Grounding Spirit

System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the …, 2002

So one day I was sitting in a meeting about the new global trade regime, NAFTA and GATT and the World Trade Organization. The more I listened, the more I began to simmer inside. “This is a huge new system people are inventing!' I said to myself. 'They haven't the slightest idea ...

Synthese, 2018

I develop a reduction of grounding to essence. My approach is to think about the relation between grounding and essence on the model of a certain concept of existential dependence. I extend this concept of existential dependence in a couple of ways and argue that these extensions provide a reduction of grounding to essence if we use sorted variables that range over facts and take it that for a fact to obtain is for it to exist. I then use the account to resolve various issues surrounding the concept of grounding and its connection with essence; apply the account to paradigm cases and to the impure logic of grounding; and respond to objections.

Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems, 2009

In order for an agent to achieve its objectives, make sound decisions, communicate and collaborate with others effectively it must have high quality representations. Representations can encapsulate objects, situations, experiences, decisions and behavior just to name a few. Our interest is in designing high quality representations, therefore it makes sense to ask of any representation; what does it represent; why is it represented; how is it represented; and importantly how well is it represented. This paper identifies the need to develop a better understanding of the grounding process as key to answering these important questions. The lack of a comprehensive understanding of grounding is a major obstacle in the quest to develop genuinely intelligent systems that can make their own representations as they seek to achieve their objectives. We develop an innovative framework which provides a powerful tool for describing, dissecting and inspecting grounding capabilities with the necessary flexibility to conduct meaningful and insightful analysis and evaluation. The framework is based on a set of clearly articulated principles and has three main applications. First, it can be used at both theoretical and practical levels to analyze grounding capabilities of a single system and to evaluate its performance. Second, it can be used to conduct comparative analysis and evaluation of grounding capabilities across a set of systems. Third, it

Mind, 2016

A number of philosophers think that grounding is, in some sense, well-founded. This thesis, however, is not always articulated precisely, nor is there a consensus in the literature as to how it should be characterized. In what follows, I consider several principles that one might have in mind when asserting that grounding is well-founded, and I argue that one of these principles, which I call `full foundations', best captures the relevant claim. My argument is by the process of elimination. For each of the inadequate principles, I illustrate its inadequacy by showing either that it excludes cases that should not be ruled out by a well-foundedness axiom for grounding, or that it admits cases that should be ruled out.

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy

Fine ( ) is a pluralist about grounding. He holds that there are three fundamentally distinct notions of grounding: metaphysical, normative, and natural. Berker (2017) argues for monism on the grounds that the pluralist cannot account for certain principles describing how the distinct notions of grounding interact. This paper defends pluralism. By building on work by Fine (2010) and Litland (2015) I show how the pluralist can systematically account for Berker's interaction principles.

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The Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application, 2002

So one day I was sitting in a meeting about the new global trade regime, NAFTA and GA 77 and the World Trade Organization. The more I listened, the more I began to simmer inside. "This is a huge new system people are inventing!'I said to myself. `They haven't the slightest idea how it will behave,' myself said back to me. (Meadows, 1997, stress added) ABSTRACT IS researchers are now far more likely to consider using qualitative approaches than may have been the case a few years ago. Publication outlets such as RITA, Information & Organization, and IFIP Working Group 8.2 have helped to establish a firm basis for non-quantitative IS research. One method that is gaining increasing popularity is the Grounded Theory Method originated by Glaser and Strauss. There are some profound problems with this approach; in particular the unproblematic conceptualization of data, and a level of methodological flexibility that can degenerate into methodological indifference and result ...