in Electronic Engineering at Padua University in 1978, he was first in charge of the data acquisition and monitoring system of a large nuclear fusion experiment in Padua. He then moved to the area of knowledge representation, joining the CNR Institute of Systems Theory and Biomedical Engineering (LADSEB-CNR) to work initially on medical expert systems. He joined ISTC-CNR in 2003, moving to Trento to found the new lab.

Since 1991 he has been playing a leading role in the ontology field, developing a strongly interdisciplinary approach that combines together Computer Science, Philosophy, and Linguistics, and relies on logic as a unifying paradigm. In 1993, he organized in Padua the first International Workshop on Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation, and since then has gained an international leadership in areas such as conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering, and more in general semantic technologies, multi-agent systems, and natural language processing. His impact is testified by a long list of widely cited research papers, and many keynote talks and invited tutorials in major conferences involving different communities. Among the best known results of his lab, the OntoClean methodology and the DOLCE foundational ontology. Current research interests include ontology-driven conceptual modelling, socio-technical systems, and service science.

He is founder and editor-in-chief (with Mark Musen from Stanford University) of the international journal Applied Ontology, and is the founder and was first president of the International Association for Ontology and its Applications, IAOA. He is editorial board member of the International Journal of Semantic Web and Information Systems, the Journal of Data Semantics, and editor of the IOS Press book series Frontiers in AI and Applications. He has been recently nominated ECCAI fellow. His publications include:

  • Formal Ontology in Information Systems, Introduction to the Proceedings of FOIS 1998, Trento, Italy, IOS Press.
  • Evaluating ontological decisions with OntoClean (with C. Welty), Communications of the ACM, 2002.
  • The ontological level: Revisiting 30 years of knowledge representation. In 'Conceptual Modeling: Foundations and Applications', Springer, 2009.
  • Commitment-based modeling of service systems (with R. Ferrario). in 'Exploring Services Science', Springer, 2012.



Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, Is it time to talk about first-person meanings in computer programs?

Abstract: Computer programming is a human activity where subjective matters have been typically looked at as sources of error and trouble. Most computer programmers have tended to deal with computer meanings in terms of correctness and completeness, paying little attention to the role of their own interpretations of context and values while generating program code. Following the orientation of all semiotic approaches to human-computer interaction (HCI), Semiotic Engineering has brought HCI designers onto the stage where users interact with systems interfaces and proposed that the latter are in face the designers’ proxy in a computer-mediated communication that involves designers and users alike. In other words, there are more people to account for in HCI than just users.
Recently, we have been using Semiotic Engineering’s conceptual tools to track the presence of human interpretation and intent in deeper layers of software. Interesting findings come from programs produced by users engaged in end user programming (EUP) activities. So, in this talk I will introduce the main ideas of Semiotic Engineering and show how, especially when applied to EUP, they can lead to intriguing questions about the first-person in computer discourse and what he/she/it/they may mean to tell us in software codes.



Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza (Ph.D. 1987, PUC-Rio) is a Full Professor at the Informatics Department of Rio de Janeiro's Pontifical Catholic University (PUC-Rio), where she works in the area of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). Her main interests are: HCI theory and methodology; HCI evaluation; computer-mediated human communication; end-user programming; explanation systems; and more recently cultural dimensions in HCI design. She was a visiting researcher at Stanford University, in Terry Winograd's group, and at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, in Jenny Preece's group. She founded SERG (Semiotic Engineering Research Group) at PUC-Rio in 1996.

Clarisse holds two ACM SIG Awards. In 2010 she was the co-winner of the ACM SIGDOC Rigo Award "for extraordinary contributions to the field of communication design” (cf. SIGDOC Awards). In 2013 she was inducted to the CHI Academy, ACM SIGCHI's "honorary group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of human-computer interaction [...] the principal leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the disciplines and/or industry, and led the research and/or innovation in human-computer interaction." (cf. SIGCHI Awards)

She is the creator of Semiotic Engineering, a semiotic theory of HCI. Her publications include:
  • Semiotics and Human-Computer Interaction. In 'The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction', 2nd Ed., 2013. (interaction-design.org)
  • The semiotic engineering of human-computer interaction (MIT Press, 2005)
  • Semiotic engineering methods for scientific resarch in HCI (Morgan & Claypool, 2009 - with Carla Leitão)
  • A Journey through Cultures (Springer, 2012 - with Luciana Salgado and Carla Leitão).