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. In the first cycle, in antiquity, the initial advancing phase culminated in the work of Aristotle, and was followed by three phases of decline, terminating in the irrational mysticism of the Neo-Pythagoreans. These four phases then repeated themselves: in the Middle Ages, beginning with Aquinas and ending with the "learned ignorance" of Nicholas of Cusa; and then in the modern period, beginning with Bacon and reaching its low point in the work of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. In the contemporary era we are currently witnessing the end of the fourth cycle in the work of (for example) Derrida, Rorty; but also the beginnings of a new, fifth cycle, which is described in the talk. (Presented at the conference Consequences of Realism, Rome, May 4-6, 2014.)
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
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
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,
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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. 20
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
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
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.
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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
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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
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
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
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40. 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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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
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
49. 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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