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359On CredentialsJournal of Social Ontology 6 (1): 47-67. 2020.Credentials play an important role in all modern societies, but the analysis of their nature and function has thus far been neglected by social philosophers. We present a view according to which the function of credentials is certify the identity and the institutional status (including the rights) of individuals. More importantly, credentials enable rights-holders to exercise their rights, so that for a particular right to be exercisable the right-holder should possess, carry and sometimes show …Read more
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4481Ontology and Cognitive OutcomesJournal of Knowledge Structures and Systems 1 (1). 2020.The term ‘intelligence’ as used in this paper refers to items of knowledge collected for the sake of assessing and maintaining national security. The intelligence community (IC) of the United States (US) is a community of organizations that collaborate in collecting and processing intelligence for the US. The IC relies on human-machine-based analytic strategies that 1) access and integrate vast amounts of information from disparate sources, 2) continuously process this information, so that, 3) a…Read more
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3413The Infectious Disease Ontology in the Age of COVID-19Journal of Biomedical Semantics 12 (13). 2021.The Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) is a suite of interoperable ontology modules that aims to provide coverage of all aspects of the infectious disease domain, including biomedical research, clinical care, and public health. IDO Core is designed to be a disease and pathogen neutral ontology, covering just those types of entities and relations that are relevant to infectious diseases generally. IDO Core is then extended by a collection of ontology modules focusing on specific diseases and patho…Read more
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242Realitätsrepräsentation: Das Ziel der OntologieIn Ludger Jansen & Barry Smith (eds.), Biomedizinische Ontologie. Philosophie – Lebenswissenschaften - Informationstechnik, Vdf (utb Forum). pp. 31-46. 2008.The development of ontologies for the purposes of data curation is an important element in modern-day data and information sciences. Unfortunately, much of the work on these applied ontologies is associated with a relativist or conceptualist point of view, according to which ontologies represent (for example) the concepts in the minds of human beings. The paper describes a series of problems with such views, and defends an alternative realist interpretation.
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259Review of Harald Delius, Self-Awareness: A Semantical Inquiry (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 170-173. 1985.The thesis of Delius's book is that statements of self-awareness such as "I am aware that I see a cat" possess what he calls 'Cartesian characteristics' of indubitability or absolute self-evidence. He argues that this is the case in virtue of the fact that such statements are not about anything independent of themselves. The book is described as a 'semantical inquiry', but it is not by any means a contribution to the philosophy of language of the predictable sort. Statements of self-awareness ex…Read more
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351Ontologies for Space and Ground SystemsIn Ground System Architectures Workshop, Gsaw. pp. 1-3. 2020.We will survey a range of ontologies relevant to space and ground system domains. The ontologies form part of the Common Core Ontology ecosystem (CCO) developed under the IARPA KDD initiative. We focus specifically on the Space Domain Ontologies, a suite of ontologies to support space situational awareness, including the Spacecraft Mission Ontology, Spacecraft Ontology, Space Event Ontology and Space Object Ontology.
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182Harald Delius, Self-Awareness: A Semantical Inquiry (review)Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 46 (1): 170-173. 1985.
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217Social ObjectsPhilosophiques 26 (2): 315-347. 1999.One reason for the renewed interest in Austrian philosophy, and especially in the work of Brentano and his followers, turns on the fact that analytic philosophers have become once again interested in the traditional problems of metaphysics. It was Brentano, Husserl, and the philosophers and psychologists whom they influenced, who drew attention to the thorny problem of intentionality, the problem of giving an account of the relation between acts and objects or, more generally, between the psycho…Read more
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346OHMI: The Ontology of Host-Microbiome InteractionsJournal of Biomedical Semantics 10 (1): 1-14. 2019.Host-microbiome interactions (HMIs) are critical for the modulation of biological processes and are associated with several diseases, and extensive HMI studies have generated large amounts of data. We propose that the logical representation of the knowledge derived from these data and the standardized representation of experimental variables and processes can foster integration of data and reproducibility of experiments and thereby further HMI knowledge discovery. A community-based Ontology of H…Read more
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231Interdyscyplinarne perspektywy rozwoju, integracji i zastosowań ontologii poznawczychAvant: Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies 7 (3): 101-117. 2016.We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for…Read more
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154Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral TheoryIn Lester Embree (ed.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 81-85. 1995.There is an inherent phenomenological tendency in British moral theory, especially from John Locke onward. The purpose of his Essay was, he said, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with. This is language that might serve well in a general description of the work of Husserl and other phenomenologists
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336Zur Nichtübersetzbarkeit der deutschen PhilosophieIn D. Papenfuss & O. Pöggeler (eds.), Zur philosophischen Aktualität Heideggers, vol. 3, Im Spiegel der Welt: Sprache, Übersetzung, Auseinandersetzung, Klostermann. pp. 125-147. 1992.Warum hat sich die deutsche Philosophie so sehr und so langanhaltend an Autoritäten und Texte gebunden gefühlt, fast als ob man – wie die alten Iatrophilologen – Wissen aus bloßen Worten herauspressen wollte? Warum haben sich in Deutschland so häufig philosophische Sprachstile entwickelt, die ein Hindernis fur das Verständnis der entsprechenden Texte sind?
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159WitasekIn Monika Betzler & Julian Nida-rümelin (eds.), Ästhetik und Kunstphilosophie: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart in Einzeldarstellungen, Alfred Kröner Verlag. pp. 821-824. 2012.Stephan Witasek was a student and follow of Meinong, who applied Meinong's ideas on the ontology of the non-existent to the working out of a theory of aesthetic phenomena in his Grundzüge der allgemeinen Ästhetik of 1904. Witasek shows how our feelings undergo certain sorts of structural modifications when they are directed towards what does not exist. He draws a distinction between genuine mental phenomena and what he calls ‘phantasy-material’, asserting that ‘the job of the aesthetic object, w…Read more
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236Commentary on Bozzi’s Untimely Meditations on the relation between self and non-selfIn Ivana Bianchi & Richard Davies (eds.), Paolo Bozzi’s Experimental Phenomenology, Routledge. pp. 125-129. 2018.Independently of whether an object of experience becomes a candidate for being a part of the self or a part of the external world, it is always given to us as just an object of experience. The observer-observed relation can be seen as a type of relation with many instances, both between the self and different objects of experience and between any given object of experience and different selves. The self is situated in a spatial grid, where the latter can be characterised as an array of relations…Read more
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752Ontology as Product-Service System: Lessons Learned from GO, BFO and DOLCEIn David Limbaugh, David Kasmier, Werner Ceusters & Barry Smith (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO), Buffalo, NY, . 2019.This paper defends a view of the Gene Ontology (GO) and of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) as examples of what the manufacturing industry calls product-service systems. This means that they are products (the ontologies) bundled with a range of ontology services such as updates, training, help desk, and permanent identifiers. The paper argues that GO and BFO are contrasted in this respect with DOLCE, which approximates more closely to a scientific theory or a scientific publication. The paper provide…Read more
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867Mental CapabilitiesIn David Kasmier, David Limbaugh & Barry Smith (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO), University at Buffalo, NY, . 2019.We propose capability as a universal or type intermediate between function and disposition. A capability is, broadly speaking, a disposition that is of a type whose instances can be evaluated on the basis of how well they are realized. A function, on the view we are proposing, is a capability the possession of which is the rationale for the existence of its bearer. To say for example that a water pump has the function to pump water is to say that the pump exists because something was needed that…Read more
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742Foundation for a Realist Ontology of Cognitive ProcessesIn David Kasmier, David Limbaugh & Barry Smith (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO), University at Buffalo, NY, . 2019.What follows is a first step towards an ontology of conscious mental processes. We provide a theoretical foundation and characterization of conscious mental processes based on a realist theory of intentionality and using BFO as our top-level ontology. We distinguish three components of intentional mental process: character, directedness, and objective referent, and describe several features of the process character and directedness significant to defining and classifying mental processes. We arr…Read more
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738A First-Order Logic Formalization of the Industrial Ontology Foundry Signature Using Basic Formal OntologyIn Barry Smith, Farhad Ameri, Hyunmin Cheong, Dimitris Kiritsis, Dusan Sormaz, Chris Will & J. Neil Otte (eds.), ”, Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO), Graz, . 2019.Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) is a top-level ontology used in hundreds of active projects in scientific and other domains. BFO has been selected to serve as top-level ontology in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF), an initiative to create a suite of ontologies to support digital manufacturing on the part of representatives from a number of branches of the advanced manufacturing industries. We here present a first draft set of axioms and definitions of an IOF upper ontology descending from BFO…Read more
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997Toward an Ontology of Commercial ExchangeIn Jonathan Vajda, Eric Merrell & Barry Smith (eds.), Proceedings of the Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO), Graz, . 2019.In this paper we propose an Ontology of Commercial Exchange (OCE) based on Basic Formal Ontology. OCE is designed for re-use in the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) and in other ontologies addressing different aspects of human social behavior involving purchasing, selling, marketing, and so forth. We first evaluate some of the design patterns used in the Financial Industry Business Ontology (FIBO) and Product Types Ontology (PTO). We then propose terms and definitions that we believe will imp…Read more
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305Naive Fizyka: Esej w ontologiiScience Blog. 2012.W dziełach Arystotelesa, lub z medievals, jak również w pismach późniejszych zdroworozsądkowe filozofów, takich jak Thomas Reid czy GE Moore’a, możemy znaleźć rodzinę różnych prób uporania się ze strukturami rozsądku i wspólnego -sense świat, który jest nam dany w normalnym, doświadczenie pre-teoretycznym. Będziemy argumentować, co wynika, że teoria takich struktur stanowi ważny i dotychczas niedoceniany związek między wczesnym psychologii Gestalt z jednej strony, oraz współczesnych osiągnięć …Read more
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695Warranted DiagnosisIn David Limbaugh, David Kasmier, Werner Ceusters & Barry Smith (eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Biomedical Ontology (ICBO), Buffalo, NY, . pp. 1-10. 2019.A diagnostic process is an investigative process that takes a clinical picture as input and outputs a diagnosis. We propose a method for distinguishing diagnoses that are warranted from those that are not, based on the cognitive processes of which they are the outputs. Processes designed and vetted to reliably produce correct diagnoses will output what we shall call ‘warranted diagnoses’. The latter are diagnoses that should be trusted even if they later turn out to have been wrong. Our work is …Read more
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396How Many Kafka's Are There?Polish Journal of Aesthetics 53 (2): 9-13. 2019.The aim of this volume is to present Kafka not as a writer, or not only as a writer, but as a philosopher. However, even after narrowing the scope of our interest down, there will still be several Kafka’s left on the table. Themes treated in the volume include: the so-called Brentano School in Prague, Kafka’s affiliation to the Louvre Circle, Kafka and existentialist philosophy, Kafka’s Jewish heritage, his love of Nietzsche and Meister Eckhart and—last but not least, since he was such an except…Read more
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562Geographical Categories: An Ontological RetrospectiveInternational Journal of Geographical Information Science 15 (7). 2001.Since it is only five years since the publication of our paper, "Geographical categories: An ontological investigation" (Smith and Mark 2001), it seems somewhat strange to be making retrospective comments on the piece. Nevertheless, the field is moving quickly, and much has happened since the article appeared. A large number of papers have already cited the work, which suggests that there is a seam here that people find worthy of being mined. In this short essay, we first review the paper and at…Read more
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1272Materials towards a history of speech act theoryIn Aschim Eschbach (ed.), Karl Bühler's Theory of Language: Proceedings of the Conference held at Kirchberg and Essen, John Benjamin. pp. 125-152. 1988.Preliminary version of “Towards a History of Speech Act Theory”, in A. Burkhardt (ed.), Speech Acts, Meanings and Intentions. Critical Approaches to the Philosophy of John R. Searle, Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990, 29–61.
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320Die ganze Welt ist eine Bühne: Zur Ökologie und Ontologie menschlicher und tierischer LebensweltInterdisziplinäre Phänomenologie / Interdisciplinary Phenomenology (Kyoto) 1 31-44. 2004.Die klassische bikategoriale Ontologie von Substanzen und Akzidentien ist für die Festlegung der Strukturen menschlichen und tierischen Verhaltens nicht hinreichend, da die Umwelten dieses Verhaltens sich nicht in dieses klassische System einfügen. Wir bieten dementsprechend den Grundriß einer Theorie der besonderen Gebilde, die die Alltagswelten menschlicher und tierischer Verhalten konstituieren. Die Ausgangsüberlegung ist die folgende, Wir sind alle (Schau)spieler, und diese brauchen eine Büh…Read more
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1129Interoperability of disparate engineering domain ontologies using Basic Formal OntologyJournal of Engineering Design 31. 2019.As engineering applications require management of ever larger volumes of data, ontologies offer the potential to capture, manage, and augment data with the capability for automated reasoning and semantic querying. Unfortunately, considerable barriers hinder wider deployment of ontologies in engineering. Key among these is lack of a shared top-level ontology to unify and organise disparate aspects of the field and coordinate co-development of orthogonal ontologies. As a result, many engineering o…Read more
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841There is no general AIarXiv. 2020.The goal of creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – or in other words of creating Turing machines (modern computers) that can behave in a way that mimics human intelligence – has occupied AI researchers ever since the idea of AI was first proposed. One common theme in these discussions is the thesis that the ability of a machine to conduct convincing dialogues with human beings can serve as at least a sufficient criterion of AGI. We argue that this very ability should be accepted also a…Read more
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541Drawing BoundariesIn Timothy Tambassi (ed.), The Philosophy of GIS, Springer. pp. 137-158. 2019.In “On Drawing Lines on a Map” (1995), I suggested that the different ways we have of drawing lines on maps open up a new perspective on ontology, resting on a distinction between two sorts of boundaries: fiat and bona fide. “Fiat” means, roughly: human-demarcation-induced. “Bona fide” means, again roughly: a boundary constituted by some real physical discontinuity. I presented a general typology of boundaries based on this opposition and showed how it generates a corresponding typology of the d…Read more
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15Proceedings of the KI 2003 Workshop on Reference Ontologies and Application Ontologies (edited book)CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Vol. 94. 2004.Contains the following contributions: Ingvar Johansson: Ontologies and Concepts. Two Proposals Christopher Menzel: Reference Ontologies - Application Ontologies: Either/Or or Both/And? Luc Schneider: Foundational Ontologies and the Realist Bias Guenther Goerz, Kerstin Buecher, Bernd Ludwig, Frank-Peter Schweinberger, and Iman Thabet: Combining a Lexical Taxonomy with Domain Ontology in the Erlangen Dialogue System Vim Vandenberghe, Burkhard Schafer, John Kingston: Ontology Modelling in the Lega…Read more
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369The Plant Ontology facilitates comparisons of plant development stages across speciesFrontiers in Plant Science 10. 2019.The Plant Ontology (PO) is a community resource consisting of standardized terms, definitions, and logical relations describing plant structures and development stages, augmented by a large database of annotations from genomic and phenomic studies. This paper describes the structure of the ontology and the design principles we used in constructing PO terms for plant development stages. It also provides details of the methodology and rationale behind our revision and expansion of the PO to cover …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 |