Ontology: The heart of philosophies, semantics, artificial intelligences, knowledge representations, linguistic expressions, and metaphysics

One of the most fundamental problems with upper ontologies is the precision that they must be approached...

Among intricate details they interact with expressions and form compound meaning within symbolic logic within larger systems of representation. At the same time, they become key aspects of the perspective many humans take without even knowing it. This is the problem of language and its core ontology.

A true reflection of our understanding of the universe is our definition of an upper ontology, at least for metaphysics.

The question remains would it also help organize the Semantic Web and other projects defined to help humans organize and share information? If so, what are the best ways to approach this project?

The initial project goals are to build up logical reasons why paradoxes in metaphysics, mathematics, linguistics, philosophies, life sciences, and approaches to artificial intelligence (not to mention real life information systems) support the need for a different approach to unifying a common upper ontology.

This project will mostly be about testing theoretical approaches and asking questions related to defining an upper ontology. And it aims to piece together a conceptual approach to defining concepts and axioms outside any (known to exist) upper ontology. This means researching existing project to make sure these approaches are solid and not duplicating any existing methodologies, as well as defining the predicates that we hope will encourage the further development or even to fully develop a unifying approach or methodology.

Background on this project

The initial ideas that formed this project are from dealing with the many complex issues related to representing and working with defining concepts within temporal and spacial domains of semantics. Without a formal grasp of the underlying issues, it is difficult to deal with the complications that arise within temporal definitions and scope restrictions. And, even within published works on this subject, many disagreements arise in the the application of working ontologies due to the optimizations for a given domain of knowledge.

Please feel free to join our efforts if the questions that follow catch your interest: Does time exist? As a means of measurement, how small can it be divided? Is time a meta-property of reality? If the matter we exist as cannot exceed the speed of light, does the inverse infinitesimal small amounts of energy have any relative time dimension -- or can we define them to exist in one place or on a path? What are the conceptual explanations for quantum effects? Does the conceptualization of Relativity, String Theory, etc. suggest fundamental barriers to our ability to know about the universe?

The project is not meant to be light reading but a project testing possibilities and other realms of explanation within a methodology that is capable of being followed and collaboratively joined by other interested individuals. We will be developing a project website in late January 2010 as this project gets going.