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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What are the philosophic positions regarding the ontology of mathematical facts?
1+1=2 and, discarding any mildly clever counter-examples that don't really matter (eg 1.4 + 1.4 = 2.8, which rounds to 3), I have a hard time imagining how the discrete quantity 1 could ever be added ...
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How can materialists make claims?
I dont have all the modern philosophical terms down, but I cannot see how materialists/physicalists can make any claims. If there is nothing but physical universe, then there is no “truth”. Actually ...
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What are some strong arguments for logical holism?
What are some strong arguments for logical holism? The idea that the world operates in such a way that no part can be known without the whole being known first seems extremely foreign to me. This is ...
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Can we know the Nature of matter because we are "made" of it?
When we consider the world to be curved spacetime sparkled and specked with tiny elementary particles (which ultimately may turn out to be ultra tiny compactifications os space) then logically we are ...
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Can an object exist both physically and mentally?
I notice that people say each object exists physically or mentally, but not both physically and mentally. Can an object exist both physically and mentally?
“he suggests that if the greatest possible ...
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What is it called to consider the whole to be the fundamental block of reality rather than its parts?
What is it called to consider the whole to be the fundamental block of reality rather than its parts? Philosophers most often say that the building blocks of this world are small like atoms like ...
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Where is it that I go when I dream?
This is a question that I had posed regarding the nature of mental images described by patients who suffer from Charles Bonnet Syndrome here:
What is the nature of the mental images that are perceived ...
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Is there a hierarchy to image schemas?
Image schemas are primitive concepts that are studied in diverse fields such as linguistics, psychology, cognitive linguistics, neuroscience.
The influences of image schemas is not only seen in ...
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What are possible naturalistic explanations to the question of existence?
Non-philosopher here, though I enjoy reading about it. Without getting into complex deductive arguments, suppose I say the following: Define the entities of the material world however one likes (maybe ...
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Is there a reason that utilitarianism is the "default" moral system of thinking for many humans, and if so, why?
Over the past few centuries a shift has been seen, from the likes of strict adherence to Christianity (at least, in Europe) to greater reliance on science, etc. as observed by Friedrich Nietzsche. ...
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What are the prerequisites for knowing something?
I want to get some references, expand and check mi intuitions. I think the epistemological prerequisites to know something are by order:
an external reality, which is stable to a minimum degree so ...
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Does Quine's Predicate Functorese maintain the existence of relations?
Quine's predicate functorese has been proposed as a "feature-placing" language for ontological nihilism (Strawson, Azzouni, Dasgupta, Diehl). This is often used to eliminate objects and ...
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Ontology - How do we describe actions/scenarios in relation to objects?
Does anyone know how actions to do with objects are represented in ontology or first order logic?
Example: the cat sits on the mat.
I think the cat and mat have properties that relate them to each ...
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What type of relationship is "partakes of"?
We call a rose beautiful because it partakes of beauty, according to Plato's Theory of Forms (or my understanding thereof).
Furthermore, we can take any attribute and turn it into a class with -ness ...
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Are ontic predicates similarly (or even well) defined across philosophers? Do they differ from logic predicates?
I've seen the term "ontic predicate" bandied around in some works. Whenever it has a clear definition it seem no different than how one would define it in (first-order) logic, i.e. it being ...
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Is there a view that only abstract objects exist, and being an abstract structure is enough for a world to be experienced by its observers?
I am looking for a view that would completely eliminate concrete objects by saying that being an abstract structure is enough for a world to be experienced by it's observers. If it is enough for a ...
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ontological commitments to properties
Quine's famous thesis about ontological commitment is roughly the following: there exist only entities which fall under the domain of quantification of our theory and that can be the values of ...
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Does Mitosis division break the Leibniz law of Identity?
Simply put: if 2 cells Mitotically divide, there's almost no difference between them. They're like 2 copied files on my computer. They're identical. Now, doesn't this mean that the law collapsed? if ...
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What is a quantum particle like before it is measured?
I have been trying to ask about this over on the Physics Stack Exchange, but they aren't really interested in questions that are this speculative. Does anyone here have any ideas about what quantum ...
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Which specific branch of philosophy defines the 'realness' of something?
One or two years ago I read an article about what was termed a newer branch of philosophy that examined not only what was real, but what took precedence in importance in certain areas depending on ...
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What is the ontological status of Plato's Demiurge?
I've done some searching and have found that he (it?) is the anthropomorphization of the deliberate Intellect's intent (SEP: Plato's Timaeus). I understand that he is neither an idea nor an idea's ...
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In Dark Ecology, Morton says that causality is in the aesthetic dimension? could you please elaborate why causality and aesthetic are connected?
"The best of bees. Marx writes that the best of bees is always worse than the worst of architects.51 That’s because the architect is imagining her or his building and the bee is just executing an ...
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What is the nature of the mental images that are perceived by patients who suffer from Charles Bonnet Syndrome?
I am not sure if this question should be asked in the Philosophy or Neuroscience forum as both domains are relevant to this inquiry. Will have a go anyway.
One of the defining characteristics of CBS ...
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What does Quine's ontological method of paraphrasing achieve?
W. V. O. Quine in "On What There Is?" denies the existence of universals. There are red things, like a fire truck (f), a tomato (t), a red umbrella (u). But the phrase "They have ...
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Pre-theoretic beliefs about non-existence [closed]
In ordinary thought and language there are obviously particulars and it is assumed they usually consist of parts. Ordinary language also supports "generalized, reified properties" (I'd say ...
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Are there any publications that attempt to give a formal ontological definition of the Christian Trinity?
Are there any publications in the field of Philosophy of Religion that have attempted to provide a formal ontological definition of the Christian God as portrayed by the doctrine of the Trinity?
Take ...
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Is the distinction between software and hardware real?
In computer science education, there exists a dichotomy between what we call "hardware" and what we call "software". Software can exist as patterns on hardware and also as a purely ...
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What word(s) or term(s) best represent objects and phenomena that have not been experienced?
Using the top third of this graphic, what word(s) or term(s) is most recognized for representing REAL objects: 1) the objects themselves (not the phenomenal experience of them); 2) not known to be ...
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Is our reality completely illusionary as it is depicted in religions or various philosophical views?
I know that in many religions or in the work of many philosophers the ultimate truth or essence of existence is depicted monist. Some even argue further that all our experience is an illusion- which I ...
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Notion of space and time
In Critique of pure reason, Kant mentions the theory of space and time, which is a priori. It will be used in Heidegger's Being and Time. However, In his second meditation, it seems that Descartes ...
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What is the difference between an object and its singleton set?
I have read in books on Mathematical Logic that we have things called "Sets" and Set Theory that correspond to classes of objects in Ontology. for example { Barack Obama, Donald Trump } is a ...
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Is Thales's claim that everything starts with water/wetness, in ontological meaning, in agreement with his claim that: "Everything is full of gods"?
Thales claimed water as his arche, but Aristotle says that he also said that "Everything is full of gods". Are those two claims in agreement?
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Is there a philosophical assessment of the terms "virtual" and "imaginary"?
In casual terms, at least from explanations I can find,
imaginary is something which "does not exist" in reality: "an imaginary world"
virtual is something which "exists ...
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Is it possible for there to exist a geometrically perfect square?
The corners of a geometrically perfect square should have no width. But if they have no width they don't exist. Therefore the corners must have a width. If they have a width they can be looked at as ...
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Metaphysical vs ontological necessity
There are many forms of consequence. It seems that there should be some method of distinguishing between them. Of primary concern to philosophers are two types of consequence: physical causality and ...
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Nothing vs something
Could it be that the famous question "why is there something instead of nothing" is misplaced?
This question presupposes that nothingness is the opposite of something but, metaphysically ...
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Do light particles exist [closed]
This question is kind of a mash between physics and philosophy. If I should delete this post and put it on the physics stackexchange, let me know.
If light travels at 299,792,458 m/s, then does it ...
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Can our world be inside PI data?
PI number contains an infinite number of 123 digit sequence, also it contains an infinite number of 12345678 digit sequence ans so on. One can take such sequence of 10^10000000 digits and the PI will ...
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Has there been an attempt to create a classification system or taxonomy of "everything"
I have only begun digging into the philosophical definitions and study of taxonomy/classification, however I am just wondering if thus far the idea of trying to categorize and classify all objects, ...
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What precedents are there for the triple-ism of Roger Penrose?
In his The Road to Reality, Roger Penrose espouses three distinct realities - the physical, mental and mathematical.
The physical and mental are basically good old dualism, although he is an atheist ...
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Is there a difference between 'exists' and 'theoretically possible'?
For the purpose of this questions let's assume that the physics of our universe can be fully described by a complete non-contradictory theory (i.e. that theory of everything exists). Then our universe ...
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Consciousness and Ontology
If consciousness is a fundamental property of reality, as David Chalmers and other philosophers/physicists speculate, does this mean that many of the ontological problems in philosophy would be solved?...
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The Philosophy of Mutual Dreaming in the New SpongeBob Movie: Ontological as well as Metaphysical?
So, in the movie SpongeBob: Sponge on the Run, Patrick states that:
"Two people cannot have the same dream, let alone be in that same dream at the same time. This is philosophically untenable.&...
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Does sensory information exist, and do philosophers have a name for it?
Are there really sensory sensations such as sight, hearing, tactile sensations, smell, taste, and umami? In other words, are those sensations or sense-data real, and if they are not real physically, ...
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Is the Problem of Universals still a prominent topic of debate?
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes an entry for the Medieval version of the debate of universals, but not for anything contemporary. There's an entry on universals in the Internet ...
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To what extent is the notion of "common" of philosophical interest?
The 2021 theme for a french competitive philosophical exam is: "the common". I'm not sure the expression really makes sense in English. In French, it is the adjective "commun" ( ...
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How do philosophers answer a question like 'How do you know something exists?'
I recently watched a video from Rationality Rules titled "The Argument from Personal Experience - Debunked (Why Personal Experiences are NOT Proof)". As the title reveals, the video's goal ...
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Does Gödel believe in the existence of his rotating universe?
I am wondering whether Gödel believe ain the existence of his rotating universe since he is a mathematical Platonist. I am also wondering in what entities believe mathematical platonists. For example: ...
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Which discipline of philosophy is most interested and relevant to studying the nature of change?
Often as a beginner, I wonder: who studies this idea?
Is there a body of literature on 'change', and if so, which discipline of philosophy is most interested in the nature of 'change' and truths ...
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What is a second-order disposition?
I am reading this paper that makes references to "first-order dispositions" and "second-order dispositions" constantly, and I do not know what they really mean:
Joachim Horvath, ...
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