Ontology

Ontology
Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being,
becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of
being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major
branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with
questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and
how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and
subdivided according to similarities and differences.

Overview
Ontology, in analytic philosophy, concerns the determination
whether some categories of being are fundamental and asks in
what sense can the items in those categories be said to "be." It is
the inquiry into being in so much as it is being ("being qua
being"), or into beings insofar as they existand not insofar as,
for instance, particular facts can be obtained about them or
particular properties belong to them.[citation needed]

Parmenides was among the first to propose an

ontological characterization of the fundamental nature
of reality.

Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all

nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to existent entities. Other
philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, but
that some provide a kind of shorthand for reference to a collection of either objects or events. In this latter view,
mind, instead of referring to an entity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers
to a collection of persons with some shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of
intellectual activity.[1] Between these poles of realism and nominalism, there are also a variety of other positions; but
any ontology must give an account of which words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result.
When one applies this process to nouns such as electrons, energy, contract, happiness, space, time, truth, causality,
and God, ontology becomes fundamental to many branches of philosophy.[citation needed]

Some fundamental questions

Principal questions of ontology are "What can be said to exist?", "Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing
things?", "What are the meanings of being?", "What are the various modes of being of entities?". Various
philosophersWikipedia:Avoid weasel words have provided different answers to these questions.[citation needed]
One common approach is to divide the extant subjects and predicates into groups called categories. Of course, such
lists of categories differ widely from one another, and it is through the co-ordination of different categorical schemes
that ontology relates to such fields as library science and artificial intelligence. Such an understanding of ontological
categories, however, is merely taxonomic, classificatory. The categories are, properly speaking,[2] the ways in which
a being can be addressed simply as a being, such as what it is (its 'whatness', quidditas or essence), how it is (its
'howness' or qualitativeness), how much it is (quantitativeness), where it is, its relatedness to other beings, etc.[citation
needed]

Further examples of ontological questions include:[citation needed]

What is existence, i.e. what does it mean for a being to be?
Is existence a property?
Is existence a genus or general class that is simply divided up by specific differences?

Ontology

Which entities, if any, are fundamental? Are all entities objects?

How do the properties of an object relate to the object itself?
What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental attributes of a given object?
How many levels of existence or ontological levels are there? And what constitutes a 'level'?
What is a physical object?
Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?
Can one give an account of what it means to say that a non-physical entity exists?
What constitutes the identity of an object?
When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing?
Do beings exist other than in the modes of objectivity and subjectivity, i.e. is the subject/object split of modern
philosophy inevitable?

Concepts
Essential ontological dichotomies include:
Universals and particulars
Substance and accident
Abstract and concrete objects
Essence and existence
Determinism and indeterminism

Types
Ontologies are classified in various ways using criteria such as the degree of abstraction and field of application:[]
1. Upper ontology: concepts supporting development of an ontology, meta-ontology
2. Domain ontology: concepts relevant to a particular topic or area of interest, for example, information technology
or computer languages, or particular branches of science
3. Interface ontology: concepts relevant to the juncture of two disciplines
4. Process ontology: inputs, outputs, constraints, sequencing information, involved in business or engineering
processes

History
Etymology
The word ontology is a compound word, composed of onto-, from the Greek , on (gen. , ontos), i.e. "being;
that which is", which is the present participle of the verb , eimi, i.e. "to be, I am", and -, -logia, i.e. "science,
study, theory".[][]
While the etymology is Greek, the oldest extant record of the word itself is the New Latin form ontologia, which
appeared in 1606, in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexicon
philosophicum by Rudolf Gckel (Goclenius); see classical compounds for this type of word formation.[citation needed]
The first occurrence in English of "ontology" as recorded by the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, second edition,
1989) appears in Nathaniel Bailey's dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as 'an Account of being in the
Abstract' - though, of course, such an entry indicates the term was already in use at the time. It is likely the word was
first used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on the Greek.[citation
needed]

The current on-line edition of the OED (Draft Revision September 2008) gives as earliest documented occurrence in
English a work by Gideon Harvey (1636/7-1702): Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Philosophy.

Ontology

Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, Religio

Philosophi or Natural Theology, Physicks or Natural philosophy - London, Thomson, 1663.[citation needed]

Origins
Parmenides and monism
Parmenides was among the first to propose an ontological characterization of the fundamental nature of existence. In
his prologue or proem he describes two views of existence; initially that nothing comes from nothing, and therefore
existence is eternal. Consequently our opinions about truth must often be false and deceitful. Most of western
philosophy, and science - including the fundamental concepts of falsifiability and the conservation of energy - have
emerged from this view. This posits that existence is what can be conceived of by thought, created, or possessed.
Hence, there can be neither void nor vacuum; and true reality can neither come into being nor vanish from existence.
Rather, the entirety of creation is eternal, uniform, and immutable, though not infinite (he characterized its shape as
that of a perfect sphere). Parmenides thus posits that change, as perceived in everyday experience, is illusory.
Everything that can be apprehended is but one part of a single entity. This idea somewhat anticipates the modern
concept of an ultimate grand unification theory that finally explains all of existence in terms of one inter-related
sub-atomic reality which applies to everything.[citation needed]
Ontological pluralism
The opposite of eleatic monism is the pluralistic conception of Being. In the 5th century BC, Anaxagoras and
Leucippus replaced [3] the reality of Being (unique and unchanging) with that of Becoming and therefore by a more
fundamental and elementary ontic plurality. This thesis originated in the Hellenic world, stated in two different ways
by Anaxagoras and by Leucippus. The first theory dealt with "seeds" (which Aristotle referred to as "homeomeries")
of the various substances. The second was the atomistic theory,[4] which dealt with reality as based on the vacuum,
the atoms and their intrinsic movement in it.[citation needed]
The materialist Atomism proposed by Leucippus was indeterminist, but then developed by Democritus in a
deterministic way. It was later (4th century BC) that the original atomism was taken again as indeterministic by
Epicurus. He confirmed the reality as composed of an infinity of indivisible, unchangeable corpuscles or atoms
(atomon, lit. 'uncuttable'), but he gives weight to characterize atoms while for Leucippus they are characterized by a
"figure", an "order" and a "position" in the cosmos.[5] They are, besides, creating the whole with the intrinsic
movement in the vacuum, producing the diverse flux of being. Their movement is influenced by the Parenklisis
(Lucretius names it Clinamen) and that is determined by the chance. These ideas foreshadowed our understanding of
traditional physics until the nature of atoms was discovered in the 20th century.[citation needed]
Plato
Plato developed this distinction between true reality and illusion, in arguing that what is real are eternal and
unchanging Forms or Ideas (a precursor to universals), of which things experienced in sensation are at best merely
copies, and real only in so far as they copy ('partake of') such Forms. In general, Plato presumes that all nouns (e.g.,
'Beauty') refer to real entities, whether sensible bodies or insensible Forms. Hence, in The Sophist Plato argues that
Being is a Form in which all existent things participate and which they have in common (though it is unclear whether
'Being' is intended in the sense of existence, copula, or identity); and argues, against Parmenides, that Forms must
exist not only of Being, but also of Negation and of non-Being (or Difference).
In his Categories, Aristotle identifies ten possible kinds of things that can be the subject or the predicate of a
proposition. For Aristotle there are four different ontological dimensions:[citation needed]
i) according to the various categories or ways of addressing a being as such
ii) according to its truth or falsity (e.g. fake gold, counterfeit money)

Ontology

4
iii) whether it exists in and of itself or simply 'comes along' by accident
iv) according to its potency, movement (energy) or finished presence (Metaphysics Book Theta).

According to Avicenna, and in an interpretation of Greek Aristotelian and Platonist ontological doctrines in medieval
metaphysics, being is either necessary, contingent qua possible, or impossible. Necessary being is that which cannot
but be, since its non-being entails a contradiction. Contingent qua possible being is neither necessary nor impossible
for it to be or not to be. It is ontologically neutral, and is brought from potential existing into actual existence by way
of a cause that is external to its essence. Its being is borrowed unlike the necessary existent, which is self-subsisting
and is impossible for it not to be. As for the impossible, it necessarily does not exist, and the affirmation of its being
is a contradiction.[6]

Other ontological topics

Ontological and epistemological certainty
Ren Descartes, with "je pense donc je suis" or "cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am", argued that "the self"
is something that we can know exists with epistemological certainty. Descartes argued further that this knowledge
could lead to a proof of the certainty of the existence of God, using the ontological argument that had been
formulated first by Anselm of Canterbury.[citation needed]
Certainty about the existence of "the self" and "the other", however, came under increasing criticism in the 20th
century. Sociological theorists, most notably George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, saw the Cartesian Other as
a "Generalized Other", the imaginary audience that individuals use when thinking about the self. According to Mead,
"we do not assume there is a self to begin with. Self is not presupposed as a stuff out of which the world arises.
Rather the self arises in the world" [7][8] The Cartesian Other was also used by Sigmund Freud, who saw the
superego as an abstract regulatory force, and mile Durkheim who viewed this as a psychologically manifested
entity which represented God in society at large.[citation needed]

Body and environment, questioning the meaning of being

Schools of subjectivism, objectivism and relativism existed at various times in the 20th century, and the
postmodernists and body philosophers tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specific
action in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights derived from scientific research into animals
taking instinctive action in natural and artificial settingsas studied by biology, ecology,[9] and cognitive
science.[citation needed]
The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of being itself became
difficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Some
linguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "EPrime", supposedly less prone
to bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage. Heidegger distinguished
human being as existence from the being of things in the world. Heidegger proposes that our way of being human
and the way the world is for us are cast historically through a fundamental ontological questioning. These
fundamental ontological categories provide the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of unspoken and
seemingly unquestionable background meanings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as subjects and
other entities understood unquestioningly as objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both generate and are
regenerated in everyday interactions, the locus of our way of being in a historical epoch is the communicative event
of language in use.[7] For Heidegger, however, communication in the first place is not among human beings, but
language itself shapes up in response to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being.[10] Even the focus of
traditional ontology on the 'whatness' or 'quidditas' of beings in their substantial, standing presence can be shifted to
pose the question of the 'whoness' of human being itself.[11]

Ontology

Ontology and language

Some philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of usage rather than a question
about facts. This perspective is conveyed by an analogy made by Donald Davidson: Suppose a person refers to a
'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments pertinent to a cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently throughout
instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity is
explained.[12] Analogously, if we find people asserting 'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think that
'such-and-such' exist, we might conclude that these people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'charity'),
they simply use 'there are' differently than we do. The question of What is? is at least partially a topic in the
philosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself.[] This viewpoint has been expressed by Eli
Hirsch.[13][14] Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something"
can be correct.[14] This position does not contradict the view that some things do exist, but points out that different
'languages' will have different rules about assigning this property.[14][] How to determine the 'fitness' of a 'language'
to the world then becomes a subject for investigation.

Prominent ontologists

Anselm of Canterbury
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Malet Armstrong
Alain Badiou
Gustav Bergmann
Bernard Bolzano
Franz Brentano
Mario Bunge
Rudolf Carnap
Ernst Cassirer
W. Norris Clarke
Gilles Deleuze
Jacques Derrida
Ren Descartes
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Al-Ghazali
tienne Gilson
Nicolai Hartmann
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Martin Heidegger

Heraclitus of Ephesus
Edmund Husserl
Roman Ingarden
Peter van Inwagen
Immanuel Kant
Gottfried Leibniz
Stanisaw Leniewski
Leucippus
David Kellogg Lewis
E.J. Lowe
Alexius Meinong
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nagarjuna
William of Ockam
Parmenides
Charles Sanders Peirce
Plato
Plotinus
Proclus Lycaeus

W. V. O. Quine
Bertrand Russell
Gilbert Ryle
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jonathan Schaffer
Adi Shankaracharya
Arthur Schopenhauer
Duns Scotus
Theodore Sider
Peter Simons
Barry Smith
Baruch Spinoza
Peter van Inwagen
Achille Varzi
Swami Vivekananda
Alfred North Whitehead
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Dean Zimmerman

References
[2]
[5]
[6]
[7]

Aristotle Categories Vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, transl. H.P. Cooke, Harvard U.P. 1983
Aristotle, Metaphysics, I , 4, 985
Nader El-Bizri, 'Avicenna and Essentialism, Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 54 (2001), pp. 753-778.
Hyde, R. Bruce. "Listening Authentically: A Heideggerian Perspective on Interpersonal Communication". In Interpretive Approaches to
Interpersonal Communication, edited by Kathryn Carter and Mick Presnell. State University of New York Press, 1994.
[8] Mead, G. H. The individual and the social self: Unpublished work of George Herbert Mead (D. L. Miller, Ed.). Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982. (p. 107).
[9] Barry Smith: Objects and Their Environments: From Aristotle to Ecological Ontology (http:/ / ontology. buffalo. edu/ smith/ articles/
napflion. pdf) The Life and Motion of SocioEconomic Units (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and Francis, 2001, 79-97.
[10] Heidegger, Martin, On the Way to Language Harper & Row, New York 1971. German edition: Unterwegs zur Sprache Neske, Pfullingen
1959.
[11] Eldred, Michael, Social Ontology: Recasting Political Philosophy Through a Phenomenology of Whoness (http:/ / www. arte-fact. org/
sclontlg. html) ontos, Frankfurt 2008 xiv + 688 pp. ISBN 978-3-938793-78-7
[12] Davidson refers to a 'ketch' and a 'yawl'; see p. 18 in

Ontology
[13] First published as Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense (http:/ / onlinelibrary. wiley. com/ doi/ 10. 1111/ j.
1933-1592. 2005. tb00506. x/ abstract)
[14] First published as Quantifier variance and realism (http:/ / onlinelibrary. wiley. com/ doi/ 10. 1111/ j. 1758-2237. 2002. tb00061. x/
abstract)

External links
Ontology. Its Theory and History from a Philosophical Perspective (http://www.ontology.co)
Logic and Ontology (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology) entry by Thomas Hofwebwer in the
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Free Open access book: Paolo Valore (ed), Topics on General and Formal Ontology (http://www.polimetrica.
com/index.php?p=productsMore&iProduct=36&
sName=topics-on-general-and-formal-ontology-(paolo-valore-ed.)).
International Ontology Congress (http://www.ontologia.net)
A short film with a general introduction to ontology (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTsaZWzVJ4c)

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