F.14. GFO – General Formal Ontology 

F.14.1. Overview 

Realistic ontology integrating processes and objects. It attempts to include many aspects of recent philosophy, which is reflected both in its taxonomic tree and its axiomatizations. 

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_ontology#General_Formal_Ontology_(GFO) 

See also: https://www.onto-med.de/ontologies/gfo, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_formal_ontology

F.14.2. Top-level 

F.14.3. Key characteristics 

GFO is a well-documented heavyweight foundational ontology. 

F.14.4. Relevant Extracts 

From General Formal Ontology (GFO) – Part I: Basic Principles – Version 1.0 – No. 8 – July 2006 

Extract 1 – Higher order 

14.3 Instantiation and Categories 

… Since we assume categories of arbitrary (finite) type, there can be arbitrarily long (finite) chains of iteration of the instantiation relation. 

Extract 2 – First order – apart from one exception – persistants, a special category of second order 

3.4 Basic Level 

The basic level of GFO contains all relevant top-level distinctions and categories. One should distinguish between primitive categories (whose instances are individuals), and higher order categories. In the present document we consider primitive categories and the category of persistants (which is a special category of second order). These categories will be extended in the future using a number of non-primitive categories. Primitive categories and persistants of the basic level will be discussed further in the following sections and are the main content of the current report. 

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