Ontological Blending in DOL

We introduce ontological blending as a method for combining ontologies. Compared with existing combination techniques that aim at integrating or assimilating categories and relations of thematically related ontologies, blending aims at creatively generating (new) categories and ontological definitions; this is done on the basis of input ontologies whose domains are thematically distinct but whose specifications share structural or logical properties. As a result, ontological blending can generate new ontologies and concepts and it allows a more flexible technique for ontology combination compared to existing methods. Our approach to computational creativity in conceptual blending is inspired by methods rooted in cognitive science (e.g., analogical reasoning), ontological engineering, and algebraic specification. Specifically, we introduce the basic formal definitions for ontological blending, and show how the distributed ontology language DOL (currently being standardised within the OntoIOp—Ontology Integration and Interoperability—activity of ISO/TC 37/SC 3) can be used to declaratively specify blending diagrams.