Brian Cantwell Smith

Brian Cantwell Smith is a philosopher and cognitive scientist working in the fields of cognitive science, computer science, information science, and philosophy, especially ontology.

His research has focused on the foundations and philosophy of computing, both in the practice and theory of computer science, and in the use of computational metaphors in other fields, such as philosophy, cognitive science, physics, and art. As of 2024^[update], he is professor of information, computer science, and philosophy at University of Toronto.

Smith received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Smith's 1982 doctoral dissertation ^[1][2] introduced the notion of computational reflection in programming languages, an area of active ongoing research in computer science. Past publications have addressed questions in computational reflection, meta-level architecture, programming languages, and knowledge representation. Over the last decade, his work has focused on fundamental issues in the foundations of epistemology, ontology, and metaphysics.

He was a founder of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, and a founder and first president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Smith served as principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, in the 1980s.

Smith is the author of more than 35 articles and three books.^[3].

Smith was Dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information from 2003–2008.

Smith formerly held a Canada Research Chair in the Foundations of Information, and is cross-appointed as Professor in the departments of Philosophy and Computer Science and in the Program in Communication, Culture and Technology at University of Toronto at Mississauga.

His father was the celebrated scholar of religion Wilfred Cantwell Smith.

• Procedural Reflection in Programming Languages, Ph.D. dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 1982.
• On the Origin of Objects, The MIT Press, 1998, ISBN 9780262193634.
• The Promise of Artificial Intelligence: Reckoning and Judgment, The MIT Press, 2019, ISBN 9780262043045.
• Computational Reflections, The MIT Press, 2025, (forthcoming).

• Age of Significance (personal bibliography and publications)
• Brian Cantwell Smith 'On the Origin of Objects'

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