A language for the human body: a tentative proposal

Authors

  • Pierluigi Graziani University of Urbino
  • Mirko Tagliaferri University of Urbino

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v7i1.241

Keywords:

Human body, modal mereotopology, discrete mereotopology, location.

Abstract

To rigorously describe the structure of the human body a rich formal language is needed: this language must be able to describe all the parts of the body and the spatial regions those parts occupy; moreover, it must be able to describe the relations that occur between those parts and those spatial regions; finally, it must be able to distinguish between essential and contingent features of the body and it must do so based on the context that is relevant for the descriptions given. Our aim in this paper is to provide a formal language that can express all those kinds of information. The language we present is inspired by Vakarelov (2008) and is a modally augmented version of the discrete mereotopology due to Galton (2014) with an added relation for location (this latter addition is inspired by Donnelly (2004)): we will call this language modal discrete mereotopology with location. In the paper, we also suggest a neighbourhood semantics for our language: this will make the language context-sensitive, making it fit for different computer graphics applications.

Downloads

Published

2019-03-03

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 1 (2019)

Section

Focus

License

– Authors are allowed to upload their papers immediately after publication on reserved access institutional repositories or archives required for research metrics and evaluation. Authors ought to include publication references (journal title, volume, issue and pages, article DOI when available, URL to journal website or journal issue).

Issue files are only available for download by subscription for 18  months from the date of publication. After the embargo period, the content becomes open access and is subject to the Creative Commons Generic Licence version 4.0 (cc. By 4.0). Copyright in individual articles passes to the publisher on the date of publication of the article and reverts to the authors at the end of the embargo period.

If the author wishes to request immediate Open Access publication of his/her contribution, without waiting for the end of the embargo period, a fee of EUR 500.00 will be charged. To make this type of request, please contact our administrative office (amministrazione@edizioniets.com) and the journal manager (journals@edizioniets.com), indicating: the title of the article, the details of the file to which it belongs, the details of the person to whom the invoice should be addressed, the existence of any research funding.