Final reminder for the Launch of the Ontology Summit 2026

[Ken Baclawski]

Ontology Summit 2026
Ontologies: Past, Present, Future

The first session will be on Wednesday 18 February 2026 at Noon US/Canada Eastern Time.

The Ontology Summit 2026 is the 20th anniversary summit.  To celebrate this auspicious occasion, we will have a retrospective of past summits as well as both current ontology activities and future prospects.

Connection URL:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86994661673?pwd=mMUeaWyWhBMSzTw3SgH5GjMv2Qx4rH.1
Meeting ID: 869 9466 1673
Passcode: 803090

The summit web page is: https://ontologforum.com/index.php/OntologySummit2026

Ken Baclawski

Chair, Ontology Summit 2026

[John F Sowa]

Phil,

Ontology is a study and classification of things that exist or may exist.  That includes physical things as well as ideas, thoughts, propositions, discoveries, and hypotheses about things that currently exist or may be designed, created, defined, imagined, proposed, suggested, or hypothesized by anyone, anywhere, in any notation, language, or symbol system.

There is only one certain statement that we can assert about any broad coverage ontology, no matter how excellent or comprehensive it may be:  it is obsolescent on the day after it has been fully specified.

But it is possible to have complete and perfect ontollogies for systems or policies that must be supported precisely for some particular purpose.  An example would be the specification of accounts and services of a bank.  The specification is, by definition, correct.  If there is any discrepancy, the implementation is incorrect.

ISO has a policy that any standard must be reaffirmed or revised every five years.

John

 

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From: "Philip Jackson" <philipcj...@hotmail.com>

Thanks very much for the presentations yesterday on the history of ontology summits.

The presentations reminded me of a possible topic for discussion at this year's summit: To create a system that has human-level AI, should the system have multiple ontologies, for different domains? Should it have a meta-ontology, an ontology of ontologies?

Michael and I posted a few remarks about this in ontolog-forum last year and then corresponded briefly about it offline. We did not write a paper though perhaps this would be a good discussion topic at some point during this year's forum. I don't have anything further prepared to say about it, though quite possibly you or others in the forum may.

Best,

Phil Jackson

[Philip Jackson]

John,

Thanks for these comments. A natural question is whether an ontology is itself a thing that can exist. If existence includes ideas, thoughts, and propositions, then presumably an ontology can exist, as an idea that is a collection of propositions. And if we can have multiple different ontologies, e.g., with each ontology for a different domain of things that can exist, then we could have an ontology of these ontologies, i.e., a meta-ontology. 

This  seems to make sense, at least as something that may be designed, defined, imagined, proposed, suggested, etc. Of course, people are free to choose whether or not to spend their time creating a meta-ontology, or different meta-ontologies. 

Phil

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From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John F Sowa <so...@bestweb.net>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2026 3:12 PM
To: ontolog-forum <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: CG <c...@lists.iccs-conference.org>
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Final reminder for the Launch of the Ontology Summit 2026

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[John F Sowa]

Phil,

For physical things in the universe, existence means that somewhere at some point in time since the Big Bang, there was something.  But this raises the question of what does it mean to make a true statement about somehting that no longer exists at the present moment.   

Or what does it mean to say that if I do operation X  on something Y that a predictable change on Y will occur?  For example, I can predict: " If I drink this cup of coffee, the cup will be empty."  Then somebody else says:  "prove it."   So I drink it, and turn the cup upside down and say:  "See.  Nothing spills out." .

Those are examples of statements about non-existent states.    And they show that people can make such statements, and they are capable of causing them to become true.  

Bit those are examples about physical things.  Numbers are nonphysical things that people specify by axioms.  Various people have invented physical methods for drawing symbols that have a one-to-one correspondence with those non-physical things.  Since different people can consistently make exactly equivalent statements about those non-physical things, we use the same word 'exist' that we use for physical things that may or may not exist at the current moment in time and place.

That example can be generalized for all the kinds of non-physical entities  for which we use phrases like "There exist",  "Let there be,,, such that ,,,", and all the similar statements used in logic, mathematics, and every branch of mathematics, science, philosophy, linguistics, etc.

Since we can use language consistently to talk about all such things, it is meaningful for us to generalize words like "exist" to apply to such non-physical things that we call "things in our ontology".

Summary:  This terminology is true by a convention that supports meaningful discussions, literature, philosophy and science.  In short, it works.

Re ontology:  That's another non-physical thing about which we can make consistent statements that other people can verify by doing similar reasoning in their own preferred language.  In short, it works.

Does that mean those theoretical things really exist?  That all depends on what language game you choose for defining the word 'really'.   As Clark Gable said, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

John

 

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From: "Philip Jackson" <philipcj...@hotmail.com>

John,

Thanks for these comments. A natural question is whether an ontology is itself a thing that can exist. If existence includes ideas, thoughts, and propositions, then presumably an ontology can exist, as an idea that is a collection of propositions. And if we can have multiple different ontologies, e.g., with each ontology for a different domain of things that can exist, then we could have an ontology of these ontologies, i.e., a meta-ontology. 

This  seems to make sense, at least as something that may be designed, defined, imagined, proposed, suggested, etc. Of course, people are free to choose whether or not to spend their time creating a meta-ontology, or different meta-ontologies. 

Phil

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From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John F Sowa 

[Alex Shkotin]

Phil,

Is this a good idea to ground your initial question this way: 

"To create a system that has human-level AI, should the system have multiple knowledge-bases, for different domains? Should it have a meta-knowledge-base, a knowledge-base of knowledge-bases?"

Just to distinguish ontology as studying i.e. kind of activity and ontology as a materialized result of some activity.

Alex

чт, 19 февр. 2026 г. в 23:56, Philip Jackson <philipcj...@hotmail.com>:

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ontolog-forum/SJ1PR11MB62995DA60C6856727B28CD91C16BA%40SJ1PR11MB6299.namprd11.prod.outlook.com.

[Philip Jackson]

John, thanks very much for your comments.

I agree with everything you've written, including the quote from Clark Gable as Rhett Butler. 🙂

Phil

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From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of John F Sowa <so...@bestweb.net>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2026 12:35 AM
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>; CG <c...@lists.iccs-conference.org>
Subject: RE: Re; meta-ontologies - was: [ontolog-forum] Final reminder for the Launch of the Ontology Summit 2026

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[Philip Jackson]

Alex,

Thanks for your suggestion. I think it is a good idea.

Phil

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From: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Alex Shkotin <alex.s...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2026 5:10 AM
To: ontolo...@googlegroups.com <ontolo...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: CG <c...@lists.iccs-conference.org>
Subject: Re: Re; meta-ontologies - was: [ontolog-forum] Final reminder for the Launch of the Ontology Summit 2026

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ontolog-forum/CAFxxRORxYD42gM4sxvEz9QoU2TkxN1cuodyQUzcgHbN%3D4%2Bu19Q%40mail.gmail.com.