GOL: toward an axiomatized upper-level ontology

  • Authors:

  • Wolfgang Degen;Barbara Heller;Heinrich Herre;Barry Smith

  • Affiliations:

  • Universität Erlangen;Universität Leipzig;Universität Leipzig;SUNY Buffalo, NY

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the international conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems - Volume 2001
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

Every domain-specific ontology must use as a framework someupper-level ontology which describes the most general,domain-independent categories of reality. In the present paper wesketch a new type of upper-level ontology, which is intended to bethe basis of a knowledge modelling language GOL (for: 'GeneralOntological Language'). It turns out that the upper-level ontologyunderlying standard modelling languages such as KIF, F-Logic andCycL is restricted to the ontology of sets. Set theory hasconsiderable mathematical power and great flexibility as aframework for modelling different sorts of structures. At the sametime it has the disadvantage that sets are abstract entities(entities existing outside the realm of time, space and causality),and thus a set-theoretical framework should be supplemented by someother machinery if it is to support applications in the ripe, messyworld of concrete objects. In the present paper we partition theentities of the real world into sets and urelements, and then weintroduce several new ontological relations between theseurelements. In contrast to standard modelling and representationformalisms, the concepts of GOL provide a machinery forrepresenting and analysing such ontologically basic relations.