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225On the Phases of ReismIn Arkadiusz Chrudzimski & Dariusz Łukasiewicz (eds.), Actions, products, and things: Brentano and Polish philosophy, Ontos. pp. 137--183. 2006.Kotarbiński is one of the leading figures in the Lvov-Warsaw school of Polish philosophy. We summarize the development of Kotarbiński’s thought from his early nominalism and ‘pansomatistic reism’ to the later doctrine of ‘temporal phases’. We show that the surface clarity and simplicity of Kotarbiński’s writings mask a number of profound philosophical difficulties, connected above all with the problem of giving an adequate account of the truth of contingent (tensed) predications. The paper will …Read more
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264VérifacteursEtudes de Philosophie 9 104-138. 2008-2011.French translation of "Truth-Makers" (1984). A realist theory of truth for a class of sentence holds that there are entities in virtue of which these sentences are true or false. We call such entities ‘truthmakers’ and contend that those for a wide range of sentences about the real world are moments (dependent particulars). Since moments are unfamiliar we provide a definition and a brief philosophical history, anchoring them in our ontology by showing that they are objects of perception. The co…Read more
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392Bodily Systems and the Modular Structure of the Human BodyArtificial Intelligence in Medicine (Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence 2780) 9 86-90. 2003.Medical science conceives the human body as a system comprised of many subsystems at a variety of levels. At the highest level are bodily systems proper, such as the endocrine system, which are central to our understanding of human anatomy, and play a key role in diagnosis and in dynamic modeling as well as in medical pedagogy and computer visualization. But there is no explicit definition of what a bodily system is; such informality is acceptable in documentation created for human beings, but f…Read more
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87Surrounding SpaceTheory in Biosciences 121 (2): 139-162. 2002.The history of evolution is a history of development from less to more complex organisms. This growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and of organism-environment relations. It is a concern with this latter aspect of evolutionary development that motivates the present paper. We begin by outlining a theory of organism-environment relations. We then show that the theory can be applied to a range of different sorts of cases, both bi…Read more
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272On Luck, Responsibility and the Meaning of LifePhilosophical Papers 34 (3): 443-458. 2005.A meaningful life, we shall argue, is a life upon which a certain sort of valuable pattern has been imposed by the person in question - a pattern which involves in serious ways the person having an effect upon the world. Meaningfulness is thus a special kind of value which a human life can bear. Two interrelated difficulties face ths proposal. One concerns responsiblity: how are we to account for the fact that a life that satisfies the above criteria can have more meaning than a life with the sa…Read more
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24Alexius Meinong, On Objects of Higher Order and Husserl's Phenomenology (review)Philosophical Quarterly 30 (120): 252. 1980.
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188Ingarden versus Meinong o logice fikcjiIn Z. Muszyński (ed.), Z badań nad prawdą i poznaniem, Wydawnictwo Umc-s. 1998.: 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 implie…Read more
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183Wittgensteinian Philosophy and the Culture of the CommentaryIn Rudolf Haller & Johannes Brandl (eds.), Wittgenstein: Towards a Re-Evaluation, Volume 2, Hölder-pichler-tempsky. pp. 247-254. 1990.The object of the present paper is the philosophical commentary, a form of literature that once predominated in all major philosophical cultures from classical Greece to Renaissance Italy, but which has more recently fallen into comparative disuse. Commentaries on the writings of German thinkers such as Kant, Hegel, Marx and Heidegger have, certainly, kept the form alive to some extent in recent centuries; in the tradition of philosophy that was initiated by Descartes and Locke, however, and whi…Read more
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481Ontologia i analiza logiczna rzeczywistościFilozofia 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
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57Biomedizinische Ontologie: Wissen strukturieren für den Informatik-Einsatz (edited book)Vdf Hochschulverlag. 2008.Dieses Buch betritt Neuland. Es ist eine Einführung in das neue Gebiet der angewandten Ontologie, jenem multidisziplinären Arbeitsgebiet, in dem Philosophen gemeinsam mit Informatikern und Vertretern der jeweils thematischen Wissenschaftsbereiche, in unserem Fall mit Biologen und Medizinern, daran arbeiten, wissenschaftliches Wissen informationstechnisch zu repräsentieren. Es zeigt, wie Philosophie eine praktische Anwendung findet, die von zunehmender Wichtigkeit nicht nur in den heutigen Lebens…Read more
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97Boundaries: An essay in mereotopologyIn Lewis H. Hahn (ed.), Philosophy of Roderick Chisholm (Library of Living Philosophers), Open Court. pp. 534--561. 1997.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.
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1194On substances, accidents and universals: In defence of a constituent ontologyPhilosophical Papers 26 (1): 105-127. 1997.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
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444Logic and formal ontologyManuscrito 23 (2): 275-323. 2000.Revised version of chapter in J. N. Mohanty and W. McKenna (eds.), Husserl’s Phenomenology: A Textbook, Lanham: University Press of America, 1989, 29–67. Logic for Husserl is a science of science, a science of what all sciences have in common in their modes of validation. Thus logic deals with universal laws relating to truth, to deduction, to verification and falsification, and with laws relating to theory as such, and to what makes for theoretical unity, both on the side of the propositions of…Read more
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1007HL7 RIM: An incoherent standardStudies 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.
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379The Soul and Its Parts: Varieties of InexistenceBrentano-Studien 4. 1992.From the point of view of Brentano’s philosophy, contemporary philosophy of mind presupposes an over-crude theory of the internal structures of mental acts and states and of the corresponding types of parts, unity and dependence. We here describe Brentano’s own account of the part-whole structures obtaining in the mental sphere, and show how it opens up new possibilities for mereological investigation. One feature of Brentano’s view is that the objects of experience are themselves parts of mind,…Read more
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1880Mach and Ehrenfels: The foundations of Gestalt TheoryIn 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
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102Objects and their environments: From Aristotle to ecological ontologyIn 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
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499Assessing Ontologies: The Question of Human Origins and Its Ethical SignificanceIn Edmund Runggaldier, Christian Kanzian & Josef Quitterer (eds.), Persons: An Interdisciplinary Approach, Öbvhpt. pp. 243--259. 2003.In their paper “Sixteen Days” Barry Smith and Berit Brogaard try to answer the question: when does a human being begin to exist? In this paper we will address some methodological issues connected with this exercise in ontology. We shall begin by sketching the argument of “Sixteen Days”. We shall then attempt to characterize what is special about the ontological realism of “Sixteen Days” as contrasted to the linguistic constructivism which represents the more dominant current in contemporary anal…Read more
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1660Aristotle, Menger, Mises: An essay in the metaphysics of economicsHistory 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
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999Fiat and Bona Fide Boundaries: Towards an Ontology of Spatially Extended ObjectsIn Stephen Hirtle & Andrew U. Frank (eds.), Spatial Information Theory: International Conference COSIT ‘97, Springer. 1997.Human cognitive acts are directed towards objects extended in space of a wide range of different types. What follows is a new proposal for bringing order into this typological clutter. The theory of spatially extended objects should make room not only for the objects of physics but also for objects at higher levels, including the objects of geography and of related disciplines. It should leave room for different types of boundaries, including both the bona fide boundaries which we find in the ph…Read more
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484Granular Spatio-Temporal OntologiesIn Thomas Bittner & Barry Smith (eds.), 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
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51The New European PhilosophyIn János Kristóf Nyíri & Barry Smith (eds.), Philosophy and political change in Eastern Europe, Hegeler Institute. pp. 165-170. 1993.The paper seeks to indicate ways in which the crude distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Continental philosophy may have to be amended in light of recent developments in Eastern Europe. As is well known, the philosophy of science is to no small part a product of the universities of the Habsburg Empire (in Vienna, Prague, Lemberg/Lwow, etc.). Logic, too, has played a more significant role in Eastern Europe (not least in Poland) than in the philosophical cultures of Germany or France. For these and…Read more
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484OAE: The Ontology of Adverse EventsJournal 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
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824Logic, Form and MatterAristotelian 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
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588A Theory of Granular PartitionsIn Matt Duckham, Michael F. Goodchild & Michael Worboys (eds.), Foundations of Geographic Information Science, Taylor & Francis. pp. 117-151. 2003.We have a variety of different ways of dividing up, classifying, mapping, sorting and listing the objects in reality. The theory of granular partitions presented here seeks to provide a general and unified basis for understanding such phenomena in formal terms that is more realistic than existing alternatives. Our theory has two orthogonal parts: the first is a theory of classification; it provides an account of partitions as cells and subcells; the second is a theory of reference or intentional…Read more
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510The functions of definitions in ontologiesIn R. Ferrario & W. Kuhn (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference (FOIS 2016), Ios Pres. pp. 37-50. 2016.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.
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300Relations in Biomedical OntologiesGenome 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.
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82BiometaphysicsIn Robin Le Poidevin, Simons Peter, McGonigal Andrew & Ross P. Cameron (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Metaphysics, Routledge. pp. 537-544. 2009.While Darwin is commonly supposed to have demonstrated the inapplicability of the Aristotelian ontology of species to biological science, recent developments, especially in the wake of the Human Genome Project, have given rise to a new golden age of classification in which ontological ideas -- as for example in the Gene Ontology, the Cell Ontology, the Protein Ontology, and so forth -- are once again playing an important role. In regard to species, on the other hand, matters are more complex. We…Read more
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406Establishing and Harmonizing Ontologies in an Interdisciplinary Health Care and Clinical Research EnvironmentStudies 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
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416Textual DeferenceAmerican Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1). 1991.It is a truism that the attitude of deference to the text plays a lesser role in Anglo-Saxon philosophy than in other philosophical traditions. Works of philosophy written in English have, it is true, spawned a massive secondary literature dealing with the ideas, problems or arguments they contain. But they have almost never given rise to works of commentary in the strict sense, a genre which is however a dominant literary form not only in the Confucian, Vedantic, Islamic, Jewish and Scholastic …Read more
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 |