Formal ontology

Formal Ontology designated projects ontological theories, which operate largely formal instruments, such as those developed in the last decades in analytical ontology according to the " ontological turn". Similar to formal logic, no concrete contents studied, but logical relations in general, the formal ontology describes general properties, relationships, identification and identity criteria of objects at all. Partial thereby forming our judgments about the structure of reality the starting point of the investigation.

For practical application for knowledge representation of some projects of formal ontology see ontology ( computer science ).

Conceptual history

The term formal ontology first used Edmund Husserl. According to him, can the pure logic ( ie those which applications to concrete situations logically precedes ) in a apophantic logic and structure a formal ontology. The former is the logic of semantic categories ( term, set, etc ). The latter refers to a formal theory of objects.

Especially since the 1980s, theories of formal ontology are developed in the context of analytic ontology and information science. Leading the way was this Patrick Hayes. In an early manifesto of 1979, he formulated the program of a formalization of everyday understanding of the actual world. This he softened later on in the direction of a formal theory of the structures of possible worlds. These tests are also applicable to problems of the organization of information about in large databases.