Applied ontology

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. This is explored by philosophers and pragmatists like Fernando Flores and Martin Heidegger.

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.{{cite news

| title = The Power of Words

| first = Harriet

| last = Rubin

| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20030422150037/http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/21/flores.html

| archive-date = 2003-04-22

| url = http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/21/flores.html

| newspaper = Fast Company

| issn = 1085-9241

| date = 1998-12-21

| accessdate = 2010-03-24

| quote = 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.

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}} This can involve concepts championed by ordinary language philosophers like Ludwig 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,{{cite encyclopedia |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/phenomenology/ |title=Phenomenology |date=2013-12-16 |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Stanford University}} the works of Heidegger, and others.

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}}

{{cite web |last1=Hyde |first1=Bruce |title=An Ontological Approach to Education |url=https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED381830.pdf |access-date=10 June 2024}}

Social scientists adopt a number of approaches to ontology.{{cite web|last1=Raddon|first1=Arwen|title=Epistemology & Ontology in Social Science Research|url=https://www2.le.ac.uk/colleges/ssah/documents/research-training-presentations/EpistFeb10.pdf|website=le.ac.uk/|publisher=University of Leicester|accessdate=28 March 2018}} Some of these are:{{cite web|title=Research Methodology: Ontology|url=https://research-methodology.net/research-philosophy/ontology/|website=Research Methodologies|publisher=research-methodology.net|accessdate=28 March 2018}}

1. Realism - the idea that facts are "out there" just waiting to be discovered;
2. Empiricism - the idea that we can observe the world and evaluate those observations in relation to facts;
3. Positivism - which focuses on the observations themselves, attending more to claims about facts than to facts themselves;
4. Grounded theory - which seeks to derive theories from facts;
5. Engaged theory - which moves across different levels of interpretation, linking different empirical questions to ontological understandings;{{Cite book | last= James | first= Paul |authorlink= Paul James (academic) | title= Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In —Volume 2 of Towards a Theory of Abstract Community |url= https://www.academia.edu/1642214 | year= 2006 | publisher= Sage Publications | location= London }}
6. Postmodernism - which regards facts as fluid and elusive, and recommends focusing only on observational claims.

{{Main|Ontology (information science)}}

Ontologies can be used for structuring data in a machine-readable manner.{{cite web |last1=Petkova |first1=Teodora |title=Whose Meaning? Which Ontology? |url=https://www.ontotext.com/blog/meaning-ontology/#:~:text=An%20ontology's%20main%20purpose%20is,explicitly%20defined)%20relationships%20between%20them. |website=ontotext |date=16 March 2018 |access-date=10 June 2024}} In this context, an ontology is a controlled vocabulary of classes that can be placed in hierarchical relations with each other.{{cite book |last1=Arp |first1=Robert |last2=Smith |first2=Barry |last3=Spear |first3=Andrew D. |title=Building ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology |date=2015 |publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=978-0-262-52781-1 |page=ix}} These classes can represent entities in the real world which data is about. Data can then be linked to the formal structure of these ontologies to aid dataset interoperability, along with retrieval and discovery of information.{{cite journal |last1=Cruz |first1=Isabel F. |last2=Xiao |first2=Huiyong |title=The Role of Ontologies in Data Integration |journal=International Journal of Engineering Intelligent Systems for Electrical Engineering and Communications |date=Dec 2005 |volume=13 |issue=4 |url=https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=9eb687b15850845e17e6584214ed52377092bf0d |access-date=12 May 2024}}{{cite journal |last1=Munir |first1=Kamran |last2=Amjum |first2=M. Sheraz |title=The use of ontologies for effective knowledge modelling and information retrieval |journal=Applied Computing and Informatics |date=July 2018 |volume=14 |issue=2 |pages=116–126 |doi=10.1016/j.aci.2017.07.003 |url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2210832717300649 |access-date=12 May 2024|doi-access=free }} The classes in an ontology can be limited to a relatively narrow domain (such as an ontology of occupations),{{cite journal |last1=Beverley |first1=John |last2=Smith |first2=Sam |last3=Diller |first3=Matthew |last4=Duncan |first4=William |last5=Zheng |first5=Jie |last6=Judkins |first6=John |last7=Hogan |first7=William |last8=McGill |first8=Robin |last9=Dooley |first9=Damion |last10=He |first10=Yongqun |title=The Occupation Ontology (OccO): Building a Bridge between Global Occupational Standards |journal=CEUR Workshop Proceedings |volume=3637 |url=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3637/paper13.pdf |access-date=10 June 2024}} or expansively cover all of reality with highly general classes (such as in Basic Formal Ontology).{{cite book |last1=Arp |first1=Robert |last2=Smith |first2=Barry |last3=Spear |first3=Andrew D. |title=Building ontologies with Basic Formal Ontology |date=2015 |publisher=Massachusetts Institute of Technology |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |isbn=978-0-262-52781-1 |page=ix}}

Applied ontology is a quickly growing field. It has found major applications in areas such as biological research,{{cite journal | vauthors = Smith B, Ashburner M, Rosse C, Bard J, Bug W, Ceusters W, Goldberg LJ, Eilbeck K, Ireland A, Mungall CJ, Leontis N, Rocca-Serra P, Ruttenberg A, Sansone SA, Scheuermann RH, Shah N, Whetzel PL, Lewis S | display-authors = 6 | title = The OBO Foundry: coordinated evolution of ontologies to support biomedical data integration | journal = Nature Biotechnology | volume = 25 | issue = 11 | pages = 1251–5 | date = November 2007 | pmid = 17989687 | pmc = 2814061 | doi = 10.1038/nbt1346 }} artificial intelligence,{{cite web |title=The Role of Ontology and Information Architecture in AI |url=https://www.earley.com/insights/role-ontology-and-information-architecture-ai |publisher=EARLEY Information Science |access-date=10 June 2024}} banking,{{cite web |title=Financial Regulation Ontology |url=https://finregont.com/ |access-date=10 June 2024}} healthcare,{{cite journal |last1=Goyer |first1=Francois |last2=Fabry |first2=Paul |last3=Barton |first3=Adrien |last4=Ethier |first4=Jean-François |title=An ontology for healthcare systems |journal=CEUR Workshop Proceedings |url=https://icbo-conference.github.io/icbo2022/papers/ICBO-2022_paper_5498.pdf |access-date=10 June 2024}} and defense.{{cite web |title=DoDAF |url=https://dodcio.defense.gov/Library/DoD-Architecture-Framework/dodaf20_ontology1/ |website=defense.gov |publisher=DoD |access-date=11 June 2024}}

• Foundation ontology
• Applied philosophy
• John Searle
• Bertrand Russell
• Barry Smith, ontologist with a focus on biomedicine
• Nicola Guarino, researcher in the formal ontology of information systems

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{{Sisterlinks|Applied ontology}}

• {{Cite book | author=Graham, S. Scott | title=The Politics of Pain Medicine: A Rhetorical-Ontological Inquiry | publisher= Chicago Scholarship Online | year=2015 | isbn=9780226264059}}

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Category:Applied philosophy

Category:Applied ontology