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...canati 2001). • Linguistic context. The representational structure of the semantic contents of (previous) discourse, affecting the interpretation of a sentence, as in Discourse Representation Theory (=-=Kamp and Reyle 1993-=-). Such contexts have been modeled as abstract objects (complex logical formulas), akin to the cognitive contexts described above (Asher 1993). The cognitive notion of context seems to be the most ade...

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...rameters) already represented in preliminary applications of our framework (Gangemi et al. 2003); (iv) exploring the possible analogy between the re-description ability exhibited by cognitive agents (=-=Karmiloff-Smith 1992-=-) and the fact that a description can be classified by a role within another description. Acknowledgements. We would like to thank Stefano Borgo, Alessandro Oltramari, and Gerardo Steve for the lively...

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...on of certain states of affairs; it is composed by a language, a set of axioms and a set of inference rules. This notion has been mainly used in artificial intelligence (Giunchiglia and Ghidini 2001, =-=McCarthy 1993-=-) although recently it has become fairly central in philosophy (Perry 1988, Recanati 2001). • Linguistic context. The representational structure of the semantic contents of (previous) discourse, affec...

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...g to Sowa, roles imply patterns of relationships, i.e. roles depend—via these patterns—on additional ‘external’ properties. In the literature various kinds of dependence relations have been analyzed (=-=Simons 1987-=-). Sowa assumes a sort of identificational dependence: to identify something as playing a certain role it is necessary to consider other entities, actions, or states. This is considered as not restric...

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... sentence, as in Discourse Representation Theory (Kamp and Reyle 1993). Such contexts have been modeled as abstract objects (complex logical formulas), akin to the cognitive contexts described above (=-=Asher 1993-=-). The cognitive notion of context seems to be the most adequate for our purposes, as it is the closest to Searle's view of context as a system of constitutive rules. Assuming that contexts can be int...

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...ons of agents. The characterization of this kind of social roles (in the restricted sense) is founded on theories of action and behavior (involving tasks, goals, plans, etc.) and deontic notions. In (=-=Zambonelli et al. 2003-=-) a role is viewed as an “abstract description of an entity's expected function” which is defined by four attributes: responsibilities (that determine the functionality of the role), permissions, acti...

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...f view, thematic roles specify how the argument structure of a verb is realized in the sentence, while, from a semantic point of view, they specify the mode of participation of an entity in an event (=-=Parsons 1990-=-). In this sense, thematic roles are akin to both the relational and the processual views of roles in (Loebe 2003), and can be seen as the most generic ‘participant roles’ of (Davis and Barrett 2002, ...

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...east a ‘subject matter’, for instance. A further constraint proposed by Guarino is that roles must be anti-rigid, i.e. they are properties that are contingent (non-essential) for all their instances (=-=Guarino and Welty 2002-=-). Accepting this general definition, Fan and colleagues (2001) limit roles to the representation of “the extrinsic features of an entity due to its participation in an event”, i.e. roles are linked t...

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...ianchi 2003, Bouquet 1998, Penco 2002): • Metaphysical context. A state of affairs holding in the world described only according to some chosen parameters, in which given sentences must be evaluated (=-=Kaplan 1978-=-, Lewis 1980). • Cognitive context. A theory that provides definitions of concepts, to be used as a background for the interpretation of certain states of affairs; it is composed by a language, a set ...

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...l, if, in addition to having a conventional nature, its very conventional constitution involves a network of relations among social agents. This network of relations can be interpreted (as argued in (=-=Gilbert 1992-=-, Searle 1990, Tuomela 1995) in different ways) in terms of (collective) intentionality, actions and deontic constraints. For example, the concepts of quark and triangle can be considered as social in...

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...tion to having a conventional nature, its very conventional constitution involves a network of relations among social agents. This network of relations can be interpreted (as argued in (Gilbert 1992, =-=Searle 1990-=-, Tuomela 1995) in different ways) in terms of (collective) intentionality, actions and deontic constraints. For example, the concepts of quark and triangle can be considered as social in the broader ...

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...s the individual dimension as well as the social one, subscribes to the idea that mental representations (concepts, beliefs, theories) are not complete or faithful replicas of ‘what is in the world’ (=-=Churchland et al. 1994-=-), but rather the result of the interaction between an active agent, guided by needs, goals and expectations, and the physical and cultural environment she lives in (Light and Butterworth 1992). Clear...

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...ilosophy are traditionally more interested in human actors, the characterizations of social roles (in the stronger sense) introduced in these disciplines are based on similar notions. In role theory (=-=Biddle 1979-=-) a role is defined as “those behaviors characteristic of one or more persons in a context”; i.e., roles focus on a limited set of behaviors that are characteristic of a set of persons and a context. ...

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...musician’, rather than through the argument structure of a verb, like in ‘John presides’ or ‘John plays music’. Therefore, the study of nominals, particularly relational nouns, is also relevant here (=-=Barker 1995-=-, De Bruin and Scha 1988). Many role nouns, like ‘mother’, ‘president’, ‘friend’, ‘gift’… are in fact relational nouns, i.e., they refer to a binary (or n-ary, n>1) relation, instead of a unary predic...

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...to characterize the structure of a concept. The concept ‘person’, for instance, may have the role ‘likes’, which represents the relationship between a person and what she likes best. As discussed in (=-=Guarino 1992-=-), this was not the original KL-ONE view, however, where roles had a more linguistic flavor, and were not supposed to stand for arbitrary relations. A stricter notion of roles was the one proposed by ...

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...g a conventional nature, its very conventional constitution involves a network of relations among social agents. This network of relations can be interpreted (as argued in (Gilbert 1992, Searle 1990, =-=Tuomela 1995-=-) in different ways) in terms of (collective) intentionality, actions and deontic constraints. For example, the concepts of quark and triangle can be considered as social in the broader sense, since t...

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...tation of roles needs to take into account various modeling issues: multiple and dynamic classification, multiple inheritance, objects changing their attributes and behaviors, etc. In (Steimann 2000, =-=Wieringa 1990-=-) specific solutions to these problems and good reviews of ways of representing roles are offered. We may quote in particular the Universal Modeling Language in which roles are represented as ‘labels’...

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... since there are not a thousand gondolas in the whole world, we are actually not counting boats but ‘boat-stages’, or, if we renounce to such a 4-D perspective, boats-passing-under-the-bridge events (=-=Musan 1995-=-). Applying such an approach to (17) would mean counting the events of “Alitalia carrying a single person” in 2002. However, this approach has difficulties with examples (19)-(21), and with any case i...

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...te from (and complementary to) ontologies, where proposed as task ontologies, where for instance a patient’s state could play the role of a hypothesis or a diagnosis during a problem-solving process (=-=Guarino 1997-=-). These roles have been called knowledge roles in the CommonKADS methodology (Schreiber et al. 2000). According to this school, knowledge roles should not be seen as predicates, but rather as individ...

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...ical account of roles. In fact, language expressions are not taken as carriers of propositional content, but “they can be viewed as ‘instructions’ to carry out certain kinds of mental constructions” (=-=Ducrot 1985-=-). 2.2 The key features of social roles On the basis of the above analysis of the literature, we have retained four basic characteristics of social roles, leaving aside the aspects related to the stri...

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... what exactly is a context remains to be clarified. The term ‘context’ has indeed received very different interpretations in the literature, but at least three senses can be identified (Bianchi 2003, =-=Bouquet 1998-=-, Penco 2002): • Metaphysical context. A state of affairs holding in the world described only according to some chosen parameters, in which given sentences must be evaluated (Kaplan 1978, Lewis 1980)....

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...s and a set of inference rules. This notion has been mainly used in artificial intelligence (Giunchiglia and Ghidini 2001, McCarthy 1993) although recently it has become fairly central in philosophy (=-=Perry 1988-=-, Recanati 2001). • Linguistic context. The representational structure of the semantic contents of (previous) discourse, affecting the interpretation of a sentence, as in Discourse Representation Theo...

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...ian Republic, the INTER Football Club) and ficta (e.g. Pinocchio, the Land of Toys). In addition, we will here consider figures (e.g., the Italian Presidency, the Holy Host), or officers in terms of (=-=Fales 1977-=-). A majority of social individuals are agentive. Agentive social individuals often receive a (legal or social) empowerment, which enables them to accept or to create descriptions. The same descriptio...

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...is a context remains to be clarified. The term ‘context’ has indeed received very different interpretations in the literature, but at least three senses can be identified (Bianchi 2003, Bouquet 1998, =-=Penco 2002-=-): • Metaphysical context. A state of affairs holding in the world described only according to some chosen parameters, in which given sentences must be evaluated (Kaplan 1978, Lewis 1980). • Cognitive...

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...mit roles to the representation of “the extrinsic features of an entity due to its participation in an event”, i.e. roles are linked to modalities of participation, as for the ‘participant roles’ of (=-=Davis and Barrett 2002-=-). Loebe (2003) notes though that roles must not be limited to the time of participation in specific events; a musician is still a musician while sleeping. He tries to characterize different approache...

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...y quote in particular the Universal Modeling Language in which roles are represented as ‘labels’ of the entity types linked by a specific relationship, i.e. a role is a named place in a relationship (=-=Fowler and Scott 1999-=-). In multi-agent systems (MAS) roles are generally viewed as descriptions of agent's acting and interacting, where agents include also societies or organizations of agents. The characterization of th...