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Ontologies, Mental Disorders and Prototypes

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Book cover On the Cognitive, Ethical, and Scientific Dimensions of Artificial Intelligence

Part of the book series: Philosophical Studies Series ((PSSP,volume 134))

Abstract

As it emerged from philosophical analyses and cognitive research, most concepts exhibit typicality effects, and resist to the efforts of defining them in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. This holds also in the case of many medical concepts. This is a problem for the design of computer science ontologies, since knowledge representation formalisms commonly adopted in this field (such as, in the first place, the Web Ontology Language – OWL) do not allow for the representation of concepts in terms of typical traits. However, the need of representing concepts in terms of typical traits concerns almost every domain of real world knowledge, including medical domains. In particular, in this article we take into account the domain of mental disorders, starting from the DSM-5 descriptions of some specific mental disorders. On this respect, we favor a hybrid approach to the representation of psychiatric concepts, in which ontology oriented formalisms are combined to a geometric representation of knowledge based on conceptual spaces.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. DAFIST, Philosophy Section, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Maria Cristina Amoretti & Marcello Frixione

  2. Center for the Philosophy of Health and Disease, Genoa, Italy

    Maria Cristina Amoretti & Marcello Frixione

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of Turin, Turin, Italy

    Antonio Lieto

  4. ICAR-CNR, Palermo, Italy

    Antonio Lieto

  5. Bruno Kessler Foundation, Trento, Italy

    Greta Adamo

  6. DIBRIS, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Greta Adamo

Authors
  1. Maria Cristina Amoretti
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  2. Marcello Frixione
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  3. Antonio Lieto
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  4. Greta Adamo
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Maria Cristina Amoretti .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

    Don Berkich

  2. Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università di Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Matteo Vincenzo d'Alfonso

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Amoretti, M.C., Frixione, M., Lieto, A., Adamo, G. (2019). Ontologies, Mental Disorders and Prototypes. In: Berkich, D., d'Alfonso, M. (eds) On the Cognitive, Ethical, and Scientific Dimensions of Artificial Intelligence. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 134. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01800-9_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01800-9_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01799-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01800-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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