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Aaron Agassi wrote:
> Alas, in a nut shell, Chris Lofting is paralyzed by uncertainty. And his
> rejection of Ontology may yet kill the very modeling process he worships.
Somewhere along the line it seems that ontology changed or expanded (possibly
contracted) its meaning too?? This is way beyond anything I pretend to know
about other than that sometimes I hear people use the term in ways that seem
off-key or suggests something much more precise than the term may be able to
sustain.
Sorry if this has all been done before.
from a random website:
Definition according to Webster's Dictionary:
1.a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of
being
2.a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of
existence
Ontology (the "science of being") is a word, like metaphysics, that
is
used in many different senses. It is sometimes considered to be
identical to metaphysics, but we prefer to use it in a more
specific
sense, as that part of metaphysics that specifies the most
fundamental
categories of existence, the elementary substances or structures
out of
which the world is made. Ontology will thus analyse the most
general
and abstract concepts or distinctions that underlie every more
specific
description of any phenomenon in the world, e.g. time, space,
matter,
process, cause and effect, system.
Here is a Roman Catholic view (which is not my background):
from: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11258a.htm
Ontology
(on, ontos, being, and logos, science, the science or
philosophy of being).
I. DEFINITION
Though the term is used in this literal meaning by
Clauberg (1625-1665) (Opp., p.
281), its special application to the first department of
metaphysics was made by
Christian von Wolff (1679-1754) (Philos. nat., sec. 73).
Prior to this time "the
science of being" had retained the titles given it by its
founder Aristotle: "first
philosophy", "theology", "wisdom". The term "metaphysics"
(q.v.) was given a
wider extension by Wolff, who divided "real philosophy"
into general
metaphysics, which he called ontology, and special, under
which he included
cosmology, psychology, and theodicy. This programme has
been adopted with
little variation by most Catholic philosophers. The
subject-matter of ontology is
usually arranged thus:
1.The objective concept of being in its widest range,
as embracing the
actual and potential, is first analyzed, the problems
concerned with
essence (nature) and existence, "act" and "potency"
are discussed, and
the primary principles -- contradiction, identity,
etc. -- are shown to
emerge from the concept of entity.
2.The properties coextensive with being -- unity,
truth, and goodness, and
their immediately associated concepts, order and
beauty -- are next
explained.
3.The fundamental divisions of being into the finite
and the infinite, the
contingent and the necessary, etc., and the
subdivisions of the finite into
the categories (q.v.) substance and its accidents
(quantity, quality, etc.)
follow in turn -- the objective -- reality of
substance, the meaning of
personality, the relation of accidents (q.v.) to
substance being the most
prominent topics.
4.The concluding portion of ontology is usually devoted
to the concept of
cause and its primary divisions -- efficient and
final, material and formal
--the objectivity and analytical character of the
principle of causality
receiving most attention.
Ontology is not a subjective science as Kant describes it
(Ub. d. Fortschr. d.
Met., 98) nor "an inferential Psychology", as Hamilton
regards it (Metaphysics,
Lect. VII); nor yet a knowledge of the absolute
(theology); nor of some ultimate
reality whether conceived as matter or as spirit, which
Monists suppose to
underlie and produce individual real beings and their
manifestations. Ontology is
a fundamental interpretation of the ultimate constituents
of the world of
experience. All these constituents -- individuals with
their attributes -- have
factors or aspects in common. The atom and the molecule of
matter, the plant,
the animal, man, and God agree in this that each is a
being, has a characteristic
essence, an individual unity, truth, goodness, is a
substance and (God excepted)
has accidents, and is or may be a cause. All these common
attributes demand
definition and explanation -- definition not of their mere
names, but analysis of the
real object which the mind abstracts and reflectively
considers. Ontology is
therefore the fundamental science since it studies the
basal constituents and the
principles presupposed by the special sciences. All the
other parts of
philosophy, cosmology, psychology, theodicy, ethics, even
logic, rest on the
foundation laid by ontology. The physical sciences --
physics, chemistry,
biology, mathematics likewise, presuppose the same
foundations. Nevertheless
ontology is dependent in the order of analysis, though not
in the order of
synthesis, on these departments of knowledge; it starts
from their data and uses
their information in clarifying their presuppositions and
principles. Ontology is
accused of dealing with the merely abstract. But all
science is of the abstract,
the universal, not of the concrete and individual. The
physical sciences abstract
the various phenomena from their individual subjects; the
mathematical sciences
abstract the quantity -- number and dimensions -- from its
setting. Ontology
finally abstracts what is left -- the essence, existence,
substance, causalty, etc.
It is idle to say that of these ultimate abstractions we
can have no distinct
knowledge. The very negation of their knowableness shows
that the mind has
some knowledge of that which it attempts to deny. Ontology
simply endeavours
to make that rudimentary knowledge more distinct and
complete. There is a
thoroughly developed ontology in every course of Catholic
philosophy; and to its
ontology that philosophy owes its definiteness and
stability, while the lack of an
ontology in other systems explains their vagueness and
instability.
II. HISTORY
It was Aristotle who first constructed a well-defined and
developed ontology. In
his "Metaphysics" he analyses the simplest elements to
which the mind reduces
the world of reality. The medieval philosophers make his
writings the groundwork
of their commentaries in which they not only expand and
illustrate the thought,
but often correct and enrich it in the light of
Revelation. Notable instances are St.
Thomas Aquinas and Suarez (1548-1617). The "Disputationes
Metaphysicae" of
the latter is the most thorough work on ontology in any
language. The
Aristotelean writings and the Scholastic commentaries are
its groundwork and
largely its substance; but it amplifies and enriches both.
The work of Father
Harper mentioned below attempts to render it available for
English readers. The
author's untimely death, however, left the attempt far
from its prospected ending.
The movement of the mind towards the physical sciences --
which was largely
stimulated and accelerated by Bacon -- carried philosophy
away from the more
abstract truth. Locke, Hume, and their followers denied
the reality of the object of
ontology. We can know nothing, they held, of the essence
of things; substance
is a mental figment, accidents are subjective aspects of
an unknowable
noumenon; cause is a name for a sequence of phenomena.
These negations
have been emphasized by Comte, Huxley, and Spencer.
On the other hand the subjective and psychological
tendencies of Descartes and
his followers dimmed yet more the vision for metaphysical
truth. Primary notions
and principles were held to be either forms innate in the
mind or results of its
development, but which do not express objective reality.
Kant, analysing the
structure of the cognitive faculties -- perception,
judgment, reasoning -- discovers
in them innate forms that present to reflection aspects of
phenomena which
appear to be the objective realities, being, substance,
cause, etc., but which in
truth are only subjective views evoked by sensory stimuli.
The subject matter of
Ontology is thus reduced to the types which the mind,
until checked by
criticism, projects into the external world. Between these
two extremes of
Empiricism and Idealism the traditional philosophy retains
the convictions of
common sense and the subtle analysis of the Scholastics.
Being, essence,
truth, substance, accident, cause, and the rest, are words
expressing ideas but
standing for realities. These realities are objective
aspects of the individuals that
strike the senses and the intellect. They exist concretely
outside of the mind,
not, of course, abstractly as they are within. They are
the ultimate elementary
notes or forms which the mind intuitively discerns,
abstracts, and reflectively
analyses in its endeavour to comprehend fundamentally any
object. In this
reflective analysis it must employ whatever information it
can obtain from
empirical psychology. Until recently this latter auxiliary
has been insufficiently
recognized by the philosophers. The works, however, of
Maher and Walker
mentioned below manifest a just appreciation of the
importance of psychology's
cooperation in the study of ontology.
CATHOLIC: HARPER, The Metaphysics of the School (London,
1879-84); DE WULF, Scholasticism
Old and New, tr. COFFEY (Dublin, 1907); PERRIER, The
revival of Scholastic Philosophy in the
Nineteenth Century (New York, 1909) (full bibliography);
RICKABY, General Metaphysics (London,
1898); WALKER, Theories of Knowledge (London, 1910);
MAHER, Psychology (London, 1903);
BALMES, Fundamental Philosophy (tr., New York, 1864);
TURNER, History of Philosophy (Boston,
1903); MERCIER, Ontologie (Louvain, 1905); DOMET DE
VORGES, Abrege de metaphysique
(Paris, 1906); DE REGNON, Metaphysique des causes (Paris,
1906); GUTBERLET, Allgemeine
Metaphysik (Munster, 1897); URRABURU, Institutiones
philosophiae (Valladolid, 1891); BLANC,
Dictionnaire de philosophie (Paris, 1906). NON-CATHOLIC:
MCCOSH, First and Fundamental
Truths (New York, 1894); IDEM, The Intuitions of the Mind"
(New York, 1880); LADD, Knowledge,
Life and Reality (New York, 1909); TAYLOR, Elements of
Metaphysics (London, 1903);
WINDELBAND, History of Philosophy (tr., New York, 1901);
BALDWIN, Dictionary of Philosophy and
Psychology (New York, 1902); EISLER, Worterbuch der
philos. Begriffe (Berlin, 1904).
F.P. SIEGFRIED
Transcribed by Robert H. Sarkissian
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