STRATIFIED ONTOLOGIES: THE CASE OF PHYSICAL OBJECTS
Stefano Borgo · 2007
When modelling a domain, it is often the case that certain individuals are represented as belonging to multiple categories, generating therefore "tangled" hierarchies: 1. A physical object can be seen as an amount of matter 2. A hole can be seen as a region of space 3. A building can be seen as a place 4. A biological organ can be seen as an aggregate of molecules 5. An association can be seen as a group of people 6. A physical object can be seen as a temporal process This phenomenon is quite common: the examples above have been taken from existing toplevel ontologies used in practice, and they are responsible, in our opinion, of many situations of tangleness, confusion, and lack of semantic rigour. We advocate in the present paper a design principle aimed to clarify such situations and produce more reusable and well-founded ontologies. It can be stated as follows: Ontological Distinction Principle: Classes corresponding to different identi