Ontology

About: Ontology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11351 publications have been published within this topic receiving 216225 citations.

The PROMPT suite: interactive tools for ontology merging and mapping

Abstract: Researchers in the ontology-design field have developed the content for ontologies in many domain areas. This distributed nature of ontology development has led to a large number of ontologies covering overlapping domains. In order for these ontologies to be reused, they first need to be merged or aligned to one another. We developed a suite of tools for managing multiple ontologies. These suite provides users with a uniform framework for comparing, aligning, and merging ontologies, maintaining versions, translating between different formalisms. Two of the tools in the suite support semi-automatic ontology merging: IPROMPT is an interactive ontology-merging tool that guides the user through the merging process, presenting him with suggestions for next steps and identifying inconsistencies and potential problems. ANCHORPROMPT uses a graph structure of ontologies to find correlation between concepts and to provide additional information for IPROMPT.

Affordances and Prospective Control: An Outline of the Ontology

Abstract: Actions must be controlled prospectively. This requires that the behavioral possibilities of surface layouts and events be perceived. In this article, the ontolog- ical basis for an understanding of prospective control in realist terms is outlined. The foundational idea is that of affordances and the promoted ontology is materialist and dynamicist. It is argued that research in the ecological approach to prospective control is ultimately the search for objective laws. Because lawfulness is equated with real possibility, this amounts to the study of the affordances (the real possibilities) underlying prospective control and the circumstances that actualize them. The ontological assumptions and hypotheses bearing on this latter proposal are articulated. It is suggested that critical evaluation of the identified ontological themes may benefit the experimental and theoretical study of perception in the service of activity.

The Basic Problems of Phenomenology

Abstract: Translator's Preface Translator's Introduction Introduction 1. Exposition and General Division of the theme 2. The concept of philosophy. Philosophy and world-view 3. Philosophy as science of being 4. The four theses about being and the basic problems of phenomenology 5. The character of ontological method. The three basic components of phenomenological method 6. Outline of the course Part One: Critical Phenomenological Discussion of Some Traditional Theses about Being Chapter One: Kant's Thesis: Being Is Not a Real Predicate 7. The content of the Kantian thesis 8. Phenomenological analysis of the explanation of the concept of being or of existence given by Kant 9. Demonstration of the need for a more fundamental formulation of the problem of the thesis and of a more radical foundation of this problem Chapter Two: The Thesis of Medeval Ontology Derived from Aristotle: To the Constitution of the Being of a Being There Belong Essence and Existence 10. The Content of the thesis and its traditional discussion 11. Phenomenological clarification of the problem underlying the second thesis 12. Proof of the inadequate foundation of the traditional treatment of the problem Chapter Three: The Thesis of Modern Ontology: The Basic Ways of Being Are the Being of Nature (res Extensa) and the Being of Mind (Res Cogitans) 13. Characterization of the ontological distinction between res extensa and res cogitans with the aid of the Kantian formulation of the problem 14. Phenomenological critique of the Kantian solution and demonstration of the need to pose the question in fundamental principle 15. The fundamental problem of the multiplicity of ways of being and of the unity of the concept of being in general Chapter Four: The Thesis of Logic: Every Being, Regardless of Its Particular Way of Being, Can Be Addressed and Talked About by Means of the "Is". The Being of the Copula 16. Delineation of the ontological problem of the copula with reference to some characteristic arguments in the course of the histroy of logic 17. Being as copula and the phenomenological problem of assertion 18. Assertional truth, the idea of truth in general, and its relation to the concept of being Part Two: The Fundamental Ontological Question of the Meaning of Being in General The Basic Structures and Basic Ways of Being Chapter One: The Problem of the Ontological Difference 19. Time and temporality 20. temporality [Zeitlichkeit] and Temporality [Temporalitat] 21. Temporality [Temporalitat] and being 22. Being and beings. The ontological difference Editor's Epilogue Translator's Appendix: A Note on the Da and the Dasein Lexicon

Sociocultural and Constructivist Theories of Learning: Ontology, Not Just Epistemology

Abstract: There is something of a controversy taking place over how best to theorize human learning. This article joins the debate over the relation between sociocultural and constructivist perspectives on learning. These 2 perspectives differ not just in their conceptions of knowledge (epistemological assumptions) but also in their assumptions about the known world and the knowing human (ontological assumptions). Articulated in this article are 6 themes of a nondualist ontology seen at work in the sociocultural perspective, and suggested is a reconciliation of the 2. This article proposes that learning involves becoming a member of a community, constructing knowledge at various levels of expertise as a participant, but also taking a stand on the culture of one's community in an effort to take up and overcome the estrangement and division that are consequences of participation. Learning entails transformation both of the person and of the social world. This article explores the implications of this view of learning...

Ontologies and the semantic web

Abstract: How ontologies provide the semantics, as explained here with the help of Harry Potter and his owl Hedwig.