Formal ontology
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In philosophy, the term formal ontology is used to refer to an ontology defined by axioms in a formal language with the goal to provide an unbiased (domain- and application-independent) view on reality, which can help the modeler of domain- or application-specific ontologies to avoid possibly erroneous ontological assumptions encountered in modeling large-scale ontologies.
This article concerns formal ontology in philosophy. In information science, a formal ontology is an ontology (information science) that is defined by axioms in a formal language, typically an ontology language. Those formal ontologies may or may not be based on the kind of formal upper level ontology described here.
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By maintaining an independent view on reality, a formal (upper level) ontology gains the following properties:
- indefinite expandability:
- the ontology remains consistent with increasing content.
- content and context independence:
- any kind of 'concept' can find its place.
- accommodate different levels of granularity.