Ontology and Its Applications

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The Course

This course will provide an introduction to ontology and its applications at the beginning graduate-student level. We will describe the roots of contemporary ontology in classical metaphysics, explain how ontology now plays a role in data science and information fusion, and outline a series of applications of ontology in the biomedical and social sciences.

Department of Philosophy: Special Topics PHI 598. Registration number: #####

Time: Monday, 1-3:50pm, Fall 2018

Room: 200G Baldy

Instructors: Barry Smith and Werner Ceusters

Office hours: By appointment via email to [1]

Recommended background reading

R. Arp, B. Smith, A. D. Spear, Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology

Schedule

August 27: Introduction to Ontology

Slides
Video

September 10: Ontological Realism and Basic Formal Ontology

Individuals, Universals and Collections
Fiat Objects
Endurantist and Perdurantist Accounts of Persistence
Slides
Video

September 17: Functions, Capabilities, Dispositions

September 24: Diseases, Disabilities, Diagnoses

Introduction to the Ontology of Medicine

October 1: Mental Health and Disease

October 8: Introduction to Referent Tracking

October 15: Organisms and Environments

  • Biological Environments
  • Human Environments
  • The Microbiome
  • Environments, Settings and Behavior
Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Ontology

October 22: The Ontology of Experimentation, Classification and Measurement

The Weight of the Baby
Functions, Function Concepts, and Scales
Slides
Video

October 29: Mind, Language, Intentionality, Emotions, Truth, and Aboutness

About Aboutness
Information Artifact Ontology
Slides
Video 1
Video 2: About Aboutness

November 5: Document Acts

Document Acts
What is a Recipe?
Slides
Video

November 12: Ontology of Deontic Entities

Building Ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology, Chapter 5
Massively Planned Social Agency
Document Acts and the Ontology of Social Reality
John Searle: From Speech Acts to Social Reality
Slides Contents
Video
Massively Planned Social Agency
Slides
Video
See also materials here

== November 19: == The Ontology of Organizations

November 26: Presentations of Student Projects 1

December 3: Presentations of Student Projects 2

Grading and Related Policies and Services

All students will be required to take an active part in class discussions throughout the semester and to prepare a paper on some relevant topic. The paper should be submitted in a draft version on or before March 29, and in final form on or before May 3. A powerpoint version will be presented in class in one or other of the two closing sessions .

Your grade will be determined in three equal portions deriving from:

1. class participation (2.5% per class attended)
2. paper (3000 words; deadline for draft: March 29; deadline for final version: May 3)
3. class presentation (graded according to quality of powerpoint slides, quality of delivery, and quality of response to questions)

For policy regarding incompletes see here

For academic integrity policy see here

For accessibility services see here