How can philosophy inspire IT, and how can digital tools and methods be successfully applied to teaching and researching philosophy?

Through the Wittgenstein Archives the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen strongly engages in applying philosophy to IT, and IT to philosophy. Does our notion of text change when transported to the digital environment? How can web search engines benefit from philosophical reflection on what exists, and how it does? What have philosophical ontologies to do with computational ontologies and the Semantic Web? These are some of the questions studied at our department where we try to fertilize IT with philosophy. But we naturally also use IT to enhance research and learning in philosophy.

In 2000 Wittgenstein's writings were published on CD-ROM in collaboration with Oxford University Press. In 2009 we made a substantial part freely available for open access on the website Wittgenstein Source. The Wittgenstein Archives increasingly participates in the Semantic Web and builds a Wittgenstein ontology which will permit multilingual access not only to Wittgenstein’s texts, but also their contents. The Wittgenstein Archives and the Department of Philosophy welcome anyone interested in “Philosophical Digital Humanities” and promise that they will find congenial minds at our place.