Questions tagged [ontology]
Ontology is the study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.
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Speaking what is not = speaking about non-being?
In Plato's The Sophist, a stranger from Elea argues with Theaetetus, a young friend of Socrates, about the definition of "sophist". They come to the conclusion that the sophist imitates the ...
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What do materialists mean by 'material' ? Is it matter ? Is it energy ? What is our evidence for its existence? [closed]
Overview of relevant material views.
Evidence for existence of this material.
Role of the observer.
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Regarding objects being concrete and properties being abstract
For those who believe that objects are concrete things and properties are abstract things, what do you make of sensory properties?
Our brains perceive sensory qualities first and build (concepts of) &...
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What does existence correspond to outside of human consciousness? [closed]
The existence of something is a purely human concept. What does it correspond to outside of human consciousness?
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How many isolated concept clusters are there?
Let me start by explaining what I mean by an isolated concept cluster. It is often remarked that you can't define any moral term without using other moral terms. For example, you can define obligation ...
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How can universal truths lead to particular truths?
Disclaimer: I have not read philosophy outside of limited Greek works
So, Plato theorized that there was a world of "universals" and "particulars", the world of general principles (...
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Can we critique Ontological Arguments by attacking their usage of the mind/language only?
Couldn’t we critique Ontological Arguments’ compatibility with the concept of God by suggesting that an omnipotent being should be able to be proved by something outside of the mind, or something ...
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Quine-Putnam indispensability argument
If Quine-Putnam's argument is (following the SEP):
(P1) We ought to have ontological commitment to all and only the
entities that are indispensable to our best scientific theories.
(P2) Mathematical ...
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Location of the sky (universe) according to Aristotle
Aristotle wrote in his Physics:
The earth is in the water, the water is in the air, the air is in the
ether, the ether is in the sky, and the sky is no longer in anything
else.
Do you agree with ...
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Identification of light with existence and darkness with non-existence [closed]
Is it true that in ancient times many thinkers identified light with existence (essence), and darkness with non-existence?
Examples include Pythagoreanism, Neoplatonism, the ontology of light as-...
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Introductory texts to formal ontology and mereology?
I’m a grad student of Mathematics, doing research in Formal Semantics (a topic in Computational Linguistics) and some of my more tangential reading has made me privy to the existence of formal ...
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Where does this concept of existence fall?
In exploring the questions of existence, I came to this concept. I am curious if anyone has any feedback or can point me to any other materials or ideas that relate to this? I am sure I am not the ...
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How does Hegel's Ontology overcome issues in Spinoza's?
I'm trying to write a paper and I've tried to reconstruct an argument about this on my own with no luck so far. It's about Hegel's criticism of Spinoza.
As far as I understand, Hegel's main critique ...
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Do models of Cartesian closed logic physically exist?
Cartesian closed logics, also known as simple type theories or simply-typed lambda calculi, are ubiquitous; we use sentential logic (WP, nLab) all the time in philosophy and law, and doxastic logic to ...
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Ontology over time
Looking for any recommended references for this topic, I was recommended a good book on logic previously on here, and found it extremely enlightening, mainly how we deal with issues like the ship of ...
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Ontic structural realism: what's the difference between 'structures are all there is' and 'all there is are structures'?
I'm a physics student reading a philosophy essay about ontic structural realism and quantum field theory. In that paper, the author presented ontic structural realism(OSR) and radical ontic structural ...
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Traditionally in philosophy, anything that can be said to be is a being
True or false? Does this mean that tables and chairs, rivers and rocks, by virtue of the fact that they exist, can be called 'beings'?
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Can 'change' be treated as the replacement of one inert object with another? [duplicate]
I was reading about how the english language has 'changed' and 'developed' over time, and this has me wonder, what makes the 'English' Language what it is? If we define a language as a set of formulas ...
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How can we denote objects that no longer exist?
This is a question more about how we can discuss about objects which no longer exist. For example, let's say that Socrates no longer exists (ignore any religious side of this and consider Socrates as ...
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Is a 'group of people' a concrete or abstract entity?
Let's say I have a 'group of people', let's call it 'Group A'. Group A consists of people (concrete) suggesting it is concrete, yet any member of Group A can be at any place in the world, and their ...
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HEIDEGGER SCHOLARS NOMENCLATURE PUZZLING
Heideggerian scholars keep utilizing the phrase "background practices" as a substitute or equivalent for being.
Background practices are things like instinctive social behavior that is ...
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What does it mean for two properties of objects to be of the same class (or even identical)?
For people adhering to a realist ontology, what does it mean for you to say that a property p of an object of species a, and a property q of an object b are of the same class, or even that are ...
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Does omniscience necessarily entail omnipotence?
Suppose an existing being has its existence in danger, but miraculously becomes omniscient, could this being save its existence? Or is there any case where this is impossible?
My main motivation for ...
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Using 'numbers' in natural language
Typically in natural language we will say something like 'I have two' to denote a group of two things, obviously using the 'mathematical' view of numbers as an abstract object with well defined 'names'...
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What did Kant have to say about atomism?
I've been trying to understand whether on not Kant accepts the atomic model (that matter is composed of smallest pieces) based on his writings in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science.
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Do all nouns denote, or only proper nouns?
By 'denote' I mean they are used specifically to denote objects, in almost all times they are used, for example most proper nouns like 'James' or 'Lithuania' or 'Paris'.
Many common nouns are generic ...
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Existence in logic vs existence in reality
Take an object which has been destroyed, we can talk about it in the past tense, how does this work logically, can we talk about objects which previously existed (in the physical sense)? For the ...
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Markus Gabriel's conception of thinking as a sense
⚠ It doesn't make much sense to answer this question if you are not acquainted with Gabriel's work and do not even read the linked interview.
I always thought that common sense is fundamentally ...
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Is the multiverse standpoint in set theory "ideologically committed" to plural quantification over universes/axioms?
One of the ways in which Hamkins expresses the multiverse standpoint is as the assertion that there is no "absolute background concept of sets or even ordinals." He spells out examples of ...
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Do things correspond to carvings of reality?
I have found many papers about “carving reality at its joints” but all of them discussed carving reality into kinds, supposed to cluster things, themselves always considered as already given. Though I ...
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Are artworks created or discovered?
I am trying to deny Joseph Margolis' argument that pieces of art are not 'universals'. Particularly, I want to say that types (in the tokens-of-a-type sense) are essentially the same thing as ...
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Is moral responsibility consistent from an ontological perspective of change?
Let a being be arbitrary, suppose that this being has the capacity to be morally responsible.
(EDIT 2) Regardless of group morality, but assume this being is in a moral environment with no moral ...
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Markus Gabriel's ontology and the non-existence of the world
Markus Gabriel proposes a permissive ontology ("New Realism") according to, if there exists a certain "field of sense" in which an entity appears, the entity exists. Even fictional ...
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What differs an entity from a sequence contaning only this entity?
I was thinking about whether there is a difference between the symbol 'x' and the expression/formula containing it.
For example we discuss 'x' the symbol but equally I can talk about 'x' the ...
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What is the distinction between Gegenstand and Objekt?
In German philosophy (particularly Kant and Husserl), the concepts Gegenstand and Objekt (and their conjugations Gegenständlichkeit and Objektivität) are used to describe very different things while ...
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Misleading language and ontology
Does natural language suggest a different ontological status to different things? I have noticed in our natural language we like to pluralise things sometimes in a way I disagree with. For example, a '...
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Aristotle on Plato's realm of forms
I am familiar with Plato's realm of forms. However, I have not read much of Aristotle except for the Nicomachean Ethics. In a nutshell, how does Aristotle pick up on Plato's forms and where would I ...
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Is a complex eternal first cause less likely than a simple eternal first cause?
I have seen this argument posed by people like Dawkins et. al, but is this actually true? Many have pointed to how complex things in nature generally come from simpler origins, but clearly, this isn't ...
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Positive vs negative classes in ontology
I am interested in the nature of ontological classification and whether there exists some form of accepted terminology to distinguish classes that are 'positive' (matching characteristics) and classes ...
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Physical location of abstract objects
I was reading about the idea of a specific colour as an abstract object as defined by Plato, and how in 'Parmenides' he struggled with the fact that the type cannot be single and exist in multiple ...
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What is an instance?
I see the definition of 'instances' and it makes sense when dealing with types that define physical objects, so any cat is an instance of the type 'cat', however, why do we discuss 'instances' of ...
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Identity of mathematical objects
Leibniz law's states that if A and B have the same properties then A and B are one and the same, however we can consider mathematical objects that are isomoprhic but not identitical, they have the ...
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Is 'a level of quantity' a poor definition of 'real number'?
I was thinking about how we define numbers with respect to their uses, and came up with the definition of 'a level of quantity' which can have a different physical consequence for each quantity ...
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Could I (or something like my mind) exist because more complicated (mental) products than me exist?
Starting with a Cartesian-type 'cogito' argument, we might be sceptical that an 'I' exists, but rather suppose that we're embedded in a kind of perceptive process allowing us to experience thoughts, ...
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Relationship between real quantities and numbers [closed]
Is there a definition of the relationship between real quantities and the numbers we relate to them, generally we use 'numbers' as mathematical objects with a 'proper' nouns, but we associate them ...
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Can a blind metaphysical will have knowledge?
Copleston stated of Schopenhauer's notion of a metaphysically "blind" will:
"If the Will is blind it cannot know itself either directly or through the phenomenon, while, if it is the ...
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Is being non existent the same as being zero in quantity
For instance,
There does not exist unicorn on earth. There are zero unicorns on earth.
How are these two different?
One could argue being zero in quantity is a temporal property. The number may change ...
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How does entropy explain consciousness and the forward direction of time?
How does entropy explain consciousness and the forward direction of time? I was told that entropy is the increasing of disorderliness and that consciousness cannot exist as memory increases when ...
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Sets vs 'association'
I previously asked whether abstract objects can be split into categories, groups or sets of their component parts, and was told, definitely, and later another question occurred to me, take an ...
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Can an 'abstract object' be a collection of constituent parts?
When I ask this, the use of collection or set is not necessarily 'mathematical', so if in this case I mean a collection of ideas that encapsulate it, 'make up' the idea in the same way the various ...
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