Abstract
An ontology in philosophy is a description of what exists; an ontology in information science is the formal specification of a domain for information organization. A top-level ontology is an ontology of high-level abstractions that is meant to provide a standard for other ontologies to make them interoperable. Top-level ontologies commit to certain philosophical assumptions in the worlds they model, such as naive scientific realism, or the choice to model only those worlds which “actually” exist. This paper uses a comparison of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE) to investigate whether naive scientific realism is useful as a philosophical stance in ontological modelling. It investigates the specific philosophical and technical features of DOLCE which make it unique. BFO and DOLCE are compared, as well as a miniature literature review of comparisons between other top-level ontologies. Then it describes the history of DOLCE and BFO’s development in the context of the collaboration between Barry Smith and Nicola Guarino. Finally, it examines the application of DOLCE in various domains, such as “sweetening” WordNet.
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