Publications

Publication details [#5210]

Goguen, Joseph A. 2005. Ontology, society, and ontotheology.

Abstract

This paper surveys a wide range of work currently little known among formal ontologists, but that shows promise for improving the state of the art. Two conclusions are that the embodied, embedded, situated nature of human concepts undermines attempts to reify context, and that category theory provides relevant tools for problems associated with structural and logical heterogeneity. Ethnomethodologists emphasize the negotiable, situated, embodied, emergent character of classification, as of all human activity. Cognitive linguists and psychologists study categorization, conceptual domains, metaphor and blending, and reach similar conclusions. Sociologists of science observe the intensely political and ethical aspects of classification systems, as well as their malleability, evolution, and local interpretation. French post-structuralists consider writerly texts, intertextuality, deconstruction, etc. Heidegger criticized “ontotheology” as the alienating notion of “being” that is the essence of modern technology. Taken together, these results motivate skepticism about extreme claims for ontologies in the technical sense of the SemanticWeb, database integration, etc., despite the undoubted applicability of this technology to many specific problems. What can emerge from carefully considering skeptical arguments, hyperbolic claims, technical advances, and logical foundations is a balanced assessment of what seems possible and desirable, versus what seems impossible and undesirable, as well as a plea for greater humility, better ethics, better theory, and more humanity. (Joseph A. Goguen)