Ontology

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open, with the primary literature named rather than gestured at.

Metaontology and the Substantivity DisputePlanned
Whether ontological disputes are genuine disagreements or artifacts of how the parties speak
22 min
Easy OntologyPlanned
Deriving numbers and properties from trivial inferences, and the claim that the hard questions were never hard
22 min
Neo-Fregean AbstractionPlanned
Deriving arithmetic from Hume's principle, and the Caesar and bad company objections
26 min
Ontological Pluralism and Quantifier VariancePlanned
Whether there are several ways of being, and whether rival ontologists mean one thing by 'there is'
24 min
Absolute GeneralityPlanned
Whether anyone can quantify over absolutely everything, and what indefinite extensibility would cost if not
26 min
Ideology and OntologyPlanned
Counting primitive notions as well as entities, and why the two economies pull against each other
20 min
Plural Quantification and Ontological InnocencePlanned
Talking about some things without talking about a further thing they form, and what nominalism can buy with it
24 min
Higher-Order MetaphysicsPlanned
Asking the questions in a typed higher-order language instead of a first-order one, and watching several of them change shape
28 min
Grounding-Based OntologyPlanned
Ranking what there is by what holds in virtue of what, rather than listing it all flat
26 min
Ontological Realism and Joint-CarvingPlanned
Sider's claim that quantification itself carves at the joints, and what makes a description natural
28 min
Boundaries, Holes, and AbsencesPlanned
The ontology of things that seem to be defined by what is not there, and what they do to a clean mereology
22 min
Formal Ontology and Applied OntologiesPlanned
Upper ontologies built for shared scientific data, and the continuant and occurrent split they turn on
22 min