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|id=Vol-1595/paper8
|storemode=property
|title=Summa Philosophiae: a Semantic Wiki for Professional Philosophers
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1595/paper8.pdf
|volume=Vol-1595
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/esws/Guillon16
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==Summa Philosophiae: a Semantic Wiki for Professional Philosophers==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1595/paper8.pdf
Summa Philosophiae: a Semantic Wiki for
Professional Philosophers
Jean-Baptiste Guillon
Collège de France, Paris, France
guillonjeanbaptiste@gmail.com
Abstract. The resources of the semantic web could be of great use to
professional philosophers working in the analytic tradition. Given the
highly structured and rapidly evolving nature of the state of the art
in analytic discussions, it is argued that a semantic wiki would be the
most appropriate tool to represent in a dynamic way the evolution of
the state of the art. The massive collaboration of philosophy graduates
could generate rapidly a very useful database, open for virtually infinite
combinations of intelligent queries.
Keywords: Semantic Wiki, Philosophy, Scientific Publishing
1 Introduction: Philosophy on the Web
Contemporary analytic philosophy is a discipline which has a functioning very
close to that of science: the discussion is structured by the contributions of a
large number of collaborators, mostly published as short papers in specialized
journals, and intended to make very precise points within a commonly recognized
state of the art.
Because of its rapidly evolving state of the art, and also its massively collabo-
rative nature, it is only natural that analytic philosophy has been using the tools
of the web, which allows for massive collaboration and rapid changes. Besides
many professional blogs, two websites are already particularly important for the
contemporary practice of professional philosophy: the Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, and PhilPapers.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [6] is an online encyclopedia run
by Stanford University. For every entry, the editorial board of the encyclopedia
contacts an expert in the field, who is in charge of writing the entry, and keeping
it up to date across time (every two years or so). Hundreds of entries have been
written since the creation of the encyclopedia in 1997, which make it one of the
best philosophical encyclopedias in history.
A second important website is PhilPapers1 PhilPapers is a comprehensive
index of everything that gets published in philosophy (journals, books, papers,
etc.). The references are organized in categories according to their field and the
specific questions they deal with. This work is done by a large number of area
1
http://philpapers.org/help/about.html
69
editors who identify every day the references in the categories they are in charge
of. PhilPapers is a very useful tool which allows professional philosophers to get
comprehensive lists of what has been written on such and such a topic.
These two websites are both invaluable tools for professional philosophers.
But there are still some resources that the web, especially the semantic web,
could bring to use for philosophy. To put it shortly, we can say that the SEP
constitutes a fantastic source of philosophical content, but this content remains
very much unstructured from a digital point of view; it is just text, that only a
human reader can interpret and manipulate (except for the basic functions for
searching words). On the other hand, PhilPapers provides a very manipulatable
database, which allows for various forms of automatic queries and surveys; but
the data which is thus organized is only metadata about papers, their authors,
dates, subjects, etc. There is no properly philosophical content.
A central idea of the Summa Philosophiae project is that, at least in the
analytic tradition of philosophy, the philosophical content itself is sufficiently
technical and organized that it could be registered and treated semantically,
thereby providing a database of properly philosophical information which would
allow for queries of high philosophical significance.
The need to introduce semantic tools in philosophy, and consequently to
rely on a formal ontology of philosophy, has been underlined by the authors of
the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project (InPho)2 [3]. The InPho project is an
attempt to build up, in a semi-automatic way, an ontology of philosophy from the
data of the SEP (and also other websites like PhilPapers). Other publications,
in particular [4] by Smith and Grenon, also point to a growing awareness of the
need for an ontology of philosophy. But, so far, what has been proposed are
attempts to construct an ontology for already existing data (on the SEP, etc.).
The Summa Philosophiae project will not be based on the analysis of a pre-given
corpus, as is classical in the Digital Humanities [1]; the idea is to invite a massive
collaboration of qualified contributors to provide the philosophical data itself,
within a presupposed ontology.
In section 2, I develop the central project of Summa Philosophiae. In section
3, I present the software which is presently used to implement this project. In
section 4, I consider some possible future improvements.
2 Summa Philosophiae: the basics
Summa Philosophiae is a semantic wiki: it combines the benefits of massive col-
laboration, proper to a wiki, and of searchable database, proper to the semantic
web. Let me explain how these characteristics will be of use for professional
philosophers.
The first use of the website will be to provide a rapidly and collaboratively
updated state of the art on any subject matter. What is the state of the art on
a given subject matter in analytic philosophy? What does it look like? Lets take
2
https://inpho.cogs.indiana.edu/
70
an example. What is the state of the art about incompatibilism in the Free Will
debate? The state of the art is a series of arguments, sub-arguments, counter-
arguments, etc., which every participant to the discussion has to be aware of.
For instance, about incompatibilism, every specialist has to know:
– that there are presently two debated arguments for incompatibilism: the Ma-
nipulation argument, defended in particular by Mele (1995) and Pereboom
(2001), and the Consequence Argument, originally defended by Ginet (1966)
and van Inwagen (1974),
– that the Manipulation argument has two premises: a moral premise and an
equivalence premise,
– that denying the equivalence premise is called the soft line reply and is
defended in Mele (2008) while denying the moral premise is called the hard
line reply and is defended in McKenna (2008),
– that the Consequence argument comprises a fixity premise, an alpha premise,
and a beta premise,
– etc.
To sum up, the state of the art for a question in analytic philosophy has the
following three properties: it is highly structured; it is highly collaborative; it
is rapidly evolving, as new papers get published every month. For that reason,
a tool designed to represent the state of the art in philosophy would have to
have the same three characteristics: being highly structured, open to massive
collaboration, and ready for constant evolution.
For all its merits, the SEP cannot have these characteristics. The data con-
tained in it is not structured as a database; it is only human-interpretable text.
It does involve some amount of collaboration, if we consider the number of au-
thors, but for a given entry, there is only one (or two) author(s) in charge of
writing it. This does have some merits: it gives the entry an undeniable unity
and coherence. And I think philosophers will always need to have encyclopedia
entries written entirely by one author. But entries written by massive collabora-
tion provide other interesting facets: they are forced to reach a more consensual
presentation of the issues, and they can be updated more rapidly. Which leads
me to the third characteristic: Summa Philosophiae will allow for very rapid
updates; as soon as a new paper gives a new twist to the state of the art on a
given topic, any participant to the project will be able to register the information
online on the wiki.
The collaboration model: in order to be living, a wiki needs a sufficiently large
number of collaborators. The collaboration of thousands of contributors is the
key to the success of wikis like Wikipedia or WikiHow, etc. Summa Philosophiae,
unlike Wikipedia, is not intended to be open to anyones contribution. It will be
open only to people holding a PhD or at least a graduation in philosophy. But
even with this restriction, the number of philosophy graduates in the English
speaking world is so high, that it will be sufficient to provide a basis for massive
collaboration. We expect that PhD students in particular will represent an im-
portant part of our contributors, because they are likely to be familiar with web
71
resources, and because they are precisely at a stage of their career when they
are working to catch up with the state of the art on their subject of study.
Massive collaboration comes with its typical risks of conflicts and controver-
sial contributions. To resolve such problems, a governance structure will have
to be set in place. The details are still a matter of reflection but the core idea
of Summa Philosophiae is (unlike wikipedia) to give contributors a level of au-
thority in conflicts corresponding to the scientific authority they hold in the
real-world, academic life.
The second use of the website will take advantage of the semantic feature.
Going on Summa Philosophiae, it will not only be possible to read a page on
the state of the art about a given topic. You will also be able to make intelligent
queries on the database which will have been progressively constituted by so
many contributions on the different pages.
I give more details about the kind of queries that are possible in the next sec-
tion, where I present the software presently used to implement Summa Philosophiae.
Should Summa Philosophiae be restricted to analytic philosophy? Wouldnt it be
more interesting to make systematic queries on all philosophical arguments, in-
cluding arguments from the past? The answer is that Summa Philosophiae will
be open to any style of philosophy which is centered on highly structured and
disambiguated arguments. Many philosophers of the past obviously satisfy such
a description, and enriching the database with their arguments will be a sig-
nificant improvement of Summa Philosophiae, allowing for more complex and
richer queries. On the other hand, there are also philosophers whose methodol-
ogy is based on ineliminable use of metaphors or polysemy, and who explicitly
reject the constructive use of arguments. For such authors (or their specialists),
Summa Philosophiae will probably not be adequate to capture their thought.
3 The Implementation: SMW+ (DataWiki)
In order to implement the concept of Summa Philosophiae, a semantic wiki
software has been used, which is based on the Semantic extension for MediaWiki,
together with another extension called Halo. The software SMW+ was initially
developed by Ontoprise, and is now supported under the name DataWiki3 by
the start-up DIQA-Projektmanagement GmbH.
The main user-interfaces for users of Summa Philosophiae on SMW+ are the
content pages and the query interface.
3.1 The Content Pages
The content pages look like regular wiki pages. There are pages dedicated to:
– concepts (e.g. Free Will): in these pages, the different definitions of the con-
cept are presented, and a list of the most important and disputed theses
involving the concept;
3
http://www.diqa-pm.de/en/DataWiki
72
– theses (e.g. incompatibilism): in these pages, the thesis will be defined, in
its various versions, but the main part of the page will be dedicated to
a presentation of the state of the art about the main arguments for and
against the thesis;
– arguments (e.g. consequence argument): in these pages, more information
will be given about the versions of the argument, and the state of the
art about which premises are stronger or weaker, and which rejoinders are
presently defended;
– authors;
– works (books and papers).
To someone who only reads a page like these, they will look very much like
a regular wiki or encyclopedia entry (except for the fact that it will be more
structured and highly technical). But the most important is in fact the semantic
data which is registered in these pages. Here is how it works.
In SMW+, each page corresponds to an object in the ontology. A concept
page is an object different from a thesis page, or from an argument page. These
objects have different properties, defined in the ontology. A thesis can bear the
relation has argument to an argument page, while an argument can bear the
relation has premise to a thesis page. And both can bear the property involves
concept to a concept page.
All these properties are registered by the contributors when they fill in the
pages. There are two ways to register this kind of semantic information: one is
to learn the language of the SMW+, and write down the properties at the same
time as one writes the philosophical content in a wikitext editor. For instance,
in order to note that incompatibilism has, as an argument, the consequence
argument, you should write the following in the page incompatibilism: [[Has
argument::Consequence Argument]].
The other solution is to write only text in the wikitext editor, and then
turn to the user-friendly annotation interface, where you can add the properties
by clicking on the relevant bits of information, together with the help of the
semantic toolbar (see figure 1).
The precise ontology is closer to that of Smith and Grenon [5] than to the
InPhO (the reason is that InPhO does not differentiate between domains, theses,
arguments, etc. All of them are categorized as ideas). Here is a sample list of the
main properties:
– Properties of concepts:
• Is involved in (thesis / argument)
• Is in domain (domain of philosophy)
– Properties of theses:
• Defended by (author)
• Defended in (work)
• Has argument (argument)
• Involves concept (concept)
– Properties of arguments:
73
Fig. 1. The annotation interface
• Defended by (author)
• Defended in (work)
• Has premise (thesis)
• Has conclusion (thesis)
• Involves concept (concept)
It should be noticed that this is (like Smiths and InPhOs ontologies) an ontol-
ogy of meta-philosophy rather than a philosophical ontology properly speaking
(involving categories like substance, physical substance, living organism, etc.).
The constitution of a computer-aided philosophical ontology is an interesting
prospect (see e.g. [5]) but would necessarily be highly controversial, while our
ontology must reflect a scientific consensus.
3.2 The Query Interface
The second important interface is the Query Interface. Here, the users can make
complex queries on the data registered in the different pages. For instance, you
can query:
– all philosophers who have defended both libertarianism about free will and
moral realism in ethics,
– all arguments that have been defended both by Descartes and by Plantinga,
– all arguments for Metaphysical Realism that have been defended after 1980
and that start with premises that Plato accepted,
– or any query of the kind.
74
Fig. 2. The query interface
To do this, you only have to fill in a form (see figure 2), informing the category
of object you are looking for (philosopher, argument, etc.) and the properties
which the object must have (Has defended so and so).
As the data collected in the database becomes more and more complete,
the results of such queries will be more and more interesting and relevant. The
query interface can also be used to check what data is presently missing in the
database, and thereby determine where more work is to be done in terms of
completing the content pages.
4 Two Possible Further Developments
Two further developments can be considered which are not presently imple-
mented in the software SMW+, one in the short run, the second in a longer run.
The first would be to render Summa Philosophia compatible with the bibliog-
raphy software Zotero. PhilPapers has this functionality. The integration with
Zotero could be used for instance in the following way. Suppose you want to
constitute a complete bibliography of recent papers defending the consequence
argument. What you have to do then is only to create a query in the query in-
terface, looking for all papers which have the property being written after 1980
and the relation defends to consequence argument. A list will be automatically
generated in the query interface, which Zotero will be able to directly capture
as a useable bibliography.
The second development was suggested to me by Emmanuel Desmontils (Uni-
versity of Nantes). The suggestion would be to develop more integration be-
75
tween the data provided by the websites of philosophy journals and the Summa
Philosophiae. For scientific journals in general, it seems reasonable to think
that the conditions of scientific publishing will develop more and more semantic
features in the years to come. This prospect is defended in particular by Tim
Berners-Lee and James Hendler in [2]: In the next few years, we expect that tools
for publishing papers on the web will automatically help users to include more of
this machine-readable mark-up in the papers they produce. If this development
occurs also for philosophy journals, then we can imagine that the journals web-
site will give, as information about a given paper, not only its author, date, area
of specialization, etc. but also semantic data directly relevant to the ontology of
Summa Philosophiae, i.e. defends argument so and so, has premises so and so,
etc. If this happens, then the contributors of Summa Philosophiae will have a
very rapid way to integrate the newly published information in the wiki pages,
and integration into Summa Philosophiae can be become an important benefit
for editors, as it will give immediate visibility to their papers for the audience
interested specifically and the theses and arguments discussed.
References
1. B. Bachimont. Engagement sémantique et engagement ontologique. In Ingénierie
des Connaissances: Évolutions Récentes et Nouveaux Défis, pages 305–323, Paris,
France, 2000. Eyrolles.
2. T. Berners-Lee and J. Hendler. Publishing on the semantic web. Nature,
410(6832):1023–1024, 2001.
3. C. Buckner, M. Niepert, and C. Allen. From encyclopedia to ontology: Toward
dynamic representation of the discipline of philosophy. Synthese, 182(2):205–233,
2011.
4. P. Grenon and B. Smith. Foundations of an ontology of philosophy. Synthese,
182(2):185–204, 2011.
5. A. Monnin and E. Félix. Essai de comparaison des ontologies informatiques et
philosophiques: entre être et artefacts. In D. Phan, editor, Rochebrune’09 : Ontolo-
gie et dynamique des systèmes complexes, perspectives interdisciplinaires, page 14,
Megève, France, 2009. Chemin de Traverse.
6. J. Perry and E. Zalta. Why philosophy needs a dynamic encyclopedia. 1997.
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