What is the philosophy and approach of the IFF?
The IFF advocates a building blocks approach to ontology construction and management. In the IFF approach, ontologies are organized in an extension hierarchy called a lattice of theories. Ontologies can be assembled from building blocks using structural summation and structural quotienting (the colimit construction). Continuing the analogy, the IFF understands that the mortar between the blocks must be strong and resilient in order to adequately support the building. This mortar is corresponds to the semantic integration of ontologies. The IFF defines the structure of object level ontologies by relating ontologies using morphisms and composing ontologies using colimits (fusion). The morphic aspect of ontologies is manifested by the lattice of IFF theories in the small and the context of IFF theories in the large. The colimit aspect of ontologies is manifested by the IFF approach to semantic integration.
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