Barry Smith

University at Buffalo
National Center for Ontological Research
  • University at Buffalo
    Department of Philosophy
    Biomedical Informatics
    Neurology
    Computer Science and Engineering
    Distinguished Professor, Julian Park Chair
  • National Center for Ontological Research
    Administrator
  • Università della Svizzera Italiana
    Institute of Philosophy (ISFI)
    Visiting Professor (Part-time)
University of Manchester
Department of Philosophy
PhD, 1976
APA Eastern Division
CV
Buffalo, New York, United States of America
  •  1804
    Mach and Ehrenfels: The foundations of Gestalt Theory
    In Barry Smith (ed.), Foundations of Gestalt Theory, Philosophia Verlag. pp. 124-157. 1988.
    Ernst Mach's atomistic theory of sensation faces problems in doing justice to our ability to perceive and remember complex phenomena such as melodies and shapes. Christian von Ehrenfels attempted to solve these problems with his theory of "Gestalt qualities", which he sees as entities depending one-sidedly on the corresponding simple objects of sensation. We explore the theory of dependence relations advanced by Ehrenfels and show how it relates to the views on the objects of perception advanced…Read more
  •  462
    Traditional vs. Analytic Philosophy (review)
    Grazer Philosophische Studien 21 (1): 193-202. 1984.
    We review an influential series of lectures on analytic philosophy published in 1976 by the West German philosopher Ernst Tugendhat focusing on Tugendhat's treatment of Husserl, and particularly on issues connected with the notion of dependence or Abhängigkeit central to Husserl's philosophy. These issues are of interest not only because Tugendhat's work is one of the few contributions to contemporary analytic philosophy in which they are confronted explicitly, but also because what he has to sa…Read more
  •  807
    Sixteen days
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 28 (1). 2003.
    When does a human being begin to exist? We argue that it is possible, through a combination of biological fact and philosophical analysis, to provide a definitive answer to this question. We lay down a set of conditions for being a human being, and we determine when, in the course of normal fetal development, these conditions are first satisfied. Issues dealt with along the way include: modes of substance-formation, twinning, the nature of the intra-uterine environment, and the nature of the rel…Read more
  •  459
    Ontologia i analiza logiczna rzeczywistości
    Filozofia Nauki 2 5-22. 1994.
    The author attempts to show how mereology, taken together with certain topological notions, can yield the foundations for future investigations in formal ontology. He also attempts to show how the mereological framework allows for the direct and natural formulation of a series of theses - for example pertaining to the concept of a boundary - which can be only indirectly formulated (if at all) in set-theoretic terms. The far-reaching ain of the present framework is to serve as a basis for a forma…Read more
  •  354
    Of Chisholm’s many signal contributions to analytic metaphysics, perhaps the most important is his treatment of boundaries, a category of entity that has been neglected, to say the least, in the history of ontology. We can gain some preliminary idea of the sorts of problems which the Chisholmian ontology of boundaries is designed to solve, if we consider the following Zeno-inspired thought-experiment.
  •  471
    On drawing lines on a map
    In Frank A. U., Kuhn W. & Mark D. M. (eds.), Spatial Information Theory: Proceedings of COSIT '95, Springer. pp. 475-484. 1995.
    The paper is an exercise in descriptive ontology, with specific applications to problems in the geographical sphere. It presents a general typology of spatial boundaries, based in particular on an opposition between bona fide or physical boundaries on the one hand, and fiat or human-demarcation-induced boundaries on the other. Cross-cutting this opposition are further oppositions in the realm of boundaries, for example between: crisp and indeterminate, complete and incomplete, enduring and trans…Read more
  •  1091
    The essay constructs an ontological theory designed to capture the categories instantiated in those portions or levels of reality which are captured in our common sense conceptual scheme. It takes as its starting point an Aristotelian ontology of “substances” and “accidents”, which are treated via the instruments of mereology and topology. The theory recognizes not only individual parts of substances and accidents, including the internal and external boundaries of these, but also universal parts…Read more
  •  57
    Surveys the evidence for an influence of Austrian philosophers – specifically Brentano, Meinong, Husserl, Twardowski and Mach – on the early Wittgenstein. Such influence might either have been direct, for instance through Wittgenstein’s reading of Mach, or indirect, through the mediation of Russell and Moore. The paper concludes by addressing the possible influence of Stumpf and Reinach on Wittgenstein’s technical usage of the term ‘Sachverhalt’ in the Tractatus.
  •  940
    HL7 RIM: An incoherent standard
    with Werner Ceusters
    Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 124 (Proceedings of MIE 2006). 2006.
    The Health Level 7 Reference Information Model (HL7 RIM) is lauded by its authors as ‘the foundation of healthcare interoperability’. Yet even after some 10 years of development work, the RIM is still subject to a variety of logical and ontological flaws which have placed severe obstacles in the way of those who are called upon to develop implementations. We offer evidence that these obstacles are insurmountable and that the time has come to abandon an unworkable paradigm.
  •  415
    OAE: The Ontology of Adverse Events
    with Yongqun He, Sirarat Sarntivijai, Yu Lin, Zuoshuang Xiang, Abra Guo, Shelley Zhang, Desikan Jagannathan, Luca Toldo, and Cui Tao
    Journal of Biomedical Semantics 5 (29): 1-13. 2014.
    A medical intervention is a medical procedure or application intended to relieve or prevent illness or injury. Examples of medical interventions include vaccination and drug administration. After a medical intervention, adverse events (AEs) may occur which lie outside the intended consequences of the intervention. The representation and analysis of AEs are critical to the improvement of public health. Description: The Ontology of Adverse Events (OAE), previously named Adverse Event Ontology (AEO…Read more
  •  719
    Dispositions and Processes in the Emotion Ontology
    with Janna Hastings, Werner Ceusters, and Kevin Mulligan
    In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Biomedical Ontology, Ceur Workshop Proceedings. pp. 71-78. 2011.
    Affective science conducts interdisciplinary research into the emotions and other affective phenomena. Currently, such research is hampered by the lack of common definitions of te rms used to describe, categorise and report both individual emotional experiences and the results of scientific investigations of such experiences. High quality ontologies provide formal definitions for types of entities in reality and for the relationships between such entities, definitions which can be used to disamb…Read more
  •  468
    Objects and their environments: From Aristotle to ecological ontology
    In Andrew U. Frank, Jonathan Raper & Jean-Paul Cheylan (eds.), The Life and Motion of Socio-Economic Units, Taylor & Francis. pp. 79-97. 2001.
    What follows is a contribution to the theory of space and of spatial objects. It takes as its starting point the philosophical subfield of ontology, which can be defined as the science of what is: of the various types and categories of objects and relations in all realms of being. More specifically, it begins with ideas set forth by Aristotle in his Categories and Metaphysics, two works which constitute the first great contributions to ontological science. Because Aristotle’s ontological ideas w…Read more
  •  1532
    Aristotle, Menger, Mises: An essay in the metaphysics of economics
    History of Political Economy, Annual Supplement 22 263-288. 1990.
    There are, familiarly, a range of distinct and competing accounts of the methodological underpinnings of Menger' s work. These include Leibnizian, Kantian, Millian, and even Popperian readings; but they include also readings of an Aristotelian sort, and I have myself made a number of contributions in clarification and defence of the latter. Not only, I have argued, does the historical situation in which Menger found himself point to the inevitability of the Aristotelian reading; this reading …Read more
  •  28
    John Searle (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2003.
    From his groundbreaking book Speech Acts to his most recent studies of consciousness, freedom and rationality John Searle has been a dominant and highly influential figure amongst contemporary philosophers. This systematic introduction to the full range of Searle's work begins with the theory of speech acts and proceeds with expositions of Searle's writings on intentionality, consciousness and perception, as well as a careful presentation of the so-called Chinese Room argument. The volume consid…Read more
  •  1981
    The Relevance of Philosophical Ontology to Information and Computer Science
    In Ruth Hagenbruger & Uwe V. Riss (eds.), Philosophy, computing and information science, Pickering & Chattoo. pp. 75-83. 2014.
    The discipline of ontology has enjoyed a checkered history since 1606, with a significant expansion in recent years. We focus here on those developments in the recent history of philosophy which are most relevant to the understanding of the increased acceptance of ontology, and especially of realist ontology, as a valuable method also outside the discipline of philosophy.
  •  436
    Granular Spatio-Temporal Ontologies
    In AAAI Symposium: Foundations and Applications of Spatio-Temporal Reasoning (FASTR), . pp. 12-17. 2003.
    We propose an ontological theory that is powerful enough to describe both complex spatio-temporal processes (occurrents) and the enduring entities (continuants) that participate therein. The theory is divided into two major categories of sub-theories: (sub-) theories of type SPAN and (sub-)theories of type SNAP. These theories represent two complementary perspectives on reality and result in distinct though compatible systems of categories. In SNAP we have enduring entities such as substances,…Read more
  •  775
    Logic, Form and Matter
    with David Murray
    Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 55 (1). 1981.
    It is argued, on the basis of ideas derived from Wittgenstein's Tractatus and Husserl's Logical Investigations, that the formal comprehends more than the logical. More specifically: that there exist certain formal-ontological constants (part, whole, overlapping, etc.) which do not fall within the province of logic. A two-dimensional directly depicting language is developed for the representation of the constants of formal ontology, and means are provided for the extension of this language to ena…Read more
  •  429
    The functions of definitions in ontologies
    with Selja Seppälä and Alan Ruttenberg, ,
    To understand what ontologies do through their definitions, we propose a theoretical explanation of the functions of definitions in ontologies backed by empirical neuropsychological studies. Our goal is to show how these functions should motivate (i) the systematic inclusion of definitions in ontologies and (ii) the adaptation of definition content and form to the specific context of use of ontologies.
  •  876
    Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2): 401-420. 2000.
    There is a basic distinction, in the realm of spatial boundaries, between bona fide boundaries on the one hand, and fiat boundaries on the other. The former are just the physical boundaries of old. The latter are exemplified especially by boundaries induced through human demarcation, for example in the geographic domain. The classical problems connected with the notions of adjacency, contact, separation and division can be resolved in an intuitive way by recognizing this two-sorted ontology of b…Read more
  •  484
    The niche
    Noûs 33 (2): 214-238. 1999.
    The concept of niche (setting, context, habitat, environment) has been little studied by ontologists, in spite of its wide application in a variety of disciplines from evolutionary biology to economics. What follows is a first formal theory of this concept, a theory of the relations between objects and their niches. The theory builds upon existing work on mereology, topology, and the theory of spatial location as tools of formal ontology. It will be illustrated above all by means of simple biolo…Read more
  •  256
    Relations in Biomedical Ontologies
    with Werner Ceusters, Bert Klagges, Jacob Köhler, Anand Kuma, Jane Lomax, Chris Mungall, ,, Fabian Neuhaus, Alan Rector, and Cornelius Rosse
    Genome Biology 6 (5). 2005.
    To enhance the treatment of relations in biomedical ontologies we advance a methodology for providing consistent and unambiguous formal definitions of the relational expressions used in such ontologies in a way designed to assist developers and users in avoiding errors in coding and annotation. The resulting Relation Ontology can promote interoperability of ontologies and support new types of automated reasoning about the spatial and temporal dimensions of biological and medical phenomena.
  •  345
    Establishing and Harmonizing Ontologies in an Interdisciplinary Health Care and Clinical Research Environment
    with Mathias Brochhausen
    Studies in Health, Technology and Informatics 134 219-234. 2008.
    Ontologies are being ever more commonly used in biomedical informatics and we provide a survey of some of these uses, and of the relations between ontologies and other terminology resources. In order for ontologies to become truly useful, two objectives must be met. First, ways must be found for the transparent evaluation of ontologies. Second, existing ontologies need to be harmonised. We argue that one key foundation for both ontology evaluation and harmonisation is the adoption of a realist p…Read more
  •  1231
    Towards an Ontological Representation of Resistance: The Case of MRSA
    with Albert Goldfain and Lindsay G. Cowell
    Journal of Biomedical Informatics 44 (1): 35-41. 2011.
    This paper addresses a family of issues surrounding the biological phenomenon of resistance and its representation in realist ontologies. The treatments of resistance terms in various existing ontologies are examined and found to be either overly narrow, internally inconsistent, or otherwise problematic. We propose a more coherent characterization of resistance in terms of what we shall call blocking dispositions, which are collections of mutually coordinated dispositions which are of such a sor…Read more
  •  85
    Brentano’s Ontology: From Conceptualism to Reism
    In Dale Jacquette (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Brentano, Cambridge University Press. pp. 197-220. 2004.
    It is often claimed that the beginnings of Brentano’s ontology were Aristotelian in nature; but this claim is only partially true. Certainly the young Brentano adopted many elements of Aristotle’s metaphysics, and he was deeply influenced by the Aristotelian way of doing philosophy. But he always interpreted Aristotle’s ideas in his own fashion. He accepted them selectively, and he used them in the service of ends that would not have been welcomed by Aristotle himself. The present paper is an ex…Read more
  •  405
    Kraus on Weininger, Kraus on Women, Kraus on Serbia
    In Wolfgang Huemer & Marc-Oliver Schuster (eds.), Writing the Austrian Traditions: Relations Between Philosophy and Literature, University of Alberta Press. pp. 81-100. 2003.
    Otto Weininger’s Sex and Character interprets Kant’s categorical imperative in a way which takes it to imply that all human relations, including human sexual relations, are immoral; it is thus in a certain sense impossible to lead a moral life on this earth. We discuss Weininger’s ideas on man, woman, value and intellect, and describe their influence among the Central European intellectuals of his day, including Wittgenstein, and also including Karl Kraus.
  •  380
    A strategy for improving and integrating biomedical ontologies
    with Cornelius Rosse, Anand Kumar, Jose L. V. Mejino, Daniel L. Cook, and Landon T. Detwiler
    The integration of biomedical terminologies is indispensable to the process of information integration. When terminologies are linked merely through the alignment of their leaf terms, however, differences in context and ontological structure are ignored. Making use of the SNAP and SPAN ontologies, we show how three reference domain ontologies can be integrated at a higher level, through what we shall call the OBR framework (for: Ontology of Biomedical Reality). OBR is designed to facilitate infe…Read more
  •  57
    A theory of divides
    The Analytic-Continental Divide Conference. 1999.
    Some would conceive philosophy as being divided into Analytic and Continental. This, as John Searle points out, is rather like conceiving America as being divided into Business and Kansas. Searle’s wise saying has not, as yet, received the theoretical attention it deserves. In both cases we have a certain domain, which is conceived as being divided into two parts, one defined in spatial terms, the other defined in terms of objects, practices or features widely spread through some spatial area. W…Read more
  •  1039
    Rationality in Action: A Symposium
    Philosophical Explorations 4 (2): 66-94. 2001.
    Searle’s tool for understanding culture, law and society is the opposition between brute reality and institutional reality, or in other words between: observer-independent features of the world, such as force, mass and gravitational attraction, and observer-relative features of the world, such as money, property, marriage and government. The question posed here is: under which of these two headings do moral concepts fall? This is an important question because there are moral facts – for example …Read more
  •  483
    A survey of theories of part, whole and dependence from Aristotle to the Gestalt psychologists, with special attention to Husserl’s Third Logical Investigation “On the Theory of Parts and Wholes”.
  •  286
    Concept systems and ontologies: Recommendations for basic terminology
    with Gunnar O. Klein
    Transactions of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence 25 (3): 433-441. 2010.
    This is the third draft of a paper that aims to clarify the apparent contradictions in the views presented in certain standards and other specifications of health informatics systems, contradictions which come to light when the latter are evaluated from the perspective of realist philosophy. One of the origins of this document was Klein’s discussion paper of 2005-07-02 entitled “Conceptology vs Reality” and the responses from Smith, as well as the several hours of discussions during the 2005 …Read more