| Publication type: |
Article |
| Author: |
Oliver Kutz, Till Mossakowski, Dominik Lücke |
| Title: |
Carnap, Goguen, and the Hyperontologies - Logical Pluralism and Heterogeneous Structuring in Ontology Design |
| Volume: |
4 |
| Page(s): |
255 – 333 |
| Journal: |
Logica Univeralis |
| Number: |
2 |
| Year published: |
2010 |
| Abstract: |
We present a general framework for the design of formal ontologies,
resting on two main principles: firstly, we endorse Rudolf Carnap's
principle of logical tolerance by giving central stage to the
concept of logical heterogeneity, i.e. the use of a plurality of
logical languages within one ontology design. Secondly, to structure
and combine heterogeneous ontologies in a semantically well-founded
way, we base our work on abstract model theory in the form of
institutional semantics, as forcefully put forward by Joseph Goguen
and Rod Burstall.
The theoretical foundation in institution theory establishes a close
link to algebraic specification theory. We explore this link by
systematically applying tools and techniques from this area to
corresponding ontology structuring and design tasks,
in particular employ the structuring mechanisms of the heterogeneous algebraic
specification language HetCASL for defining an abstract notion of
structured heterogeneous ontology, leading to the idea of a hyperontology, a heterogeneous, distributed, highly modular and structured ontology.
This approach enables the
designer to split up a heterogeneous ontology into semantically
meaningful parts and employ dedicated reasoning tools to them.
Moreover, we distinguish, on a structural and semantic level,
several different kinds of combining and aligning heterogeneous
ontologies, namely integration, connection, and refinement. The
notion of heterogeneous refinement can, in particular, be used to
provide both a general notion of sub-ontology as well as a notion of
heterogeneous equivalence of ontologies.
Finally, we sketch how different modes of reasoning over ontologies are related to these different structuring aspects. |
| Internet: |
http://www.springerlink.com/content/e170073t6676m765/ |
| PDF Version: |
http://www.informatik.uni-bremen.de/~till/papers/Hyperontology.pdf |
| Keywords: |
ontology heterogeneity structuring alignment refinement Carnap Goguen institution |
| Status: |
Reviewed |
| Last updated: |
18. 11. 2010 |
|
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