Actualism versus possibilism in formal ontology
pp. 105-117
in: Roberto Poli, Johanna Seibt (eds), Theory and applications of ontology, Berlin, Springer, 2010Abstract
Comparative formal ontology is the study of how different informal ontologies can be formalized and compared with one another in their overall adequacy as explanatory frameworks. One important criterion of adequacy of course is consistency, a condition that can be satisfied only by formalization. Formalization also makes explicit the commitments of an ontology.