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On the Substantive Nature of Disagreements in Ontology
Author(s) -
KOSLICKI KATHRIN
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00431.x
Subject(s) - skepticism , epistemology , nothing , mereology , philosophy , ontology , metaphysics , argument (complex analysis) , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , nihilism , mathematics , statistics , chemistry , biochemistry
This paper concerns a fundamental dispute in ontology between the “ Foundational Ontologist ”, who believes that there is only one correct way of characterizing what there is, and the ontological “ Skeptic ”, who believes that there are viable alternative characterizations of what there is. I examine in detail an intriguing recent proposal in Dorr (2005), which promises to yield (i) a way of interpreting the Skeptic by means of a counter/actual semantics; and (ii) a way of converting the Skeptic to a position within Foundational Ontology, viz., that of Nihilism (according to which nothing composes anything and the world consists of mereological simples); this alleged conversion crucially turns on a novel notion of “ metaphysical analyticity ”. I argue that both components of Dorr's proposal are problematic in central ways: as a result, the Foundational Ontologist gains an indirect argument against the coherence of the Skeptic's position; and the non‐Nihilist Foundational Ontologist may feel confirmed in his doubts towards the Nihilist outlook.