Chapter 1 - An Introduction to Ontology

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Annotated Bibliography

W.V.O. Quine. 1948. On What There Is.: http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/; The paper that introduced the method for determining ontological commitments discussed in this chapter
Peter van Inwagen. 1998. Meta-Ontology.: http://link.springer.com/article; Van Inwagen presents, explains, and defends five Quinean theses about ontology
Jason Turner. 2010. Ontological Pluralism.: http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf; Explores the view that there may be different ways or kinds of being, in contrast to the Quinean thesis that being is univocal
William Alston. 1958. Ontological Commitments.: http://link.springer.com/article/; Challenges the idea that the way to determine one's ontological commitments is to regiment one's beliefs and see what follows from them
Richard Routley. 1982. On What There Is Not.: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107527; Defends a theory of nonexistent objects against Quine's criticisms
Amie Thomasson. 2008. Existence Questions.: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11098-008-9263-8; Challenges the Quinean method for evaluating existence questions and advocates a distinct method using a combination of conceptual analysis and empirical enquiry
Bertrand Russell. 1905. On Denoting.: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2248381; A presentation of the theory of names as definite descriptions
Donald Davidson. 1967. The Logical Form of Action Sentences.: http://isites.harvard.edu/; An argument for the existence of events from the logical form of sentences describing actions
Elliott Sober. 1981. The Principle of Parsimony.: http://bjps.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/2/145.extract; Examines and criticizes the justifications that have been offered for Ockham's Razor
David Papineau. 2001. The Rise of Physicalism.: http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/881/1/D_Papineau_Rise..pdf
Alyssa Ney. 2008. Defining Physicalism.: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/; Considers several strategies for understanding physicalism, acknowledging the problem that our current physical theories are incomplete
Jaegwon Kim. 2003. The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism.: http://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.; Describes the history of naturalism and explores several versions of the view
Penelope Maddy. 2001. Naturalism: Friends and Foes.: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/; Describes several versions of naturalism, including the Quinean version endorsed by the author and responds to objections to the position
Elizabeth Barnes. 2012. Emergence and Fundamentality.: http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/content/; Distinguishes the issue of fundamentality from the issue of ontological independence and uses these notions to provide a new characterization of emergence
Jaegwon Kim. 1984. Concepts of Supervenience.: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2107423?origin=crossref; Clarifies several philosophically important notions of supervenience
Karen Bennett. 2011. Construction Area (No Hard Hat Required).: http://link.springer.com/article/; Explores a variety of ontological dependence relations and argues that they are conceptually intertwined and may be considered varieties of a unified building relation
Kit Fine. 2001. The Question of Realism.: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/; Introduces the notions of ground and the real to explain what is at stake in metaphysical debates about realism and anti-realism
Jonathan Schaffer. 2009. On What Grounds What.: http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/grounds.pdf; Contrasts the Quinean approach to ontology with a rival Aristotelian approach that sees the important metaphysical questions being questions of what is fundamental and what grounds what
Kelly Trogdon. Forthcoming. An Introduction to Grounding.: http://www.kellytrogdon.org/KT/research_files/IG%20-%20final.pdf; Provides an overview of recent literature on grounding and its relation to the topic of reduction
Jessica Wilson. Forthcoming. No Work for a Theory of Grounding.: http://individual.utoronto.ca/jmwilson/; Argues that there is no need for metaphysicians to postulate a new, distinctive relation of grounding in addition to the notions of ontological dependence already found in the metaphysical literature
Jonathan Schaffer. 2003. Is There a Fundamental Level?: http://www.jonathanschaffer.org/fundamental.pdf; Defends the view that there may be no fundamental level to reality

Annotated Weblinks

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/: Section 4 of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on Meinong (who was represented by Quine's character, Wyman) explains Meinong's ontological views in detail. Meinong's view is that an object is any target of a mental act, and thus a great variety of things really are objects, including actual objects, possible objects, and impossible objects.
http://plato.stanford.edu/: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on nonexistent objects details the entire literature surrounding the problem motivating Quine's rejection of McX and Wyman's views. The entry extends into current debates about solutions to the problem of nonexistent objects.
http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/metaphysical-kit/: An interview with Kit Fine at 3:AM Magazine, in which he discusses his view that common sense is a necessary component of philosophical progress, and other topics.
http://philosophyideas.com/
http://philosophyideas.com/
http://philosophyideas.com/
http://philosophyideas.com/: These Philosophy Ideas database entries on the nature of existence, types of existence, being, and non-being, all briefly list a great number of historical and contemporary one-sentence views about existence.
http://www.philostv.com/: Owen Flanagan and Alex Rosenberg debate naturalism and other topics at Philosophy TV.

Discussion Questions

Explain in your own words what is meant by the Quinean slogan “no entity without identity.”
How should one explain the contribution ‘Zeus’ makes to the overall meaning of the sentence “Zeus does not exist”?
Explain in your own words what is meant by the Quinean slogan “to be is to be the value of a bound variable.”
Quine suggests that we may accept the biological theory including the sentence ‘Some zoological species are cross-fertile,’ without accepting the existence of species. How does this not conflict with his slogan “to be is to be the value of a bound variable”?
Is the above maneuver convincing? Can one plausibly accept this biological theory while denying the existence of species?
Explain in your own words what Quine is getting at when he expresses a “taste for desert landscapes.”
Why might one think the simplest ontology is most likely to be true?
How would someone who does not believe in abstract entities paraphrase the sentence “Some marriages are happy”?
Do you think Fine is correct in thinking that when philosophy departs too much from common sense, it is a sign of error?
Physicalists believe that one should look to physics to find one’s fundamental ontology. What are three kinds of phenomena that are not described explicitly by physics but might plausibly be grounded in the entities physics describes?