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Meta-ontology deals with the nature of ontology and ontological questions. Hofweber suggests that strictly construed, meta-ontology is a metatheory, but ontology broadly construed contains its metatheory. Proponents of the use of the term, which is of recent origin, distinguish between ontology (which investigates what there is) from meta-ontology (which investigates what we are asking when we ask what there is). Inwagen traces the issue to Rudolf Carnap's distinction, introduced in 1950, between internal and external questions. and his differences with Quine. Other publications about meta-ontology include a collection of essays, and a book about the misuses of language that can arise in discussing ontology.

Carnap and Quine

Carnap argued that ontological questions are ambiguous. They may be understood either from within a given conceptual framework, in which case they are to be answered by appeal to the rules of the framework, and some will have obvious answers and some will have rather difficult (or even undecidable) answers, or else they may be understood from outside a framework, as asking whether there are "really" any such things, regardless of their existence within the framework. According to Carnap, the theory of something is a formal language whose interpretation, the 'something', is fixed at the point of application. Carnap argued that this "external" question about the existence of 'such-and-such' is tantamount to asking whether one should adopt the framework in question, and this is a question to which there is no objectively correct answer, because there may be pragmatic considerations for or against such an adoption.

The answers to 'internal' questions that are found from within a framework are called analytic truths and are 'logical truths' or an equivalent to a logical truth (examples are: "Squares are rectangles", or "Elm Street is a street" ). On the other hand, what we might call 'facts' of experience are synthetic truths. (Examples might be: "Cockroaches are in New York", or "Elm Street is a dead-end street.")

Carnap argued that the 'internal' questions were too trivial to concern philosophers (no factual content), who should be concerned with 'deep' issues. On the other hand, he argued that the 'external' questions (those with factual content), being inextricably involved in plebeian pragmatic and practical decisions, were not philosophical issues either, leaving no useful questions for ontology.

The debate between Quine and Carnap on ontology is considered by some a classic in the field. Quine argued that there is no sharp differentiation between internal and external questions, and their separation in Carnap's sense is is untenable. There is not a sharp distinction between theory and observation. Quine held that an ontological commitment to the existence of 'such-and-such' was inseparable from the framework behind that commitment, and the distinction between analytic and synthetic truths was invalid.

Van Inwagen believes that Quine engaged in meta-ontology. The central message of Quine is the rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction. According to Ryan, this view is supported by Nelson Goodman, Morton White, and Hilary Putnam while H.P. Grice and P.F. Strawson, among others, suggest Quine has oversimplified matters by extending analyticity beyond mere logical tautology.

The Carnap-Quine debate has been generalized recently by Schaffer. Schaffer suggests that the dichotomy exemplified by Quine and Carnap is not the whole issue regarding what ontology is, but there is a different question to discuss: the hierarchical connections between the objects in an ontology and which are the fundamental objects and which are derived. He describes three possible approaches to ontology, as shown in the figure. He calls them flat (top), that is an array of undifferentiated objects; sorted, that is an array of classified objects (center); and ordered (bottom), that is an array of inter-related objects. Schaffer says Quine's ontology is flat, a mere listing of objects, while Aristotle's is ordered, with an emphasis upon identifying the most fundamental objects. Perhaps Carnap's ontology might fall into the "sorted" category with the sorting into two categories: 'analytic' and 'synthetic' objects, neither of which he felt was interesting enough for a significant ontology.

See also

• Metaphilosophy
• Meta-epistemology
• Philosophy of science
• Subject–object problem

Further reading

• David Chalmers, David Manley, Ryan Wasserman: Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology. Oxford University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-19-954604-5 (google.com).  Chapter 2: Composition, Colocation and Metaontology" (Karen Bennett); Chapter 6: The Metaonology of Abstraction (Bob Hale, Crispin Wright)
• Frank X Ryan: American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia. Hrsg.: John Lachs, Robert B. Talisse, eds. Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 0-203-49279-X, Analytic: Analytic/Synthetic, S. 36–39 (google.com). 
• Eli Hirsch: Quantifier Variance and Realism : Essays in Metaontology. Oxford University Press, 2011, ISBN 0-19-973211-6 (google.com): „'''meta-ontology''': a term that has recently become popular, referring to the philosophical theory concerning the nature and proper methodology for ontology, including the nature of existence claims. p. 278“ 
• Peter van Inwagen: Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics. Cambridge University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-521-79548-6, Chapter 1: Meta-ontology, S. 13 ff (google.com). 
• Julian Dodd: Adventures in the metaontology of art: local descriptivism, artefacts and dreamcatchers. In: Philosophical Studies. Springer, 10. August 2012, doi:10.1007/s11098-012-9999-z (springer.com). 
• Matti Eklund: Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics. Hrsg.: Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne, Dean W. Zimmerman, eds. Blackwell, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4051-1228-4, The Picture of Reality as an Amorphous Lump, S. 382 ff (cornell.edu [PDF]): Metaontology, which I will be concerned with, is about what ontology is. l.

External links

• PhilPapers metaontology
• Scholarly papers on metaontology
• David Chalmers: Ontological Anti-Realism
• Cian Dorr: What We Disagree About When We Disagree About Ontology
• Logic and Ontology Article by Thomas Hofweber, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy