About the Workshop

There is a long-standing view according to which potency precedes actuality. Under this view, the happening of an event consists in the realization or manifestation of potentialities that already exist in the event’s participants. Indeed, the world seems full of entities that encapsulate such potentialities, which we usually refer to as realizable entities, with dispositions being among the most significant. A disposition is an entity that inheres in another entity and determines the behavior of the latter under certain circumstances. Dispositions are closely related to the causal powers that objects have in the world and encompass what we usually call abilities, capabilities, tendencies, propensities, liabilities, capacities, and so on.

As they link the static structure of the world (i.e., the endurants/continuants that populate it) to its dynamical structure (i.e., the perdurants/occurrents that can happen to or be performed by such continuants), realizable entities have become a popular topic in the Formal Ontology community, being subject of active research. Among other applications, realizable entities have been employed to represent diseases and biological functions, provide ontological grounds for risks and probabilities, model engineered artifacts and affordances, and describe organizational capabilities and social roles.

The purpose of POWERs is to turn the spotlight on this issue, providing a venue for researchers and practitioners to present their work on dispositions and other realizable entities, exploring their various perspectives. Information and computer scientists, philosophers, cognitive scientists, linguists, conceptual modelers, domain experts, and professionals from related disciplines are very welcome to participate.

Topics of Interest

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Characterization and formalization of realizable entities (e.g., single vs. multi-track dispositions, degree of realization, formalisms for reasoning based on dispositions).

• Types of realizable entities (e.g., discussions on whether some core entities such as roles and biological/artifactual functions are realizable) and analysis of the contrast between dispositional and non-dispositional realizable entities.

• Relation between realizable entities and entities from other categories (e.g., qualities, events).

• Domain applications (e.g., biology, health sciences, industry, enterprise modeling).

• Philosophical investigations relevant to formal ontology, including:

  • Is the distinction between realizable and non-realizable (sometimes called “categorical”) properties metaphysical or linguistic?

  • Intrinsicness vs. extrinsicness of realizable entities

  • How may the distinction between dispositions and powers be relevant for formal ontology?

  • Can dispositions provide a good account of causation? Can they offer a good substitute for laws of nature in ontology?

  • How could blocks, finks, and antidotes be relevant for applied ontology?

Submissions

We welcome three types of contributions:

• Abstract for presentation only: 2-3 pages, 10-15 minutes presentation (not included in the proceedings);

• Short papers: 6-8 pages, 10-15 minutes presentation;

• Full research papers: 10-14 pages, 20-25 minutes presentation.

Submissions must be sent via Easychair (https://easychair.org/my/conference?conf=fois2025 - select the track “WS: Entities that can be Realized”).

All contributions must be submitted as a single PDF file and must adhere to the one-column CEUR template. Here are instructions from the How To Submit CEUR webpage:

“[…] we require that authors use the new CEURART style for writing papers to be published with CEUR-WS. The style is available from Vol-XXX. An Overleaf page for LaTeX users is available as template. […]

You can also download an offline version with the style files from http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-XXX/CEURART.zip. It contains the LaTeX CEURART style and also the ODT (LibreOffice) template file. Do not use Word for the ODT template. We require that the Libertinus font family is used in CEURART. Instructions on installing these fonts are found in the ODT template. […]”

Submissions including semantic artefacts, methodologies, softwares, etc, need to adhere to the FAIR guidelines.

Organization

Workshop Chairs

• Fabrício Henrique Rodrigues – Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil

• Adrien Barton – CNRS, Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT), France

Program Comittee (still to be completed)

• João Paulo Almeida – Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil

• John Beverley – University at Buffalo, USA

• Stefano Borgo – Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Italy

• Rodrigo Calhau – Federal Institute of Espírito Santo, Brazil

• Giancarlo Guizzardi – University of Twente, Netherlands

• Ludger Jansen – PTH Brixen College, Italy

• Max Kistler – University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France

• Ítalo Oliveira – University of Twente, Netherlands

• Barry Smith – University at Buffalo, USA

• Fumiaki Toyoshima – Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland

• Neil Williams – University at Buffalo, USA