2nd International Workshop on Epistemology in Ontologies

Formal ontologies and knowledge representation mainly focus on characterising how a given domain is structured, i.e., they identify a set of concepts, entities, and relations together with the constraints that hold for this domain. The structure of the characterisation is usually intended to reflect the point of view of significant experts or a realist view of how things about a particular domain are in reality. The aim of this workshop is to explore an epistemological stance in formal ontology and knowledge representation and focus on the assessment of the modelling provided by the ontology designer. In particular, we are interested in fostering two intertwined research directions: (1) EPISTEMOLOGY OF ONTOLOGY. We are interested in promoting discussions about the epistemological foundations of formal ontologies and of knowledge representation. A number of timely important problems are related to this point, for instance: the investigations of cognitively adequate ontological representations, the investigations on the provenance of data, the problem of the reliability of the source of information (both human and artificial, e.g. sensors), the problem of the epistemic reliability of the classification provided by ontology users, the problem of finding epistemically and cognitively well-founded rationales for the integration of ontological representations with other representational formats (e.g. deep neural networks, vector space models, etc.). (2) ONTOLOGY OF EPISTEMOLOGY. We are interested in formal and ontological approaches to the definitions of the concepts that are relevant to the assessment of the perspective of the ontology designer. Problems related to this direction include: ontology of general epistemological concepts (e.g. proof, argument, explanation, epistemic reliability, trust), ontology of cognitive concepts (perception, reasoning, sensations), ontology of data and measurements.