Social Ontology
The Course
This course will provide an introduction to ontology at the beginning graduate-student label, with a discussion of applications in of central themes in social ontology viewed from a broadly realist perspective. The course will be of interest not only to philosophers but also to those interested in ontological applications, including applications in biomedical informatics.
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
Aristotle
- What's Wrong with Contemporary Philosophy?
- Austrian Philosophy
- Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Ontology
- Pieces of a Theory
- 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: Mind, Language, Intentionality, Emotions, Truth, and Aboutness
- Mental Health and Disease=
October 8: How to Keep Track of Absolutely Everything
Werner on Referent Tracking
October 15: Document Acts
October 22: 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
October 29: The Ontology of Experimentation, Classification and Measurement
November 5: Organisms and Environments
- Biological Environments
- Human Environments
- Environments, Settings and Behavior
November 12: Terrorism, Wars and Warfighting
- Defining Terrorism
- An Ontological Framework for Understanding the Terror-Crime Nexus
- Military Ontology
- Slides
- Video
November 19:
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
