Ontological methodology
Roberto Poli · Institutional Research Information System (Università degli Studi di Trento) · 2002
The interest in ontology may peter out unless three problems are addressed: What are the boundaries of ontology? What types are there of ontology? What is the structure of ontology? After distinguishing three main kinds of information (ontological, quasi-ontological and non-ontological) and three types of ontologies (descriptive, formal and formalized), the paper presents a few basic ontological sub-theories (theory of particulars, of levels of reality, of wholes, parts and boundaries, and the intensive-extensive opposition for determinations). The methodology of domain analysis is further addressed and the distinction between a domain's structure and the scheme of the canonical item of a domain is introduced.