Towards a Computational Ontology for the Philosophy of Wittgenstein: Representing Aspects of the Tractarian Philosophy of Mathematics

Abstract

The present paper concerns the Wittgenstein ontology project: an attempt to create a Semantic Web representation of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy. The project has been in development since 2006, and its current state enables users to search for information about Wittgenstein-related documents and the documents themselves. However, the developers have much more ambitious goals: they attempt to provide a philosophical subject matter knowledge base that would comprise the claims and concepts formulated by the philosopher. The current knowledge representation technology is not well-suited for this task, and a non-standard approach is required. The creators of the Wittgenstein ontology project are aware of this fact; recently, they have been discussing conceptual devices adjusting the technology to their needs. The main goal of this paper is to present examples of a representation of philosophical content that make use of both the devices already proposed and some new inventions. The represented content comes from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; more specifically, its theses concerning the problems in philosophy of mathematics.