Philosophy Colloquium: John Beverley

Please join us in welcoming Professor John Beverley from the University at Buffalo. Professor Beverley will deliver a talk entitled: “How to Build an Ontologist.”

Abstract:

Too much data has been collected, in too many different fields, using too many different syntaxes, to possibly sort through manually. If our collection efforts are to ever be justified, we need a way to interoperate this data, make it machine readable and comprehensible with minimal cognitive effort. The field I work in – Applied Ontology – includes these tasks among its aims. Applied Ontology intersects metaphysics, epistemology, logic, artificial intelligence and data science. Simplifying a bit, we use philosophical insights to help subject-matter experts – in domains ranging across physics, virology, immigration law, and psychology among others – organize datasets to promote interoperability, identify novel predictions, and extract implicit information. In this talk, I will introduce you to the field of Applied Ontology, its history, its many present opportunities for those with philosophical backgrounds and its future. I will throughout provide examples of philosophically interesting puzzles one encounters working with experts in other fields, and highlight reasons why philosophers are particularly well-suited to this work and are consequently in particularly high demand.