Syllabus

Overview:

This course is intended to acquaint the beginning student with the problems and methods unique to ontology and logic. Creating ontologies is not simply a matter of creating consistent data models, although logical rigor is absolutely necessary. Considering traditionally difficult ontological problems and ways of addressing them is essential to the fidelity, robustness, and longevity of ontologies and data models.

Audience: Ontologists, Business Analysts, Database Designers

Generally, anybody who would like to make the jump from creating data models to creating ontologies would be well-served by this course. Although Ontology Works products are used to drive parts of the class, the content taught to students is application-independent – a user of MS Access could gain just as much as a user of the Ontology Works Knowledge Server

Structure:

This is a four-day course covering fundamental topics in logic and ontology. Each day will consist of a morning logic session and an afternoon ontology session. Numerous exercises will reinforce the material.

Outline:

By the end of this course, students should be comfortable with reading formal sentences and translating natural language sentences into their formal counterparts. Moreover, students will become familiar with the Ontology Works Top-Level Ontology and be prepared to model elementary domains from an ontological perspective. Combined with the four-day IODE course, this course prepares students to independently develop ontologies with Ontology Works products and begin studying more advanced topics in ontology design.

Content:

Prerequisites:

The Ontology Works IODE course is recommended.

Tuition:

Tuition is $2500 per student or, for groups of 5 or more, $2100 per student. No more than twelve students will be accepted per session. Minimum class size will be 3 students. Additional expenses are covered by the customer. Contact Lowell Vizenor for on-site training.

Day One

Morning Session:

• Introduction
• What is a formal language?
• What is an interpretation?
• How do we define truth?

Afternoon session:

• What is an ontology?
• How is ontology possible without epistemic certainty?
• Language and representation.

Day Two

Morning session:

• Truth functional and modal operators.
• Existential and universal quantification.

Afternoon session:

• What does it mean for something to be a kind of thing?
• Are kinds of things really just sets?
• What is the difference between a dependent and an independent entity?

Day Three

Morning Session

• Identity and definite descriptions.

Afternoon session:

• What is an abstract entity?
• Can something be temporal and yet not spatial?
• What does it mean to be located somewhere?
• What is a location?

Day Four

Morning session:

• Negation and second order quantification.

Afternoon session:

• What is an event?
• How do events have a location? Are they always located somewhere?
• How do objects and events interact?

Each section will include discussion and hands-on exercises.

Additional Information

• See Class Schedule
• Sign Up for Classes