Abstract

For the development of applications, artificial intelligence requires the identification of models of human cognitive mechanisms and of the process of knowledge acquisition: formal ontology, too, which constitutes one of the most recent approaches to modelling knowledge, is in reality a revisitation of linguistic and philosophical theories. In the field of legal applications, the theory of law and dogmatics are a rich reservoir of ideas which offer solutions and suggestions exportable to other sectors: one need only consider the application of deontic logic to the generation of databases. From computational models, on the other hand, it is possible to extract interesting feedback for legal science.In this article, we shall describe the principles on which formal ontology is based, comparing its characteristics with those of legal domain and referring, as exemplification, to some models offered by legal theory which could lay the bases for a legal formal ontology