The OntoCommons consortium is organising the workshop "Formal Ontologies, Applied Sciences and Data" from 2 to 4 October 2023 in Bologna (Italy), where 15 experts coming from different disciplines (philosophy, applied science, computer science, etc.) come together to investigate the connections between formal ontologies (intended here as logical theories) and sciences.
Formal ontologies mainly aim at characterising how, according to some experts, a given domain is structured, i.e., to identify and formally represent a set of concepts and relations together with the constraints that hold for this domain making sure that the resulting conceptual framework is logically and philosophically sound and coherent. In particular, foundational or top-level ontologies focus on very general notions which make sense in a wide domain.
A first subjective dimension concerns the conceptualisation of these domains and its representation: different models of the ‘same (general) domain’ is possible and can be represented by making use of different formal languages. Furthermore, data are usually reduced to factual instantiations of (part of) the model (factual propositions). Both the model and data sharing can then be addressed by standardizing, integrating, or partially aligning the involved ontologies.
The workshop is closed and by-invitation only!
