Ontologies and Knowledge Bases. Towards a Terminological Clarification

The word \ontology" has recently gained a good popularity within the knowledge engineering community. However, its meaning tends to remain a bit vague, as the term is used in very difierent ways. Limiting our attention to the various proposals made in the current debate in AI, we isolate a number of interpretations, which in our opinion deserve a suitable clariflcation. We elucidate the implications of such various interpretations, arguing for the need of clear terminological choices regarding the technical use of terms like \ontology", \conceptualization" and \ontological commitment". After some comments on the use \Ontology" (with the capital \o") as a term which denotes a philosophical discipline, we analyse the possible confusion between an ontology intended as a particular conceptual framework at the knowledge level and an ontology intended as a concrete artifact at the symbol level, to be used for a given purpose. A crucial point in this clariflcation efiort is the careful analysis of Gruber’ s deflnition of an ontology as a speciflcation of a conceptualization.

[1]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  A translation approach to portable ontology specifications , 1993 .

[2]  M. Bunge.  Treatise on basic philosophy , 1974 .

[3]  Roberto Poli.  Bimodality of formal ontology and mereology , 1995, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[4]  Timothy W. Finin,et al.  Swartout: Enabling technology for knowledge sharing , 1991 .

[5]  M A Musen,et al.  Dimensions of knowledge sharing and reuse. , 1992, Computers and biomedical research, an international journal.

[6]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing? , 1995, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[7]  Timothy W. Finin,et al.  Enabling Technology for Knowledge Sharing , 1991, AI Mag..

[8]  P. E. van der Vet,et al.  Ontologies for very large knowledge bases in materials science: a case study , 1995 .

[9]  Nicola Guarino,et al.  Proceedings of the International Workshop on Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation , 1993 .

[10]  Nicola Guarino,et al.  Formalizing ontological commitments , 1994, AAAI 1994.

[11]  Nicola Guarino,et al.  An Ontology of Meta-Level Categories , 1994, KR.

[12]  A. T. Schreiber,et al.  Framework and formalism for expressing ontologies, Deliverable ESPRIT project P8145, KACTUS/DO1b.1-Framework-1.1-UvA-BW+GS+WJ+AA , 1994 .

[13]  Nicola Guarino,et al.  Formal ontology, conceptual analysis and knowledge representation , 1995, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Stud..

[14]  Nicola Guarino,et al.  Formalizing Ontological Commitment , 1994, AAAI.