Formal, Measurable Ontologies for Worldviews

Formal ontology has been used in a variety of projects in the humanities. Most interesting from our perspective is the work carried out to develop an ontology of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass since we want to take the first steps toward an ontology for the work of Arthur Norman Prior. We go through some of Prior’s early attempts to describe the logic involved in reformed theology. In The Analogy of Faith (1940), we suggest that Prior developed a knowledge graph of what he called “the logic of the bible.” We call this the Interpretative Community Graph and suggest that it can be adapted to a Prior Community Graph and used to develop a formal ontology of A.N. Prior’s Nachlass. We argue that this graph suggests a deeper conceptual structure concerning object properties for the ontology than the one provided by the Wittgenstein ontology. Based on this, we demonstrate how this deeper conceptual structure can be used to derive conclusions concerning philosophical views affirmed by Prior and the philosophers relevant to his work. Finally, we suggest that the project of providing a formal ontology for A.N. Prior could be used to develop formal ontologies for theology and systems of beliefs.