Topics in Ontology: Carving up Reality

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Topics in OntologyCarving up Reality

• Daniel von Wachter
• daniel_at_von-wachter.de
• http//daniel.von-wachter.de/

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Change

• 21 February The Existence of God
• 28 February Event Causation
• 7 March Agent Causation
• Discussion session Mondays 10am?

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Essay

• Write two essays answering questions from the
  list.
• The first to warm up, not more than 2000 words.
  As soon as possible, at the latest till 25
  February.
• The second not more than 3000 words. Till 3
  March. (I am leaving 9 March)

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Essential reading

• Armstrong, David M. 1989. Universals An
  Opinionated Introduction. Boulder Westerview
  Press. (Or his A World of States of Affairs,
  1997)
• Campbell, Keith. 1990. Abstract Particulars.
  Oxford Blackwell.
• Simons, Peter. 1994. Particulars in Particular
  Clothing Three Trope Theories of Substance.
  Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
  54553-575.
• Loux, Michael J. 1998. Metaphysics A
  Contemporary Introduction. London Routledge, ch.
  .

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How to write the essay

• Answer the question head on.
• Dont start with Already Plato
• Dont write anything that is not relevant for the
  defence of your answer.
• Be concise!

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Today survey the main ontological theories and
carve up reality

• The problem of universals
• Metaphysics versus semantics
• Various ontologies
• Carving up reality

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What people mean by ontology

• Christian Wolff (1729) Ontology is the science
  of Being in general or as Being. Part of
  metaphysics.
• Science of the most general structures of
  reality.
• Theory of semantic values and ontological
  commitments.
• Database structure.

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The problem of universals

• Apparently, things can share something, e.g. two
  things can have mass 1 kg. What is going on
  there?
• There are things that resemble each other. What
  does resemblance consist in, at the most basic
  level?
• Things are causally complex. So do they have
  ontic constituents?

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Universals as a solution to the problem of
universals

• Resemblance is analysed in terms of identity. Two
  things can share something, namely a universal.
• So there are entities that, other than other
  kinds of entities, can be identically at
  different things.

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Metaphysics versus Semantics

• Some authors, and we, mean by ontology the
  investigation of the most general structures of
  reality independently of whether and how things
  are referred to.
• But other authors mean by ontology the
  investigation of which concepts there are. By
  saying that there are universals they mean
  (something like) that there are general concepts.

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Semantific metaphysics the argument from meaning

• This is a bad, semantic, argument.
• There are general terms. There has to be
  something that constitutes or corresponds to the
  meaning of the general terms. So there has to be
  horseness, etc., i.e. universals.
• Semanticians may also call universals a kind of
  entity, but if you look closer you see that they
  really mean a kind of concept.

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Armstrong on the argument from meaning

• I regard this ... line of argument as
  completely unsound. Furthermore, I believe that
  the identification of universals with meanings
  (connotations, intensions), which this argument
  presupposes, has been a disaster for the theory
  of universals. A thoroughgoing separation of the
  theory of universals from the theory of the
  semantics of general terms is in fact required.
  Only if we first develop a satisfactory theory of
  universals can we expect to develop fruitfully
  the further topic of the semantics of general
  terms. ltArmstrong, 1978 858, xvigt

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Semantific metaphysics descriptive metaphysics

• Strawson, in Individuals (1959), wants to be
  modest and do descriptive metaphysics
  Descriptive metaphysics is content to describe
  the actual structure of our thought about the
  world, revisionary metaphysics is concerned to
  produce a better structure.
• This shows that Strawson is concerned only with
  concepts.

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Semantific metaphysics ontological commitment

• Quine The universe of entities is the range of
  values of variables. To be is the value of a
  variable. (Designation and Existence, 1939)
• Entities of a given sort are assumed by a theory
  if and only if some of them must be counted among
  the values of the variables in order that the
  statements affirmed in the theory be true.
• Authors in this tradition inquire whether there
  is a certain type of entity by inquiring whether
  we quantify over them and whether we can
  eliminate this quantification.

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Semantific metaphysics ontological commitment

• See On what there is, in From a logical point
  of view.
• You cant read off from language what kinds of
  entities there are. There are always different
  theories available about what the truthmakers of
  a given set of sentences are.

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Semantific metaphysics semantic analysis
(Lewis)

• Lewis there are entities of a certain type (e.g.
  possible worlds properties) if we need them
  to provide an adequate supply of semantic values
  for lingustic expressions.
• Example Humility is a virtue. We need an
  entity to assign as semantic value to the word.
  We should assume that there is the property
  humility (where a property is a class of
  possibilia those things of which it is true to
  say that they are humble). Properties can serve
  as the requisite semantic value.

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Open questions

• Is there a structure of reality parallel to the
  structure of language?
• What kind of theory is the metaphysician looking
  for? Is there a most general structure of reality
  describable philosophically, or does physics find
  out what the most general structure of reality is?

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Properties

• Immanent vs transcendent universals
• Tropes (DC Williams Husserl), abstract
  particulars (abstract not in the Quinean sense)
• Resemblance
• How does the realist account for non-exact
  universals?

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Substrata vs bundles

• Bundles of properties
• independent tropes
• tropes dependent on other tropes
• Bare substratum
• Kinded substrata

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Universals and substrata

• David Armstrong A World of States of Affairs
  (1997)
• Immanent universals, which cannot exist without
  being instantiated
• Substrata that cannot exist without instantiating
  universals

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Trope bundle theory

• DC Williams
• K Campbell (Abstract Particulars, 1990)
• Peter Simons 1994 Particulars in particular
  clothing. Dependence as ontological glue.

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Aristotles four category ontology
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Carving up reality

• Socrates (Phaedrus) Lets try to carve up things
  at their natural joints. Not like a bad cook who
  destroys the limbs when he carves up the beast.
• What kind of carving is meant?
• What could make one way of carving up better than
  another one?

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Carving up concrete things

• Are some portions of stuff ontologically
  privileged over others?
• Are boundaries something to be discovered? (If
  you point to a thing, is there a fact of the
  matter as to how far the thing goes?)
• Causal unity
• Boundaries
• Some contain a substratum that is an
  exemplification of a kind-universal

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Carving up tropes

• Is the mass trope covering just the apple more
  natural than the mass trope covering just the
  apple?
• What could determine objective boundaries of
  tropes?
• Relativist view We can refer, e.g., to the
  temperature in any region, and any region of
  temperature is equally legitimately to be
  conceived of as a temperature trope.

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Lowes objection against tropes

• An objects individual color, say, is not
  itself an object, somehow related to the object
  of which it is the color. If it were an object,
  it would hve determinate identity conditions, and
  yet it does not appear that it can have these.
  Supposing the colored object to be uniformly
  colored, it makes doubtful sense to ask whether
  the color of its top half is numerically
  identical with the color of its bottom half, or
  whether either or both of these is identical with
  the color of the whole object. Certainly, these
  questions cannot apparently be answered in a
  nonarbitrary and principled way. (Lowe 1995,
  512f)

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Field ontology

• Campbell Abstract Particulars, ch. . Wachter
  2000.
• Relativism about carving up tropes. Tropes are
  carved out of something, of which each portion
  can be taken to be one trope. Boundaries are not
  something to be discovered. There is no
  non-arbitrary answer to the question how many
  temperature tropes there are in the pot.
• There is a certain number of fields
  (superimposed), each extended over all of space,
  each with a determinate strength at each point.

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Field ontology

• Campbell Abstract Particulars (p. 146) Taking
  our clue from space-time itself, we now propose
  that all the basic tropes are partless and
  edgeless in the ways that space is, an that they
  change only in space-times innocent way. All
  basic tropes are space-filling fields, each one
  of them distributes some quantity, in perhaps
  varying intensities, across all of space time.
• Everywhere in space there are the same fields
  present.
• There may be, e.g., not a temperature field, but
  temperature consists ultimately of field
  strengths.
• Particles are certain configurations of field
  strengths in a certain region.

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Questions

• Which ontologies entail that for each thing you
  refer to by pointing it is something to be
  discovered where it ends?
• Does There are substances entail that
  substances have boundaries to be discovered?
• Which ontologies entail that there are privileged
  ways of carving up reality?
• Can one be conventionalist in ontology, e.g. by
  saying that one can refer to properties either as
  universals or as tropes? (Cf. Williams Martin)