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510SachverhaltIn Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Volume 8, Basel: Schwabe. 1992.Both ‘Sachverhalt’ and ‘state of affairs’ seem to have been derived from the juridical ‘status’ in the sense of 'status rerum' meaning: state or constitution of things. ‘Status’ signifies also in an extended sense ‘the way things stand, the condition or peculiarity of a thing in regard to its circumstances, position, order’. We describe the history of usage of ‘Sachverhalt’ from these beginnings, addressing the role of Goclenius, Lotze, Stumpf, Husserl and Adolf Reinach, whose theory of the rela…Read more
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472Mach und Ehrenfels: Über Gestaltqualitäten und das Problem der AbhängigkeitIn R. Fabian (ed.), Christian von Ehrenfels: Leben Und Werk, Rodopi. pp. 85-111. 1986.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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497Assessing 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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30Review of Paul Gochet, Outline of a Nominalist Theory of Propositions (review)Grazer Philosophische Studien 14 (1): 216-217. 1981.
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1735Towards a History of Speech Act TheoryIn Armin Burkhardt (ed.), Speech acts, meaning, and intentions: critical approaches to the philosophy of John R. Searle, W. De Gruyter. pp. 29--61. 1990.That uses of language not only can, but even normally do, have the character of actions was a fact largely unrealised by those engaged in the study of language before the present century, at least in the sense that there was lacking any attempt to come to terms systematically with the action-theoretic peculiarities of language use. Where the action-character of linguistic phenomena was acknowledged, it was normally regarded as a peripheral matter, relating to derivative or nonstandard aspects of…Read more
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414Textual 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
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5732Gestalt theory: An essay in philosophyIn Foundations of Gestalt Theory, Philosophia Verlag. pp. 11-81. 1988.The Austrian philosopher Christian von Ehrenfels published his essay "On 'Gestalt Qualities'" in 1890. The essay initiated a current of thought which enjoyed a powerful position in the philosophy and psychology of the first half of this century and has more recently enjoyed a minor resurgence of interest in the area of cognitive science, above all in criticisms of the so-called 'strong programme' in artificial intelligence. The theory of Gestalt is of course associated most…Read more
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367Functional anatomy: A taxonomic proposalActa Biotheoretica 53 (3): 153-166. 2005.It is argued that medical science requires a classificatory system that (a) puts functions in the taxonomic center and (b) does justice ontologically to the difference between the processes which are the realizations of functions and the objects which are their bearers. We propose formulae for constructing such a system and describe some of its benefits. The arguments are general enough to be of interest to all the life sciences.
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294We provide a methodology for the creation of ontological partitions in biomedicine and we test the methodology via an application to the phenomenon of blood pressure. An ontology of blood pressure must do justice to the complex networks of intersecting pathways in the organism by which blood pressure is regulated. To this end it must deal not only with the anatomical structures and physiological processes involved in such regulation but also with the relations between these at different levels o…Read more
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577A 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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472Ontology and the logistic analysis of realityIn Nicola Guarino & Roberto Poli (eds.), Proceedings of the International Workshop on Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation, Italian National Research Council. pp. 51-68. 1993.I shall attempt in what follows to show how mereology, taken together with certain topological notions, can yield the basis for future investigations in formal ontology. I shall attempt to show also how the mereological framework here advanced can allow the direct and natural formulation of a series of theses – for example pertaining to the concept of boundary – which can be formulated only indirectly (if at all) in set-theoretic terms.
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773Applied ontology: A new discipline is bornPhilosophy Today 12 (29): 5-6. 1998.The discipline of applied ethics already has a certain familiarity in the Anglo-Saxon world, above all through the work of Peter Singer. Applied ethics uses the tools of moral philosophy to resolve practical problems of the sort which arise, for example, in the running of hospitals. In the University at Buffalo (New York) there was organized on April 24-25 1998 the world's first conference on a new, sister discipline, the discipline of applied ontology. Applied ontologists seek to apply ontolog…Read more
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682BiometaphysicsIn 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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410The Benefits of Realism: A Realist Logic with ApplicationsIn Katherine Munn & Barry Smith (eds.), Applied Ontology: An Introduction, Ontos. pp. 109-124. 2008.We propose a formalization of a realist ontology using first order logic with identity and allowing quantification over terms representing both individuals and universals. In addition to identity, the ontology includes also relational predicates such as subtype, instantiation, parthood, location, and inherence. Inspired in part by Davidson’s treatment of events, the ontology includes also various relations linking events to their participants and to the times at which they occur.
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444Elements of Speech Act Theory in the Work of Thomas ReidHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 7 (1). 1990.Historical research has recently made it clear that, prior to Austin and Searle, the phenomenologist Adolf Reinach (1884-1917) developed a full-fledged theory of speech acts under the heading of what he called "social acts". He we consider a second instance of a speech act theory avant la lettre, which is to be found in the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid (1710-1796). Reid’s s work, in contrast to that of Reinach, lacks both a unified approach and the detailed analyses of pertinent exampl…Read more
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1007Foundations of an ontology of philosophySynthese 182 (2): 185-204. 2011.We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that…Read more
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196Referent tracking for treatment optimisation in schizophrenic patientsJournal of Web Semantics 4 (3): 229-236. 2006.The IPAP Schizophrenia Algorithm was originally designed in the form of a flow chart to help physicians optimise the treatment of schizophrenic patients. We examined the current version from the perspective of recent work on terminologies and ontologies thereby drawing on the resources of Basic Formal Ontology, and this with the objective to make the algorithm appropriate for Semantic Web applications. We found that Basic Formal Ontology is a rich enough theory to represent all the entities invo…Read more
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382Adapting Clinical Ontologies in Real-World EnvironmentsJournal of Universal Computer Science 14 (22): 3767-3780. 2008.The desideratum of semantic interoperability has been intensively discussed in medical informatics circles in recent years. Originally, experts assumed that this issue could be sufficiently addressed by insisting simply on the application of shared clinical terminologies or clinical information models. However, the use of the term ‘ontology’ has been steadily increasing more recently. We discuss criteria for distinguishing clinical ontologies from clinical terminologies and information models. T…Read more
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209Logica KirchbergensisIn Peter Klein (ed.), Praktische Logik. Traditionen und Tendenzen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. pp. 123-145. 1989.In der klassischen Logik von Aristoteles bis Wolff findet sich eine durchgängige Parallelität von logischen (einschließlich grammatikalischen und psychologischen) und ontologischen Gebilden. Der Logiker beschäftigt sich mit Subjekt und Prädikat, aber gleichzeitig auch z.B. mit Substanz und Akzidenz als Entitäten in der Welt. Nach Kant begann für die Logik eine Phase, in der diese ontologische oder objektbezogene Seite verloren ging. Gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts beginnt man dann aber wieder üb…Read more
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238Aristoteles 2002In T. Buchheim (ed.), Kann man heute noch etwas anfangen mit Aristoteles?, Meiner. pp. 3-38. 2003.The essay surveys recent developments in ontology and defends a strategy for improvement of ontologies based on ontological realism. As a thought experiment, we consider central theses of Aristotelian metaphysics, and show how they fall short of what we believe to be the requirements of ontology today. Above all, Aristotle provides us with no strategy for the reconciliation of common-sense realism and scientific realism where these diverge. We focus specifically on shortfalls in Aristotle’s trea…Read more
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1127We describe a strategy for integration of data that is based on the idea of semantic enhancement. The strategy promises a number of benefits: it can be applied incrementally; it creates minimal barriers to the incorporation of new data into the semantically enhanced system; it preserves the existing data (including any existing data-semantics) in their original form (thus all provenance information is retained, and no heavy preprocessing is required); and it embraces the full spectrum of data so…Read more
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388Roman Ingarden: Ontological Foundations for Literary TheoryIn John Odmark (ed.), Language, Literature and Meaning I: Problems of Literary Theory, Benjamins. pp. 373-390. 1979.The paper seeks to apply the work of the Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden to certain problems in literary theory; contrasts the notions of ontological and epistemological incompleteness of the represented objects of a literary work and considers the question of the nature of such objects. The paper concludes by analyzing some of the degrees of freedom possessed by the readings of literary work in relation to the work itself.
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1123Characteristica UniversalisIn Kevin Mulligan (ed.), Language, Truth and Ontology, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 48--77. 1992.Recent work in formal philosophy has concentrated over-whelmingly on the logical problems pertaining to epistemic shortfall - which is to say on the various ways in which partial and sometimes incorrect information may be stored and processed. A directly depicting language, in contrast, would reflect a condition of epistemic perfection. It would enable us to construct representations not of our knowledge but of the structures of reality itself, in much the way that chemical diagrams allow the re…Read more
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292Referent Tracking: The Problem of Negative FindingsStudies in Health Technology and Informatics 124 741-46. 2006.The paradigm of referent tracking is based on a realist presupposition which rejects so-called negative entities (congenital absent nipple, and the like) as spurious. How, then, can a referent tracking-based Electronic Health Record deal with what are standardly called ‘negative findings’? To answer this question we carried out an analysis of some 748 sentences drawn from patient charts and containing some form of negation. Our analysis shows that to deal with these sentences we need to introduc…Read more
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515Normalizing medical ontologies using Basic Formal OntologyIn K. Versorgung & V. Forschung (eds.), Ubiquitäre Information (Proceedings of GMDS 2004), Videel Ohg. pp. 199-201. 2004.Description Logics are nowadays widely accepted as formalisms which provide reasoning facilities which allow us to discover inconsistencies in ontologies in an automatic fashion. Where ontologies are developed in modular fashion, they allow changes in one module to propogated through the system of ontologies automatically in a way which helps to maintain consistency and stability. For this feature to be utilized effectively, however, requires that domain ontologies be represented in a normalized…Read more
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386Values in Contexts: An Ontological TheoryIn G. John M. Abbarno (ed.), Inherent and Instrumental Values: Excursions in Value Inquiry, University Press of America. pp. 17-29. 2014.Values exist not in isolation, but in complex wholes. Values are what they are because of the complex wholes in which they are situated. To do justice to this thesis will require a holistic ontology, a theory according to which many types of entities exist only as inseparable parts or moments of wider contexts or environments. An ontological theory of environments -- with roots in Gestalt psychology and the ecological psychology of J. J. Gibson and Roger Barker, and which is related also to the …Read more
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414Kasimir Twardowski: An Essay on the Borderlines of Psychology, Ontology and LogicIn K. Szaniawski (ed.), The Vienna Circle and the Philosophy of the Lvov-Warsaw School, Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 313--375. 1988.The influence of Kasimir Twardowski on modern Polish philosophy is all-pervasive. As is well known, almost all important 20th century Polish philosophers went through the hard training of his courses in Lvov. Twardowski instilled in his students an enduring concern for clarity and rigour. He taught them to regard philosophy as a collaborative effort, a matter of disciplined discussion and argument. And he encouraged them to work together with scientists from other disciplines — above all with ps…Read more
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231How to Distinguish Parthood from Location in BioontologiesIn Stefan Schulz, Philipp Daumke, Barry Smith & Udo Hahn (eds.), Proceedings of the AMIA Symposium, American Medical Informatics Association. pp. 669-673. 2005.The pivotal role of the relation part-of in the description of living organisms is widely acknowledged. Organisms are open systems, which means that in contradistinction to mechanical artifacts they are characterized by a continuous flow and exchange of matter. A closer analysis of the spatial relations in biological organisms reveals that the decision as to whether a given particular is part-of a second particular or whether it is only contained-in the second particular is often controversial. …Read more
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607Ontology and Geographic KindsIn T. Poiker & N. Chrisman (eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling, International Geographic Union. pp. 308-320. 1998.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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588Philosophie, Politik und Wissenschaftliche WeltauffassungGrazer Philosophische Studien 58 (1): 1-22. 2000.Die Entwicklung der Philosophie in Österreich unterscheidet sich in markanter Weise von der Hauptlinie der philosophischen Entwicklung in Deutschland. Dabei fällt bei der österreichischen Philosophie vor allem die konsequente Orientierung an den Wissenschaften auf. In der philosophiegeschichtlichen Forschung sind für diese Besonderheit der österreichischen Philosophie z. B. von Otto Neurath, Rudolf Haller, Friedrich Stadier und J.C. Nyiri verschiedene Erklärungen vorgeschlagen worden. In diesen …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 |