Ontology: its transformation from philosophy to information systems

  • Authors:
  • Gloria L. Zúñiga

  • Affiliations:
  • The Acton Institute, Grand Rapids, MI

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

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Abstract

It is no secret that the multidisciplinary sphere of informationsystems has borrowed the term 'ontology' from philosophy, andreinterpreted it to be more suitable for information systems.However, there is some disagreement about what thisreinterpretation should be. This paper examines two prominent anddistinct views on what information systems ontology is, andattempts to advance a unified definition that can be understoodinterdisciplinarily. But the goal of this paper is to show thespecific points of variance between information systems ontologyand philosophical ontology in order to shed light on thetransformation of the term 'ontology' in its adoption by theinformation systems community. The relatively new informationsystems ontology is facing great challenges that may be betterconfronted with the insights that can be discovered throughphilosophical ontology.