Applied ontology
Applied ontology involves the practical application of ontological resources to specific domains, such as biomedicine or geography. Much work in applied ontology is carried out within the framework of the semantic web. See foundation ontology and ontology (computer science).
Applying ontology to relationships
The challenge of applying ontology is ontology's emphasis on a world view orthogonal to epistemology. The emphasis is on being rather than on doing (as implied by "applied") or on knowing.
One way in which that emphasis plays out is in the concept of "speech acts": acts of promising, ordering, apologizing, requesting, inviting or sharing. The study of these acts from an ontological perspective is one of the driving forces behind relationship-oriented applied ontology.[1] This can involve concepts championed by ordinary language philosophers like Wittgenstein.
Applying ontology can also involve looking at the relationship between a person's world and that person's actions. The context or clearing is highly influenced by the being of the subject or the field of being itself. This view is highly influenced by the philosophy of phenomenology,[2] the works of Martin Heidegger, and many others.[3]
Ontological perspectives
Social scientists adopt one of a number of ontological approaches:
- realism - the idea that facts are "out there" just waiting to be discovered;
- empiricism - the idea that we can observe the world and evaluate those observations in relation to facts;
- positivism - which focuses on the observations themselves, attentive more to claims about facts than to facts themselves;
- Grounded theory - which claims to derive theories from facts;
- Engaged theory - which moves across different levels of interpretation, linking different empirical questions to ontological understandings;[4]
- postmodernism - which regards facts as fluid and elusive, and recommends focusing only on observational claims.
See also
- Applied philosophy
- John Searle
- Fernando Flores
- Bertrand Russell
- Barry Smith - ontologist with a focus on biomedicine
- Nicola Guarino, researcher in the formal ontology of information systems
References
- ↑ Rubin, Harriet (1998-12-21). "The Power of Words". Fast Company. ISSN 1085-9241. Retrieved 2010-03-24.
Talk all you want to, Flores says, but if you want to act powerfully, you need to master 'speech acts': language rituals that build trust between colleagues and customers, word practices that open your eyes to new possibilities. Speech acts are powerful because most of the actions that people engage in -- in business, in marriage, in parenting -- are carried out through conversation.
- ↑ Phenomenology article
- ↑ McCarl, Steven R., Zaffron, Steve, Nielsen, Joyce McCarl and Kennedy, Sally Lewis, "The Promise of Philosophy and the Landmark Forum" . Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. XXIII, No. 1 & 2, Jan/Feb & Mar/Apr 2001 doi:10.2139/ssrn.278955
- ↑ James, Paul (2006). Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In —Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
External references
- Applied Ontology (journal), abstracted in the ACM Guide to Computing Literature
- Formal Ontology in Information Systems (interdisciplinary conference on Applied Ontology)
- International Association for Ontology and its Applications, focusing on "the applications of ontological analysis to conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering, knowledge management, information-systems development, library and information science, scientific research, and semantic technologies in general"
- Laboratory for Applied Ontology (LOA) ISTC-CNR, researching "the use of ontologies for e-government, enterprise modeling and integration, natural language processing, and the Semantic Web"
- National Center for Ontological Research, covering "applications in fields such as ontology of the sciences, spatial and cognitive ontology, terminological systems, enterprise ontology and in a variety of defense- and homeland security-related projects"
- European Center for Ontological Research, "applying ontology to a variety of problems in information science and related areas"
- Ontology applied to geography
- Ontology applied to biomedicine
- Process Specification Language, ontology applied to process in manufacturing, engineering, and business operations
- "Introduction to Applied Ontology: The Philosophical Analysis of Everyday Objects" - featuring ontology defined as the "study of categories" of sociological objects
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