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Ontology

The part of metaphysics concerned with what exists and which basic kinds of things there are.

thoughtbridgeInterpretation
IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

Ontological questions ask whether categories such as colors, minds, numbers or moral properties are real and what kind of reality they have. Listing database entities is a related technical use, but narrower than the philosophical field.

What “Interpretation” means

This is a philosophical distinction, theory or contested way of organizing a question—not an empirical diagnosis with one universally accepted answer.

Marker-board illustration created specifically to explain Ontology: The part of metaphysics concerned with what exists and which basic kinds of things there are.VISUAL EXPLANATION · MARKER BOARD
The part of metaphysics concerned with what exists and which basic kinds of things there are.
EXAMPLE

Debating whether color is a surface property, a disposition or a feature of experience is partly an ontological debate.

COMMON CONFUSION

Ontology asks what kinds of things exist; epistemology asks how claims about them can be known or justified.

ASK YOURSELF

What entities or properties must exist for this explanation to be true?

RELATED CONCEPTS
color × thought × bridgePerception

Processes through which sensory information becomes an experienced and usable representation of the world.

→thought × bridgeConsciousness

The presence of subjective experience—there being something it is like to see, feel, think or perceive.

→thought × bridgePersonal identity

The philosophical problem of what makes a person the same person across time and change.

→thoughtMoral realism

A family of views on which moral claims can state facts and at least some moral claims are true.

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SOURCES & TRUST

References

Last reviewed

  1. 01
    Metaphysics

    Peter van Inwagen and Meghan Sullivan · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    Central questions about existence, categories, identity, time and possibility.
    Reference source
  2. 02
    Color

    Jonathan Cohen and colleagues · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    Philosophical accounts of what colors are and how color experience relates to the physical world.
    Reference source
What the source labels mean
Primary source
Original work, experiment, standard or historical text.
Academic source
Scholarly research or review published for an academic audience.
Reference source
An expert standard, encyclopedia or institutional explanation that summarizes a field.
General reference
A practical specialist resource useful for application, but not treated as decisive research by itself.