On the adequacy of requirements for foundational ontologies

In this very issue, Augusto (2022) formulates two requirements upon which to
evaluate the adequacy of a foundational ontology. Specifically, the ontological
categories: (i) should be understood as the most general kinds of things and
(ii) are organized in a non-overlapping finite hierarchy. On the basis of such
constraints, he claims that most existing foundational ontologies engineered in
the context of Applied Ontology, including the UFO-B ontology, are inadequate.
In this article, first we show that his objection against UFO-B can be dissipated
by pointing to a trivial terminological confusion. We then argue that his two
constraints are not plausible. Then, we show that the disagreement between our
point of view and Augusto’s framework is not restricted to those two constraints
but extends over the notion of conceptualization of reality.