Building Formal Ontologies for Theology and Systems of belief
Author
Graf, Simon Josias
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2018
Abstract
This thesis explores how systems of belief can be represented as information architectures using formal ontology. It first clarifies the historical development of ontology from philosophy to its current role in information science. It then designs two machine-readable knowledge models in OWL with Protégé: a general ontology of theology (TheOn), informed by ontologies in philosophy and semantic structures in biblical studies, and a domain ontology for Calvinism (CalvOn), structured by A. N. Prior’s formal categorization of the Westminster Confession. By defining classes, relations, and individuals that capture theological concepts and confessional claims, the ontologies enable semantic search and logical inference across the modeled domains. The thesis documents the modeling process, discusses design choices, and evaluates the purposes, usefulness, and potential applications (e.g., websites, online learning, and artificial intelligence) of such information architectures. It concludes with an assessment of TheOn and CalvOn and outlines directions for further work; detailed empirical findings beyond this assessment are not included in the excerpt.
Dette speciale undersøger, hvordan trossystemer kan repræsenteres som informationsarkitekturer ved hjælp af formel ontologi. Først klargøres ontologiens historiske udvikling fra filosofi til dens nutidige brug i informationsvidenskab. Herefter udvikles to maskinlæsbare vidensmodeller i OWL med Protégé: en generel ontologi for teologi (TheOn), informeret af ontologier i filosofi og semantiske strukturer i bibelstudier, samt en domæneontologi for kalvinisme (CalvOn), struktureret efter A. N. Priors formelle kategorisering af Westminsterbekendelsen. Ved at definere klasser, relationer og individer, der indfanger teologiske begreber og konfessionelle udsagn, muliggør ontologierne semantisk søgning og logiske slutninger på tværs af de modellerede felter. Specialet dokumenterer modelleringsprocessen, diskuterer designvalg, og vurderer formål, nytte og potentielle anvendelser (fx websites, online læring og kunstig intelligens) af sådanne informationsarkitekturer. Det afsluttes med en vurdering af TheOn og CalvOn samt skitserer mulige veje for videre arbejde; detaljerede empiriske resultater ud over denne vurdering fremgår ikke af uddraget.
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Keywords