Meta-ontology

Meta-ontology is the metatheory of ontology, which is to say it comprises discussion of what ontolgy is about and its methods. According to Hofweber:

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"it also isn't so clear what an ontological question really is, and thus what it is that ontology is supposed to accomplish. To figure this out is the task of meta-ontology, which strictly speaking is not part of ontology construed narrowly, but the study of what ontology is. However, like most philosophical disciplines, ontology more broadly construed contains its own meta-study, and thus meta-ontology is part of ontology, more broadly construed. Nonetheless it is helpful to separate it out as a special part of ontology. Many of the philosophically most fundamental questions about ontology really are meta-ontological questions."

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——Thomas Hofweber; Logic and ontology

The term 'meta-ontology' is rather new and became more used following a paper titled 'Meta-ontology' by Peter van Inwagen. He phrased the subject of 'meta-ontolgy' as follows:

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Quine has called the question ‘What is there?’ "the ontological question." But if we call this question by that name, what name shall we use for the question, ‘What are we asking when we ask “What is there?” ’? Established usage, or misusage, suggests the name ‘the meta-ontological question’, and this is the name I shall use."

’

——Peter van Inwagen; Meta-ontology

The question by Quine that Inwagen is referring to was posed in an essay On what there is.

Background

The questions Inwagen referred to as 'meta-ontology' concerned a debate between Carnap and Quine about the structure of an ontology. So a logical starting point is the position of Carnap, followed by the critique by Quine, and then some more mdern takes on the issues.

Carnap

Carnap came from the school of logical positivism which was an outgrowth of some impatience of scientists with philosophy. Carnap's view was that an ontology consists of two parts: an 'internal' part, consisting of a logical combination of terms, definitions and formal relationships, and the observational data that the logical part intended to explain, and an 'external' part that consisted of pragmatic or practical consideration about which framework to use. He called the internal part a 'linguistic framework', and felt that it was not interesting to philosophers because any analysis of this part amounted simply to questions about usage of terms. On the other hand, Carnap felt that the 'external' part was not interesting to philosophers either, because it turned upon merely practical matters, such as how accurate a description was useful, whether a particulate linguistic framework was pertinent to a particular practical problem and so forth.

His views were expressed in two major works: Meaning and necessity in which he presented the idea of the analytic-synthetic distinction, and Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology in which he presented the internal-external distinction. The internal-external distinction has been described. The analytic-synthetic distinction was a separation between terms that were defined, analytic terms whose meaning was specified by the logical part of a linguistic framework, and synthetic terms whose meaning involved some empirical observation. An example of the analytic type that is very often presented is All bachelors are unmarried. An example of the synthetic type requiring some evidential input is John is a bachelor.

Quine

Quine critiqued Carnap's views in several major works. Possibly the most direct critiques are On Carnap's views on ontology and Two dogmas of empiricism. He first dismissed the 'internal-external distinction' as just a matter of how general a terminology one chose to use. So for example, one could choose a language that employed the term furniture, in which case one could talk about tables and chairs and beds, or one could choose to use a narrower language in which furniture was not a concept, but only chairs. In that case one was restricted to speak of types of chair: arm chairs, lawn chairs and so forth; the choice of language being just a matter of convenience. Quine called this a matter of categories (the breadth of a language) and subclasses (the division of a category into its constituents) and considered the 'internal-external distinction' to be trivial.

This aspect of Quine's critique is not widely accepted today, as is discussed later.

By dropping the 'internal-external' distinction, Quine reduced Carnap's structure for an ontology to simply the 'analytic-synthetic distinction' and he proceeded to argue that this division was untenable, that any attempt to define 'analyticity' inevitably was either completely circular and meaningless or dragged in some empirical aspect that made the supposedly analytic actually synthetic. The problem is that any explanation of a analytic statement that is more than just a restatement in terms of defined synonyms, that is, any explanation that is not circular, is a statement about usage, and any non-circular approach to usage inevitably draws in a context that invokes empirical matters. Quine's approach to this issue also has been questioned, as discussed later, but it is a much more subtle matter than it appears.

As a result, in Quine's meta-ontological view, there is one all-encompassing ontology that includes all possible subdivisions made for practical convenience and entertains no analytic-synthetic partition.

Later views

It has been said that Quine is important not for settling matters but for providing the tools for discussion. Inwagen referred specifically to Quine's elaborate technique for uncovering just what basic items a theory required for its construction, be that explicit or only implied; the various 'such-and-such' used in expressions like there is at least one such-and-such. Quine referred to these objects and the connections between them as the 'ontological commitment' of the theory.