Notes for Ontology III: Pluralism and Conclusions
E. Pluralism: no one or two kinds of thing is ultimately real;
there is a variety of real kinds of things
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Aristotle: things are distinguished as being different substances,
each with a different essence (or "form") that makes it be the kind of
thing it is, and the material that comprises each individual member of
that kind or species is what distinguishes it from other members of the
same kind.
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Ordinary Language Philosophy: the variety of things (e.g., symphonies)
cannot be reduced to one or two basic kinds, and the best way to address
the issue of the basic ways of speaking of reality is to notice how ordinary
language distinguishes things and how they are ordinarily characterized.
This is sometimes called "naive realism" because it claims that the real
world is pretty much like what we imagine it to be. One "real" world
is no more real than another if both are part of ordinary discourse.
Concluding Remarks: Doubts about Ontology in General
1. Dualism has no scientific evidence to back it up and serious problems
(e.g., interaction of mind and body).
2. Objections to materialism in general:
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If materialism is correct, then even materialist philosophy is nothing
other than the motion of matter. It can hardly be said to be "true"
or to "explain" anything, then, for an explanation of something (seemingly)
would be different from that which it claims to explain.
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If there is no purpose in the universe, then there would be no purpose
in trying to prove that there is no purpose--which is exactly what the
materialist tries to do.
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Certainly, to say that I have a thought is not the same thing as to say
that a neuron fires in my brain--but that is what the materialist seems
to say.
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Eliminative or reductive materialism (the attempt to give a purely physical
description of so-called mental states) is somewhat unpersuasive regarding
emotional states and really unpersuasive regarding social or legal states
(e.g., being married). Why should everything be reducible to physics?
Perhaps the naïve realist approach adopted by ordinary language philosophers
is the best. As J. L. Austin says, "real" makes sense not in terms
of some attribute of a thing but simply in terms of being able to contrast
that thing to something that is not considered real. Ontology would
therefore ultimately be about how we ordinarily view the world. Of
course, we might change our fundamental way of viewing the world and thus
change our minds about what we call real (in what is called a paradigm
shift). But such a shift would not depend on our getting closer to
a "truer" or "more real" sense of reality.
3. Other philosophers have claimed that the enquiry into the nature of reality is wrong-headed for a number of reasons. Two of the most notable schools of anti-metaphysical thought include:
- Positivism/Verificationism (represented by A. J. Ayer): metaphysical speculation is meaningless, because claims about the nature of reality are not true by definition nor are they verifiable by appeal to experience
- Pragmatism (represented by William James): unless metaphysical distinctions make some practical difference in our lives, it is useless to speculate about them
4. More recently philosophers have wondered about whether there is such a thing as reality at all. Realists (e.g., John Searle) claim that reality is independent of our thinking; we assume reality as the background for our thought. Anti-realists (e.g., Hilary Putnam, Charles Taylor) argue that the notion of reality is a social, institutional (e.g., linguistic) construct that we appeal to for practical (often political) reasons. Indeed, some feminists (e.g., Catherine McKinnon) claim that to describe reality as a determinate, identifiable, and meaningful thing is to think of reality as something apart from our input or control, and this is another way to encourage people to accept discrimination and exploitation simply as "the way things are."