Ontology for information Systems. Artefatcs as a case study

Ontologies for information systems are usually classified according to two dimensions: their level of detail and their level of dependence on a particular task. One can distinguish between Top-Level Ontologies – less detailed and independent on a particular task – and Domain Ontologies – more detailed and specific on a particular task. The first ones are descriptions of the most general concepts as, for example, entity, material entity, space, time, matter..., while the second ones deal with a more specific domain like medicine or engineering. The goal of this paper is to analyse one central concept of a Top-Level Ontology: i.e. the concept of artefact. The relation is partitioned in four sections. After a sketch (sec. 1) of some intuitive and commonsense reasons concerning the importance of artefacts as an ontological category and some features we usually assign to this kind of objects we consider (sec. 2) the characterisation of it given by two of the most common Top-level Ontologies: Cyc and Wordnet. We outline some difficulties there are in their characterization of it. In the second part of the relation (sec. 3 and sec. 4) we propose an elucidation of artefacts using the notions of copy, original object, and author. We distinguish three kinds of copies: replicas, rigid copies, and functional copies, and two kinds of original objects: absolute original objects and relative original objects. Following A. Thomasson [Fiction and Metaphysics] we state some different ontological dependence relations among (these different kinds of) copies, original objects, and authors. In this way we want to elucidate how technical artifacts, can be discriminate from artworks and natural objects.