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The ontological theories of endurantism and perdurantism aim to explain how material objects persist through time. Endurantism is the view that material objects are three-dimensional entities that travel through time while being fully present in each moment.
OWL is a language for making ontological statements, developed as a follow-on from RDF and RDFS, as well as earlier ontology language projects including OIL, DAML, and DAML+OIL. OWL is intended to be used over the World Wide Web, and all its elements (classes, properties and individuals) are defined as RDF resources, and identified by URIs.
Individuals (instances) are the basic, "ground level" components of an ontology. The individuals in an ontology may include concrete objects such as people, animals, tables, automobiles, molecules, and planets, as well as abstract individuals such as numbers and words (although there are differences of opinion as to whether numbers and words are classes or individuals).
A more recent ontological argument came from Kurt Gödel, who proposed a formal argument for God's existence. Norman Malcolm also revived the ontological argument in 1960 when he located a second, stronger ontological argument in Anselm's work; Alvin Plantinga challenged this argument and proposed an alternative, based on modal logic.
The ontological commitments of the theory then correspond to the variables bound by existential quantifiers. [44] For example, the sentence "There are electrons" could be translated as "∃x Electron(x)", in which the bound variable x ranges over electrons, resulting in an ontological commitment to electrons. [42]
In ontology, the theory of categories concerns itself with the categories of being: the highest genera or kinds of entities. [1] To investigate the categories of being, or simply categories , is to determine the most fundamental and the broadest classes of entities. [ 2 ]
The ontological commitments of the theory then correspond to the variables bound by existential quantifiers. [95] This approach is summed up by Quine's famous dictum that "[t]o be is to be the value of a variable". [96] This method by itself is not sufficient for ontology since it depends on a theory in order to result in ontological commitments.
Willard Van Orman Quine provided an early and influential formulation of ontological commitment: [4]. If one affirms a statement using a name or other singular term, or an initial phrase of 'existential quantification', like 'There are some so-and-sos', then one must either (1) admit that one is committed to the existence of things answering to the singular term or satisfying the descriptions ...