Ontology 1

Ontology

Parmenides was among the first to propose anontological characterization of the fundamental nature

of reality.

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being,becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories ofbeing and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the majorbranch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals withquestions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, andhow such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, andsubdivided according to similarities and differences. In thebroadest sense, ontologists investigate what makes a humanhuman, relying on institutional, social, and technical conventionsrepresenting a nexus of intellectual activities.[1]

Overview

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

Some philosophers, notably of the Platonic school, contend that all nouns (including abstract nouns) refer to existententities. Other philosophers contend that nouns do not always name entities, but that some provide a kind ofshorthand for reference to a collection of either objects or events. In this latter view, mind, instead of referring to anentity, refers to a collection of mental events experienced by a person; society refers to a collection of persons withsome shared characteristics, and geometry refers to a collection of a specific kind of intellectual activity. Betweenthese poles of realism and nominalism, stand a variety of other positions; but any ontology must give an account ofwhich words refer to entities, which do not, why, and what categories result. When one applies this process to nounssuch as electrons, energy, contract, happiness, space, time, truth, causality, and God, ontology becomes fundamentalto many branches of philosophy.[citation needed]

Some fundamental questionsPrincipal questions of ontology include:•• "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 philosophers have provided different answers to these questions. One common approach is to divide theextant subjects and predicates into groups called categories. Of course, such lists of categories differ widely from oneanother, and it is through the co-ordination of different categorical schemes that ontology relates to such fields aslibrary science and artificial intelligence. Such an understanding of ontological categories, however, is merelytaxonomic, classificatory. The categories are, properly speaking,[2] the ways in which a being can be addressedsimply 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]

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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?•• 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?

ConceptsEssential ontological dichotomies include:• universals and particulars• substance and accident• abstract and concrete objects• essence and existence• determinism and indeterminism

TypesPhilosophers can classify ontologies in various ways using criteria such as the degree of abstraction and field ofapplication:1. Upper ontology: concepts supporting development of an ontology, meta-ontology2. Domain ontology: concepts relevant to a particular topic or area of interest, for example, information technology

or computer languages, or particular branches of science3. Interface ontology: concepts relevant to the juncture of two disciplines4. Process ontology: inputs, outputs, constraints, sequencing information, involved in business or engineering

processes

History

EtymologyThe word ontology is a compound word, composed of onto-, from the Greek ὤν, on (gen. ὄντος, ontos), i.e. "being;that which is", which is the present participle of the verb εἰμί, eimi, i.e. "to be, I am", and -λογία, -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, whichappeared in 1606, in the work Ogdoas Scholastica by Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus) and in 1613 in the Lexiconphilosophicum by Rudolf Göckel (Goclenius); see classical compounds for this type of word formation.[citation needed]

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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 theAbstract' — though, of course, such an entry indicates the term was already in use at the time. It is likely the wordwas first used in its Latin form by philosophers based on the Latin roots, which themselves are based on theGreek.[citation needed]

The current on-line edition of the OED (Draft Revision September 2008) gives as earliest documented occurrence inEnglish a work by Gideon Harvey (1636/7-1702): Archelogia philosophica nova; or, New principles of Philosophy.Containing Philosophy in general, Metaphysicks or Ontology, Dynamilogy or a Discourse of Power, ReligioPhilosophi 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. Inhis prologue or proem he describes two views of existence; initially that nothing comes from nothing, and thereforeexistence is eternal. Consequently, our opinions about truth must often be false and deceitful. Most of westernphilosophy, 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, orpossessed. Hence, there can be neither void nor vacuum; and true reality can neither come into being nor vanish fromexistence. Rather, the entirety of creation is eternal, uniform, and immutable, though not infinite (he characterized itsshape as that of a perfect sphere). Parmenides thus posits that change, as perceived in everyday experience, isillusory. Everything that can be apprehended is but one part of a single entity. This idea somewhat anticipates themodern concept of an ultimate grand unification theory that finally describes all of existence in terms of oneinter-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 andLeucippus replaced the reality of Being (unique and unchanging) with that of Becoming and therefore by a morefundamental and elementary ontic plurality. This thesis originated in the Hellenic world, stated in two different waysby 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, which dealt with reality as based on the vacuum, theatoms and their intrinsic movement in it.[citation needed]

The materialist Atomism proposed by Leucippus was indeterminist, but then developed by Democritus in adeterministic way. It was later (4th century BC) that the original atomism was taken again as indeterministic byEpicurus. 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.[3] They are, besides, creating the whole with the intrinsicmovement 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 oftraditional 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

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'Being' is intended in the sense of existence, copula, or identity); and argues, against Parmenides, that Forms mustexist 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 aproposition. For Aristotle there are four different ontological dimensions:[citation needed]

i) according to the various categories or ways of addressing a being as suchii) according to its truth or falsity (e.g. fake gold, counterfeit money)iii) whether it exists in and of itself or simply 'comes along' by accidentiv) 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 medievalmetaphysics, being is either necessary, contingent qua possible, or impossible. Necessary being is that which cannotbut be, since its non-being entails a contradiction. Contingent qua possible being is neither necessary nor impossiblefor it to be or not to be. It is ontologically neutral, and is brought from potential existing into actual existence by wayof a cause that is external to its essence. Its being is borrowed unlike the necessary existent, which is self-subsistingand is impossible for it not to be. As for the impossible, it necessarily does not exist, and the affirmation of its beingis a contradiction.[4]

Other ontological topics

Ontological formationsThe concept of 'ontological formations' refers to formations of social relations understood as dominant ways ofliving. Temporal, spatial, corporeal, epistemological and performative relations are taken to be central tounderstanding a dominant formation. That is, a particular ontological formation is based on how ontologicalcategories of time, space, embodiment, knowing and performing are lived - objectively and subjectively. Differentontological formations include the customary (including the tribal), the traditional, the modern and the postmodern.The concept was first introduced in a book called Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism[5] and carried forward insubsequent writings from a series of writers including Damian Grenfell, Paul James and Manfred Steger.In the engaged theory approach, ontological formations are seen as layered and intersecting rather than singularformations. They are 'formations of being'. This approach avoids the usual problems of a Great Divide being positedbetween the modern and the pre-modern.

Ontological and epistemological certaintyRené 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 knowledgecould lead to a proof of the certainty of the existence of God, using the ontological argument that had beenformulated first by Anselm of Canterbury.[citation needed]

Certainty about the existence of "the self" and "the other", however, came under increasing criticism in the 20thcentury. Sociological theorists, most notably George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, saw the Cartesian Other asa "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" [6][7] The Cartesian Other was also used by Sigmund Freud, who saw thesuperego as an abstract regulatory force, and Émile Durkheim who viewed this as a psychologically manifestedentity which represented God in society at large.[citation needed]

Ontology 5

Body and environment, questioning the meaning of beingSchools of subjectivism, objectivism and relativism existed at various times in the 20th century, and thepostmodernists and body philosophers tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking some specificaction in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights derived from scientific research into animalstaking instinctive action in natural and artificial settings—as studied by biology, ecology,[8] and cognitivescience.[citation needed]

The processes by which bodies related to environments became of great concern, and the idea of being itself becamedifficult to really define. What did people mean when they said "A is B", "A must be B", "A was B"...? Somelinguists advocated dropping the verb "to be" from the English language, leaving "E Prime", supposedly less proneto bad abstractions. Others, mostly philosophers, tried to dig into the word and its usage. Heidegger distinguishedhuman being as existence from the being of things in the world. Heidegger proposes that our way of being humanand the way the world is for us are cast historically through a fundamental ontological questioning. Thesefundamental ontological categories provide the basis for communication in an age: a horizon of unspoken andseemingly unquestionable background meanings, such as human beings understood unquestioningly as subjects andother entities understood unquestioningly as objects. Because these basic ontological meanings both generate and areregenerated in everyday interactions, the locus of our way of being in a historical epoch is the communicative eventof language in use. For Heidegger, however, communication in the first place is not among human beings, butlanguage itself shapes up in response to questioning (the inexhaustible meaning of) being.[9] Even the focus oftraditional ontology on the 'whatness' or 'quidditas' of beings in their substantial, standing presence can be shifted topose the question of the 'whoness' of human being itself.[10]

Ontology and languageSome philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of usage rather than a questionabout 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 throughoutinstead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity isexplained.[11] 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 thephilosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself. This viewpoint has been expressed by EliHirsch.[12][13] Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something"can be correct. 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. How to determine the 'fitness' of a 'language' to theworld then becomes a subject for investigation.

Ontology and human geographyIn human geography there are two types of ontology: small “o” which accounts for the practical orientation,describing functions of being a part of the group, thought to oversimplify and ignore key activities. The other “o”, orbig “O”, systematically, logically, and rationally describes the essential characteristics and universal traits. Thisconcept relates closely to Plato’s view that the human mind can only perceive a bigger world if they continue to livewithin the confines of their “caves”. However, in spite of the differences, ontology relies on the symbolic agreementsamong members. That said, ontology is crucial for the axiomatic language frameworks.[14]

Ontology 6

Reality and actualityAccording to A.N. Whitehead, for ontology, it is useful to distinguish the terms 'reality' and 'actuality'.In this view, an 'actual entity' has a philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority, while a 'real entity' isone which may be actual, or may derive its reality from its logical relation to some actual entity or entities. Forexample, an occasion in the life of Socrates is an actual entity. But Socrates' being a man does not make 'man' anactual entity, because it refers indeterminately to many actual entities, such as several occasions in the life ofSocrates, and also to several occasions in the lives of Alcibiades, and of others. But the notion of man is real; itderives its reality from its reference to those many actual occasions, each of which is an actual entity. An actualoccasion is a concrete entity, while terms such as 'man' are abstractions from many concrete relevant entities.According to Whitehead, an actual entity must earn its philosophical status of fundamental ontological priority bysatisfying several philosophical criteria, as follows.•• There is no going behind an actual entity, to find something more fundamental in fact or in efficacy. This criterion

is to be regarded as expressing an axiom, or postulated distinguished doctrine.•• An actual entity must be completely determinate in the sense that there can be no confusion about its identity that

would allow it to be confounded with another actual entity. In this sense an actual entity is completely concrete,with no potential to be something other than itself. It is what it is. It is of course a source of potentiality for thecreation of other actual entities, of which it may be said to be a part cause. Likewise it is the concretion orrealization of potentialities of other actual entities which are its partial causes.

• Causation between actual entities is essential to their actuality. Consequently, for Whitehead, each actual entityhas its distinct and definite extension in physical Minkowski space, and so is uniquely identifiable. A descriptionin Minkowski space supports descriptions in time and space for particular observers.

• It is part of the aim of the philosophy of such an ontology as Whitehead's that the actual entities should be allalike, qua actual entities; they should all satisfy a single definite set of well stated ontological criteria of actuality.

Whitehead proposed that his notion of an occasion of experience satisfies the criteria for its status as thephilosophically preferred definition of an actual entity. From a purely logical point of view, each occasion ofexperience has in full measure the characters of both objective and subjective reality. Subjectivity and objectivityrefer to different aspects of an occasion of experience, and in no way do they exclude each other.[15]

Examples of other philosophical proposals or candidates as actual entities, in this view, are Aristotle's 'substances',Leibniz' monads, and Descartes ′res verae' , and the more modern 'states of affairs'. Aristotle's substances, such asSocrates, have behind them as more fundamental the 'primary substances', and in this sense do not satisfyWhitehead's criteria. Whitehead is not happy with Leibniz' monads as actual entities because they are "windowless"and do not cause each other. 'States of affairs' are often not closely defined, often without specific mention ofextension in physical Minkowski space; they are therefore not necessarily processes of becoming, but may be astheir name suggests, simply static states in some sense. States of affairs are contingent on particulars, and aretherefore have something behind them.[16] One summary of the Whiteheadian actual entity is that it is a process ofbecoming. Another summary, referring to its causal linkage to other actual entities, is that it is "all window", incontrast with Leibniz' windowless monads.This view allows philosophical entities other than actual entities to really exist, but not as fundamentally andprimarily factual or causally efficacious; they have existence as abstractions, with reality only derived from theirreference to actual entities. A Whiteheadian actual entity has a unique and completely definite place and time.Whiteheadian abstractions are not so tightly defined in time and place, and in the extreme, some are timeless andplaceless, or 'eternal' entities. All abstractions have logical or conceptual rather than efficacious existence; their lackof definite time does not make them unreal if they refer to actual entities. Whitehead calls this 'the ontologicalprinciple'.

Ontology 7

Prominent ontologists

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

•• Heraclitus of Ephesus•• Edmund Husserl•• Roman Ingarden•• Peter van Inwagen•• Immanuel Kant•• Gottfried Leibniz•• Stanisław Leśniewski•• 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[1] Harvey, F. (2006). Ontology. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Geography. (pp. 341-343). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications,

Inc[2] Aristotle Categories Vol. 1, Loeb Classical Library, transl. H.P. Cooke, Harvard U.P. 1983[3] Aristotle, Metaphysics, I , 4, 985[4] Nader El-Bizri, 'Avicenna and Essentialism, Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 54 (2001), pp. 753-778.[5] P. James, Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In, Sage Publications, London, 2006[6] 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.[7] 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).[8] 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.[9] Heidegger, Martin, On the Way to Language Harper & Row, New York 1971. German edition: Unterwegs zur Sprache Neske, Pfullingen

1959.[10] 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[11][11] Davidson refers to a 'ketch' and a 'yawl'; see p. 18 in[12] 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)[13] First published as “Quantifier variance and realism” (http:/ / onlinelibrary. wiley. com/ doi/ 10. 1111/ j. 1758-2237. 2002. tb00061. x/

abstract)[14] Harvey, F. (2006). Ontology. In B. Warf (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human Geography. (pp. 341-343). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE

Publications, Inc[15] Whitehead, A.N. (1929). Process and Reality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK, passim.[16] Armstrong, D.M. (1997). A World of States of Affairs, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge UK, ISBN 0-521-58064-1, p. 1.

Ontology 8

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• Intentionality (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ intentionality) entry by Pierre Jacob 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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