180110 SE Metaontology (2025S)

METAONTOLOGY

I. Aims
The aim of this course is to think more carefully about the presuppositions of ontology and ontological questions.

II. Contents
It is routine to make and assess claims about what there is. There is, for example, a city called Wiener Neustadt but there is no city called Pariser Neustadt. If the claim that Fido is brown is about the brownness of Fido, then intuitively the foregoing examples are about the being of cities. But while we know a good deal about what it is for something to be brown, it’s rather less clear what it is for something to be. The goal of this seminar is to advance our understanding of being. Doing so takes us to the heart of ontology, the study of what it is to be. In particular, whereas traditionally ontologists have been preoccupied with questions about what there is—whether there are universals, whether a whole is something over and above its parts etc.—our interest is foundational: we want to know more about what exactly ontologists are doing in posing the foregoing problems. What factors make an ontological argument better or worse? What difference does it make whether there are composite objects? What are ontologists even arguing about? These questions are sometimes described as metaontological.

We’ll begin by considering the logical form of claims about what there is and introduce the idea of “ontological commitment”—the being-related content of a claim. We’ll focus first on a standard Quinean approach that ties ontological commitment to quantification. Next, we’ll then consider some different theories about the bearers of ontological commitment—the elements of an assertion that entail ontological commitments—and discuss various deflationist views according to which ontological debates are not substantive. We’ll also consider Sider’s defence of so-called ontological realism in the face of deflationist arguments. Next we’ll turn to look at different theories of ontology: how many things are there, are there different ways to be, are some things more real than others, are there things that don’t exist, etc. Finally, we’ll consider some alternatives to Quinean methodologies, inspired by the work of Aristotle and Kant.

Each session will focus on a seminal text from the literature in contemporary analytic metaphysics. Students will have an opportunity to see how various authors respond to and criticize one another and to gain a sense for the development of thinking in this area over the past century.

III. Methods
Teaching will involve seminar discussion, reading, etc.