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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