[1] Originally devised by metaphysician Edward Zalta in 1981,[2] the theory was an expansion of mathematical Platonism.
AOT is a dual predication approach (also known as "dual copula strategy") to abstract objects[3] influenced by the contributions of Alexius Meinong[4][5] and his student Ernst Mally.
[6][5] On Zalta's account, there are two modes of predication: some objects (the ordinary concrete ones around us, like tables and chairs) exemplify properties, while others (abstract objects like numbers, and what others would call "nonexistent objects", like the round square and the mountain made entirely of gold) merely encode them.
[15] AOT employs restricted abstraction schemata to avoid such paradoxes.
[16] In 2007, Zalta and Branden Fitelson introduced the term computational metaphysics to describe the implementation and investigation of formal, axiomatic metaphysics in an automated reasoning environment.