Intellectual Foundations of Ontologies in Willard Van Orman Quine Philosophy

The aim of this study was to study the theoretical refinement of ontologies as a retrieval tool to examine their intellectual foundations. To this end, firstly the definitions of ontologies were extracted and their intellectual origins were discussed. Secondly, the intellectual foundations of ontologies in the technical qualities of ontologies were investigated. Then, these foundations were sought in the Quine philosophy.
The documentary research method was used for the disquisition of intellectual foundations for the definitions and technical qualities of ontologies. Conceptual analysis was used as an approach for identifying these foundations in Quine philosophy.
Findings: This study showed that one of the most important foundations of ontologies is “Ontological Commitment” that was first introduced in Quine philosophy. Ontologies have commitments only to the entities that could be represented. Thus, being or not being of entities in ontologies is contingent to the capability of representation and not to their real existence in the world. Likewise, we found that with regard to Quine philosophy and its infiltration in theoretical and technical foundations of ontologies, relations to this tool are extensional but not intentional like relations in thesauruses or classification schemes.