In philosophy, ontology refers to the subfield aiming to answer the question “Which things exist?”.
Perhaps as a consequence of this, hearing “ontology” makes me think of questions like: What are the primitives or building blocks here? E.g. in a spreadsheet, there would be cells; in a graph there would be vertices and edges etc.
But I think the important things Jacob is talking about show up as answer to the different question of which relations there are between these primitives. E.g. the important thing about a spreadsheet is that each cell is unique identified by a pair of numbers, that you can perform computations/functions on the values of cells; the important thing about a (certain type of) graph is that every edge has exactly one vertex as source and exactly one vertex as target.
Brainstorm for alternative terms: structure, conceptual structure, conceptual apparatus, conceptual scheme, conceptual toolkit, relations, relational constraints, conceptual landscape, …
(The math version of my complaint is that “ontology” makes me think of set theory, whereas I think the important bits are more naturally visible from a category theory point of view.)
[Thoughts on the term “ontology”.]
In philosophy, ontology refers to the subfield aiming to answer the question “Which things exist?”.
Perhaps as a consequence of this, hearing “ontology” makes me think of questions like: What are the primitives or building blocks here? E.g. in a spreadsheet, there would be cells; in a graph there would be vertices and edges etc.
But I think the important things Jacob is talking about show up as answer to the different question of which relations there are between these primitives. E.g. the important thing about a spreadsheet is that each cell is unique identified by a pair of numbers, that you can perform computations/functions on the values of cells; the important thing about a (certain type of) graph is that every edge has exactly one vertex as source and exactly one vertex as target.
Brainstorm for alternative terms: structure, conceptual structure, conceptual apparatus, conceptual scheme, conceptual toolkit, relations, relational constraints, conceptual landscape, …
(The math version of my complaint is that “ontology” makes me think of set theory, whereas I think the important bits are more naturally visible from a category theory point of view.)