Semantic Integration in the Information Flow Framework
This work addresses foundational issues in ontology and category theory for institutional applications, but it appears incremental as it builds on existing frameworks without introducing new paradigms.
The paper tackles the problem of semantic integration within the Information Flow Framework by axiomatizing institutions and their morphisms, resulting in a natural expression of semantic integration as the colimit of theories.
The Information Flow Framework (IFF) is a descriptive category metatheory currently under development, which is being offered as the structural aspect of the Standard Upper Ontology (SUO). The architecture of the IFF is composed of metalevels, namespaces and meta-ontologies. The main application of the IFF is institutional: the notion of institutions and their morphisms are being axiomatized in the upper metalevels of the IFF, and the lower metalevel of the IFF has axiomatized various institutions in which semantic integration has a natural expression as the colimit of theories.