General Ontology

General Ontology - GO 

1. Overview 

General Ontology is a proposal to illustrate a top-level ontology over a multiplicity of domain specific ontologies. It builds upon advances in AI and philosophy in the late 90s. 

2. Top-level 

3. Key characteristics 

 General Ontology is a top-level ontology over a multiplicity of domain specific ontologies. 

4. Relevant extracts 

For any area of a special-purpose ontology, it is possible to make changes like these to move toward greater generality. An obvious question then arises: do all these ontologies converge on a general-purpose ontology? The answer is, "Possibly." In this section, we will present one version, representing a synthesis of ideas from many knowledge representation efforts in AI and philosophy. (p. 227) 

If we say that all instances of the category Food are edible,: and if we assert that Fruit is a subclass of Food and Apples is a subclass of Fruit, then we know '. that every apple is edible. (p. 230) 

Notice that because Tomatoes is a category, and is a member of DomesticatedSpecies, then DomesticatedSpecies must be a category of categories. One can even have categories of categories of categories, but they are not much use. (p. 231)