Ontology and Epistemology

Ontology: The branch of metaphysics (philosophy concerning the overall nature of what
things are) is concerned with identifying, in the most general terms, the kinds of things
that actually exist. In other words addressing the question: What is existence? and What is
the nature of existence? When we ask deep questions about "what is the nature of the
universe?" or "Is there a god?" or "What happens to us when we die?" or "What principles
govern the properties of matter?" we are asking inherently ontological questions.

Epistemology: The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge itself, its
possibility, scope, and general basis. More broadly: How do we go about knowing things? or
How do we separate true ideas from false ideas? or How do we know what is true? or "How can we
be confident when we have located 'truth'?" "What are the systematic ways we can determine
when something is good or bad?"

So ontology is about what is true and epistemology then is about methods of figuring out
those truths.

The split between Plato and Aristotle is both ontological and epistemic. The
split between religion and science is both ontological and epistemic. For example,
religion and science offer two very different ontologies (theories about what is out there) and
epistemology (ways to figure out what is out there). And the split between Plato and
Aristotle matches exactly the split between religion and science...and you should
leave this class understanding why and how! See Plato vs. Aristotle

Ontology is the theory of objects and their ties. It provides criteria for
distinguishing different types of objects (concrete and abstract, existent and
nonexistent, real and ideal, independent and dependent) and their ties
(relations, dependencies and predication).
We can distinguish: a) formal, b) descriptive and c) formalized ontologies.
a) Formal ontology was introduced by Edmund Husserl in his Logical
Investigations (1): according to Husserl, its object is the study of the genera of
being, the leading regional concepts, i.e., the categories; its true method is the
eidetic reduction coupled with the method of categorial intuition. The
phenomenological ontology is divided into two: (I) Formal, and (II) Regional, or
Material, Ontologies.
The former investigates the problem of truth on three basic levels: (a) Formal
Apophantics, or formal logic of judgments, where the a priori conditions for the
possibility of the doxic certainty of reason are to be sought, along with (b) the
synthetic forms for the possibility of the axiological, and (c) "practical" truths. In
other words it is divided into formal logic, formal axiology, and formal praxis.
In contemporary philosophy, formal ontology has been developed in two
principal ways. The first approach has been to study formal ontology as a part of
ontology, and to analyze it using the tools and approach of formal logic: from
this point of view formal ontology examines the logical features of predication
and of the various theories of universals. The use of the specific paradigm of the
set theory applied to predication, moreover, conditions its interpretation.
This approach is best exemplified by Nino Cocchiarella; according to whom
"Formal Ontology is the result of combining the intuitive, informal method of
classical ontology with the formal, mathematical method of modern symbolic
logic, and ultimately of identifying them as different aspects of one and the same
science. That is, where the method of ontology is the intuitive study of the
fundamental properties, modes, and aspects of being, or of entities in general,
and the method of modern symbolic logic is the rigorous construction of formal,
axiomatic systems, formal ontology, the result of combining these two methods,
is the systematic, formal, axiomatic development of the logic of all forms of
being. As such, formal ontology is a science prior to all others in which particular
forms, modes, or kinds of being are studied." (2)
The second line of development returns to its Husserlian origins and analyses
the fundamental categories of object, state of affairs, part, whole, and so forth, as
well as the relations between parts and the whole and their laws of dependence
-- once all material concepts have been replaced by their correlative form
concepts relative to the pure 'something'. This kind of analysis does not deal
with the problem of the relationship between formal ontology and material
ontology." (3).
b) Descriptive ontology concerns the collection of information about the list of
objects that can be dependent or independent items (real or ideal).
c) Formalized ontology attempts to constructs a formal codification for the
results descriptively acquired at the preceding levels.
Notes
(1) "To the best of my knowledge, the idea of a formal ontology makes its first
literary appearance in Volume I of my Logische Untersuchungen (1900),
[Chapter 11, The Idea of Pure Logic] in connexion with the attempt to explicate
systematically the idea of a pure logic -- but not yet does it appear there under
the name of formal ontology, which was introduced by me only later.
The Logische Untersuchungen as a whole and, above all, the investigations in
Volume II ventured to take up in a new form the old idea of an a priori ontology
-- so strongly interdicted by Kantianism and empiricism -- and attempted to
establish it, in respect of concretely executed portions, as an idea necessary to
philosophy." E. Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929), English
translation: The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff 1969, p. 86.
(2) Formal Ontology, in: Barry Smith, Hans Burkhardt (eds.), Handbook of
Metaphysics and Ontology, Munich: Philosophia Verlag 1991 p. 640.
(3) Liliana Albertazzi, Formal and Material Ontology, in: Roberto Poli, Peter
Simons (eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht: Kluwer 1996, p. 199 (notes
omitted).

Major Ontologists
The main intellectual links from the major ontologists of Nineteenth
century: Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), and Gottlob
Frege (1848-9125) to contemporary thinkers are traced in the "Table of
Ontologists":
For details see Table of Ontologists of 19th and 20th Centuries
Detailed information (bibliographies, abstract of relevant publications, and
selections of critical judgments) for the thinkers mentioned in the Table of
Ontologists are partly available and will be completed in the near future; I will
publish also pages in French and Italian with selections of critical studies
available in these languages, but not translated in English.
An important feature of this site will be the bibliographies about the history of
ontology, selected authors and ontological topics that have not yet been covered
in such detail; bibliographical entries will not only include the most relevant
books, but also a selection of articles from about one hundred philosophical
reviews; attention will be paid to the relations with logic, semantics and
semiotics, in particular to the theories of predication and reference and to the
relation between thought, language and the world.
The completion of this job will require some years; more than 15,000
bibliographic references are already available in the following languages, in
decreasing order of frequency: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish,
Portuguese; the Bibliographies will be constantly expanded and updated, and
new abstracts of existing entries will be added.
I wish to apologize to readers of other languages, not included only because of
my limited knowledge of foreign languages (my mother tongue is Italian), but I
hope that students and researchers will find sufficient material for a more
thorough study and will enjoy discovering many philosophical treasures, some
little known, but in no way less significant.

Metaphysics and Theory of Objects

Metaphysics is the science that studies being qua being (Aristotle, Metaphysics,
Book Gamma), in other words it considers reality, which is to say existent or
actual objects; according to Alexius Meinong, the theory of objects is an a priori
science which concerns the whole of what is given, existent or nonexistent.
Existent objects must be distinguished from subsistent or ideal objects, such as
identity, diversity, or number. Existence and subsistence are the two forms of
being, whereas the 'pure object' considered in the theory of objects is beyond
being and nonbeing (On the Theory of Objects, 1904).
Before Meinong, the Polish philosopher Twardowski developed, according to
Ingarden, in his On the Content and Object of Presentations. A Psychological
Investigation (1894), "the first consistently constructed theory of objects
manifesting a certain theoretical unity since the times of Scholasticism and the
' Ontologia' of Christian Wolff [1730]." (4)
"The relationship between Husserl's conception of ontology and the 'theory of
objects' of Meinong has long been misunderstood. As conceived in the Logical
Investigations [1900], the idea of ontology is not eidetic science of objects.
The mathesis universalis is accordingly an ontology (only the word is avoided in
the first edition). It is characterized as the a priori science of objects in general,
and correlatively of meanings in general, i.e., of meanings which refer to objects
in general. Inasmuch as that is brought out clearly in both volumes, Husserl
observes that no one is justified in trying to instruct him with regard to the
'object-theoretical' character of formal logic and mathematics. Indeed, the third
investigation is explicitly declared to belong to the 'a priori theory of objects as
such,' and Husserl suggests that it is this passage that led to the formation of the
undesirable expression ' Gegenstandstheorie [Theory of objects].' Ontology, or
the theory of objects in the present sense, not only comprises all that relates to
the field of the pure mathesis universalis, but includes the first volume as well as
the third and fourth investigations of the second volume." (5)
Notes
(4) Roman Ingarden, "The Scientific Activity of Kazimierz Twardowski", Studia
Philosophica, 1947, pp. 23.
(5) Marvin Farber, The Foundation of Phenomenology. Edmund Husserl and the
Quest for a Rigorous Science of Philosophy, Cambridge: Harvard University
Press 1943; reprint: Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2006, pp. 205-206.

Formal Ontology as a Characteristica Universalis

"A system of logic can be constructed under two quite different aspects. On the
one hand, it can be developed as a formal calculus and studied independently of
whatever content it might be used to represent. Such a formal system in that
case is only a calculus ratiocinator. On the other hand, a system of logic can be
constructed somewhat along the lines of what Leibniz, called a characteristica
universalis. Such a system, according to Leibniz, was to serve three main
purposes. The first was that of an international auxiliary language that would
enable the people of different countries to speak and communicate with one
another. Apparently, because Latin was no longer a "living" language and new
trade routes were opening up to lands with many different local languages, the
possibility of such an international auxiliary language was widely considered and
discussed in the 17th and 18th centuries. (...)
In any case notwithstanding its visionary goal, the idea of an international
auxiliary language is not the purpose of a formal ontology. The second and third
purposes Leibniz set for his characteristica universalis are what distinguish it
from its precursors and give his program its formal or logistic methodology. The
second purpose that the universal character is to be based upon an ars
combinatoria, i.e. an ideography or system of symbolization, that would enable it
to provide a logical analysis of all of the actual and possible concepts that might
arise in science. Such an ars combinatoria would contain both a theory of logical
form, i.e., a theory of all the possible forms that a meaningful expression might
have in such a language, and a theory of definitional forms, i.e., a theory of the
operations whereby one could construct new concepts on the basis of already
given concepts. The third purpose was that the universal character must contain
a calculus ratiocinator, and in particular a complete system of deduction and
valid argument forms, by which, through a study of the consequences, or
implications, of what was already known, it could serve as an instrument of
knowledge. These two purposes are central to the notion of a formal ontology."
(pp. 4-5)
From: Nino Cocchiarella, Formal Ontology and Conceptual Realism, Dordrecht:
Kluwer 2007.
Different Approaches
Two definitions from philosophers of the Analytic tradition:
"Ontology is intimately related to metaphysics, the theory of ultimate categories
of things. Andronicus of Rhodes coined meta ta physica as meaning the writings
coming "after the physics" in his collation of Aristotle, but metaphysics is really
the study with which those writings deal. Some might say that the categories are
ultimate differentiations of being and that ontology is the study of
undifferentiated being. Now insofar as metaphysics is the study of the nature
and existence of broad categories of things, ontology is a branch of metaphysics
by logical courtesy. It deals, paradoxically, with the nature and existence of the
"category" of undifferentiated being. But strictly speaking, ontology is
transcategorial. Of course, if we say, "To be is to be material," we do equate the
study of being with the study of matter. But the equation is transcategorial in its
very elimination of all categories other than matter. Of course, some ontologists
admit different kinds or degrees of being. But even if every metaphysical
category is also a kind of being and viceversa, so that the words "metaphysics"
and " ontology" are coextensive, those words are still not synonymous. Certainly
when they are used as I have explained them, they are not
intersubstitutable salva veritate in every context of discussion.
What does the objective world include? Common-sensically, it divides into many
objects: the Sun, the Moon, stars, trees, people, and so on. We also speak and
think about thoughts, smiles, numbers, and many other things. There are many
similarities and differences among all these things, and this makes hierarchies of
classifications possible. Leo the lion and Felix the cat are both feline, and so on.
Insofar as our classificatory purposes may vary, the genera of one system may be
the differentia of another. Humans compared to cats are generically animal and
differentially rational; humans compared to angels are generically rational and
differentially animal. (...)
Any system of classifications, on pain of admitting an infinite series of
classifications, will end with summa genera or ultimate classifications. This is
the level of metaphysical categories. Where change consists of something of a
given kind losing old properties and acquiring new ones, nothing can
conceivably change in its metaphysical category. It is conceivable that Socrates
can fall asleep, learn things, or even change into a rock or tree. But it is not
conceivable that Socrates can change into time or into a number. We are not
able to describe such transitions because we find nothing generically underlying
them to persist through or undergo the transition. Perhaps that is only because
such logic-metaphysical substrata have not been found yet in any plausible
classificatory system. But I suspect the reason is that our most fundamental
classifications are, at least in part, correct." (7).
"The word "ontology" has four established meanings in philosophy. There are
two intersecting sets of distinctions. Pure philosophical ontology is different
from applied scientific ontology, and ontology in the applied scientific sense can
be understood either as a discipline or a domain.
Ontology as a discipline is a method or activity of enquiry into philosophical
problems about the concept or facts of existence. Ontology as a domain is the
outcome or subject matter of ontology as a discipline. Applied scientific ontology
construed as an existence domain can be further subdivided as the theoretical
commitment to a preferred choice of existent entities, or to the real existent
entities themselves, including the actual world considered as a whole, also
known as the extant domain. Ontology as a theoretical domain is thus a
description or inventory of the things that are supposed to exist according to a
particular theory, which might but need not be true. Ontology as the extant
domain, in contrast, is the actual world of all real existent entities, whatever
these turn out to be, identified by a true complete applied ontological theory. As
a result, we must be careful in reading philosophical works on ontology, when an
author speaks of "ontology" without qualification, not to confuse the intended
sense of the word with any of the alternatives." (8).
In: "A Short Glossary of Metaphysics" by Peter Simons with additional entries by
Ross P. Cameron (*), the following definition is given:
"ONTOLOGY. From onto-logos, the science of being. A surprisingly late
coinage. The Latin term ontologia was felicitously invented in 1613,
independently, by two German philosophers, Rudolf Gockel (Goclenius) in
his Lexicon Philosophicum and Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus), in his Theatrum
Philosophicum, but first entered general circulation when popularized
by Christian Wolff in his Latin writings, especially his Philosophia Prima sive
Ontologia of 1730. The first known English use of the term "ontology" is 1720.
(1) General as distinct from special metaphysics. (2) More limitedly, the list or
table of basic kinds of entities. (3) Attributively, as in "Quine's ontology," the
basic kinds of entities assumed by a given philosopher. (4) In Ingarden's
philosophy, the study of all possible general arrangements of the world, by
comparison with metaphysics which concerns only what actually exists. (5)
Recently and loosely, in computer science, a set of categories for programming
and data representation which is independent of particular hardware, software
or implementations."
This definition is historically inaccurate: the Latin word ontologia was created
in 1606 by Lorhard (seven years before Gockel) and the first occurrence of
"ontology" in English can be found in a work by Gideon Harvey of 1663 (see
"Birth of a New Science: the History of Ontology from Suárez to Kant").
Notes
(*) Appendix to: Robin Le Poidevin et al. (eds.), The Routledge Companion to
Metaphysics, New York: Routledge 2009, pp. 590-591.
(7) Jan Dejnožka, The Ontology of the Analytic Tradition and Its Origins.
Realism and Identity in Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and Quine, New York:
Rowman & Littlefield 1996, p. 7.
(8) Dale Jacquette, Ontology, Montreal: Mc-Gill-Queens's University Press
2002, pp. 2-3.

Main Currents in Contemporary Philosophy

After Kant's rejection of the possibility of a general ontology (1), Bernard
Bolzano was the first philosopher who contributed to the new ontological turn,
but is work was rediscovered only in the Twentieth century by Husserl (2).
Bolzano's work influenced both Husserl (a disciple of Franz Brentano) and
Frege, that are at the origins of the main traditions of contemporary ontology:
the Phenomenological, the Analytical, and the Austro-Polish (Brentano was also
the teacher of Twardowski, the founder of the Lvov-Warsaw School); the first
work of Brentano On the Several Senses of Being in Aristotle (1862) and
the Logical Investigations (1900) by Husserl were at the origin of the interest in
philosophy of the most authoritative exponent of Continental ontology, Martin
Heidegger (3).
Phenomenological
Bolzano and Brentano can be considered the forerunners of this School, founded
by Edmund Husserl; the main exponents are Adolf Reinach, Roman Ingarden
and Nicolai Hartmann.
Analytical
After C. S. Peirce and the classical works by Frege, Russell and the early
Wittgenstein, at least Rudolf Carnap, Gustav Bergmann, Nelson Goodman and
W.V.O. Quine should be mentioned.
Austro-Polish
The father of Polish philosophy was Twardowski; Kotarbinski and Leśniewski
are ontologists of the first Polish generation (the Lvov-Warsaw School) and
Roman Suszko and Jerzy Perzanowski of the most recent times.
Continental
After Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Deleuze and Foucault, just to mention
a few names, are the most debated thinkers; other prominent ontologists are
listed in the Table of Formal and Descriptive Ontologists.
Notes
(1) "The Transcendental Analytic accordingly has this important result: That the
understanding can never accomplish a priori anything more than to anticipate
the form of a possible experience in general, and, since that which is not
appearance cannot be an object of experience, it can never overstep the limits of
sensibility, within which alone objects are given to us. Its principles are merely
principles e of the exposition of appearances, and the proud name of an
ontology, which presumes to offer synthetic a priori cognition of things in
general in a systematic doctrine (e.g., the principle of causality), must give way
to the modest one of a mere analytic of the pure understanding." I.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (A247/B304), Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press 1998, pp. 358-359.
(2) "With such illogicality did things happen in the history of logic which we are
pursuing here that this great, born logician fell prey to a fate which beats the fate
of Joachim Jungius. For the latter at least was read, and read by a Leibniz; but
that cannot even be said of Bolzano. Hence we cannot even maintain in his case
that he was forgotten. All the greater is the merit of Edmund Husserl who
discovered Bolzano." Hermes Scholz, Concise History of Logic (1931), English
translation: New York: Philosophical Library 1961, p. 47.
(3) "The first philosophical text through which I worked my way, again and
again from 1907 on, was Franz Brentano's dissertation: On the Manifold Sense
of Being in Aristotle." Martin Heidegger, Preface to: William
Richardson, Heidegger. Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff 1963, p. X.
Essays by Various Authors in PDF format
Gianfranco Basti:
Analogia, Ontologia e Problema dei Fondamenti (in Italian)
Nino Cocchiarella:
"Conceptual Realism as Formal Ontology", in: Roberto Poli, Peter Simons
(eds.), Formal Ontology, Dordrecht/Boston/London, Kluwer 1996, pp. 27-60,
Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, vol. 53. (256 KB). This essay is
reproduced with the kind authorization of Kluwer Academic Publishers.
"Logic and Ontology", in: Axiomathes vol. 12, (2001) pp. 117-150 (Italian
translation by Flavia Marcacci, revised by Gianfranco Basti: "Logica e
ontologia",Aquinas.Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia 52: 7-50 (2009).
"Logical Necessity Based on Carnap's Criterion of Adequacy", Korean Journal of
Logic, vol. 5 n. 2 (2002), pp. 1-21.
"Conceptual Realism and the Nexus of Predication", Metalogicon vol. 16, 2
(2003), pp. 45-70.
"Denoting Concepts, Reference, and the Logic of Names, Classes as Many,
Groups and Plurals", Linguistics and Philosophy vol. 28 n. 2 (2005), pp. 135-179.
"Russell's Logical Atomism 1914-1918: Epistemological Ontology and Logical
Form", unpublished essay (will be removed after publication).
Deontic Logic, unpublished notes based on a course given on modal logic in the
late 1960s at the State University of California at San Francisco.
Gustav Bergmann on Ideal Languages, unpublished lecture presented at Indiana
University at the Gustav Bergmann Memorial Conference (October 30-21, 1992).
A Modal-Ontological Argument and Leibniz's View of Possible Worlds,
unpublished paper (2018)
Some Remarks on Stoic Logic
Diodorus's Master Argument
Jan Dejnožka:
Being Qua Identity in Russell’s Ontologies (2018), unpublished essay posted
with the kind permission of the Author.
Piero Di Vona:
Studi sulla Scolastica della Controriforma. L’esistenza e la sua distinzione
metafisica dall’essenza, Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1968.
Marco Forlivesi:
General Bibliography of João Poinsot (Joannes de s. Thoma - Juan de sto Tomás
- Jean de st-Thomas - Giovanni di s. Tommaso - John of St Thomas)
George Edward Hughes:
The Modal Logic of John Buridan, G. Corsi, C. Mangione, and M. Mugnani
(eds.), Atti del Convegno internazionale di storia della logica: la teoria delle
modalità, Bologna: CLUEB 1989, pp. 93–112.
Marco Lamanna:
Correspondences between Clemens Timpler's work and that of Jacob Lorhard
Gottfried Wihelm Leibniz:
Leibniz Classification of the Sciences (1667 - 1676 - 1679)
Leibniz Classification of the Sciences (1697)
Ulrich Gottfried Leinsle:
Das Ding und die Methode. Methodische Konstitution und Gegenstand der
frühen protestantischen Metaphysik. Augsburg: MaroVerlag 1985.
I. Teil: Darstellung; (23 MB)
II. Teil: Anmerkungen und Register. (18 MB)
Jerzy Perzanowski:
Ontological Conditions for Emergence (Abstract) (2002) - Abstract of an essay
read at the Conference Levels of Reality organized by Mitteleuropa Foundation
Roberto Poli:
Descriptive, Formal and Formalized Ontologies - in: Denis Fisette (ed.) -
"Husserl's Logical Investigations reconsidered", Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2003, pp.
183-210
Framing Ontology (1999)
Levels - Axiomathes - vol. 9, 1998, pp. 197-211