What Is an Ontology?
What Is an Ontology?
Words, pictures, theories, and ideas are representations. We use them primarily in order to represent entities in reality and sometimes also in other ways. An ontology is made out of multiple representational elements called ‘terms’. These elements are organized into networks by means of relational links, for example ‘mammal’ linked with ‘animal’ through the hierarchical relation: subtype. We define an ontology as a representational artifact, and explore the implications of this. We outline our preferred realist view of universals, and contrast it with alternative views (nominalism and conceptualism). For the realist, terms in ontologies primarily represent real universals (for example: mammal, cell, molecule), while defined terms and empty terms represent special cases. We distinguish ontologies from representational artifacts of other sorts, including terminologies, and contrast the realist method for ontology development with the concept orientation often favored by terminology developers.
Keywords: Representation, universal, particular, hierarchy, defined class, empty terms, relations, realism, nominalism, concept orientation
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