Web ontologies: Paradoxical origins and perspectives

In the light of the Organon, we show how Web ontologies, despite their mundane use by computers, raise real philosophical issues about being and truth. ‘Embedded’ answers to these issues are then identified by drawing a lineage of the term ‘ontology’ from philosophers to computer scientists. To finish with, we expose the consequences of these philosophical options on real cases, so that our criticism of ontologies is made from the inside of their proponents’ system of thought.