Showing papers by "Nicola Guarino published in 1994"

An ontology of meta-level categories

Abstract: We focus in this paper on some meta-level ontological distinctions among unary predicates, like those between concepts and assertional properties. Three are the main contributions of this work, mostly based on a revisitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation. The first is a formal notion of ontological commitment, based on a modal logic endowed with mereological and topological primitives. The second is a formal account of Strawson's distinction between sortal and non-sortal predicates. Assertional properties like red belong to the latter category, while the former category is further refined by distinguishing substantial predicates (corresponding to types like person ) from non-substantial predicates (corresponding to roles like student ). The third technical contribution is definition of countability which exploits the topological notion of connection to capture the intended semantics of unary predicates.

Formalizing ontological commitments

Abstract: Formalizing the ontological commitment of a logical language means offering a way to specify the intended meaning of its vocabulary by constraining the set of its models, giving explicit information about the intended nature of the modelling primitives and their a priori relationships. We present here a formal definition of ontological commitment which aims to capture the very basic ontological assumptions about the intended domain, related to issues such as identity and internal structure. To tackle such issues, a modal framework endowed with mereo-topological primitives has been adopted. The paper is mostly based on a re-visitation of philosophical (and linguistic) literature in the perspective of knowledge representation.