Evaluating Ontological Decisions with OntoClean.¶
Guarino, N., & Welty, C. (2002). Evaluating Ontological Decisions with OntoClean. Communications of the ACM, 45(2), 61-65.
Cited by¶
4 citations across 4 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Criteria of Individuation
- In ontology engineering the three sub-criteria are made first-class simultaneously: OntoClean tags classes with whether they carry a unity criterion (integral whole, plural whole, or none), an identity criterion (what fixes sameness), and a rigidity / identity-providing meta-property (what an instance cannot survive losing) — and the methodology's central result is that hierarchies smuggle in incompatible individuation assumptions that cause inferential errors when unmasked.
This sourceIntroduces OntoClean's unity (+U/−U), identity (+I/−I), and rigidity (+R/−R) meta-properties and the constraints whose violation signals hidden, incompatible individuation assumptions in a hierarchy.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract backs only that OntoClean exposes misuses of subsumption; it does not state the +U/−U, +I/−I, +R/−R criteria or their simultaneous first-class status.
“Explosing common misuses of the subsumption relationship and the formal basis for why they are wrong.”
- In ontology engineering the three sub-criteria are made first-class simultaneously: OntoClean tags classes with whether they carry a unity criterion (integral whole, plural whole, or none), an identity criterion (what fixes sameness), and a rigidity / identity-providing meta-property (what an instance cannot survive losing) — and the methodology's central result is that hierarchies smuggle in incompatible individuation assumptions that cause inferential errors when unmasked.
- Identity-Providing Kind
- In conceptual modeling and ontology engineering, the distinction is operationalized as a meta-property that marks the category supplying persistence criteria and contrasts it with those that do not, and large ontology projects use it to detect category-design errors at scale.
This sourceOperationalizes identity and rigidity (+I, +R) meta-properties to detect category-design errors at scale — modeling a role as the identity-bearing kind is a rigidity violation.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
The abstract shows a paper about formally exposing misuses of subsumption in ontology modelling, which is background for category-design error detection but says nothing of +I/+R meta-properties, persistence criteria, or at-scale adoption.
“Explosing common misuses of the subsumption relationship and the formal basis for why they are wrong.”
- In conceptual modeling and ontology engineering, the distinction is operationalized as a meta-property that marks the category supplying persistence criteria and contrasts it with those that do not, and large ontology projects use it to detect category-design errors at scale.
- Identity Test
- In ontology engineering it is made first-class: classes are tagged with whether they carry an identity criterion and what it is, so that hierarchies do not smuggle in incompatible identity assumptions.
This sourceMakes identity criteria first-class class tags so hierarchies do not smuggle in incompatible identity assumptions — the identity test as an ontology-engineering artifact.
- In ontology engineering it is made first-class: classes are tagged with whether they carry an identity criterion and what it is, so that hierarchies do not smuggle in incompatible identity assumptions.
Mechanisms¶
- Ontology Refactoring
- The discipline it draws on is OntoClean-style analysis — checking that each class's identity and subsumption is metaphysically well-formed
This sourcePresents OntoClean as a formal method for evaluating class meanings and taxonomic subsumption choices in an ontology.
- The discipline it draws on is OntoClean-style analysis — checking that each class's identity and subsumption is metaphysically well-formed
Verification¶
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