Gloria Sansò

My research focuses on Social Metaphysics, Philosophy of Computing and AI, and Applied Ontology. I am especially interested in places where these areas overlap.

My two primary research projects concern i) the development of a computational ontology of finance, and ii) the transformative effect of algorithms and AI systems in the financial sector and society at large.

Selected publications (for a complete list of publications, see my CV)

Book chapter

“Why we need a computational ontology of finance (and how philosophers can help build it)” (2025), in E. Ippoliti, M. Vergara-Fernández, & F. Zennaro (Eds.), Philosophy and finance: Ten open questions (Synthese Library, Vol. 504, pp. 125-140), Springer (pre-print).

This chapter explains how a well-designed computational ontology of finance could help improve data management; it argues that this ontology should be realism-based and compatible to Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). This choice implies some complications because it requires some preliminary reflections on the nature of the entities involved. Fortunately, some philosophical literature can be the starting point for these reflections; in this chapter, this is shown by considering money as a case study.

Edited volume

Ontology of Finance (with B. Smith) (2023), Rivista di Estetica

Articles in referred journals

“Ownership, preferences, and offers” (2023), Rivista di Estetica, 84(3), 58-74 (pre-print).

This paper presents some reflections on the Action Theory of Exchanges. I focus, in particular, on the ontological problems associated with the expression “transferring the ownership”, and I offer an interpretation that solves them. I also present a characterization of buying and selling that, in addition to being compatible with the Action Theory of Exchanges, has the advantage of accounting for both monetary and non-monetary exchanges.

This paper considers different social ontological approaches that may be used to account for speculative bubbles, and argues for the document-based one as the most promising.