How to conduct research and teach with and about data in philosophy?

Authors

Jonathan D. Geiger and Christian Schröter

27.10.2025

Workshop background

While it is beyond question that the philosophy of the digital or of digitality is a legitimate field of research, digital approaches to philosophical research questions have so far remained underdetermined. In addition to areas such as digital or digitally supported hermeneutics, digital editions, and digital explorational tools and spaces, this particularly includes digital (quantitative) research methods that produce insights from large data collections.

The prerequisites for this are multifaceted: on the one hand, suitable philosophy-of-science foundations are needed to theoretically backup, or at least support, the scientific insights gained through machine-based procedures without lapsing into data positivism. On the other hand, digital work in philosophy requires a structured and sustainable provision of the necessary data, collections, tools, and infrastructures. There is also an aspect that has so far been largely sidelined because it is downstream, namely the teaching and development of competencies: to handle digital research data, infrastructures, and tools competently, appropriate skills must be taught not only within degree programs but also fostered through continuing education and self-study. This last point concerns learning media and their accessibility, particularly Open Educational Resources, which in turn presuppose a digital infrastructure.

These focal areas—digital methods and infrastructures for philosophy, as well as the associated competencies—were the focus of the 1st Community Workshop on Digital Philosophy and Data Literacy, held on September 4–5, 2025 at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, both in person and online. It built on the DigitalLab of the working group “Philosophy of Digitality / Philosophical Digitality Research” (“Philosophie der Digitalität / philosophische Digitalitätsforschung”) of the German Society for Philosophy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie) at the XVII Congress for Philosophy in Münster (in 2024), and linked the perspective of a philosophy done digitally with the focus of the overarching DALIA project on data literacy, research data management competencies, and Open Educational Resources.

Impressions from the workshop (Foto: Jonathan D. Geiger).
Impressions from the workshop (Foto: Jonathan D. Geiger).

Research Data, Infrastructures, and Data Literacy: The Contributions

Thematically, the workshop was divided into two parts: the first day focused on research data and infrastructures in philosophy, the second on data literacy in philosophy degree programs. The keynote inputs and concrete case studies were discussed in depth.

Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter (University of Münster) presented the project PRODATPHIL (Programmable Data Collection for Philosophy), which aims to collect and provide machine-readable full texts of philosophical works, particularly from the early 20th century. The project initially focuses on questions in logic and philosophy of science and seeks historically oriented contextualization. A key point of discussion concerned which texts belong in such a corpus and which do not—in other words, how “philosophy” is classified in this context.

Martin Lemke (University of Rostock) presented a multi-author edition project for the historical and systematic study of the Vienna Circle (“Wiener Kreis”). Starting from the claim that the historiography of philosophy must be both historically adequate and relevant to contemporary questions, he introduced constellation research and its theoretical underpinnings. He emphasized the need for a solid editorial foundation enabling transparency, machine readability, dynamic commentary apparatuses, and a growing corpus to make quantitative methods possible. A graph database is planned for the technical implementation.

The talk by Agnes Kleinhans and Ning Xia (both Technical University of Darmstadt) addressed the concept of semantic digital twins as an advancement over classical digital twins, which were originally used, for example, in aerospace—famously during the Apollo 13 accident—to virtually model complex systems. In the project freeda, a prototype is being developed that brings together fragmented data silos and integrates heterogeneous data using semantic technologies. The discussion focused in particular on issues of digital sovereignty and system transparency.

Jonathan D. Geiger (Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz) explored how digital methods can be implemented in philosophy, particularly through the quantitative analysis of digital data. As an example, he presented the long-standing PHILOS-L mailing list, which has existed since 1989 as an international digital forum for professional philosophers and today counts over 13,000 subscribers in more than 60 countries and remains active. He outlined conceptual and technical approaches to transforming the mailing list’s email archive into a usable data corpus. The discussion critically examined, among other things, the personal rights associated with digital personal papers (digitaler Vorlass).

The talk by Christian Schröter (Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz) considered the Historical Dictionary of Philosophy (Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, HWP) as a potential resource for digital philosophical research and proposed a connection with the PhiWiki as an instance of Semantic MediaWiki. He situated the needs of the philosophical community in the context of collaborative digital tools: from conceptual work and citation management to genealogies of philosophers and Linked Open Data approaches. Using the HWP as an example, he presented initial steps in data modeling, such as linking author indexes with data from student projects. Possible biases in the HWP’s category tree were critically discussed.

Finally, Eric Eggert and Nils Geißler (both from the Information Service for Philosophy, “Fachinformationsdienst Philosophie”) presented the PhilPortal as a digital infrastructure for philosophy, which has been operated and further developed at the University of Cologne since 2018. The project succeeds the former Special Subject Collections (“Sondersammelgebiet Philosophie”) and aims to provide location-independent digital access to literature for philosophical research. Its foundation is a close connection with the scholarly community, since funding depends largely on demonstrated need and acceptance. The portal rests on four pillars: discovery, literature provision, journal hosting, and research data. The discussion particularly addressed issues of data authority, provenance, and contextualization.

The second day, dedicated to data literacy in philosophy degree programs, was opened by Markus Bohlmann (University of Münster). He examined the role of digital methods and Open Educational Resources (OER) in philosophy teaching. Many Digital Humanities projects and data literacy initiatives produce OER either intentionally or as a by-product, with subject-specific pedagogy (Fachdidaktik) playing a special role in Germany in international comparison. Many instructors are not specifically trained in philosophy didactics and therefore increasingly seek didactic resources, making OER particularly attractive. While many OER offerings already exist, they are often dependent on individuals and therefore only partially sustainable. The subsequent discussion emphasized that data literacy should not be understood solely as preparation for data-science careers, but as a fundamental ability for the critical handling of data.

The concluding input was given by Andreas Hütig (University of Mainz). He addressed how data ethics can be taught systematically. The starting point was the project Data Literacy @ JGU and the “Data and Information” study program within the Studium generale. It was also emphasized that data literacy builds on older concepts such as media literacy and information literacy. While existing frameworks mention data ethics, they rarely elaborate it systematically; in the context of the Data Literacy Charter, data ethics is understood as a cross-cutting aspect. A practical example is the course “Data Ethics & Critical Thinking,” which attracts broad interest from a range of disciplines and is intended to be published as an Open Educational Resource (OER) in the future. The discussion focused in particular on the question of how to anchor data ethics in curricula.

Summary

The discussion made clear that the digital dimension of philosophical work encompasses several closely interconnected fields: working with digital data, tools, and infrastructures, but also the necessary competencies and the provision of suitable materials, such as Open Educational Resources (OER). A minimal program for digital competencies would already have been beneficial earlier in philosophy, but integrating it into curricula still poses major challenges.

It is therefore important to introduce students to digital tools and practices at an early stage—both in specialized, DH-oriented programs and in philosophy education more broadly. Proposed minimum competencies include working with digital bibliographic data and reference management tools such as Zotero, basic knowledge of regular expressions (regex), and proficient use of document styles/templates for academic texts.

The workshop was conceived as the starting point for an ongoing dialogue. In addition to further consolidating the results, engagement with its core topics will continue. The organizers would like to thank all participants, both on site and online, as well as the DALIA project for financially supporting the workshop. Interested parties are warmly invited to contribute to the ongoing work. Contact: jonathan.geiger@adwmainz.de and christian.schroeter@adwmainz.de.

How to conduct research and teach with and about data in philosophy?

Autoren

Jonathan D. Geiger and Christian Schröter

27.10.2025

Workshop background

While it is beyond question that the philosophy of the digital or of digitality is a legitimate field of research, digital approaches to philosophical research questions have so far remained underdetermined. In addition to areas such as digital or digitally supported hermeneutics, digital editions, and digital explorational tools and spaces, this particularly includes digital (quantitative) research methods that produce insights from large data collections.

The prerequisites for this are multifaceted: on the one hand, suitable philosophy-of-science foundations are needed to theoretically backup, or at least support, the scientific insights gained through machine-based procedures without lapsing into data positivism. On the other hand, digital work in philosophy requires a structured and sustainable provision of the necessary data, collections, tools, and infrastructures. There is also an aspect that has so far been largely sidelined because it is downstream, namely the teaching and development of competencies: to handle digital research data, infrastructures, and tools competently, appropriate skills must be taught not only within degree programs but also fostered through continuing education and self-study. This last point concerns learning media and their accessibility, particularly Open Educational Resources, which in turn presuppose a digital infrastructure.

These focal areas—digital methods and infrastructures for philosophy, as well as the associated competencies—were the focus of the 1st Community Workshop on Digital Philosophy and Data Literacy, held on September 4–5, 2025 at the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz, both in person and online. It built on the DigitalLab of the working group “Philosophy of Digitality / Philosophical Digitality Research” (“Philosophie der Digitalität / philosophische Digitalitätsforschung”) of the German Society for Philosophy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Philosophie) at the XVII Congress for Philosophy in Münster (in 2024), and linked the perspective of a philosophy done digitally with the focus of the overarching DALIA project on data literacy, research data management competencies, and Open Educational Resources.

Impressions from the workshop (Foto: Jonathan D. Geiger).
Impressions from the workshop (Foto: Jonathan D. Geiger).

Research Data, Infrastructures, and Data Literacy: The Contributions

Thematically, the workshop was divided into two parts: the first day focused on research data and infrastructures in philosophy, the second on data literacy in philosophy degree programs. The keynote inputs and concrete case studies were discussed in depth.

Stefan Heßbrüggen-Walter (University of Münster) presented the project PRODATPHIL (Programmable Data Collection for Philosophy), which aims to collect and provide machine-readable full texts of philosophical works, particularly from the early 20th century. The project initially focuses on questions in logic and philosophy of science and seeks historically oriented contextualization. A key point of discussion concerned which texts belong in such a corpus and which do not—in other words, how “philosophy” is classified in this context.

Martin Lemke (University of Rostock) presented a multi-author edition project for the historical and systematic study of the Vienna Circle (“Wiener Kreis”). Starting from the claim that the historiography of philosophy must be both historically adequate and relevant to contemporary questions, he introduced constellation research and its theoretical underpinnings. He emphasized the need for a solid editorial foundation enabling transparency, machine readability, dynamic commentary apparatuses, and a growing corpus to make quantitative methods possible. A graph database is planned for the technical implementation.

The talk by Agnes Kleinhans and Ning Xia (both Technical University of Darmstadt) addressed the concept of semantic digital twins as an advancement over classical digital twins, which were originally used, for example, in aerospace—famously during the Apollo 13 accident—to virtually model complex systems. In the project freeda, a prototype is being developed that brings together fragmented data silos and integrates heterogeneous data using semantic technologies. The discussion focused in particular on issues of digital sovereignty and system transparency.

Jonathan D. Geiger (Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz) explored how digital methods can be implemented in philosophy, particularly through the quantitative analysis of digital data. As an example, he presented the long-standing PHILOS-L mailing list, which has existed since 1989 as an international digital forum for professional philosophers and today counts over 13,000 subscribers in more than 60 countries and remains active. He outlined conceptual and technical approaches to transforming the mailing list’s email archive into a usable data corpus. The discussion critically examined, among other things, the personal rights associated with digital personal papers (digitaler Vorlass).

The talk by Christian Schröter (Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz) considered the Historical Dictionary of Philosophy (Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, HWP) as a potential resource for digital philosophical research and proposed a connection with the PhiWiki as an instance of Semantic MediaWiki. He situated the needs of the philosophical community in the context of collaborative digital tools: from conceptual work and citation management to genealogies of philosophers and Linked Open Data approaches. Using the HWP as an example, he presented initial steps in data modeling, such as linking author indexes with data from student projects. Possible biases in the HWP’s category tree were critically discussed.

Finally, Eric Eggert and Nils Geißler (both from the Information Service for Philosophy, “Fachinformationsdienst Philosophie”) presented the PhilPortal as a digital infrastructure for philosophy, which has been operated and further developed at the University of Cologne since 2018. The project succeeds the former Special Subject Collections (“Sondersammelgebiet Philosophie”) and aims to provide location-independent digital access to literature for philosophical research. Its foundation is a close connection with the scholarly community, since funding depends largely on demonstrated need and acceptance. The portal rests on four pillars: discovery, literature provision, journal hosting, and research data. The discussion particularly addressed issues of data authority, provenance, and contextualization.

The second day, dedicated to data literacy in philosophy degree programs, was opened by Markus Bohlmann (University of Münster). He examined the role of digital methods and Open Educational Resources (OER) in philosophy teaching. Many Digital Humanities projects and data literacy initiatives produce OER either intentionally or as a by-product, with subject-specific pedagogy (Fachdidaktik) playing a special role in Germany in international comparison. Many instructors are not specifically trained in philosophy didactics and therefore increasingly seek didactic resources, making OER particularly attractive. While many OER offerings already exist, they are often dependent on individuals and therefore only partially sustainable. The subsequent discussion emphasized that data literacy should not be understood solely as preparation for data-science careers, but as a fundamental ability for the critical handling of data.

The concluding input was given by Andreas Hütig (University of Mainz). He addressed how data ethics can be taught systematically. The starting point was the project Data Literacy @ JGU and the “Data and Information” study program within the Studium generale. It was also emphasized that data literacy builds on older concepts such as media literacy and information literacy. While existing frameworks mention data ethics, they rarely elaborate it systematically; in the context of the Data Literacy Charter, data ethics is understood as a cross-cutting aspect. A practical example is the course “Data Ethics & Critical Thinking,” which attracts broad interest from a range of disciplines and is intended to be published as an Open Educational Resource (OER) in the future. The discussion focused in particular on the question of how to anchor data ethics in curricula.

Summary

The discussion made clear that the digital dimension of philosophical work encompasses several closely interconnected fields: working with digital data, tools, and infrastructures, but also the necessary competencies and the provision of suitable materials, such as Open Educational Resources (OER). A minimal program for digital competencies would already have been beneficial earlier in philosophy, but integrating it into curricula still poses major challenges.

It is therefore important to introduce students to digital tools and practices at an early stage—both in specialized, DH-oriented programs and in philosophy education more broadly. Proposed minimum competencies include working with digital bibliographic data and reference management tools such as Zotero, basic knowledge of regular expressions (regex), and proficient use of document styles/templates for academic texts.

The workshop was conceived as the starting point for an ongoing dialogue. In addition to further consolidating the results, engagement with its core topics will continue. The organizers would like to thank all participants, both on site and online, as well as the DALIA project for financially supporting the workshop. Interested parties are warmly invited to contribute to the ongoing work. Contact: jonathan.geiger@adwmainz.de and christian.schroeter@adwmainz.de.