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Meta-Ontologie

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Meta-ontology deals with the nature of ontology and ontological questions. Some proponents of the term, which is of recent origin, distinguish 'ontology' (which investigates what there is) from 'meta'-ontology (which investigates what we are asking when we ask what there is).[1] Hofweber suggests that while strictly construed, meta-ontology is a metatheory, ontology when broadly construed contains its metatheory.[2] Inwagen[3] exemplifies meta-ontology using Rudolf Carnap's extension of Kant's analytic–synthetic distinction, a distinction between internal and external questions, respectively,[4] and Quine's famous refutations thereof.[5][6] Other publications about meta-ontology include a collection of essays,[7] and a book about the misuses of language that can arise in discussing ontology.[8]

Carnap and Quine

Vorlage:See also Inwagen exemplified meta-ontology by analyzing Quine's critique of Carnap's analytic/synthetic distinction.[3] raising the question of what techniques can be brought to bear in judging an ontology. [9]

Carnap's approach

Carnap argued that ontological questions are 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 (though according to Kurt Gödel, some are undecidable[10]), or they will have empirical answers understood from outside a framework.[11]

Carnap asserts that there is no need to suppose the objects referred to in a framework have any counterpart in 'reality': Vorlage:Quote

According to Carnap, the "internal" theory of something is a formal language whose interpretation, the 'something', is fixed at the point of application.[12] Whereas "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 answers,[13] theories "for the construction of a metalanguage for the analysis of the language of science [are meant] not as assertions, but rather as proposals".[11]

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The answers to "internal" questions that are found from within a framework are called analytic truths and are 'tautologies' or an equivalent to a logical truth such as: "Squares are rectangles", or "Elm Street is a street". On the other hand, "external" facts are synthetic and contingent upon experience: "Cockroaches are in New York", or "Elm Street is a dead-end street".[14]

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. [2]

Quine's approach

Quine's response to these arguments by Carnap extended over many publications and many years.[15][16][17] Quine argued that there is no sharp differentiation between internal and external questions, and their separation in Carnap's sense is is untenable.[15][16][17] There is not a sharp distinction between theory and observation. Quine held that an ontological commitment[18] 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.[2][14][15]

Vorlage:Quote

In regard to Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, Frank Ryan concludes his article on the analytic–synthetic distinction: Vorlage:Quote

Deflationism

Vorlage:See also A deflationary meta-ontological view argues that ontological questions, such as whether numbers exist, are meaningful only on the common sense level in which they are trivially true,[19] thereby accounting for the lack of progress in resolving a purportedly deeper philosophical sense of the question. Eklund, for example, considers the contemporary meta-ontological debate, for the most part, to be whether such deeply philosophical questions are genuinely worthwhile.[20] The deflationist meta-ontology view of Thomasson has been criticized as being inconsistent because it says that certain ontological questions are unanswerable, but her view of ontology answers them.[21]

The most prominent deflationist approach, that of Hilary Putnam and Eli Hirsch,[22] is to view ontological disputes as nothing more than verbal arguments wherein the only disagreement is one of definition or how we should use certain expressions. Hirsch holds that for any ontological position, a language exists in which that ontological position comes out to be true.[23][8]

Carnap's view holds that ontology, like all metaphysics, is meaningless. Carnap argues that ontological sentences are trivial within a 'framework' and meaningless outside of it.[4]

Further views

The basic issue that formed Inwagen's notion of meta-ontology is discussion of whether 'there exists...' has a different meaning for different kinds of things, for instance, material objects, minds, supernatural beings, numbers, or possibilities.[3] Inwagen, like Quine, suggested that there is no difference, leading to a 'flat' ontology in which all things exist in the same sense.[3]

Schaffer [24] argues that there is a different question for meta-ontology to discuss namely the classification of ontologies according to the hierarchical connections between the objects in them, and which are the fundamental objects and which are derived. He describes three possible approaches to ontology: 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.

Thomasson says that the Carnap-Quine debate is misplaced: "The real distinction instead is between existence questions asked using a linguistic framework and existence questions that are supposed to be asked somehow without being subject to those rules—asked, as Quine puts it ‘before the adoption of the given language’."[19]

See also

References

Vorlage:Reflist


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.
  • Amie L Thomasson: Carnap and the prospects for easy ontology.: „After more than fifty years, metaontology has come back in fashion.“ To be published in Ontology after Carnap Stephan Blatti & Sandra Lapointe (eds.)
  • Willard van Orman Quine: Pursuit of Truth. 2nd Auflage. Harvard University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-674-73950-7, Chapter 1: Evidence, S. 1 ff (google.ca).
  1. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Rosenkrantz.
  2. ↑ a b c Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Hofweber.
  3. ↑ a b c d Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Inwagen.
  4. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Carnap.
  5. ↑ J.J. Katz: Realistic Rationalism (= Representation and Mind Series). Mit Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-262-61151-0, S. 69 (google.com): „Carnap [1963] distinguished 'logical truths,' which 'do not state anything about the world of facts [but] hold for any possible combination of facts,' from 'factual truths,' which make empirical statements and do not hold for any possible combination of empirical facts. This reconstruction of Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact gave rise to a new empiricism. Thanks to Frege’s logical semantics, particularly his conception of analyticity, arithmetic truths like '7 + 5 = 12' are no longer synthetic a priori, but analytic a priori truths in Carnap’s extended sense of 'analytic.' Hence, logical empiricists are not subject to Kant’s criticism of Hume for throwing out mathematics along with metaphysics.“
  6. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Manley.
  7. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Chalmers.
  8. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Hirsch.
  9. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Inwagen2.
  10. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Godel.
  11. ↑ a b J.J. Katz: Realistic Rationalism (= Representation and Mind Series). Mit Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-262-61151-0, S. 70 (google.com): „Driven by his perennial positivism about the nature of philosophical disagreement, Carnap claimed that issues about logical or mathematical truth that arise outside linguistic systems with explicitly formulated rules for theoremhood are meaningless. Moreover, since there is no cognitive basis for external debate about the correctness of such systems, philosophers can do no more than propose linguistic systems. Anything (everything?) is okay as long as it is explicitly Formulated… Quine [1936] famously refuted the first answer, showing that stipulation cannot even explain the truth of logical laws (much less their certainty). Logical truths, being infinite in number, must be captured as instances of general principles, but, as logic is required for this enterprise, conventionalism offers no explanation of logical truth… Quine [1961] also mounted a powerful attack on the second answer. Carnap’s noncognitivism has two components: a positivistic motivation for the claim that linguistic systems are essentially unconstrained proposals and a conception of analyticity as a basis for the under standing of logic and mathematics. Since positivism was widely seen as a failed program, the issue came down to whether Carnap’s apparatus of meaning postulates can explain analyticity… [which] “might better be untendentiously [labeled] as ‘K’ so as not to seem to throw light on the interesting word ‘analytic’.” There is nothing to distinguish the recursively specified class of sentences with the label “analytic” from any other class of sentences, except for the fact that someone chose to label them such. [Camap, 1963] replied that analyticity is no worse off than other notions of formal logic, but this reply is grist for Quine’s mill. Construed along Carnapian lines, “S is a logical truth in L,” “S implies S’ in L,” and so on are, of course, no worse off than analyticity, but, as Quine sees it, they are no better off either.“
  12. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Kupers.
  13. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Burgess.
  14. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen McDonald.
  15. ↑ a b c Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Quine0.
  16. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Quine1.
  17. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Quine2.
  18. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen definition.
  19. ↑ a b Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Thomasson1.
  20. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Eklund.
  21. ↑ Jonathan Schaffer: The Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson's Ordinary Objects. In: Philosophical Books. 50. Jahrgang, Nr. 3, 3. Juli 2009, S. 142–157 (jonathanschaffer.org [PDF; abgerufen am 25. April 2013]). See p. 142.
  22. ↑ Amie L Thomasson: The Easy Approach to Ontology. In: Axiomathes. 19. Jahrgang, Nr. 1, 2009, S. 1–15 (amiethomasson.org): „But the vast majority of the metaontological discussion thus far has focused on a different sort of skeptical view: the view suggested by Hilary Putnam (1987) and prominently defended by Eli Hirsch (2002a, 2002b), that ontological debates are merely verbal disputes, in which the disputants simply talk past each other by using the quantifier with different meanings, although they are really (in some sense) ‘saying the same thing’, each in his or her own idiolect.“
  23. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Swetly.
  24. ↑ Referenzfehler: Ungültiges <ref>-Tag; kein Text angegeben für Einzelnachweis mit dem Namen Schaffer.
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