The Fifth Cycle of Philosophy

Barry Smith

Brentano’s Four Phases

In a lecture, delivered in Vienna in 1894 and dedicated "to the academic youth of Austria-Hungary", Franz Brentano outlined four phases of advance and decline which he saw as providing the key to the understanding of the history of Western philosophy.

The Four Phases of Philosophy

rapid practical scepticism mysticism progress interest

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First Cycle

Thales to Stoicism and Pyrrho, Neo-Pythagoreans, Aristotle Epicureanism Eclectics Neo-Platonists

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Aristotle

empiricalwonderment

Second Cycle

Rediscovery of Scotism Ockham, Lull, Aristotle by Augustine Nominalists Nicholas ofand Early Scholastics Cusa 5

Aquinas

learnedignorance

Third Cycle

Bacon Christian Wolff Hume Berkeley, Fichte Descartes Reid Schelling, Hegel Leibniz, Locke Kant 6

groundingknowledge on blind prejudices

Philosophical mother ship gives birth to empirical physics

Bacon Rising practical Descartes (scientific) interestLeibniz, Locke Galileo, Newton 7

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Fourth Cycle (Continental)

Brentano Husserl Heidegger Derrida andRediscovery Reinach the French of Aristotle Ingarden 9

Philosophical mother ship gives birth to the new empirical science of psychology

Brentano, Stumpf Meinong, EhrenfelsWilhelm Wundt

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The Birth of Psychology1874: Brentano publishes Psychology from an Empirical StandpointVera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi scientiae naturalis est. 1879: Wundt establishes world’s first psychological laboratory at the University of Leipzig1883: Wundt establishes a journal entitled Philosophische Studien, to publish the results of his laboratory experiments

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The Birth of Psychology1889: First International Congress of Psychology; Meinong founds Laboratory of Psychology in Graz1892: American Psychological Association founded, with 42 members1894: Stumpf becomes professor of philosophy in Berlin with explicit task of establishing an institute of psychology 1907: Twardowski founds first psychological laboratory in Poland

Fourth Cycle (Analytical)

Frege Vienna Circle Wittgenstein 2o RortyWittgenstein 1o Gödel Quine Feyerabend Russell Tarski Goodman 13

Philosophy gives birth to mathematical logic andcomputer science

Frege Gödel Russell Tarski Whitehead Turing 14

DerridaRorty

Judith Butler15

Each final phase of decline, with its ultimate collapse into nonsense and jokes, gives rise to the call for a new phase of renewal.

You are now here

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DerridaRortyButler

The Fifth CyclePhases of renewal are associated with a

new focus on empiricism, on rigour and clarity, a new scientific relevance of philosophy,

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Rise of analytical metaphysics

Roderick ChisholmE.J.Lowe, David ArmstrongPeter SimonsIngvar Johansson …

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Something’s happening here … but you don’t know what it is, Mr Jones

Russell, Husserl, Ingarden, Chisholm, E.J.Lowe, ArmstrongSimons, Ingvar Johansson, Kit FineMaurizio Ferraris??? Patrick Hayes,

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why were disciplines such as physics or psychology … founded?

• feelings of chaos, sectarianism, superficiality, deadendedness, triviality inside philosophy

• philosophy goes round and round in circles forever re-re-re-re-re-explaining Kant’s theory of apperception

• new methods for tackling philosophical problems also address extra-philosophical concerns

• empirical results• increasing cross-disciplinary collaboration between

philosophy and extra-philosophical disciplines

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Philosophical mother ship gives birth to the new science of ontology

Husserl, Ingarden, ChisholmE.J.Lowe, David ArmstrongPeter Simons, Ingvar JohanssonPatrick Hayes, Cornelius Rosse

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What is ontology?

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Google hits Jan. 2004

• ontology + Heidegger 58K

• ontology + Aristotle 77K

• ontology + philosophy327K

• ontology + software 468K

• ontology + database 594K

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Comparison 2004/2012

• ontology + Heidegger 58K 1.91M

• ontology + Aristotle 77K 1.66M

• ontology + philosophy 327K 4.91M

• ontology + software 468K 7.80M

• ontology + database 594K 10.20M

Ontology (philosophy)

(Synonym of ‘metaphysics’) The science of being. A theory of the types of entities existing in reality, and of the relations between them, for example between basic and non-basis entities.

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Ontology (science)The science which develops theories of the types of entities existing in given domains of reality, and of the relations between themsuch theories are represented as computational artifacts called ‘ontologies’which are used to describe heterogeneous data in consistent ways to support comparison and integration

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World’s first ontology scientist

Cornelius Rosse (born in Hungary in 1932, studied Aristotle in the Jesuit seminar in Budapest, used his knowledge of Aristotle to create the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA), the first philosophically rigorous biological ontology

Rosse draw on his knowledge of Aristotle to create the Foundational Model of Anatomy (FMA), the first philosophically rigorous biological ontology

subtype Pleural Cavity

Interlobar recess

Mesothelium of Pleura

Pleura(Wall of Sac)

VisceralPleura

Pleural Sac

Parietal Pleura

Anatomical Space

OrganCavity

Serous SacCavity

AnatomicalStructure

Organ

Serous Sac

MediastinalPleura

Tissue

Organ Part

Organ Subdivision

Organ Component

Organ CavitySubdivision

Serous SacCavity

Subdivision

part_

of

120,000 terms (nodes); over 2.1 million relations (edges)

subtype

Anatomical Space

OrganCavity

Serous SacCavity

AnatomicalStructure

Organ

Serous Sac Tissue

Organ Part

Organ Subdivision

Organ Component

Organ CavitySubdivision

Serous SacCavity

Subdivision

Independent Continuant

Entity

World’s most successful ontology

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http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm

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www.geneontology.org

how a logically and philosophically well-structured ontology can contribute to integration across massively heterogeneous data sources

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Ontology (science)

is not a job for software engineersbut it is not a job for philosophers, either,

e.g. where ontology is playing an increasing role in supporting interdisciplinary communication between human beings – for example in improving communication between Federal government departments

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Typical reasons for founding a new discipline

feelings of chaos, deadendedness, triviality inside the mother discipline

new methods for tackling problems of the mother discipline

new kinds of empirical methods and resultsincreasing need for cross-disciplinary

collaboration – e.g. marked by multi-authorship

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What is needed to found a new discipline

FundingJournalsConferencesInstitutesSocietiesIndustrial applicationsMilitary applications

Funding

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Examples of Ontology (Science) Projects funded by US National Institutes of Health

NIH / NHGRI GO: Gene OntologyNIH / NIGMS PRO: Protein OntologyNIH / NIAID IDO: Infectious Disease OntologyNIH / NIDCR Ontology for Mental DiseaseNIH / NHGRI SO: Sequence OntologyNIH / NLM FMA: Foundational Model of

AnatomyNIH / NHGRI CL: Cell Ontology

by now at least $500 million funding from NIH39

Journals

• Applied Ontology• Journal of Biomedical Semantics• International Journal of Metadata,

Semantics and Ontologies• Ontology Development and Applications• Journal of Social Ontology

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Conferences

Formal Ontology in Information SystemsBio-OntologiesOntology for the Intelligence Community

(now: Semantic Technology for Intelligence, Defence and Security)

International Conference on Biomedical Ontology

Annual NIST Ontology Summit

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http://icbo14.com/

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http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br/

44http://stids.c4i.gmu.edu/

Research Institutes (Examples)Laboratory for Applied Ontology (Trento and

Rome)LabOnt (Turin and Rome)Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical

Information Science (Saarbrücken)Centre for Knowledge Analytics and

Ontological Engineering (Bangalore)National Center for Biomedical Ontology

(Stanford Medical School, Mayo Clinic, Buffalo Department of Philosophy)

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http://www.loa-cnr.it/

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founded 1999http://www.labont.it/

48Founded 2002

Ontology Societies

International Association for Ontology and Its Applications (iaoa.org)

International Society for Biocuration (biocurator.org)

UK Ontology Network (ukontology.org)

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Industrial applications

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies

Industrial applications

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siri

http://www.indeed.com/q-Ontology-jobs.html

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Military applications

US DoD Civil Affairs strategy for non-classified information sharing

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located near

LatrineWell

‘VT 334 569’

Distance Measurement

Result

Village Name

‘Khanabad Village’

Village

is_a

instance_of

Geopolitical Entity

Spatial Region

GeographicCoordinates

Setdesignates

instance_of

located in

instance_of

has location designates

has location

instance_of

instance_of

’16 meters’

instance_of

measurement_of

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Military Applications

56http://militaryontology.org/