Book Details

Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism

Publication year: 2007

ISBN: 978-1-4020-6204-9

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Theories about the ontological structure of the world have generally been described in informal, intuitive terms, and the arguments for and against them, including their consistency and adequacy as explanatory frameworks, have generally been given in even more informal terms. The goal of formal ontology is to correct for these deficiencies. By formally reconstructing an intuitive, informal ontological scheme as a formal ontology we can better determine the consistency and adequacy of that scheme; and then by comparing different reconstructed schemes with one another we can much better evaluate the arguments for and against them and come to a decision as to which system it is best to adopt.


Subject: Humanities, Social Science and Law, Aristotelian essentialism, Formal ontology, General reference, Medieval logic, Philosophy of logic, logic, ontology