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4202Guidelines for writing definitions in ontologiesCiência da Informação 46 (1). 2017.Ontologies are being used increasingly to promote the reusability of scientific information by allowing heterogeneous data to be integrated under a common, normalized representation. Definitions play a central role in the use of ontologies both by humans and by computers. Textual definitions allow ontologists and data curators to understand the intended meaning of ontology terms and to use these terms in a consistent fashion across contexts. Logical definitions allow machines to check the integr…Read more
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374Ontologie des Embryos: Wann beginnt menschliches LebenIn Honnefelder L. & Schmidt M. C. (eds.), Naturalismus als Paradigma - Wie weit reicht die naturwissenschaftliche Erklärung des Menschen? , 2007,, Berlin University Press. pp. 196-204. 2007.Der Abschluß der Gastrulation, der gleichzeitig auch den Anfang der Neurulation bedeutet, ist die zeitliche Grenze, die Beginn eines menschlichen Individuums markiert. Oft wird behauptet, daß jegliche natürliche Veränderung stetig ist. Wie ist es dann aber möglich, eine zeitliche Grenze auszuzeichnen, an der ein menschliches Lebewesen zu existieren beginnt? Man beachte, was geschieht, wenn wir vom Thema zeitlicher Unstetigkeit zum räumlichen übergehen. Lebewesen haben räumliche Grenzen (wie sie …Read more
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273Ontologische RelationenIn Ludger Jansen & Barry Smith (eds.), Biomedizinische Ontologie: Wissen strukturieren für den Informatik-Einsatz, Vdf Hochschulverlag. pp. 155-172. 2008.In Kapitel 5 dieses Buches wurde mit dem ontologischen Sextett eine Klassifizierung der Realität vorgestellt, die das klassische Aristotelische Viereck erweitert, indem sie Einzeldinge und Universalien in insgesamt sechs Kategorien umfaßt. Zwischen den Entitäten dieser Kategorien sind bestimmte Beziehungen postuliert worden, wie zum Beispiel Inhärenz, Partizipation, Instantiierung, Exemplifizierung und Charakterisierung. In diesem Kapitel soil der Frage nachgegangen werden, wie eben diese Bezieh…Read more
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486Towards new information resources for public health: From WordNet to MedicalWordNetJournal of Biomedical Informatics 39 (3): 321-332. 2006.In the last two decades, WORDNET has evolved as the most comprehensive computational lexicon of general English. In this article, we discuss its potential for supporting the creation of an entirely new kind of information resource for public health, viz. MEDICAL WORDNET. This resource is not to be conceived merely as a lexical extension of the original WORDNET to medical terminology; indeed, there is already a considerable degree of overlap between WORDNET and the vocabulary of medicine. Instead…Read more
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1242The Emotion Ontology: Enabling Interdisciplinary Research in the Affective SciencesIn Janna Hastings, Werner Ceusters, Barry Smith & Kevin Mulligan (eds.), The Emotion Ontology: Enabling Interdisciplinary Research in the Affective Sciences, Springer. pp. 119--123. 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 terms 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 disambi…Read more
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73The Cambridge companion to Husserl (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 1995.The essays in this volume explore the full range of Husserl's work and reveal just how systematic his philosophy is. There are treatments of his most important contributions to phenomenology, intentionality and the philosophy of mind, epistemology, the philosophy of language, ontology, and mathematics. An underlying theme of the volume is a resistance to the idea, current in much intellectual history, of a radical break between 'modern' and 'postmodern' philosophy, with Husserl as the last of th…Read more
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315The evaluation of ontologies: Editorial review vs. democratic rankingIn Proceedings of InterOntology (Tokyo, Japan, 26-27 February 2008),, Keio University Press. pp. 127-138. 2008.Increasingly, the high throughput technologies used by biomedical researchers are bringing about a situation in which large bodies of data are being described using controlled structured vocabularies—also known as ontologies—in order to support the integration and analysis of this data. Annotation of data by means of ontologies is already contributing in significant ways to the cumulation of scientific knowledge and, prospectively, to the applicability of cross-domain algorithmic reasoning in su…Read more
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370The HL7 approach to semantic interoperabilityIn Landgrebe Jobst & Smith Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Biomedical Ontology, Ceur, Vol. 833. pp. 139-146. 2011.Health Level 7 (HL7) is an international standards development organisation in the domain of healthcare information technology. Initially the mission of HL7 was to enable data exchange via the creation of syntactic standards which supported point-to-point messaging. Currently HL7 sees its mission as one of creating standards for semantic interoperability in healthcare IT on the basis of its flagship “version 3” (v3). Unfortunately, v3 has been plagued by quality and consistency issues, and it ha…Read more
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267Ontological relationsIn Peter Heuer & Boris Hennig (eds.), Applied Ontology, . pp. 219-234. 2008.
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1285Ontology: Towards a new synthesisIn Nicola Guarino (ed.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems, Ios Press. 1998.This introduction to the second international conference on Formal Ontology and Information Systems presents a brief history of ontology as a discipline spanning the boundaries of philosophy and information science. We sketch some of the reasons for the growth of ontology in the information science field, and offer a preliminary stocktaking of how the term ‘ontology’ is currently used. We conclude by suggesting some grounds for optimism as concerns the future collaboration between philosophical …Read more
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311Ontology, natural language, and information systems: Implications of cross-linguistic studies of geographic termsIn Mark David M., Werner Kuhn, Smith Barry & Turk A. G. (eds.), 6th Annual Conference of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE),, . pp. 45-50. 2003.Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associa…Read more
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954Ontology and geographic objects: An empirical study of cognitive categorizationIn Freksa C. & Mark David M. (eds.), Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1661), . pp. 283-298. 1999.Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our e…Read more
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310Ontological theory for ontological engineering: Biomedical systems information integrationIn Fielding James M., Simon Jonathan, Ceusters Werner & Smith Barry (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on the Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (KR2004), Whistler, BC, 2-5 June 2004, . 2004.Software application ontologies have the potential to become the keystone in state-of-the-art information management techniques. It is expected that these ontologies will support the sort of reasoning power required to navigate large and complex terminologies correctly and efficiently. Yet, there is one problem in particular that continues to stand in our way. As these terminological structures increase in size and complexity, and the drive to integrate them inevitably swells, it is clear that t…Read more
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217On Forms of Communication In PhilosophyThe Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 12 73-82. 2001.In previous work, I have drawn attention to certain systematic differences among philosophical traditions as regards to the literary forms that are prevalent in each. In this paper, however, I focus on the commentary form. I raise the question of why the use of commentaries abounds in most traditions except those transmitted in the English language and suggest that problems of translation are central to this issue. I argue that the appearance of commentaries in a philosophical tradition is a cri…Read more
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240On making sense of IngardenIn Smith Barry (ed.), Crisis of Aesthetics, Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press. pp. 283-289. 1979.An account of Roman Ingarden's ontology of literature
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767La lógica es para Husserl una ciencia de la ciencia, una ciencia de lo que todas las ciencias tienen en común respecto de sus modos de validación. De este modo, la lógica trata por un lado con leyes universales relacionadas con la verdad, la deducción, la verificación y la falsación; y, por otro lado, con leyes relacionadas con la teoría como tal, y con lo que produce la unidad teorética. Ambos tipos de leyes se refieren por una parte a las proposiciones de una teoría y por otra parte al dominio…Read more
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803Malaria diagnosis and the Plasmodium life cycle: the BFO perspectiveIn Werner Ceusters & Barry Smith (eds.), Interdisciplinary Ontology. Proceedings of the Third Interdisciplinary Ontology Meeting, Keio University Press. pp. 25-34. 2010.Definitive diagnosis of malaria requires the demonstration through laboratory tests of the presence within the patient of malaria parasites or their components. Since malaria parasites can be present even in the absence of malaria manifestations, and since symptoms of malaria can be manifested even in the absence of malaria parasites, malaria diagnosis raises important issues for the adequate understanding of disease, etiology and diagnosis. One approach to the resolution of these issues adopts …Read more
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273La verità e il campo visivoParadigmi 17 49-62. 1999.L'articolo usa la teoria delle parti, del tutto e dei contomi per elaborare alcune relazioni cruciali tra la «psicologia ecologica» di J.J. Gibson e la fenomenologia di Husserl. Presenta, inoltre, una teoria ontologica dei contomi spaziali e delle entita spazialmente estese, applicandola al cam po visivo, qui concepito come un' entita spazialmente estesa dipendente dal soggetto che percepisce. Su questa base e possibile formulare un nuovo tipo di definizione teoretico-correspondentista della ver…Read more
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183La teoria sostituzionale dell'arteSupplementi di Topoi 3 186-209. 1989.In perceptual experience we are directed towards objects in a way that 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 o…Read more
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571La physique naïve: un essai d'ontologieIntellectica 17 (2): 173--197. 1993.The project of a naive physics has been the subject of attention in recent years above all in the artificial intelligence field, in connection with work on common-sense reasoning, perceptual representation and robotics. The idea of a theory of the common-sense world is however much older than this, having its roots not least in the work of phenomenologists and Gestalt psychologists such as Kohler, Husserl, Schapp and Gibson. This paper seeks to show how contemporary naive physicists can profit f…Read more
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215Independent Review of Emerging Semantic Web Technologies Supporting the Defense Training EnvironmentIndependent Review of Emerging Semantic Web Technologies Supporting the Defense Training EnvironmentIn Philips Mark, Smith Barry, Vizenor Lowell & Streit Scott (eds.), Joint Forces Command. Report, . 2010.
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1259Husserl’s Theory of Meaning and ReferenceIn L. Haaparanta (ed.), Mind, Meaning and Mathematics. Essays on the Philosophy of Husserl and Frege, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 163-183. 1994.This paper is a contribution to the historical roots of the analytical tradition. As Michael Dummett points out in his Origins of Analytic Philosophy, many tendencies in Central European thought contributed to the early development of analytic philosophy. Dummett himself concentrates on just one aspect of this historical complex, namely on the relationship between the theories of meaning and reference developed by Frege and by Husserl in the years around the turn of the century. It is to this sp…Read more
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792Infectious Disease OntologyIn Lindsay Grey Cowell & Barry Smith (eds.), Infectious Disease Ontology, Springer New York. pp. 373-395. 2009.Technological developments have resulted in tremendous increases in the volume and diversity of the data and information that must be processed in the course of biomedical and clinical research and practice. Researchers are at the same time under ever greater pressure to share data and to take steps to ensure that data resources are interoperable. The use of ontologies to annotate data has proven successful in supporting these goals and in providing new possibilities for the automated processing…Read more
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262What follows is a summary of basic principles pertaining to the definitions used in constructing an ontology. A definition is a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions. What this means in the simplest case can be understood as follows. To say that ɸ‐ing is a necessary condition for being an A is just another way of saying that every A ɸ’s; to say that ɸ‐ing is a sufficient condition for being an A is just another way of saying that everything that ɸ’s is an A. The goal in writing a defi…Read more
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Introduction: A New Definition of Liberal EducationIn Barry Smith & Carl Bereiter (eds.), Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society, Open Court. pp. 1-9. 2002.
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189Implementing clinical guidelines in an organizational setupIn Kumar Anand, Smith Barry, Stefanelli Mario, Quaglini Silvana & Piazza Matteo (eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Model-Based and Qualitative Reasoning in Biomedicine, AIME ., . pp. 39-44. 2003.Outcomes research in healthcare has been a topic much addressed in recent years. Efforts in this direction have been supplemented by work in the areas of guidelines for clinical practice and computer-interpretable workflow and careflow models.In what follows we present the outlines of a framework for understanding the relations between organizations, guidelines, individual patients and patient-related functions. The derived framework provides a means to extract the knowledge contained in the gui…Read more
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1280Functions in Basic Formal OntologyApplied ontology 11 (2): 103-128. 2016.The notion of function is indispensable to our understanding of distinctions such as that between being broken and being in working order (for artifacts) and between being diseased and being healthy (for organisms). A clear account of the ontology of functions and functioning is thus an important desideratum for any top-level ontology intended for application to domains such as engineering or medicine. The benefit of using top-level ontologies in applied ontology can only be realized when each o…Read more
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644Formal Ontology for Natural Language Processing and the Integration of Biomedical DatabasesInternational Journal of Medical Informatics 75 (3-4): 224-231. 2005.The central hypothesis of the collaboration between Language and Computing (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is that the methodology and conceptual rigor of a philosophically inspired formal ontology greatly benefits application ontologies. To this end r®, L&C’s ontology, which is designed to integrate and reason across various external databases simultaneously, has been submitted to the conceptual demands of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO)…Read more
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523GOL: A general ontological languageIn Barry Smith & Christopher Welty (eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS), Acm Press. pp. 34-46. 2001.Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework some upper-level ontology which describes the most general, domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper we sketch a new type of upper-level ontology, which is intended to be the basis of a knowledge modelling language GOL (for: 'General Ontological Language'). It turns out that the upper- level ontology underlying standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic and CycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. Set theory h…Read more
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218GOL: Toward an axiomatized upper-level ontology. IMISE ReportIn Wolfgang Degen, Barbary Haller, Heinrich Herre & Barry Smith (eds.), GOL: Toward an axiomatized upper-level ontology. IMISE Report, . 2001.Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework some upper-level ontology which describes the most general domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper we sketch a new type of upper-level ontology, and we outline an associated knowledge modelling language called GOL – for: General Ontological Language. It turns out that the upper-level ontology underlying well-known standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic and CycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. In a set…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 |