Analytical Metaphysics

Department of Philosophy: PHI 531. Registration number [1]

Time: Tuesdays, 1-3:50pm, Spring 2016

Room: 141 Park Hall, UB North Campus

Office hours: By appointment via email at [2]

The Course

Topics Threedimensionalism, Fourdimensionalism, 4-Category Ontology Emotions, Norms, Values Referent Tracking, Aboutness Genes, Species, Races; Biological categories (Metaphysics After Darwin) Commanding and Other Social Acts (2015) How to Build an Imaging Ontology (2015 Ontology of Poker (2014) The Ontology of Disease (2014) Document Acts and the Ontology of Social Reality (2014) Mind, Language and Emotions (2014) Semantics of Biodiversity (2013) Massively Planned Social Agency (2013) Information Ontologies for the Intelligence Community (2013) Intelligence, Defense and Security (2012) Basic Formal Ontology

Background

February 2: Introduction to Ontology

February 9: Big Data and How to Overcome the Problems it Causes

February 16 An Introduction to Basic Formal Ontology

February 23: Use of Ontologies in Tracking Systems

March 1: How to Build an Ontology

March 8: Creating Ontologies That Work Together

March 15: Spring Recess

March 22: Document Acts

March 29: The Semantic Web

April 5: Ontology Examples

April 12: Finance Ontology

April 19: The Ontology of Plans

April 26: Presentations of Student Projects 1

May 3: Presentations of Student Projects 2

Guidance for Presentations and Reports

Grading and Related Policies and Services

All students will be required to take an active part in class discussions throughout the semester. In addition they will be required to design and complete an ontology project, including written description, and brief presentation of the project in class. Students enrolled in the practical segment will be required to create a Protégé file to accompany their ontology project, and also to complete quizzes designed to gauge developing competence in the use of the Protégé Ontology Editor and SPARQL query language.

For 3 credit hour students, your grade will be determined in five equal portions deriving from:

1. class participation (1.5% per class attended),

2. results of two quizzes relating to the lab portion of the course

3. written description of ontology project (3000 words; deadline December 2),

4. Protégé ontology file (deadline November 25),

5. class presentation.

For 2 credit hour students, your grade is determined as follows:

1. class participation (1.5% per class attended),

2. written description of ontology project (4000 words; deadline December 2) (50%),

3. class presentation (30%).

For policy regarding incompletes see here

For academic integrity policy see here

For accessibility services see here