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1 Overview
Ontology, in analytic philosophy, deals with the determination whether 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.
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 specic kind of intellectual activity.[1]
Between these poles of realism and nominalism, stand 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.
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 dierences.
Although ontology as a philosophical realm is academic
in the sense that it is inseparable from each thinkers
epistemology, it has practical application in information
science and information technology, where it informs
ontologies with chosen taxonomies.
2 HISTORY
what it is (its 'whatness, quidditas or essence)
1.3 Types
Philosophers can classify ontologies in various ways using criteria such as the degree of abstraction and eld of
application:[4]
2 History
2.1 Etymology
2.2 Origins
universals and particulars
substance and accident
abstract and concrete objects
essence and existence
determinism and indeterminism
3
Consequently, our opinions about truth must often be
false and deceitful. Most of western philosophy including the fundamental concepts of falsiability 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 innite (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 unication theory that nally describes all of existence in terms of one
inter-related sub-atomic reality which applies to everything.
2.2.2
Ontological pluralism
The concept of 'ontological formations refers to formations of social relations understood as dominant ways of
living. Temporal, spatial, corporeal, epistemological and
performative relations are taken to be central to understanding a dominant formation. That is, a particular on2.2.3 Plato
tological formation is based on how ontological categories
of time, space, embodiment, knowing and performing
Plato developed this distinction between true reality and are livedobjectively and subjectively. Dierent ontoillusion, in arguing that what is real are eternal and un- logical formations include the customary (including the
changing Forms or Ideas (a precursor to universals), of tribal), the traditional, the modern and the postmodern.
The concept was rst introduced by Paul James Global- of being human and the way the world is for us are cast
ism, Nationalism, Tribalism[11] together with a series of historically through a fundamental ontological questionwriters including Damian Grenfell and Manfred Steger. ing. These fundamental ontological categories provide
In the engaged theory approach, ontological formations the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of unare seen as layered and intersecting rather than singu- spoken and seemingly unquestionable background meanlar formations. They are 'formations of being'. This ap- ings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as
proach avoids the usual problems of a Great Divide being subjects and other entities understood unquestioningly as
objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both
posited between the modern and the pre-modern.
generate and are regenerated in everyday interactions, the
locus of our way of being in a historical epoch is the com[12]
3.2 Ontological and epistemological cer- municative event of language in use. For Heidegger,
however, communication in the rst place is not among
tainty
human beings, but language itself shapes up in response
to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being.[15]
Ren Descartes, with je pense donc je suis or "cogito
Even the focus of traditional ontology on the 'whatness
ergo sum" or I think, therefore I am, argued that
or 'quidditas of beings in their substantial, standing presthe self is something that we can know exists with
ence can be shifted to pose the question of the 'wholeness
epistemological certainty. Descartes argued further that
of human being itself.[16]
this knowledge could lead to a proof of the certainty of
the existence of God, using the ontological argument that
had been formulated rst by Anselm of Canterbury.
3.3
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 specic
action in an environment. This relied to a great degree on
insights derived from scientic research into animals taking instinctive action in natural and articial settingsas
studied by biology, ecology,[14] and cognitive science.
The processes by which bodies related to environments
became of great concern, and the idea of being itself became dicult to really dene. 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 "E Prime", 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
Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that different concepts of the existence of something can be
correct.[21] This position does not contradict the view
that some things do exist, but points out that dierent
'languages will have dierent rules about assigning this
property.[21][22] How to determine the 'tness of a 'language' to the world then becomes a subject for investigation.
3.7
Microcosmic ontology
3.6
5
Whitehead proposed that his notion of an occasion of experience satises the criteria for its status as the philosophically preferred denition of an actual entity. From
a purely logical point of view, each occasion of experience has in full measure the characters of both objective
and subjective reality. Subjectivity and objectivity refer
to dierent aspects of an occasion of experience, and in
no way do they exclude each other.[24]
REFERENCES
Subatomic particles are usually considered to be much [13] Mead, G. H. The individual and the social self: Unpublished work of George Herbert Mead (D. L. Miller, Ed.).
smaller than atoms. Their real or actual existence may be
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. (p. 107).
very dicult to demonstrate empirically.[26] A distinction
ISBN 0-226-51673-3
is sometimes drawn between actual and virtual subatomic
particles. One can reasonably ask, in what sense, if any, [14] Barry Smith: Objects and Their Environments: From
do virtual particles exist as physical entities? For atomic
Aristotle to Ecological Ontology The Life and Motion of
and subatomic particles, dicult questions arise, such as
SocioEconomic Units (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and
Francis, 2001, 79-97.
do they possess a precise position, or a precise momentum? A question that continues to be controversial is 'to [15] Heidegger, Martin, On the Way to Language Harper &
what kind of physical thing, if any, does the quantum meRow, New York 1971. German edition: Unterwegs zur
chanical wave function refer?'.[2]
Sprache Neske, Pfullingen 1959.
Prominent ontologists
[16] Eldred, Michael, Social Ontology: Recasting Political Philosophy Through a Phenomenology of Whoness ontos,
Frankfurt 2008 xiv + 688 pp. ISBN 978-3-938793-787
See also
[17] Carvalko, Joseph (Summer 2005). Introduction to an Ontology of Intellectual Property. The Scitech Lawyer, ABA.
References
[18] Davidson refers to a 'ketch' and a 'yawl'; see p. 18 in Donald Davidson (1974). On the very idea of a conceptual
scheme (PDF). Proceedings and Address of the American
Philosophical Association 47: 520.
[19] Uriah Krieger (2011). Two defenses of common-sense
ontology (PDF). Dialectica 65 (2). pp. 177204.
doi:10.1111/j.1746-8361.2011.01262.x.
[20] Hirsch, Eli (2011). Chapter 9: Physical-object ontology,
verbal disputes and common sense. Quantier Variance
and Realism: Essays in Metaontology. Oxford University
Press. pp. 144177. ISBN 9780199732111. First published as Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and
Common Sense
[21] Hirsch, Eli (2011). Chapter 5: Quantier variance and
realism. Quantier Variance and Realism: Essays in
Metaontology. Oxford University Press. pp. 6895.
ISBN 9780199732111. First published as Quantier
variance and realism
[7] Sample Chapter for Graham, D.W.: Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientic Philosophy.
Press.princeton.edu. Retrieved 2010-02-21.
[23] Harvey, F. (2006). Ontology. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Geography. (pp. 341-343). Thousand
Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc
External links
Ontology. Its Theory and History from a Philosophical Perspective
Logic and Ontology entry by Thomas Hofwebwer in
the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Intentionality entry by Pierre Jacob in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
International Ontology Congress
A short lm with a general introduction to ontology
8.1
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