Giancarlo Guizzardi, John Mylopoulos, Nicola Guarino
This paper contributes to the philosophical foundations of conceptual modeling by addressing a number of foundational questions such as: What is a conceptual model? Among models used in computer science, which are conceptual , and which are not? How are conceptual models different from other models used in the Sciences and Engineering? The paper takes a stance in answering these questions and, in order to do that, it draws from a broad literature in philosophy, cognitive science, Logics, as well as several areas of Computer Science (including Databases, Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Information Systems Engineering , among others). After a brief history of conceptual modeling, the paper addresses the aforementioned questions by proposing a characterization of conceptual models with respect to conceptual semantics and ontological commitments. Finally, we position our work w.r.t. to a “Reference Framework for Conceptual” modeling recently proposed in the literature.
DOI: 10.3233/FAIA200002
Year published: 2020
See also: Volume 321: Information Modelling and Knowledge Bases XXXI
DOI: https://ebooks.iospress.nl/volumearticle/53687