Nicola Guarino at the Ontology Summit 2026

[Ken Baclawski]

We are very pleased to announce that the next Ontology Summit session on Wednesday 15 April 2026 will feature

Nicola Guarino

who will present

Ontological Analysis as a Search for Truthmakers

    

Abstract: A crucial choice when designing an ontology concerns, of course, what to include in the domain of discourse. The entities that are relevant for our conceptualization of reality—those we implicitly assume to exist— are typically far more numerous than those we explicitly choose to talk about. So, our cognitive domain is much broader than our domain of discourse. For example, when we say that John and Mary are married, our language only refers to them, although we know that there has been a wedding event and that an ongoing marriage relationship exists. It is up to us to introduce these additional entities in our domain of discourse, should we need to represent and reason about them. In this talk I will argue that formal ontology gives us a clear criterion for this decision: include in the domain the truthmakers of the relevant propositions we aim to represent. In this talk I will introduce different kinds of truthmakers, depending on the types of properties and relationships involved, and I will show how various truthmaking patterns can enhance the explanatory value of an ontology.
   

As usual, all summit sessions are zoom sessions on Wednesdays at Noon US/Canada Eastern Time, and each session lasts one hour.  The summit is open to the public and no registration is necessary.  All summit sessions are recorded and are available on the summit web pages and on the Ontology Summit YouTube channel.

The session page is: https://ontologforum.com/index.php/ConferenceCall_2026_04_15

Zoom information:

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

We had a very well attended session on 8 April during which Mark Musen gave a stirring call to action by the applied ontology community.  If you were unable to attend be sure to check out the videos on the session page at https://ontologforum.com/index.php/ConferenceCall_2026_04_08 or on the Ontology Summit YouTube channel.

Ken Baclawski
Chair, Ontology Summit 2026