[ontac-forum] Single upper ontology issue - was: A suggestion for ontolo

["Gary Berg-Cross" <gary.berg-cross@xxxxxxxx>]

 

John,

 

Antifoundational stances in philosophy are not intuitve to many of us at first exposure,

but perhaps the analogy to Euclidean geometr and the parallel axiom provides an overly simple

bridge to see alternative foundations that provide useful theorems in different contexts

 

Or perhaps we need to adapt the antifoundational slogan of "having to build our boats while at sea" to

the ontological endeavor.

 

In response to your point:

 

JS>One of my criticisms of any ontology that has a fixed

upper level, such as DOLCE and many others (including

the one I presented in my KR book), is that there is only *one* upper level. 

The DOLCE design patterns have been designed to propagate design decisions

JS>made for the DOLCE upper level to every level of the ontology from top to bottom.     

 

Yes,  but DOLCE is the first module of the WonderWeb Foundational Ontologies Library

(WFOL).which, as I understand it from Guarino’s briefings, has no single upper level. 

 Instead it has a “small” set of foundational ontologies that have been “carefully”

justified and positioned with respect to a space of alternative, possible choices.

 

The approach is to clearly documented options using clear branching points

basic to allow exploration and easy comparison of alternative ontological options.  That

seems to be a practical strategy for not getting caught in one upper level as a first step.

 

 

Gary Berg-Cross

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