Metaontology or meta-ontology is the study of the field of inquiry known as ontology. [1] The goal of meta-ontology is to clarify what ontology is about and how to interpret the meaning of ontological claims. [2] Different meta-ontological theories disagree on what the goal of ontology is and whether a given issue or theory lies within the scope of ontology. There is no universal agreement whether meta-ontology is a separate field of inquiry besides ontology or whether it is just one branch of ontology. [3]
Meta-ontological realists hold that there are objective answers to the basic questions of ontology. According to the Quinean approach, the goal of ontology is to determine what exists and what doesn't exist. The neo-Aristotelian approach asserts that the goal of ontology is to determine which entities are fundamental and how the non-fundamental entities depend on them. Meta-ontological anti-realists, on the other hand, deny that there are objective answers to the basic questions of ontology. One example of such an approach is Rudolf Carnap's thesis that the truth of existence-claims depends on the framework in which these claims are formulated.
The term "meta-ontology" is of recent origin. It was first coined in the francophone world by Alain Badiou, in his work 'Being and Event,' in which he proposes a philosophy of the event conditioned by axiomatic set theory. [4] Its first Anglo-American use can be found in the work of Peter van Inwagen, in which he analyzes Willard Van Orman Quine's critique of Rudolf Carnap's metaphysics, [2] where Quine introduced a formal technique for determining the ontological commitments in a comparison of ontologies. [5]
Thomas Hofweber, while acknowledging that the use of the term is controversial, suggests that meta-ontology constitutes a separate field of enquiry besides ontology as its metatheory, when understood in a strict sense. But ontology can also be construed more broadly as containing its metatheory. [3] [6] Advocates of the term seek to distinguish 'ontology', which investigates what there is, from 'meta'-ontology, which investigates what we are asking when we ask what there is. [2] [7] [8]
The notion of ontological commitment is useful for elucidating the difference between ontology and meta-ontology. A theory is ontologically committed to an entity if that entity must exist in order for the theory to be true. [9] Meta-ontology is interested in, among other things, what the ontological commitments of a given theory are. [2] [10] For this inquiry it is not important whether the theory and its commitments are true or false. Ontology, on the other hand, is interested in, among other things, what entities exist, i.e. which ontological commitments are true. [9]
The meta-ontological realist holds that there are objective answers to the basic questions of ontology. [11] Recent work in meta-ontological realism can be roughly divided into 2 approaches: the neo-Aristotelian approach and the Quinean approach. [12]
According to the Quinean approach, the goal of ontology is to determine what exists and what doesn't exist. [13] Quine himself developed a specific version of this approach relying on first-order logic and pre-existing scientific theories in order to answer existence-questions. It involves translating these theories into first-order logic formulas. Their ontological commitments are then read off from the existential quantifiers used in the formulas.
One idea behind this approach is that scientific theories are our best guess about what is true. But in order for them to be true there should be something there that makes them true: their truthmakers. The existential quantifiers act as a guide to truthmakers. [14]
Another approach to answering existence-questions is proposed by Amie L. Thomasson. Her easy approach to ontology differs from Quine's approach in that it relies on common sense instead of science. The approach is easy because it usually starts off from very trivial common-sense premises. For example, an easy argument for the existence of numbers in the philosophy of mathematics can be made in the following way. There are five books on the table. So the number of books on the table is five. Therefore numbers exist. [15] Thomasson's approach differs from Quine's not just concerning her commitment to common sense but also concerning her account of quantification. [16]
According to the neo-Aristotelian approach, the goal of ontology is to determine which entities are fundamental and how the non-fundamental entities depend on them. [13] The concept of fundamentality is usually defined in terms of metaphysical grounding. Fundamental entities are different from non-fundamental entities because they are not grounded in other entities. [13] For example, it is sometimes held that elementary particles are more fundamental than the macroscopic objects (like chairs and tables) they compose. This is a claim about the grounding-relation between microscopic and macroscopic objects. A neo-Aristotelian would categorize this claim as an ontological claim.
Aristotle himself was also "neo-Aristotelian" in the sense that he held that entities from different ontological categories have different degrees of fundamentality. For example, substances have the highest degree of fundamentality because they exist in themselves. Properties, on the other hand, are less fundamental because they depend on substances for their existence. [17]
Jonathan Schaffer's priority monism is a more recent form of neo-Aristotelian ontology. He holds that on the most fundamental level there exists only one thing: the world as a whole. This thesis doesn't deny our common-sense intuition that the distinct objects we encounter in our everyday affairs like cars or other people exist. It only denies that these objects have the most fundamental form of existence. [18]
According to Schaffer, an important difference between the two approaches is that the Quinean approach leads to a flat ontology while the neo-Aristotelian approach leads to an ordered ontology. In a flat ontology, there is no difference in fundamentality between the different objects: they are all on the same level. In an ordered ontology, on the other hand, the entities are part of a complex hierarchical structure with different levels. The higher levels of this structure are grounded in the more basic levels. Schaffer also distinguishes a third type of ontology which he calls sorted. Sorted ontologies classify entities into different exclusive ontological categories. But this classification doesn't entail any hierarchical relations between the entities of the different categories. [13]
It has been argued that neo-Aristotelianism is not a genuine alternative to Quineanism. [12] So theories in ontology may combine elements from both approaches without becoming inconsistent.
The meta-ontological anti-realist holds that there are no objective answers to the basic questions of ontology. One example of such an approach is Rudolf Carnap's thesis that the truth of existence-claims depends on the framework in which these claims are formulated. The choice between frameworks is guided by pragmatic considerations but there is no definite fact about which framework is correct. [11] Quine disagreed with his teacher Carnap on these points, which led to the Carnap-Quine debate. Amie L. Thomasson summarizes the disagreement underlying this debate with reference to the distinction "between existence questions asked using a linguistic framework and existence questions that are supposed to be asked somehow without being subject to those rules—asked, as Quine puts it 'before the adoption of the given language'." [19] Carnap refers to this distinction as the internal–external distinction.
Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one does not know whether the entity exists.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some modern theorists view it as an inquiry into the fundamental categories of human understanding. It is sometimes characterized as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry.
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universals – things that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things. The other version specifically denies the existence of abstract objects – objects that do not exist in space and time.
Ontology is the philosophical study of being. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines what all entities have in common and how they are divided into fundamental classes, known as categories. An influential distinction is between particular and universal entities. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, like the person Socrates. Universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color green. Another contrast is between concrete objects existing in space and time, like a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality, employing categories such as substance, property, relation, state of affairs, and event.
The problem of universals is an ancient question from metaphysics that has inspired a range of philosophical topics and disputes: "Should the properties an object has in common with other objects, such as color and shape, be considered to exist beyond those objects? And if a property exists separately from objects, what is the nature of that existence?"
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". He served as the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 1978.
In formal semantics, an ontological commitment of a language is one or more objects postulated to exist by that language. The 'existence' referred to need not be 'real', but exist only in a universe of discourse. As an example, legal systems use vocabulary referring to 'legal persons' that are collective entities that have rights. One says the legal doctrine has an ontological commitment to non-singular individuals.
Aristotelianism is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes, including purpose or teleology, and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle.
A possible world is a complete and consistent way the world is or could have been. Possible worlds are widely used as a formal device in logic, philosophy, and linguistics in order to provide a semantics for intensional and modal logic. Their metaphysical status has been a subject of controversy in philosophy, with modal realists such as David Lewis arguing that they are literally existing alternate realities, and others such as Robert Stalnaker arguing that they are not.
Modal realism is the view propounded by philosopher David Lewis that all possible worlds are real in the same way as is the actual world: they are "of a kind with this world of ours." It is based on four tenets: possible worlds exist, possible worlds are not different in kind from the actual world, possible worlds are irreducible entities, and the term actual in actual world is indexical, i.e. any subject can declare their world to be the actual one, much as they label the place they are "here" and the time they are "now".
In philosophical logic, the concept of an impossible world is used to model certain phenomena that cannot be adequately handled using ordinary possible worlds. An impossible world, , is the same sort of thing as a possible world , except that it is in some sense "impossible." Depending on the context, this may mean that some contradictions, statements of the form are true at , or that the normal laws of logic, metaphysics, and mathematics, fail to hold at , or both. Impossible worlds are controversial objects in philosophy, logic, and semantics. They have been around since the advent of possible world semantics for modal logic, as well as world based semantics for non-classical logics, but have yet to find the ubiquitous acceptance, that their possible counterparts have found in all walks of philosophy.
Jonathan Schaffer is an American philosopher specializing in metaphysics and also working in epistemology, mind, and language. He is best known for his work on grounding and his development of monism, and is also a notable proponent of contrastivism.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science. Cosmology and ontology are traditional branches of metaphysics. It is concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world. Someone who studies metaphysics can be called either a "metaphysician" or a "metaphysicist".
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to metaphysics:
Structuralism is a theory in the philosophy of mathematics that holds that mathematical theories describe structures of mathematical objects. Mathematical objects are exhaustively defined by their place in such structures. Consequently, structuralism maintains that mathematical objects do not possess any intrinsic properties but are defined by their external relations in a system. For instance, structuralism holds that the number 1 is exhaustively defined by being the successor of 0 in the structure of the theory of natural numbers. By generalization of this example, any natural number is defined by its respective place in that theory. Other examples of mathematical objects might include lines and planes in geometry, or elements and operations in abstract algebra.
The internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy.
The term quantifier variance refers to claims that there is no uniquely best ontological language with which to describe the world. The term "quantifier variance" rests upon the philosophical term 'quantifier', more precisely existential quantifier. A 'quantifier' is an expression like "there exists at least one 'such-and-such'". Quantifier variance then is the thesis that the meaning of quantifiers is ambiguous. This thesis can be used to explain how some disputes in ontology are only due to a failure of the disagreeing parties to agree on the meaning of the quantifiers used.
The history of ontology studies the development of theories of the nature and categories of being from the ancient period to the present.
Grounding is a topic in metaphysics. Consider an ordinary physical object, such as a table, and the atoms it is made of. Without the atoms, the table would not exist; thus, the table's existence depends on the existence of the atoms. This kind of dependence is called "grounding" to distinguish it from other kinds of dependence, such as the dependence of an effect on its cause. It is sometimes called metaphysical or ontological dependence.
The Quine–Putnam indispensability argument is an argument in the philosophy of mathematics for the existence of abstract mathematical objects such as numbers and sets, a position known as mathematical platonism. It was named after the philosophers Willard Quine and Hilary Putnam, and is one of the most important arguments in the philosophy of mathematics.
The larger discipline of ontology can thus be seen as having four parts [of which one is] the study of meta-ontology, i.e. saying what task it is that the discipline of ontology should aim to accomplish, if any, how the questions it aims to answer should be understood, and with what methodology they can be answered..
Quine's lecture is not to be measured by its failure...Its value is to be found in its demonstration, by example, of the way in which an ontological project should be undertaken...Its value lies in its contributions to meta-ontology, not in its contributions to ontology.
Metaontology, which I will be concerned with, is about what ontology is.
meta-ontology: a term that has recently become popular, referring to the philosophical theory concerning the nature and proper methodology for ontology, including the nature of existence claims. p. 278
After more than fifty years, metaontology has come back in fashion.To be published in Ontology after Carnap Stephan Blatti & Sandra Lapointe (eds.)