Semantic Integration in the Information Flow Framework

The Information Flow Framework (IFF) [1] 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. Some of the ideas used in this paper first appeared in papers by Joseph Goguen [2] and the author [3], and discussions on the SUO email list. See also the companion paper [4]. Keywords: descriptive category metatheory, institutions, semantic integration "Philosophy cannot become scientifically healthy without an immense technical vocabulary. We can hardly imagine our great-grandsons turning over the leaves of this dictionary without amusement over the paucity of words with which their grandsires attempted to handle metaphysics and logic. Long before that day, it will have become indispensably requisite, too, that each of these terms should be confinedto a single meaning which, however broad, must be free from all vagueness. This will involve a revolution in terminology; for in its present condition a philosophical thought of any precision can seldom be expressed without lengthy explanations."