Pierre Grenon

SNAP and SPAN: Towards Dynamic Spatial Ontology

We propose a modular ontology of the dynamic features of reality. This amounts, on the one hand, to a purely spatial ontology supporting snapshot views of the world at successive instants of time and, on the other hand, to a purely spatiotemporal ontology of change and process. We argue that dynamic spatial ontology must combine these two distinct types of inventory of the entities and relationships in reality, and we provide characterizations of spatiotemporal reasoning in the light of the interconnections between them.

Foundations of an ontology of philosophy

We describe an ontology of philosophy that is designed to aid navigation through philosophical literature, including literature in the form of encyclopedia articles and textbooks and in both printed and digital forms. The ontology is designed also to serve integration and structuring of data pertaining to the philosophical literature, and in the long term also to support reasoning about the provenance and contents of such literature, by providing a representation of the philosophical domain that is oriented around what philosophical literature is about.

Philosophy, ontology, and information systems

The workshop aimed at providing a forum to discuss the use of philosophical ontology in object-oriented information systems. Whilst ontology is now more widely used in computing circles – knowledge representation, system integration, legacy transformation, and the semantic web for example – initial attempts have been modest in their outcomes. This is because computing ontology to-date has been used primarily for (often competing) concept definitions: Pragmatically, ontologies have either been developed in an abstract sense (based on some authorative perspective), or people have taken materials at hand (data models and the like) and tried to glue them together. A sound basis on which to properly align different views on aspects of the world in order to work towards a consistent whole is missing. With this in mind, the workshop aimed to secure a measure of agreement on: What philosophical ontology is, How ontology can assist in software development, Key obstacles to the deployment of ontology, and Possible collaborative efforts among the participants. Selection of participants was based on short position papers and/or previously demonstrated interest in related areas of activity.