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An ontology based on common-sense realism, which has received some attention in in-
formation systems, is that of Roderick Milton Chisholm (1996). His ontology is consistent
with the brand of realism followed in this paper through Husserl, Ingarden, and Brentano.
The ontology is robust, located in the common-sense realism school of thought, and
deals with static and dynamic aspects. Importantly for the work proposed in this paper,
Chisholm addresses the question of perception and the intentional point of view. He
states:
I assume that our perception of our own states of mind is a source of certainty
and that the deliverances of external perception should be treated as innocent,
epistemically, unless we have positive reason to call them into question
(Chisholm, 1996: pp. 4-5).
Chisholm's ontology is also able to accommodate 'noema' through 'appearances' thus
helping to explain how people (and groups of people) can have perspectives on reality
that change over time and appear to be not quite what they really are:
Our qualitative experiences - the sensing of appearances - is subjective in
being dependent for its existence on the existence of the subject of experience
(Chisholm, 1996, p. 113).
To present the full coverage of Chisholm's ontology is beyond the scope of this paper,
but his emphasis on the 'primacy of the intentional' (Chisholm, 1996) suggests that his
ontology may provide an appropriate framework for analysing the reality of information
systems research. It may be possible to use this well-respected philosophical research
to build a sensible categorisation scheme for information systems research, but the
question remains of how this can be done.
Establishing and empirically validating ontological categories
Traditionally, ontological studies have been methodologically based on introspection
and analysis of world models and abstract theories. Logic has also been used to analyse
the ontological commitments in theories (Quine, 1953). Smith and Mark (1999) have re-
ported on an experiment in the use of empirical methods, based on common-sense realism,
to test aspects of an ontological theory of geographic objects. Much of the work done
in categorisation is based on mathematical set theory. All objects within a set are equally
representative members of a set, and it is absolutely definable as to whether an individual
item is or is not a member of a set. In looking at geographical objects, this clarity is not
evident. Many geographical terms such as pond, lake, sea or ocean more closely resemble
ranges on a continuum rather than precisely definable items. Clearly these geographical
objects do not satisfy the requirements of set theory. Equally, comparison of published
papers in the field of information systems research with some of the categories proposed
in schemes covering information systems research reveal a similar vagueness in distin-
guishing categories. For example, papers on entity relationship modelling might be cat-
egorised as systems analysis and design or as database , or might be thought to lie some-
where between the two, depending on the emphasis of the paper. In these cases we are
dealing with categories that are the products of human cognition rather than products
of mathematical propositions.
Rosch (1978) looked at the ability of people to differentiate between objects and to
identify individual objects which fitted in specific categories better than other individu-
als, and found a great degree of agreement as to which were good and bad examples.
Rather than discrete set-based categories, she described categories with a radial structure,
with prototypical or central members surrounded by more or less typical members. This
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