Online research in philosophy

In this paper we give an example of intertranslatability between an ontology of individuals (nominalism), an ontology of properties (realism), and an ontology of facts (factualism). We demonstrate that these three ontologies are dual to each other, meaning that each ontology can be translated into, and recaptured from, each of the others. The aim of the enterprise is to raise the possibility that, at least in some settings, there may be no need for considerations of ontological primacy. Whether the world is made up of things, or properties, or facts, may be no more than a matter of how we look at it.

In this work, the author elaborates on his position on philosophy and ontology. Not only does he defend critical ontology and metaphysics but he also dismisses any kind of speculative ontology and metaphysics as epistemologically untenable. Furthermore, in this work, the author puts together for the first time his relationalist theory of being, called “ontic relationalism" .

Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality. ‘Ontology’ is often used by philosophers as a synonym of ‘metaphysics’ (a label meaning literally: ‘what comes after the Physics’), a term used by early students of Aristotle to refer to what Aristotle himself called ‘first philosophy’. Sometimes ‘ontology’ is used in a broader sense, to refer to the study of what might exist; ‘metaphysics’ is then used for the study of which of the various alternative possible ontologies is in fact true of reality. (Ingarden 1964) The term ‘ontology’ (or ontologia) was coined in 1613, independently, by two philosophers, Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius), in his Lexicon philosophicum and Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus), in his Theatrum philosophicum. Its first occurrence in English as recorded by the OED appears in Bailey’s dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as ‘an Account of being in the Abstract’.

A number of important philosophical problems are problems in the overlap of logic and ontology. Both logic and ontology are diverse fields within philosophy, and partly because of this there is not one single philosophical problem about the relation between logic and ontology. In this survey article we will first discuss what different philosophical projects are carried out under the headings of "logic" and "ontology" and then we will look at several areas where logic and ontology overlap.

This monograph contains the author’s initial reflections on "critical ontology." Conceived primarily as a method of doing philosophy in general and ontology in particular, critical ontology approves the Kantian critique of knowledge, without, however, endorsing its agnosticism of metaphysics.

According to a certain, familiar way of dividing up the business of philosophy, made popular by Quine, ontology is concerned with the question of what there is (a task that is often identified with that of drafting a “complete inventory” of the universe) whereas metaphysics is concerned with the question of what it is (i.e., with the task of specifying the “ultimate nature” of the items included in the inventory).1 For instance, a thesis to the effect that there are such things as colors or virtues would strictly speaking belong to ontology, whereas it would pertain to metaphysics proper to establish whether such entities are Platonic forms, Aristotelian universals, tropes, moments, or what have you. Likewise, it would fall within the scope of ontology to determine whether, when we speak of Sherlock Holmes, of the natural numbers, or of Sebastian’s walks in Bologna, we are speaking of things that truly belong to the furniture of the universe, but it would be a further metaphysical task to say something precise in regard to the ultimate make-up of those things, if such there be—for instance, that Sherlock Holmes is a theoretical artifact, that numbers are abstract individuals, that walks are property exemplifications, and so on. Of course, this view is all but universal among philosophers. There are many other, different ways of understanding the terms ‘ontology’ and ‘metaphysics’, some of which can certainly claim a respectable pedigree. For example, it is also common to think of ontology as a proper part of metaphysics—that part that has to do with what there is2—and there are even philosophers who use those terms in a way that is the exact opposite of the one I have just offered.3 But never mind; I am not interested in defending the view or in criticizing it, as very little depends on it. I am citing it just to fix a certain distinction and to settle on a terminology. The question I wish to address concerns the relationship between the distinction—the relationship between ontology understood as the study of what there is and metaphysics understood as the study of what it is..

Ontology is the study of what there is, what kinds of things make up reality. Ontology seems to be a very difficult, rather speculative discipline. However, it is trivial to conclude that there are properties, propositions and numbers, starting from only necessarily true or analytic premises. This gives rise to a puzzle about how hard ontological questions are, and relates to a puzzle about how important they are. And it produces the ontologyobjectivity dilemma: either (certain) ontological questions can be trivially answered using only uncontroversial premises, or the uncertainties of ontology are really a threat to the truth of basically everything we say or believe. The main aim of this dissertation is to resolve these puzzles and to shed some light on the discipline of ontology. I defend a view inspired by Carnap’s internal-external distinction about what there is, but one according to which both internal and external questions are fully factual and meaningful. In particular, I argue that the trivial arguments are valid, but they do not answer any ontological questions. Furthermore, I propose an account of the function of our talk about properties, propositions and natural numbers. According to this account our talk about them has no ontological presuppositions for its literal and objective truth. This avoids the ontology-objectivity dilemma, and solves the puzzles about ontology. To do this I look at quantification and noun phrases in general, and at their relation to ontology. I argue that quantifiers are semantically underspecified in a certain respect, and play two different roles in communication. I discuss the relation between syntactic form and information structure, the function of certain non-referential, non-quantificational noun phrases, the uses of bare number determiners, and how arithmetic truths are learned and taught. The more metaphysical issues discussed include: inexpressible properties, logicism about arithmetic, nominalism, Carnap’s view about ontology, the problem of universals, the relationship between ontology and objectivity, different projects within ontology, non-existent....

Early analytic philosophers like Carnap, Wittgenstein and Ryle regarded ontology as a branch of metaphysics that is either trivial or meaningless. But at present it is generally assumed that philosophy can make substantial discoveries about what kinds of things exist and about the essence of these kinds. My paper challenges this ontological turn. The currently predominant conceptions of the subject, at any rate, do not license the idea that ontology can provide distinctively philosophical insights into the constituents of reality. I distinguish four main sources of analytic ontology—Strawson's descriptive metaphysics, Kripke's realist semantics, the Austro-Australian truth-maker principle, Quine's naturalistic conception of ontology—and indicate briefly why the first three do not rehabilitate ontology. In the remainder, I concentrate on the most influential and promising position. Quinean ontology seeks to bring out and reduce the ontological commitments of our best scientific theories through logical paraphrase. Against this programme, I argue that Quine's conception of ontological commitment is inadequate, and that his logical paraphrase cannot contribute to the exploration of reality, but at most to the clarification of our conceptual framework.

Mainstream metaphysics has been preoccupied by inquiring into the nature of major kinds of entities, like objects, properties and events, while avoiding minor entities, like shadows or holes. However, one might want to hope that dealing with such minor entities could be profitable for even solving puzzles about major entities. I propose a new ontological puzzle, the Shadow of Constitution Puzzle, incorporating the old puzzle of material constitution, with shadows in the role of the minor entity to guide our approach to the issues involved. I then analyze the standard answers to the original puzzle of constitution, in their role as potential solutions to the new puzzle. Finally, I discuss three views that can solve the proposed puzzle.

Ontology is the philosophical discipline that tries to find out what there is: what entities make up reality, what is the stuff the world is made from? Thus, ontology is part of metaphysics, and in fact it seems to be about half of all of metaphysics. It tries to establish what (kinds of) things there are, the other half tries to find out what the (general) properties of these things are and what (general) relations they have to each other. Settling questions in ontology would bring with it major progress in metaphysics. And it would bring with it major progress in a variety of areas in philosophy outside of metaphysics as well. Many philosophical debates outside of metaphysics are quite directly influenced by how things turn out in ontology. Whether or not there are certain entities will give rise to quite different answers in various philosophical debates. I would like to very briefly describe three debates where ontological questions play a central role. These debates are either directly from metaphysics or from other areas of philosophy and they will be of central importance throughout this paper.