Ontoprises

Ontoprises is a term used in philosophy of ontology and information science to refer to the products of ontological construction—the outcomes, artifacts, and commitments that emerge when an agent delineates what exists and how it is related. The concept emphasizes that any ontology—whether a scholarly theory, a data model, or a knowledge graph—produces not only categorizations but also implicit boundaries and assumptions about reality.

Although not universally adopted, the term highlights that ontological commitments shape perception and reasoning by constraining how entities are identified, grouped, and connected. Ontoprises arise from choices about scope, granularity, identity criteria, and the specification of relations, and they can reveal biases, gaps, or inconsistencies across domains.

Applications and significance: in information science, ontology engineering, and artificial intelligence, ontoprises can be used to audit interoperability, compare ontologies, and guide alignment and integration strategies. They also appear in meta-ontological discussions that examine how different frameworks produce divergent knowledge representations from the same domain.

Criticism: some scholars argue that the term is vague or tautological or that focusing on ontoprises may distract from substantive ontological analysis. Proponents counter that identifying ontoprises supports reflexivity in the design of knowledge systems and helps manage cross-domain translation challenges.

See also: Ontology; Knowledge representation; Taxonomy; Meta-ontology.