Ontology

Helping orphans the way you would do it

This article is about the philosophical meaning of ontology. For the term in computer science, see ontology (computer science).

In philosophy, ontology, the most fundamental branch of metaphysics, is the study of being or existence as well as the basic categories thereof.

Table of contents

1 Being
2 Aristotle's description
3 Some basic questions
4 Some concepts
5 The modality of an entity
6 External link

Being

A being is anything that can be said to 'be' in various senses of the word 'be'. The verb to be has many different meanings and can therefore be rather ambiguous. Because "to be" has so many different meanings, there are, accordingly, many different ways of being.

Aristotle's description

Aristotle described ontology as "the science of being qua being." The word 'qua' means 'with regard to the aspect of'. According to this theory, then, ontology is the science of being with regard to the aspect of being, or the study of beings insofar as they exist. More precisely, ontology concerns determining what categories of being are fundamental and asks whether, and in what sense, the items in those categories can be said to "be."

Some basic questions

Different philosophers make different lists of the fundamental categories of being; one of the basic questions of ontology is: "What are the fundamental categories of being?"

Here are a few more examples of ontological questions:

What is existence?
What are physical objects?
Is it possible to give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?
What are an object's properties or relations and how are they related to the object itself?
Is existence a property?
When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing?

Some concepts

A few quintessential ontological concepts are:

The modality of an entity

In Software architecture, Marketing or Sales, the entities can be _, should be _, need to be _ or will be _. Thus the issues lie with Brand, Brand name or Product line. See also:

In Engineering, Software development or Software engineering, the entities will be _, are _, or were _. See also:

External link

[http://www.formalontology.it/being-qua-being.htm Aristotle's definition of a science of Being qua Being:

ancient and modern interpretations]