From Surface Ontology to Deep Ontology

How deep is your ontology?

The term ontology and variations of it such as deep ontology, shallow ontology, and surface ontology have been inconsistently used within many fields of study ... When we use the term deep ontology we are referring to a specification of concepts that approximately specifies the domain as opposed to a shallow or surface ontology that directly specifies only those fairly standard concepts in the domain, In this spectrum a surface ontology may be too weak for detailed and precise communication while a deep ontology may be too difficult or controversial to construct, since it can only be an approximation. Ramanathan and Ramnath

Meanwhile, the philosopher Uwe Meixner uses the term surface ontology to refer to a working ontology that human beings have found useful in communicating with each other about their everyday normal environment and deep ontology to refer to the ultimate truth of the matter.

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Uwe Meixner, Change and Change-Ersatz, in A. Bottani, Massimiliano Carrara, P. Giaretta (eds) Individuals, Essence and Identity: Themes of Analytic Metaphysics (Springer 2002) pp 427-449

Jay Ramanathan and Rajiv Ramnath, Co-engineering Applications and Adaptive Business Technologies in Practice: Enterprise Service Ontologies, Models, and Frameworks (IGI Global, 2009)