A New Classification of Collectives

In C. Eschenbach and M. Grüninger (Eds.), Formal Ontology in Information Systems, IOS Press, 2008, pages 109-120.

Abstract

We are surrounded by collective phenomena, with examples existing on many levels of granularity. Despite our frequent experiences of such phenomena they seem to have been largely ignored within the field of ontology. In this paper, existing ontologies are examined to determine the extent to which they can adequately represent collective phenomena, and are found wanting in a number of important respects. Our goal is to find good ways of representing collective phenomena in a way which does justice to the often subtle relationship that exists between the view of a collective as a whole and its constitution as a plurality of individual participants. An important prerequisite for this is to determine the range of variation that exists within the broad class of collectives. A number of example collective phenomena have been studied to extract appropriate classification criteria. The results from this study are used to produce a new typology of collectives which is intended to establish a basis for the adequate treatment of collectives within an ontology. The paper concludes with a set of further research questions that have been raised during the development of the classification.

This paper was awarded the BEST PAPER AWARD at FOIS 2008.

Antony Galton

Last modified: Mon Mar 29 13:04:31 BST 2010