1.
The Fifth Cycle of Philosophy
Barry Smith

2.
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.

3.
The Four Phases of Philosophy
rapid practical scepticism mysticism
progress interest
3

4.
First Cycle
Thales to Stoicism and Pyrrho, Neo-Pythagoreans,
Aristotle Epicureanism Eclectics Neo-Platonists
4
Aristotle
empirical
wonderment

5.
Second Cycle
Rediscovery of Scotism Ockham, Lull,
Aristotle by Augustine Nominalists Nicholas of
and Early Scholastics Cusa 5
Aquinas
learned
ignorance

6.
Third Cycle
Bacon Christian Wolff Hume Berkeley, Fichte
Descartes Reid Schelling, Hegel
Leibniz, Locke Kant 6
grounding
knowledge on
blind prejudices

7.
Philosophical mother ship gives
birth to empirical physics
Bacon Rising practical
Descartes (scientific) interest
Leibniz, Locke
Galileo, Newton
7

8.
8

9.
Fourth Cycle (Continental)
Brentano Husserl Heidegger Derrida and
Rediscovery Reinach the French
of Aristotle Ingarden
9

10.
Philosophical mother ship gives
birth to the new empirical
science of psychology
Brentano,Stumpf
Meinong,Ehrenfels
Wilhelm Wundt
1

11.
11
The Birth of Psychology
1874: Brentano publishes Psychology from
an Empirical Standpoint
Vera philosophiae methodus nulla alia nisi
scientiae naturalis est.
1879: Wundt establishes world’s first
psychological laboratory at the University of
Leipzig
1883: Wundt establishes a journal entitled
Philosophische Studien, to publish the
results of his laboratory experiments

12.
12
The Birth of Psychology
1889: First International Congress of
Psychology; Meinong founds Laboratory of
Psychology in Graz
1892: American Psychological Association
founded, with 42 members
1894: Stumpf becomes professor of philosophy
in Berlin with explicit task of establishing an
institute of psychology
1907: Twardowski founds first psychological
laboratory in Poland

13.
Fourth Cycle (Analytical)
Frege ViennaCircle Wittgenstein2o Rorty
Wittgenstein1o Gödel Quine Feyerabend
Russell Tarski Goodman 13

14.
Philosophy gives birth to
mathematical logic and
computer science
Frege Gödel
Russell Tarski
Whitehead Turing 14

15.
Derrida
Rorty
Judith Butler
15
Each final phase of
decline, with its ultimate
collapse into nonsense
and jokes, gives rise to
the call for a new phase
of renewal.

16.
You are now here
16
Derrida
Rorty
Butler

17.
The Fifth Cycle
Phases of renewal are associated with a
new focus on empiricism, on rigour and
clarity, a new scientific relevance of
philosophy,
17

18.
Rise of analytical metaphysics
Roderick Chisholm
E.J.Lowe,
David Armstrong
Peter Simons
Ingvar Johansson …
18

19.
Something’s happening here …
but you don’t know what it is,
Mr Jones
Russell, Husserl, Ingarden,
Chisholm, E.J.Lowe, Armstrong
Simons, Ingvar Johansson, Kit Fine
Maurizio Ferraris??? Patrick Hayes, 19

20.
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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

21.
21

22.
Philosophical mother ship gives
birth to the new science
of ontology
Husserl, Ingarden, Chisholm
E.J.Lowe, David Armstrong
Peter Simons, Ingvar Johansson
Patrick Hayes, Cornelius Rosse 22

23.
What is ontology?
23

24.
24
Google hits Jan. 2004
ontology + Heidegger 58K
ontology + Aristotle 77K
ontology + philosophy 327K
ontology + software 468K
ontology + database 594K

25.
25
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

26.
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.
26

27.
Ontology (science)
The science which develops theories of the
types of entities existing in given domains of
reality, and of the relations between them
such theories are represented as
computational artifacts called ‘ontologies’
which are used to describe heterogeneous
data in consistent ways to support
comparison and integration
27

28.
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

29.
Pleural
Cavity
Interlobar
recess
Mesothelium
of Pleura
Pleura(Wall
of Sac)
Visceral
Pleura
Pleural Sac
Parietal
Pleura
Anatomical Space
Organ
Cavity
Serous Sac
Cavity
Anatomical
Structure
Organ
Serous Sac
Mediastinal
Pleura
Tissue
Organ Part
Organ
Subdivision
Organ
Component
Organ Cavity
Subdivision
Serous Sac
Cavity
Subdivision
120,000 terms (nodes); over 2.1 million relations (edges)

30.
Anatomical Space
Organ
Cavity
Serous Sac
Cavity
Anatomical
Structure
Organ
Serous Sac
Organ Part
Organ
Subdivision
Organ
Component
Organ Cavity
Subdivision
Serous Sac
Cavity
Subdivision
Independent
Continuant
Entity

31.
World’s most successful
ontology
31

32.
32

33.
http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm
33

34.
34
www.geneontology.org
how a logically and philosophically well-structured
ontology can contribute to integration across
massively heterogeneous data sources

35.
35
Ontology (science)
is not a job for software engineers
but 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

36.
36
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 results
increasing need for cross-disciplinary
collaboration – e.g. marked by multi-
authorship

37.
37
What is needed to found a new
discipline
Funding
Journals
Conferences
Institutes
Societies
Industrial applications
Military applications

38.
Funding
38

39.
Examples of Ontology (Science) Projects
funded by US National Institutes of Health
NIH / NHGRI GO: Gene Ontology
NIH / NIGMS PRO: Protein Ontology
NIH / NIAID IDO: Infectious Disease Ontology
NIH / NIDCR Ontology for Mental Disease
NIH / NHGRI SO: Sequence Ontology
NIH / NLM FMA: Foundational Model of
Anatomy
NIH / NHGRI CL: Cell Ontology
by now at least $500 million funding from NIH
39

40.
Journals
• Applied Ontology
• Journal of Biomedical Semantics
• International Journal of Metadata,
Semantics and Ontologies
• Ontology Development and Applications
• Journal of Social Ontology
40

41.
Conferences
Formal Ontology in Information Systems
Bio-Ontologies
Ontology for the Intelligence Community
(now: Semantic Technology for
Intelligence, Defence and Security)
International Conference on Biomedical
Ontology
Annual NIST Ontology Summit
41

42.
http://icbo14.com/
42

43.
43
http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br/

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

45.
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) 45

46.
46
http://www.loa-cnr.it/

47.
47
founded 1999
http://www.labont.it/

48.
48
Founded 2002

49.
Ontology Societies
International Association for Ontology and
Its Applications (iaoa.org)
International Society for Biocuration
(biocurator.org)
UK Ontology Network (ukontology.org)
49

50.
Industrial applications
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ontologies

51.
Industrial applications
51
siri

52.
http://www.indeed.com/q-Ontology-jobs.html
52

53.
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Military applications

54.
US DoD Civil Affairs strategy for non-classified
information sharing
54

55.
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55
Military Applications

56.
56http://militaryontology.org/