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2574Knowing How vs. Knowing ThatIn J. C. Nyíri & Barry Smith (eds.), Practical Knowledge: Outlines of a Theory of Traditions and Skills, Croom Helm. pp. 1-16. 1988.A sketch of the history of the opposition between propositional and practical knowledge is followed by a brief account of the relevant ideas of Merleau-Ponty, Polanyi, and H. and S. Dreyfus (on expertise and artificial intelligence). The paper concludes with a discussion of the work of Ryle on the notion of a ‘discipline’, drawing implications for a theory of traditions.
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416Theories of JudgmentIn Thomas Baldwin (ed.), The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945, Cambridge University Press. pp. 157--173. 2003.The dominant theory of judgment in 1870 was one or other variety of combination theory: the act of judgment is an act of combining concepts or ideas in the mind of the judging subject. In the decades to follow a succession of alternative theories arose to address defects in the combination theory, starting with Bolzano’s theory of propositions in themselves, Brentano’s theory of judgment as affirmation or denial of existence, theories distinguishing judgment act from judgment content advanced by…Read more
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1621The Space Object OntologyIn Alexander P. Cox, Christopher Nebelecky, Ronald Rudnicki, William Tagliaferri, John L. Crassidis & Barry Smith (eds.), 19th International Conference on Information Fusion (FUSION 2016), Ieee. 2016.Achieving space domain awareness requires the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Storing and leveraging associated space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and collision prediction and avoidance present further challenges. Space objects are characterized according to a variety of parameters including their identifiers, design specifications, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missio…Read more
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18Brentano and Marty: An Inquiry into Being and TruthIn Kevin Mulligan (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Metaphysics: The Philosophy and Theory of Language of Anton Marty, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 111-149. 1990.See revised version in Barry Smith, Austrian Philosophy, chapter 4; available online at: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/book/austrian_philosophy/
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284Philosophy and Biomedical Information SystemsIn Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds.), Applied Ontology: An Introduction, Ontos. pp. 17-30. 2008.The pathbreaking scientific advances of recent years call for a new philosophical consideration of the fundamental categories of biology and its neighboring disciplines. Above all, the new information technologies used in biomedical research, and the necessity to master the continuously growing flood of data that is associated therewith, demand a profound and systematic reflection on the systematization and classification of biological data. This, however, demands robust theories of basic concep…Read more
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335Investigating Subsumption in SNOMED CT: An Exploration into Large Description Logic-Based Biomedical TerminologiesArtificial Intelligence in Medicine 39 (3): 183-195. 2007.Formalisms based on one or other flavor of Description Logic (DL) are sometimes put forward as helping to ensure that terminologies and controlled vocabularies comply with sound ontological principles. The objective of this paper is to study the degree to which one DL-based biomedical terminology (SNOMED CT) does indeed comply with such principles. We defined seven ontological principles (for example: each class must have at least one parent, each class must differ from its parent) and examined …Read more
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449Truthmaker ExplanationsIn Jean-Maurice Monnoyer (ed.), Metaphysics and Truthmakers, Ontos Verlag. pp. 79-98. 2007.This paper is a fresh attempt to articulate the role of a theory of truthmakers. We argue that truthmaker theory constitutes a cornerstone of good methodology in metaphysics, but that a conflation of truthmaker theory with the theory of truth has been responsible for certain excesses associated with truthmaker-based approaches in the recent literature. If truthmaker theory is not a component of a theory of truth, then truthmaker maximalism – the view that every truth has a truthmaker – loses its…Read more
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265ItIn Rudolf Haller & Wolfgang Grassl (eds.), Language, Logic and Philosophy, Reidel. 1980.A brief study of the logical, linguistic, psychological and ontological problem of ‘impersonalia’, which is to say of assertions such as ‘it’s raining’ or ‘es blitzt’ which seem to have no subject. Such assertions cause problems not only for defenders of traditional subject-predicate views of assertive sentences, but also for those, such as Frege, who defended a view in terms of functions and arguments.
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1957The Substitution Theory of ArtGrazer Philosophische Studien 25 (1): 533-557. 1985.In perceptual experience we are directed towards objects in a way which establishes a real relation between a mental act and its target. In reading works of fiction we enjoy experiences which manifest certain internal similarities to such relational acts, but which lack objects. The substitution theory of art attempts to provide a reason why we seek out such experiences and the artifacts which they generate. Briefly, we seek out works of art because we enjoy the physiology and the phenomenology …Read more
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670The National Center for Biomedical OntologyJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association 19 (2): 190-195. 2012.The National Center for Biomedical Ontology is now in its seventh year. The goals of this National Center for Biomedical Computing are to: create and maintain a repository of biomedical ontologies and terminologies; build tools and web services to enable the use of ontologies and terminologies in clinical and translational research; educate their trainees and the scientific community broadly about biomedical ontology and ontology-based technology and best practices; and collaborate with a variet…Read more
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926Individuals, universals, collections: On the foundational relations of ontologyIn Achille Varzi Laure Vieu (ed.), ”, Formal Ontology in Information Systems. Proceedings of the Third International Conference, Ios Press. 2004.This paper provides an axiomatic formalization of a theory of foundational relations between three categories of entities: individuals, universals, and collections. We deal with a variety of relations between entities in these categories, including the is-a relation among universals and the part-of relation among individuals as well as cross-category relations such as instance-of, member-of, and partition-of. We show that an adequate understanding of the formal properties of such relations – in …Read more
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755Ontological realism: A methodology for coordinated evolution of scientific ontologiesApplied ontology 5 (3): 139-188. 2010.Since 2002 we have been testing and refining a methodology for ontology development that is now being used by multiple groups of researchers in different life science domains. Gary Merrill, in a recent paper in this journal, describes some of the reasons why this methodology has been found attractive by researchers in the biological and biomedical sciences. At the same time he assails the methodology on philosophical grounds, focusing specifically on our recommendation that ontologies developed fo…Read more
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432A realism-based approach to the evolution of biomedical ontologiesIn Proceedings of the Annual AMIA Symposium, American Medical Informatics Association. pp. 121-125. 2006.We present a novel methodology for calculating the improvements obtained in successive versions of biomedical ontologies. The theory takes into account changes both in reality itself and in our understanding of this reality. The successful application of the theory rests on the willingness of ontology authors to document changes they make by following a number of simple rules. The theory provides a pathway by which ontology authoring can become a science rather than an art, following principles …Read more
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593Applying the Realism-Based Ontology-Versioning Method for Tracking Changes in the Basic Formal OntologyIn P. Garbacz & O. Kutz (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2014), Ios Press. pp. 227-240. 2014.Changes in an upper level ontology have obvious conse-quences for the domain ontologies that use it at lower levels. It is therefore crucial to document the changes made between successive versions of ontologies of this kind. We describe and apply a method for tracking, explaining and measuring changes between successive versions of upper level ontologies such as the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The proposed change-tracking method extends earlier work on Realism-Based Ontology Versioning (RBOV) …Read more
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2006Basic concepts of formal ontologyIn Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems, Ios Press. pp. 19-28. 1998.The term ‘formal ontology’ was first used by the philosopher Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations to signify the study of those formal structures and relations – above all relations of part and whole – which are exemplified in the subject-matters of the different material sciences. We follow Husserl in presenting the basic concepts of formal ontology as falling into three groups: the theory of part and whole, the theory of dependence, and the theory of boundary, continuity and contact. T…Read more
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337Husserlian EcologyHuman Ontology (Kyoto) 7 9-24. 2001.If mind is a creature of adaptation, then our standard theories of intentionality and of mental representation are in need of considerable revision. For such theories, deriving under Cartesian inspiration from the work of Brentano, Husserl and their followers, are context-free. They conceive the subject of mental experience in isolation from any surrounding physico-biological environment. Husserl sought in his later writings to find room for the surrounding world of human practical experience, a…Read more
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336Some Formal Moments of TruthIn Werner Leinfellner (ed.), Language and Ontology, Hölder-pichler-tempsky / Reidel. pp. 186-90. 1982.A preliminary statement of the formal theory of the truthmaker relation advanced in the paper “Truth-makers” (Mulligan, Simons and Smith) in 1984. Correspondence theories of truth have. I give a brief account of some more or less obvious formal characteristics of this almost forgotten basic truthmaker relation. I then attempt to show how this account may be extended to provide elements of a theory of truth which is in keeping with the spirit of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus.
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3355Visceral Values: Aurel Kolnai on DisgustIn Barry Smith & Carolyn Korsmeyer (eds.), Aurel Kolnai's On Disgust, Open Court Publishing Company. pp. 1-23. 2004.In 1929 when Aurel Kolnai published his essay “On Disgust” in Husserl's ]ahrbuch he could truly assert that disgust was a "sorely neglected" topic. Now, however, this situation is changing as philosophers, psychologists, and historians of culture are turning their attention not only to emotions in general but more specifically to the large and disturbing set of aversive emotions, including disgust. We here provide an account of Kolnai’s contribution to the study of the phenomenon of disgust, of …Read more
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382Ontological Support for Living Plan Specification, Execution and EvaluationIn Erik Thomsen, Fred Read, William Duncan, Tatiana Malyuta & Barry Smith (eds.), Semantic Technology in Intelligence, Defense and Security (STIDS), CEUR vol. 1304, . pp. 10-17. 2014.Maintaining systems of military plans is critical for military effectiveness, but is also challenging. Plans will become obsolete as the world diverges from the assumptions on which they rest. If too many ad hoc changes are made to intermeshed plans, the ensemble may no longer lead to well-synchronized and coordinated operations, resulting in the system of plans becoming itself incoherent. We describe in what follows an Adaptive Planning process that we are developing on behalf of the Air Force …Read more
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292On carcinomas and other pathological entitiesComparative and Functional Genomics 6 (7/8). 2005.Tumors, abscesses, cysts, scars, fractures are familiar types of what we shall call pathological continuant entities. The instances of such types exist always in or on anatomical structures, which thereby become transformed into pathological anatomical structures of corresponding types: a fractured tibia, a blistered thumb, a carcinomatous colon. In previous work on biomedical ontologies we showed how the provision of formal definitions for relations such as is_a, part_of and transform…Read more
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986Features, Objects, and other Things: Ontological Distinctions in the Geographic DomainIn Daniel R. Montello (ed.), Spatial Information Theory: Foundations of Geographic Information Science, Springer. pp. 489-502. 2001.Two hundred and sixty-three subjects each gave examples for one of five geographic categories: geographic features, geographic objects, geographic concepts, something geographic, and something that could be portrayed on a map. The frequencies of various responses were significantly different, indicating that the basic ontological terms feature, object, etc., are not interchangeable but carry different meanings when combined with adjectives indicating geographic or mappable. For all of the test p…Read more
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814Realistic PhenomenologyIn Lester Embree (ed.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology, Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 586-590. 1997.The tradition of realist phenomenology was founded in around 1902 by a group of students in Munich interested in the newly published Logical Investigations of Edmund Husserl. Initial members of the group included Johannes Daubert, Alexander Pfänder, Adolf Reinach and Max Scheler. With Reinach’s move to Göttingen the group acquired two new prominent members – Edith Stein and Roman Ingarden. The group’s method turned on Husserl’s idea that we are in possession a priori (which is to say: non-induct…Read more
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462SNAP and SPAN: Towards dynamic spatial ontologySpatial Cognition and Computation 4 (1). 2004.We propose a modular ontology of the dynamic features of reality. This amounts, on the one hand, to a purely spatial ontology supporting snapshot views of the world at successive instants of time and, on the other hand, to a purely spatiotemporal ontology of change and process. We argue that dynamic spatial ontology must combine these two distinct types of inventory of the entities and relationships in reality, and we provide characterizations of spatiotemporal reasoning in the light of the inte…Read more
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417From concepts to clinical reality: An essay on the benchmarking of biomedical terminologiesJournal of Biomedical Informatics 39 (3): 288-298. 2006.It is only by fixing on agreed meanings of terms in biomedical terminologies that we will be in a position to achieve that accumulation and integration of knowledge that is indispensable to progress at the frontiers of biomedicine. Standardly, the goal of fixing meanings is seen as being realized through the alignment of terms on what are called ‘concepts’. Part I addresses three versions of the concept-based approach – by Cimino, by Wüster, and by Campbell and associates – and surveys som…Read more
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2063On Classifying Material Entities in Basic Formal OntologyIn Interdisciplinary Ontology: Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting, Keio University Press. pp. 1-13. 2012.Basic Formal Ontology was created in 2002 as an upper-level ontology to support the creation of consistent lower-level ontologies, initially in the subdomains of biomedical research, now also in other areas, including defense and security. BFO is currently undergoing revisions in preparation for the release of BFO version 2.0. We summarize some of the proposed revisions in what follows, focusing on BFO’s treatment of material entities, and specifically of the category object
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337Permanent generic relatedness and silent changeIn Niels Grewe, Ludger Jansen & Barry Smith (eds.), Formal Ontology and Information Systems, Ceur, Vol. 1060. pp. 1-5. 2016.Given the assertion of a relation between two types, like: “Epidermis has part some Keratinocyte”, we define silent change as any kind of change of the instance-relata of the relation in question that does not change the truth-value of the respective type-level assertion. Such assertions are notoriously difficult to model in OWL 2. To address this problem, we distinguish different modes of type-level relatedness giving rise to this problem and describe a conservative extension to the BFO top-le…Read more
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196Von T. G. Masaryk bis Jan Patočka: Eine philosophische SkizzeIn J. Zumr & T. Binder (eds.), T. G. Masaryk und die Brentano-Schule, Czech Academy of Sciences. pp. 94-110. 1993.Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, later founder and President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia, studied philosophy in the University of Vienna from 1872 to 1876, where he came under the powerful influence of Franz Brentano. We survey the role of Brentano’s philosophy, and especially of his ethics, in Masaryk’s life and work.
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234Les objets sociauxPhilosophiques 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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261Austria and the rise of scientific philosophyIn Arkadiusz Chrudzimski & Wolfgang Huemer (eds.), Phenomenology and analysis: essays on Central European philosophy, Ontos. pp. 33-56. 2004.The term ‘Continental philosophy’ designates not philosophy on the continent of Europe as a whole, but rather a selective slice of Franco-German philosophy. Through a critical analysis of the arguments advanced by Otto Neurath, the paper addresses the issue of why Austrian philosophers in particular are not counted in the pantheon of Continental philosophers. Austrian philosophy is marked by the predominance of philosophical analysis and of the philosophy of science. The paper concludes that it …Read more
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276Philosophie und biomedizinische ForschungAllgemeine Zeitschrift für Philosophie 30 (1). 2005.Die bahnbrechenden wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse der letzten Jahre erzwingen eine neue philosophische Auseinandersetzung mit den Grundkategorien der Biologie und der benachbarten Disziplinen. Insbesondere die Anwendung neuer informationstechnischer Mittel in der biomedizinischen Forschung und die damit verbundene, kontinuierlich zunehmende Datenflut sowie die Notwendigkeit, ihrer Herr zu werden, erfordern ein konsequentes Nachdenken darüber, wie biologische Daten systematisiert und klassifizier…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 |