Existence, Fundamentality, and the Scope of Ontology

Argumenta 1 (1):97-109 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A traditional conception of ontology takes existence to be its proprietary subject matter—ontology is the study of what exists (§ 1). Recently, Jonathan Schaffer has argued that ontology is better thought of rather as the study of what is basic or fundamental in reality (§ 2). My goal here is twofold. First, I want to argue that while Schaffer’s characterization is quite plausible for some ontological questions, for others it is not (§ 3). More importantly, I want to offer a unified characterization of ontology that covers both existence and fundamentality questions (§§ 4-5).

Author's Profile

Uriah Kriegel
Rice University

Analytics

Added to PP
2014-10-28

Downloads
651 (#21,621)

6 months
90 (#40,364)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?