Work

The SCOR’s working groups carry out both foundational and domain-specific ontology research from an interdisciplinary perspective in a variety of fields.

Ontology of Production and Products

A research group working on an ontology of production and products (e.g. artifacts), in connection with the SNSF-funded project “An Ontology of Production, Products and By-Products” (2023-2027).

• People: Kathrin Koslicki, Olivier Massin, Francesco Franda, Fumiaki Toyoshima
• Key Publications (listed by topic and in reverse chronological order)
  • Philosophical foundations
    • Francesco Franda & Pauline Souman. (2025). Why art cannot (technically) malfunction. Synthese 206, 10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-05086-4
    • Kathrin Koslicki & Olivier Massin. (2025). Artifact-functions: A capacity-based approach. In Maria J. García-Encinas and Fernando Martínez-Manrique (Eds.), Special Objects: Social, Fictional, Modal, and Non-Existent (pp. 31–52). Springer. Available online at: https://philpapers.org/rec/KATAAC-2
  • A realizable-centered ontology of artifacts
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton & Kathrin Koslicki. (2026). Towards a realizable-centered approach to artifacts in applied ontology. Applied Ontology (online first). https://doi.org/10.1177/15705838261447740
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima & Ludger Jansen. (2026). Malfunctioning artifacts: Towards a unifying realizable-centered account. In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2025). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 4176, pp. 1-14) [“Best of JOWO 2025” award]. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4176/foust-3.pdf
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima & Satoru Niki. (2024). To be more concrete about abstracta and concreta. In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2024) (pp. 74-88). Amsterdam: IOS Press. https://ebooks.iospress.nl/volumearticle/71394
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton & Kathrin Koslicki. (2024). Artifactual functions: A dual, realizable-based view. In Proceedings of the 10th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2024). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 3882, pp. 1-14). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3882/foust-6.pdf
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton, Kathrin Koslicki & Olivier Massin. (2024). The interconnection between artifacts and realizable entities. In Proceedings of the 10th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2024). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 3882, pp. 1-14). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3882/foust-2.pdf
  • An ontology of food and food production
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton & Damion Dooley. (2026). Representing food waste in ontologies: A role-based account. In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2025). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 4176, pp. 1-11). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4176/ifow-2.pdf
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima, Adrien Barton & Damion Dooley. (2025). Two ontological approaches to food products. In Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2025) (pp. 225-239). Amsterdam: IOS Press. https://ebooks.iospress.nl/doi/10.3233/FAIA250496
    • Adrien Barton, Fumiaki Toyoshima & Damion Dooley. (2024). What is food? An investigation into food realizables. In Proceedings of the 10th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2024). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 3882, pp. 1-14). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3882/ifow-1.pdf
  • An ontology of artifacts in archeology
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima & Géraldine Delley. (2026). Towards a realism-based ontology of archeology: Artifacts, CIDOC-CRM and BFO. In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2025). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 4176, pp. 1-11). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4176/swodch-5.pdf

Ontology of Economic Reality

A research group working on an ontology of basic economic entities such as goods, services, economic exchanges, money and wealth.

• People: Olivier Massin, Fumiaki Toyoshima, Sebastian Aeschbach
• Key Publications (listed by topic and in reverse chronological order)
  • Philosophical foundations
    • Olivier Massin. (2025). The ontology of liberties: Reconciling Reinach and Hohfeld. In Marietta Auer, Paul Miller, Henry Smith and James Toomey (Eds.), Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law (pp. 189-216). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Open access: The Ontology of Liberties (Chapter 8) – Reinach and the Foundations of Private Law
    • Olivier Massin. (2025). The pure commodity theory of money. Synthese 205, 194. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-025-05004-8
    • Olivier Massin & Emma Tieffenbach. (2017). The metaphysics of economic exchanges. Journal of Social Ontology 3(2), 167–205. https://doi.org/10.1515/jso-2015-0057
    • Olivier Massin. (2017). The metaphysics of ownership: A Reinachian account. Axiomathes 27, 577–600. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-017-9351-5
  • An ontology of money
    • Fumiaki Toyoshima & Olivier Massin. (2026). Representing money as a pure commodity in ontologies. In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2025). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 4176, pp. 1-13). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4176/oss-3.pdf
  • An ontology of economic exchanges
    • Eric C. Merrell, Olivier Massin & Barry Smith. (2021). Common core conformant definitions for an ontology of commercial exchange. In Proceedings of the 8th The Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2021). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 2969, pp. 1-8). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2969/paper75-SoLEE.pdf
• Past Events
  • Workshop “Ontology of economics: Capital, exchanges and preferences”. University of Neuchâtel, May 8, 2019. Poster
  • Workshop “Ontology of economics II: Models, gifts, capabilities and essence”. University of Neuchâtel, May 20, 2022. Poster
  • Workshop “Ontology of economics III: Doing, owing, owning, knowing”. University of Neuchâtel, May 12, 2023. Poster

Miscellaneous works by SCOR members

(Listed by topic and in reverse chronological order)

• Logical foundations for ontologies
  • Fumiaki Toyoshima & Satoru Niki. (2026). Subsumption in the mirror of ontological and logical choices. In Proceedings of the 11th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2025). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 4176, pp. 1-13). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-4176/foust-4.pdf
  • Fumiaki Toyoshima & Satoru Niki. (2021). Semantics matters: A new light on ontological commitments of logics.  In Proceedings of the 7th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2021). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 2969, pp. 1-16). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2969/paper44-FOUST.pdf
• An ontology of arguments
  • John Beverley, Francesco Franda, Mohamed Hedi Karray, Dan Maxwell, Carter Benson & Barry Smith. (2024). Ontologies, arguments, and large-language models. In Proceedings of the 10th Joint Ontology Workshops (JOWO 2024). CEUR Workshop Proceedings (Vol. 3882, pp. 1-9). https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3882/caos8-4.pdf