pper ontologies provide shared conceptual foundations for knowledge representation, semantic interoperability, and ontology development. However, established frameworks offer limited support for concepts whose interpretation depends on subjective experience, metaphysical commitments, or transcendent forms of existence. This limitation is particularly important in philosophical, theological, and humanities-oriented domains, where such concepts cannot always be adequately represented through a conventional Physical–Abstract distinction.

To address this gap, we analyze four widely adopted Upper Ontologies—DOLCE, SUMO, Cyc, and PROTON—and identify a common limitation in representing subjective, spiritual, and metaphysical concepts within a unified semantic framework. Inspired by the conceptual principles of Mulla Sadra's Transcendent Philosophy (al-Hikmah al-Muta'aliyah), particularly the gradation of existence and the hierarchical organization of reality, we propose PANORA , a multi-layer Upper Ontology that systematically models physical, abstract, subjective, and transcendent domains while preserving their semantic relationships.

A preliminary qualitative evaluation based on semi-structured interviews with seven experts suggests that the proposed four-domain framework is conceptually coherent, while also identifying areas that require more precise formalization. The reported percentages represent descriptive patterns within this expert panel and are not presented as evidence of technical or logical validation. A preliminary OWL 2 DL formalization of PANORA and accompanying HTML documentation are provided as supplementary materials.