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International Conference on Conceptual Structures

ICCS 2005: Conceptual Structures: Common Semantics for Sharing Knowledge pp 425–438Cite as

What Has Happened to Ontology

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 3596))

Abstract

Ontology as the study of being as such dates back to ancient Greek philosophy, but the term itself was coined in the early 17th century. The idea termed in this manner was further studied within academic circles of the Protestant Enlightenment. In this tradition it was generally believed that ontology is supposed to make true statements about the conceptual structure of reality. A few decades ago computer science imported and since then further elaborated the idea of ‘ontology’ from philosophy. Here, however, the understanding of ontology as a collection of true statements has often been played down. In the present paper we intend to discuss some significant aspects of the notion of ‘ontology’ in philosophy and computer science. Mainly we focus on the questions: To what extent are computer scientists and philosophers — who all claim to be working with ontology problems — in fact dealing with the same problems? To what extent may the two groups of researchers benefit from each other? It is argued that the well-known philosophical idea of ontological commitment should be generally accepted in computer science ontology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication, Aalborg University, Kroghstræde 3, DK-9220, Aalborg East, Denmark

    Peter Øhrstrøm, Jan Andersen & Henrik Schärfe

Authors
  1. Peter Øhrstrøm
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  2. Jan Andersen
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  3. Henrik Schärfe
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems and Technology, University of Wollongong, Northfields Ave, NSW 2522, Wollongong, Australia

    Frithjof Dau

  2. RCR, LIRMM, UMII, CNRS,  

    Marie-Laure Mugnier

  3. Research Center L3S, Appelstr. 9a, D-30167, Hannover, Germany

    Gerd Stumme

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© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Øhrstrøm, P., Andersen, J., Schärfe, H. (2005). What Has Happened to Ontology. In: Dau, F., Mugnier, ML., Stumme, G. (eds) Conceptual Structures: Common Semantics for Sharing Knowledge. ICCS 2005. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 3596. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11524564_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11524564_29

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-27783-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31885-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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