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486On drawing lines on a mapIn 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
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352Persistence and Ontological PluralismIn Christian Kanzian (ed.), Persistence, Ontos. pp. 33-48. 2007.We aim to provide the ontological grounds for an adequate account of persistence. We defend a perspectivalist, or moderate pluralist, position, according to which some aspects of reality can be accounted for in ontological terms only via partial and mutually complementary ontologies, each one of which captures some relevant aspect of reality. Our thesis here is that this is precisely the sort of ontological account that is needed for the understanding of persistence, specifically an account invo…Read more
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59Wittgenstein and the Background of Austrian PhilosophyIn Elisabeth Leinfellner (ed.), Wittgenstein and his impact on contemporary thought: proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, 29th August to 4th September 1977, Kirchberg/Wechsel (Austria) ; editors, Elisabeth Leinfellner... [et al.], D. Reidel Pub. Co.. pp. 31-35. 1978.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.
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499Laws of Essence or Constitutive Rules? Reinach vs. Searle on the Ontology of Social EntitiesIn Francesca De Vecchi (ed.), Eidetica del Diritto e Ontologia Sociale. Il Realismo di Adolf Reinach, Mimesis. pp. 83-108. 2012.Amongst the entities making up social reality, are there necessary relations whose necessity is not a mere reflection of the logical connections between corresponding concepts? We distinguish three main groups of answers to this question, associated with Hume and Adolf Reinach at opposite extremes, and with Searle who occupies a position somewhere in the middle. We first set forth Reinach’s views on what he calls ‘material necessities’ in the realm of social entities. We then attempt to show tha…Read more
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44Prolegomena to a Metaphysics of Real EstateIn Roberto Casati (ed.), Shadows and Socio-Economic Units. Foundations of Formal Geography, Technical University of Vienna. pp. 151--155. 1996.As an object in which property rights can be invested, land is a peculiar hybrid structure that comprehends both spatial and non-spatial aspects. Even in its purely spatial aspect land is treated differently from culture to culture, thus for example in the degree to which property rights in land are held to relate to vague or precisely delineated parcels and to portions of space above and below the surface of the earth. When we examine the non-spatial aspects of landed property, however, the dim…Read more
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160Carving Up RealityIn Michael Gorman & Jonathan Sanford (eds.), Categories: Historical and Systematic Essays, Catholic University of America Press. pp. 225-237. 2004.If Mont Blanc is a vague object, then its vagueness will depend on the context in which reference is made. In a geological context the mountain might include only rock, perhaps together with a certain amount of air in the crevices and tunnels which have been formed beneath its surface. In a context of soil chemistry we might include also a surrounding thin layer of organic matter. In a skiing context we might include some snow. This essay sketches in informal terms the theory of granular partiti…Read more
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29John 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
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496Strategies for Referent Tracking in Electronic Health RecordsJournal of Biomedical Informatics 39 (3): 362-378. 2006.The goal of referent tracking is to create an ever-growing pool of data relating to the entities existing in concrete spatiotemporal reality. In the context of Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) the relevant concrete entities are not only particular patients but also their parts, diseases, therapies, lesions, and so forth, insofar as these are salient to diagnosis and treatment. Within a referent tracking system, all such entities are referred to directly and explicitly, something which cannot…Read more
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2002The Relevance of Philosophical Ontology to Information and Computer ScienceIn 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.
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39Kamikaze – und der WestenIn Georg Meggle (ed.), Terror und der Krieg gegen ihn: Öffentliche Reflexionen, Mentis. pp. 107-118. 2003.Vor dem Hintergrund einer von Durkheim ausgehenden Selbstmordarten-Typologie wird das Phänomen von terroristischen Selbstmordattentaten untersucht: Diese scheinen ein spezifisch nicht-westliches Phänomen zu sein. Der deutliche Unterschied zwischen der Strategie westlicher Terrorgruppen und solchen Terrorgruppen, die Selbstmordattentate ausüben, geht auf ein besonderes Merkmal der Geschichte und der Eigenart des Westens zurück; und dies wiederum ist tief im Mittelalter verwurzelt. Against the bac…Read more
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1208Questions: An essay in Daubertian phenomenologyPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (3): 353-384. 1987.A number of logicians and philosophers have turned their attention in recent years to the problem of developing a logic of interrogatives. Their work has thrown a great deal of light on the formal properties of questions and question-sentences and has led also to interesting innovations in our understanding of the structures of performatives in general and, for example, in the theory of presuppositions. When, however, we examine the attempts of logicians such as Belnap or Åqvist to specify…Read more
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745Dispositions and Processes in the Emotion OntologyIn 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
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472On the Origins of Analytic Philosophy (review)Grazer Philosophische Studien 35 (1): 153-173. 1989.Analytic philosophers have until recently been reluctant to pursue historical investigations into the Central European roots of their own philosophical tradition. The most recent book by Michael Dummett, however, entitled Origins of Analytic Philosophy, shows how fruitful such investigations can be, not only as a means of coming to see familiar philosophical problems in a new light, but also as a means of clarifying what, precisely, ‘analytic philosophy’ might mean. As Dummett points out, the ne…Read more
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383Biodynamic Ontology: Applying BFO in the Biomedical DomainStudies in Health and Technology Informatics 102. 2004.Current approaches to formal representation in biomedicine are characterized by their focus on either the static or the dynamic aspects of biological reality. We here outline a theory that combines both perspectives and at the same time tackles the by no means trivial issue of their coherent integration. Our position is that a good ontology must be capable of accounting for reality both synchronically (as it exists at a time) and diachronically (as it unfolds through time), but that these are tw…Read more
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902Fiat and Bona Fide BoundariesPhilosophy 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
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408Living high and letting diePhilosophy 76 (3): 435-442. 2001.Imagine that your body has become attached, without your permission, to that of a sick violinist. The violinist is a human being. He will die if you detach him. Such detachment seems, nonetheless, to be morally permissible. Thomson argues that an unwantedly pregnant woman is in an analogous situation. Her argument is considered by many to have established the moral permissibility of abortion even under the assumption that the foetus is a human being. Another popular argument is that presented by…Read more
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495The nicheNoûs 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
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896Ingarden vs. Meinong on the logic of fictionPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 41 (1/2): 93-105. 1980.For Meinong, familiarly, fictional entities are not created, but rather merely discovered (or picked out) from the inexhaustible realm of Aussersein (beyond being and non-being). The phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, in contrast, offers in his Literary Work of Art of 1931 a constructive ontology of fiction, which views fictional objects as entities which are created by the acts of an author (as laws, for example, are created by acts of parliament). We outline the logic of fiction which is implied …Read more
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418Creating the ontologists of the futureApplied ontology 6 (1): 91-98. 2011.The goal of the 2010 Ontology Summit was to address the current shortage of persons with ontology expertise by developing a strategy for the education of ontologists. To achieve this goal we studied how ontologists are currently trained, the requirements identified by organizations that hire ontologists, and developments that might impact the training of ontologists in the future. We developed recommendations for the body of knowledge that should be taught and the skills that should be developed …Read more
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90Brentano’s Ontology: From Conceptualism to ReismIn 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
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393Boundaries: A Brentanian TheoryBrentano Studien 8 107-114. 1998.According to Brentano's theory of boundaries, no boundary can exist without being connected with a continuum. But there is no specifiable part of the continuum, and no point, which is such that we may say that it is the existence of that part or of that point which conditions the boundary. - An adequate theory of the continuum must now recognize that boundaries be boundaries only in certain directions and not in others. This leads to consequences in other areas, too.
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58A theory of dividesThe 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
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718The Ontology for Biomedical InvestigationsPLoS ONE 11 (4). 2016.The Ontology for Biomedical Investigations (OBI) is an ontology that provides terms with precisely defined meanings to describe all aspects of how investigations in the biological and medical domains are conducted. OBI re-uses ontologies that provide a representation of biomedical knowledge from the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) project and adds the ability to describe how this knowledge was derived. We here describe the state of OBI and several applications that are using it, …Read more
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1068Rationality in Action: A SymposiumPhilosophical 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
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66How Not To Talk About What Does Not ExistIn Rudolf Haller (ed.), Aesthetics, Hölder-pichler-tempsky. pp. 194-196. 1984.Defends a view of intentional directedness according to which those seemingly object-directed acts – involved for example in reading works of fiction – which lack existing objects as targets, are not intentional (thus: not directed towards any object). Rather, each such act seems to its subject as if it were so directed because it is associated with a belief of a certain special sort, whose intentional directedness is not towards any putative external object but rather towards the very act itsel…Read more
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61The Logic of Biological Classification and the Foundations of Biomedical OntologyIn Dag Westerståhl (ed.), Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference, King's College Publication. pp. 505-520. 2005.Biomedical research is increasingly a matter of the navigation through large computerized information resources deriving from functional genomics or from the biochemistry of disease pathways. To make such navigation possible, controlled vocabularies are needed in terms of which data from different sources can be unified. One of the most influential developments in this regard is the so-called Gene Ontology, which consists of controlled vocabularies of terms used by biologists to describe cellula…Read more
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1551Husserl’s Logical InvestigationsGrazer Philosophische Studien 27 (1): 199-207. 1986.The magisterial analyses of logic and meaning advanced in Husserl's Logical Investigations of 1900/01 have for a number of reasons been neglected by analytical philosophers in subsequent decades. This state of affairs has to do, in part, with the history of the editions and translations of Husserl's writings. Findlay's readable but imperfect translation appeared seventy years after the work itself was first published, and the editors and translators and expositors of Husserl's works have reflect…Read more
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627A Spatio-Temporal Ontology for Geographic Information IntegrationInternational Journal for Geographical Information Science 23 (6): 765-798. 2009.This paper presents an axiomatic formalization of a theory of top-level relations between three categories of entities: individuals, universals, and collections. We deal with a variety of relations between entities in these categories, including the sub-universal relation among universals and the parthood relation among individuals, as well as cross-categorial relations such as instantiation and membership. We show that an adequate understanding of the formal properties of such relations – in pa…Read more
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556Ontology for the Intelligence AnalystCrossTalk 14 (Nov/Dec): 18-25. 2012.As available intelligence data and information expand in both quantity and variety, new techniques must be deployed for search and analytics. One technique involves the semantic enhancement of data through the creation of what are called ‘ontologies’ or ‘controlled vocabularies.’ When multiple different bodies of heterogeneous data are tagged by means of terms from common ontologies, then these data become linked together in ways which allow more effective retrieval and integration. We describe …Read more
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505Aristoteles, Kant und die QuantenphysikIn Ruth Hagengruber (ed.), Philosophie und Wissenschaft, Königshausen Und Neumann. pp. 79-97. 2002.Der folgende Vortrag hat zwei Teile. Teil 1 hat mit dem Internet zu tun und mit neuen Entwicklungen im Bereich des so genannten „ontological engineering“. Teil 2 hat zu tun mit der kantischen Philosophie und mit neuen Versuchen, diese Philosophie mit Hilfe der Quantenphysik zu unterstützen. Diese zwei Teile sind nicht vollkommen unabhängig voneinander, aber die Verbindung zwischen den zwei Teilen wird erst im Laufe des Vortrags klar werden.
Barry Smith
University at Buffalo
National Center for Ontological Research
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University at BuffaloDepartment of Philosophy
Biomedical Informatics
Neurology
Computer Science and EngineeringDistinguished Professor, Julian Park Chair -
National Center for Ontological ResearchAdministrator
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APA Eastern Division
Buffalo, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Ontology |
Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence |
Philosophy of Biology |