A Study in Personal Ontology

University Press Scholarship Online
You are looking at 1-10 of 708 items for: keywords : ontology
What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology

Eric T. Olson
Published in print: 2007 Published Online: Publisher: Oxford University Press
September 2007 DOI: 10.1093/
ISBN: 9780195176421 eISBN: 9780199872008 acprof:oso/9780195176421.001.0001
Item type: book
Discussions of personal identity commonly ignore the question of

our basic metaphysical nature: whether we are biological organisms,
spatial or temporal parts of organisms, bundles of perceptions, or what
have you. This book is a general study of this question. It begins by
explaining what the question means and how it differs from others,
such as questions of personal identity and the mind-body problem. It
then examines critically the main possible accounts of our metaphysical
nature. The book does not endorse any particular account but argues
that the matter turns on issues in the ontology of material objects.
If composition is universalif any material things whatever make up
something biggerthen we are temporal parts of organisms. If things
never compose anything bigger, so that there are only mereological
simples, then either we are simplesperhaps the immaterial souls of
Descartesor we do not exist at all. If some things compose bigger things
and others do not, we are organisms.
The Language and Reality of Time

Thomas Sattig
September 2006 DOI: 10.1093/0199279527.001.0001
ISBN: 9780199279524 eISBN: 9780191604041
Item type: book
The book develops a comprehensive framework for doing philosophy

of time. It brings together a variety of different perspectives, linking
the ordinary conception of time with the physicists conception, and
linking questions about time addressed in metaphysics with questions
addressed in the philosophy of language. Within this framework, the
book explores the temporal dimension of the material world in relation to
the temporal dimension of our ordinary discourse about the world. The
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discussion is centred around the dispute between three-dimensionalists
and four-dimensionalists about whether the temporal profile of ordinary
objects mirrors their spatial profile. Are ordinary objects extended
in time in the same way in which they are extended in space? Do
they have temporal as well as spatial parts? Four-dimensionalists say
yes, three-dimensionalists say no. The book develops an original
three-dimensionalist picture of the material world, and argues that
this picture is preferable to its four-dimensionalists rivals if ordinary
thought and talk are taken seriously. Among the issues discussed
are the metaphysics of persistence, change, composition, location,
coincidence, and relativity; the ontology of past, present, and future; and
the semantics of predication, tense, temporal modifiers, and sortal terms.
Artworld Metaphysics
Robert Kraut
January 2008 DOI: 10.1093/
Item type: book
The artworld is a complicated place. It contains acts of artistic creation,

interpretation, evaluation, preservation, misunderstanding, and
condemnation. The goal of this book is to turn a critical reflective eye
upon various aspects of the artworld, and to articulate some of the
problems, principles, and norms implicit in the actual practices of artistic
creation, interpretation, evaluation, and commodification. Aesthetic
theory is treated as a descriptive, rather than normative, enterprise:
one that relates to artworld realities as a semantic theory relates to the
fragments of natural language it seeks to describe. Sustained efforts
are made to illuminate emotional expression, correct interpretation,
and objectivity in the context of artworld practice; the relevance of jazz
to aesthetic theory; the goals of ontology (artworld and otherwise);
the relation(s) between art and language; and the relation(s) between
artistic/critical practice and aesthetic theory.
The Universe As We Find It

John Heil
Item type: book
This book offers answers to the following questions. What does reality
encompass? Is reality exclusively physical? Or does reality include non
physical mental, and perhaps abstract aspects? What is it to be
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physical or mental or to be an abstract entity? What are the elements
of being, realitys building blocks? How is the manifest image we inherit
from our culture and refine in the special sciences related to the scientific
image as we have it in fundamental physics? Can physics be understood
as providing a theory of everything, or do the various sciences make
up a hierarchy corresponding to autonomous levels of reality? Is our
conscious human perspective on the universe in the universe or at its
limits? What, if anything, makes ordinary truths, truths of the special
sciences, and truths of mathematics true? And what is it for an assertion
or judgment to be made true? Answers to these questions are framed
in terms of a comprehensive ontology of substances and properties
inspired by Descartes, Locke, their successors, and their more recent
exemplars. Substances are simple, lacking parts that are themselves
substances. Properties are modes (tropes), particular ways particular
substances are, not universals. Arrangements of propertied substances
serve as truthmakers for all the truths that have truthmakers. The deep
story about the nature of these truthmakers is addressed by fundamental
physics.
Being, Humanity, and Understanding

G. E. R. Lloyd
Item type: book
This book explores the variety of ideas and assumptions that humans
have entertained concerning three main topics, first being, or what
there is, secondly humanity what makes a human being a human
and thirdly understanding, namely both of the world and of one another.
Amazingly diverse views have been held on these issues by different
individuals and collectivities in both ancient and modern times. The
aim is to juxtapose the evidence available from ethnography and from
the study of ancient societies, both to describe that diversity and to
investigate the problems it poses. Many of the ideas in question are
deeply puzzling, even paradoxical, to the point where they have often
been described as irrational or frankly unintelligible. Many implicate
fundamental moral issues and value judgements, where again we may
seem to be faced with an impossible task in attempting to arrive at a fair-
minded evaluation. How far does it seem that we are all the prisoners
of the conceptual systems of the collectivities to which we happen to
belong? To what extent and in what circumstances is it possible to
challenge the basic concepts of such systems? This study examines
these questions crossculturally and seeks to draw out the implications
for the revisability of some of our habitual assumptions concerning such
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topics as ontology, morality, nature, relativism, incommensurability, the
philosophy of language, and the pragmatics of communication.
Persistence and Spacetime

Yuri Balashov
Item type: book
Material objects persist through time and survive change. How do

they manage to do so? What are the underlying facts of persistence?
Do objects persist by being wholly present at all moments of time
at which they exist? Or do they persist by having distinct temporal
segments confined to the corresponding times? Are objects three
dimensional entities extended in space, but not in time? Or are they
fourdimensional spacetime worms? These are matters of intense
debate, which is now driven by concerns about two major issues in
fundamental ontology: parthood and location. It is in this context that
broadly empirical considerations are increasingly brought to bear
on the debate about persistence. The book explores this decidedly
positive tendency. It begins by stating major rival views of persistence
endurance, perdurance, and exdurancein a spacetime framework
and proceeds to investigate the implications of Einstein's theory of
relativity for the debate about persistence. The overall conclusion
that relativistic considerations favor fourdimensionalism over three
dimensionalismis hardly surprising. It is, however, anything but trivial.
Contrary to a common misconception, there is no straightforward
argument from relativity to fourdimensionalism. The issues involved are
complex, and the debate is closely entangled with a number of other
philosophical disputes, including those about the nature and ontology of
time, parts and wholes, material constitution, causation and properties,
and vagueness.
Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays

Matthew Nudds and Casey O'Callaghan (eds)
February 2010 DOI: 10.1093/
Item type: book
This book comprises original chapters that address the central questions
and issues that define the emerging philosophy of sounds and auditory
perception. This work focuses upon two sets of interrelated concerns.
The first is a constellation of debates concerning the ontology of
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sounds. What kinds of things are sounds, and what properties do
sounds have? For instance, are sounds secondary qualities, physical
properties, waves, or some type of event? The second is a set of
questions about the contents of auditory experiences and of hearing.
How are sounds experienced to be? What sorts of things and properties
are experienced in auditory perception? For example, in what sense is
auditory experience spatial; do we hear sources in addition to sounds;
what is distinctive about musical listening; and what do we hear when
we hear speech? An introductory chapter summarises many of the issues
discussed, provides a summary of the contributions and shows how they
are connected.
Metaphysical Essays
John Hawthorne
Item type: book
John Hawthorne is widely regarded as one of the finest philosophers

working today. He is perhaps best known for his contributions to
metaphysics, and this book collects his most notable papers in this field.
The book offers original treatments of fundamental topics in philosophy,
including identity, ontology, vagueness, and causation.
The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for

Natural Science
E. J. Lowe
Published in print: 2005 Published Online: May Publisher: Oxford University Press
2006 DOI: 10.1093/0199254397.001.0001
ISBN: 9780199254392 eISBN: 9780191603600
Item type: book
The four-category ontology is a metaphysical system recognizing two

fundamental categorial distinctions these being between the particular
and the universal, and between the substantial and the non-substantial
which cut across each other to generate four fundamental ontological
categories. The four categories thus generated are substantial particulars
(objects), non-substantial particulars (modes), substantial universals
(kinds), and non-substantial universals (attributes). This ontology
has a lengthy pedigree, with many commentators attributing a version
of it to Aristotle on the basis of certain passages in one of his early
works, the Categories. Although it has been revived or rediscovered
at various times during the history of western philosophy, it has never
found widespread favour, perhaps due to its apparent lack of parsimony
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and its commitment to universals. In pursuit of ontological economy,
metaphysicians have generally preferred to recognize fewer than four
fundamental ontological categories. This book contends that the four-
category ontology has an explanatory power which is unrivalled by more
parsimonious systems, and that this counts decisively in its favour.
It provides a uniquely powerful explanatory framework for a unified
account of causation, dispositions, natural laws, natural necessity, and
many other related matters, such as the semantics of counterfactual
conditionals. The book is divided into four parts: the first setting out the
framework of the four-category ontology, the second focusing on its
central distinction between object and property, the third exploring its
applications in the philosophy of natural science, and the fourth dealing
with fundamental issues of truth and realism.
Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology

Stewart Shapiro
November 2003 DOI: 10.1093/0195139305.001.0001
ISBN: 9780195139303 eISBN: 9780199833658
Item type: book
The philosophy of mathematics articulated and defended in this book

goes by the name of structuralism, and its slogan is that mathematics
is the science of structure. The subject matter of arithmetic, for example,
is the natural number structure, the pattern common to any countably
infinite system of objects with a distinguished initial object and a
successor relation that satisfies the induction principle. The essence
of each natural number is its relation to the other natural numbers.
One way to understand structuralism is to reify structures as ante rem
universals. This would be a platonism concerning mathematical objects,
which are the places within such structures. Alternatively, one can
take an eliminative, in re approach, and understand talk of structures
as shorthand for talk of systems of objects or, invoking modality,
talk of possible systems of objects. Shapiro argues that although the
realist, ante rem approach is the most perspicuous, in a sense, the
various accounts are equivalent. Along the way, the ontological and
epistemological aspects of the structuralist philosophies are assessed.
One key aspect is to show how each philosophy deals with reference
to mathematical objects. The view is tentatively extended to objects
generally: to science and ordinary discourse.
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University Press Scholarship Online

You are looking at 1-10 of 708 items for: keywords : ontology

What Are We?: A Study in Personal Ontology

Discussions of personal identity commonly ignore the question of

The Language and Reality of Time

The book develops a comprehensive framework for doing philosophy

The artworld is a complicated place. It contains acts of artistic creation,

The Universe As We Find It

Being, Humanity, and Understanding

Persistence and Spacetime

Material objects persist through time and survive change. How do

Sounds and Perception: New Philosophical Essays

John Hawthorne is widely regarded as one of the finest philosophers

The Four-Category Ontology: A Metaphysical Foundation for

The four-category ontology is a metaphysical system recognizing two

Philosophy of Mathematics: Structure and Ontology

The philosophy of mathematics articulated and defended in this book

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