Ontology Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! === Ontology and language === Some philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of ''usage'' rather than a question about facts.<ref>{{cite book | title= Introduction to an Ontology of Intellectual Property | publisher=The Scitech Lawyer, ABA| author=Carvalko, Joseph | date= Summer 2005 }}</ref> This perspective is conveyed by an analogy made by [[Donald Davidson (philosopher)|Donald Davidson]]: Suppose a person refers to a 'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments pertinent to a cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently throughout instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity is explained.<ref name="Davidson">{{cite journal|author=Davidson, Donald|year=1974|title=On the very idea of a conceptual scheme|url=http://files.meetup.com/328570/davidson_on-the-very-idea.pdf|journal=Proceedings and Address of the American Philosophical Association|volume=47|pages=5β20}} Davidson refers to a 'ketch' and a 'yawl' (p. 18).</ref> Analogously, if we find people asserting 'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think that 'such-and-such' exist, we might conclude that these people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'charity'); they simply use 'there are' differently than we do. The question of ''What is?'' is at least partly a topic in the philosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself.<ref name="Krieger">{{cite journal|author=Kriegel, Uriah|year=2011|title=Two defenses of common-sense ontology|url=http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/defenses.pdf|url-status=dead|journal=Dialectica|volume=65|issue=2|pages=177β204|doi=10.1111/j.1746-8361.2011.01262.x|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181221041700/http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/defenses.pdf|archive-date=2018-12-21|access-date=2013-04-27}}</ref> This viewpoint has been expressed by [[Eli Hirsch]].<ref name="Hirsch">Hirsch, Eli. 2011. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRqtcjeHPsC&pg=PA144 Physical-object ontology, verbal disputes and common sense]." pp. 144β177 in ''Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology''. New York: [[Oxford University Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0199732111}}. First published as "[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00506.x/abstract Physical-Object Ontology, Verbal Disputes, and Common Sense]."</ref><ref name="Hirsch1">Hirsch, Eli. 2011. "[https://books.google.com/books?id=iPRqtcjeHPsC&pg=PA68 Quantifier variance and realism]." pp. 68β95 in ''Quantifier Variance and Realism: Essays in Metaontology''. New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0199732111}}. First published as "[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1758-2237.2002.tb00061.x/abstract Quantifier variance and realism]."</ref> Hirsch interprets [[Hilary Putnam]] as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something" can be correct.<ref name=Hirsch1/> This position does not contradict the view that some things do exist, but points out that different 'languages' will have different rules about assigning this property.<ref name=Hirsch1/><ref name="Hirsch2">{{cite book|author=Hirsch, Eli|title=Ernest Sosa and His Critics|publisher=Blackwell|year=2004|isbn=978-0470755471|editor=John Greco|pages=224β232|chapter=Sosa's Existential Relativism|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Moz8OeX4w8AC&pg=PA224}}</ref> How to determine the 'fitness' of a 'language' to the world then becomes a subject for investigation. Common to all [[Indo-European copula]] languages is the double use of the verb "to be" in both stating that entity X exists ("X is") as well as stating that X has a property ("X is P"). It is sometimes argued that a third use is also distinct, stating that X is a member of a class ("X is a C"). In other language families these roles may have completely different verbs and are less likely to be confused with one another. For example they might say something like "the car has redness" rather than "the car is red". Hence any discussion of "being" in Indo-European language philosophy may need to make distinctions between these senses.{{citation needed|date=September 2017}} Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page