Abstract
Ontological pluralism is the doctrine that there are different ways or modes of being. In contemporary guise, it is the doctrine that a logically perspicuous description of reality will use multiple quantifiers which cannot be thought of as ranging over a single domain. Although thought defeated for some time, recent defenses have shown a number of arguments against the view unsound. However, another worry looms: that despite looking like an attractive alternative, ontological pluralism is really no different than its counterpart, ontological monism. In this paper, after explaining the worry in detail, I argue that considerations dealing with the nature of the logic ontological pluralists ought to endorse, coupled with an attractive philosophical thesis about the relationship between logic and metaphysics, show this worry to be unfounded.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 419-448 |
Number of pages | 30 |
Journal | Journal of Philosophical Logic |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2012 |
Externally published | Yes |
Keywords
- Free logic
- Logical realism
- Many-sorted logic
- Metaphysics
- Notational variants
- Ontological pluralism
- Ontology
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Philosophy