University of Kansas - Fall 2023

Management 225, Chapter 6 Worksheet

Professor Burdick, Section 9

December 17, 2023

The problem of material constitution asks whether or in what sense a whole should be

considered a new object in addition to the collection of parts composing it. Abstract objects

are closely related to fictional and intentional objects.

Class Date: 6/2/2024

Teacher’s Remark: Excellent use of visuals to enhance understanding.

GENERIC CONTENT:

## Background (List)

- Fictional objects are entities invented in works of fiction.

- They can be things, like the One Ring in J. R. R. Tolkien's book series The Lord of the Rings,

and people, like the Monkey King in the novel Journey to the West.

- Some philosophers say that fictional objects are abstract objects and exist outside space

and time.

- Others understand them as artifacts that are created as the works of fiction are written.
## Analysis

Intentional objects are entities that exist within mental states, like perceptions, beliefs, and

desires. For example, if a person thinks about the Loch Ness Monster then the Loch Ness

Monster is the intentional object of this thought. People can think about existing and non-

existing objects. This makes it difficult to assess the ontological status of intentional objects.

=== Other concepts ===

Ontological dependence is a relation between entities.

## Discussion (List)

- An entity depends ontologically on another entity if the first entity cannot exist without

the second entity.

- For instance, the surface of an apple cannot exist without the apple.

## Conclusion (List)

- An entity is ontologically independent if it does not depend on anything else, meaning that

it is fundamental and can exist on its own.

- Ontological dependence plays a central role in ontology and its attempt to describe reality

on its most fundamental level.

## Findings

It is closely related to metaphysical grounding, which is the relation between a ground and
the facts it explains. An ontological commitment of a person or a theory is an entity that

exists according to them.

## Background

For instance, a person who believes in God has an ontological commitment to God.

Ontological commitments can be used to analyze which ontologies people explicitly defend

or implicitly assume. They play a central role in contemporary metaphysics when trying to

decide between competing theories. For example, the Quine–Putnam indispensability

argument defends mathematical Platonism, asserting that numbers exist because the best

scientific theories are ontologically committed to numbers. Possibility and necessity are

further topics in ontology.

## Analysis

Possibility describes what can be the case, as in "it is possible that extraterrestrial life

exists". Necessity describes what must be the case, as in "it is necessary that three plus two

equals five". Possibility and necessity contrast with actuality, which describes what is the

case, as in "Doha is the capital of Qatar". Ontologists often use the concept of possible

worlds to analyze possibility and necessity.

## Discussion

A possible world is a complete and consistent way how things could have been. For

example, Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in the actual world but there are possible
worlds in which he was born at a different date. Using this idea, possible world semantics

says that a sentence is possibly true if it is true in at least one possible world. A sentence is

necessarily true if it is true in all possible worlds. In ontology, identity means that two

things are the same.

## Conclusion

Philosophers distinguish between qualitative and numerical identity. Two entities are

qualitatively identical if they have exactly the same features, such as perfect identical twins.

This is also called exact similarity and indiscernibility. Numerical identity, by contrast,

means that there is only a single entity. For example, if Fatima is the mother of Leila and

Hugo then Leila's mother is numerically identical to Hugo's mother.

## Findings

Another distinction is between synchronic and diachronic identity. Synchronic identity

relates an entity to itself at the same time. Diachronic identity relates an entity to itself at

different times, as in "the woman who bore Leila three years ago is the same woman who

bore Hugo this year". == Branches ==

There are different and sometimes overlapping ways to divide ontology into branches.

## Background (List)

- Pure ontology focuses on the most abstract topics associated with the concept and nature

of being.
- It is not restricted to a specific domain of entities and studies existence and the structure

of reality as a whole.

## Analysis

Pure ontology contrasts with applied ontology, also called domain ontology. Applied

ontology examines the application of ontological theories and principles to specific

disciplines and domains, often in the field of science. It considers ontological problems in

regard to specific entities such as matter, mind, numbers, God, and cultural artifacts. Social

ontology, a major subfield of applied ontology, studies social kinds, like money, gender,

society, and language.

## Discussion

It aims to determine the nature and essential features of these concepts while also

examining their mode of existence. According to a common view, social kinds are useful

constructions to describe the complexities of social life. This means that they are not pure

fictions but, at the same time, lack the objective or mind-independent reality of natural

phenomena like elementary particles, lions, and stars. In the fields of computer science,

information science, and knowledge representation, applied ontology is interested in the

development of formal frameworks to encode and store information about a limited domain

of entities in a structured way. A related application in genetics is Gene Ontology, which is a

comprehensive framework for the standardized representation of gene-related information

across species and databases.

Formal ontology is the study of objects in general while focusing on their abstract

structures and features.

References / Works Cited:

1. Wikipedia (n.d.). Retrieved from [Link]

2. Random Book Title (2022). Academic Publishing House.