Upper-level ontologies

Chapter 9: This chapter provides a concrete case study of several overlapping ontologies with a particular field, that of 'upper-level', or foundational, ontologies. These ontologies aim to provide reliable and reusable definitions of abstract concepts and their relations: what, for instance, concepts like space, time, particular and quality mean, and how they relate. In the past ten years a number of upper-level ontologies have been developed to establish a set of concepts and definitions which could be shared by lower-level, domain ontologies. By establishing a core set of abstract concepts, use of an upper-level ontology by lower-level, domain level ontologies is at least some guarantee of a shared metaphysical orientation.