Ontological Indeterminacy

The conference on Metametaphysics here at ANU has just finished.  It was a highly enjoyable conference, with a number of excellent talks and a good airing of the issues.  Ted Sider argued for ontological realism; Steve Yablo and I set out (very different) ways of understanding how there can be no fact of the matter in some ontological debates; Amie Thomasson argued for a sort of lightweight realism where existence facts are sortal-relative and to be determined by conceptual analysis; Karen Bennett argued against Eli Hirsch's thesis that debates about composition involve verbal disputes and suggested that the right answers in the composition and coincidence debates may involve unknowable facts; and Huw Price discussed the Quine-Carnap debate over ontology, arguing that Quine's ontological realism is a lot closer to a pragmatic Carnapian view than it is sometimes taken to be.  Lots of good discussion after every paper.  I've put some photos online.

I've also uploaded the Powerpoint for my own talk, "Ontological Indeterminacy".  There I first try to set out the issues and make some distinctions, and then try to state and defend a broadly Carnapian view where the truth-value of many ontological assertions is indeterminate.  This involves a bit of semi-technical apparatus toward the end, involving "furnishing functions" that map possible worlds onto "furnished worlds" (which have built-in domains).  There's even some supervaluation and some contextualism, for those who like that sort of thing.  This should turn into a real paper one of these days, but in the meantime, comments are welcome.

Comments

[Damon Woolsey]

It is possible to both be an ontological realist and accept that the "correctness [or truth] of certain absolute ontological existence assertions" is relative [or indeterminate].

Common sense ontology depends upon whatever objects a given type of mind picks out in the world. This categorization of the world need not correspond to our proper ontology, because a mind instantiates its own "domain-determination function".

So if you ask how many objects are on the table, speaking from a proper ontology, I would say "What table?" (or, "What is a table?"); but from a humanistic common sense ontology, I would say "two". The way to bridge this gap is through an understanding of the mind.

[Gregg Rosenberg]

A few years ago I guest edited an issue of the Electronic Journal of Analytic Philosophy on the same topics. The theme was how to do philosophical ontology and if it is even possible. It has papers by Huw Price and Amie Thomasson on the topics it sounds like they spoke on at this meeting, along with papers by others.

The url for anyone interested is: http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1997.spring/contents.html

[Matt]

John Dupre's approach, at least in _The Disorder of Things_, might also be seen as both ontological realist and conceptual relativist. I don't know if that's the best way to understand his "promiscious realism", but it seems a fairly natural one. (It's a position I have lots of sympathy for, as well.)