Combinatorial ontology
Dale Jacquette · 2002
Logic and ontology The idea of making logic the basis of ontology is not new. This chapter develops a particular choice of logical foundations for a combinatorial pure philosophical ontology. The answer to the question of being that the theory makes possible depends on the totality of logically possible combinations of predications involving all logically possible combinations of logical objects with all logically possible properties. Combinatorial ontology explains what it means for something to exist, why there is something rather than nothing, and why the actual world is uniquely existent and logically contingent. It further requires and provides a rationale for revising the concept of a logically possible world in a reform of conventional model set-theoretical semantics for modal logic. A combinatorial ontology based on logic stands in sharp contrast with Heidegger's existential ontology based on phenomenology. If we accept Heidegger's thesis of the priority of the question of being over the ontic sciences, then we cannot proceed to the applied ontic sciences unless or until we answer the question of being by explaining what it means for something to exist. Where Heidegger applies a derived Husserlian phenomenology as the a priori method for answering the question of being, we shall consider an a priori logical investigation of the concept of being involving all logically possible combinations of logically possible predications, as required by the principles of pure classical logic.