Relational vs. constituent ontologies
Peter van Inwagen · Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2014
In a companion piece to this chapter, an essay entitled “What is an Ontological Category?”, I have tried to give an account of the concept of an ontological category, and I have suggested that ontology is the discipline that attempts to answer Quine's “ontological question” – ‘What is there?’ – in terms of a system of ontological categories. And I have suggested that an ontology is any given such attempt at an answer. Very roughly speaking, in that essay I have defended the view that there are natural classes – classes whose boundaries are not simply matters of arbitrary convention – and I have contended that the ontological categories are natural classes that are in a certain sense very “high” or very comprehensive. In the present chapter, I’m going simply to assume that we have some sort of intuitive grasp of these concepts – “natural class,” “ontological category,” “ontology” (mass term), and “ontology” (count noun).