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Scientific literature on particular themes in ontology is extremely abundant, but it is often very hard for freshmen or sophomores to find a red thread between the various proposals. This text is an opinionated introduction, a preliminary text to research in ontology from the so called standard approach to ontological commitment, that is from the particular point of view that connects ontological questions to quantificational questions. It offers a survey of this viewpoint in ontology together with their possible applications through a broad array of examples and open problems and, at the same time, essential references to the classics of philosophy, so as to allow non-specialists to understand the terms and analysis procedures characterizing the discipline. Its result is a wide-ranging overview of the issued tackled by ontology, with a particular focus on the most relevant problems of contemporary debate (categorial taxonomies, nonexistent objects, case studies of ontological debates in specific fields of knowledge).
Scientific literature on particular themes in ontology is extremely abundant, but it is often very hard for freshmen or sophomores to find a red thread between the various proposals. This text is an opinionated introduction, a preliminary text to research in ontology from the so called standard approach to ontological commitment, that is from the particular point of view that connects ontological questions to quantificational questions. It offers a survey of this viewpoint in ontology together with their possible applications through a broad array of examples and open problems and, at the same time, essential references to the classics of philosophy, so as to allow non-specialists to understand the terms and analysis procedures characterizing the discipline. Its result is a wide-ranging overview of the issued tackled by ontology, with a particular focus on the most relevant problems of contemporary debate (categorial taxonomies, nonexistent objects, case studies of ontological debates in specific fields of knowledge).
Following Quine, some philosophers argue that insofar as we accept our best scientific theories as true, we are committed to the existence of the things these theories say 'there are'. And, we determine what things our theories say 'there are' by looking to the objects required to satisfy the existentially quantified sentences of these theories. In other words, existential quantification is the mark of ontological commitment. In my dissertation, I examine this relationship between quantification and ontology. Building on work from Peter Geach and Van McGee, I develop an account of quantification, what I call"unrestricted substitutional quantification". I argue that this is not only the appropriate understanding of the quantifiers, but it also allows for a robust science of ontology. With this understanding of the quantifiers, I consider the role they play in determining our ontological commitments by examining the paradigm example of this role--the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument. My analysis of the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument focuses on two central points. First, I argue that standard formulations of the argument include an unnecessary premise. Eliminating this superfluous premise significantly strengthens the argument as it has drawn a great deal of criticism. Second, the resulting argument serves as a blueprint for Quinean appeals to existential quantification in determining our ontological commitments. As a result, the argument helps clarify a necessary condition on such appeals. We are only committed to the objects required to satisfy existentially quantified sentences in formalizations of our accepted theories provided they occur in appropriate formalizations of the theories. Hence, appealing to existential quantification to determine ontological commitments requires an account of 'appropriateness' for formalizations. I conclude by offering such an account by drawing on work from Hartry Field, Mark Colyvan, and other areas of study (e.g., Kantian Ethics) where a similar problem of occurs.
Our experience of objects (and consequently our theorizing about them) is very rich. We perceive objects as possessing individuation conditions. They appear to have boundaries in space and time, for example, and they appear to move independently of a background of other objects or a landscape. In Ontology Without Boundaries Jody Azzouni undertakes an analysis of our concept of object, and shows what about that notion is truly due to the world and what about it is a projection onto the world of our senses and thinking. Location and individuation conditions are our product: there is no echo of them in the world. Features, the ways that objects seem to be, aren't projections. Azzouni shows how the resulting austere metaphysics tames a host of ancient philosophical problems about constitution ("Ship of Theseus," "Sorities"), as well as contemporary puzzles about reductionism. In addition, it's shown that the same sorts of individuation conditions for properties, which philosophers use to distinguish between various kinds of odd abstracta-universals, tropes, and so on, are also projections. Accompanying our notion of an object is a background logic that makes cogent ontological debate about anything from Platonic objects to Bigfoot. Contemporary views about this background logic ("quantifier variance") make ontological debate incoherent. Azzouni shows how a neutral interpretation of quantifiers and quantifier domains makes sense of both philosophical and pre-philosophical ontological debates. Azzouni also shows how the same apparatus makes sense of our speaking about a host of items--Mickey Mouse, unicorns, Martians--that nearly all of us deny exist. It's allowed by what Azzouni shows about the background logic of our ontological debates, as well as the semantics of the language of those debates that we can disagree over the existence of things, like unicorns, without that background logic and semantics forcing ontological commitments onto speakers that they don't have.