Ontological and Conceptual Relativity and the Self

TY - CHAP

T1 - Ontological and Conceptual Relativity and the Self

AU - Sosa, Ernest

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The several contributors 2003. All rights reserved.

PY - 2009/9/2

Y1 - 2009/9/2

N2 - This article takes up, in six sections, issues of realism and of ontological and conceptual relativity. The first section briefly lays out the kind of absolutist realism of interest in what follows. The second section considers arguments against ordinary common-sense entities such as bodies, and for the view that subjects enjoy a superior ontological position. No such argument is found persuasive. The third lays out three options in ontology, opts for a kind of conceptual relativism, and takes up three problems for the proposed view. The fourth section then offers a compromise position based on a kind of existential relativity meant to accommodate our most settled beliefs about what there is, while retaining a fundamentally realist and objectivist ontology. The main argument of that section relies on a distinction between (a) semantical relativity and (b) ontological relativity.

AB - This article takes up, in six sections, issues of realism and of ontological and conceptual relativity. The first section briefly lays out the kind of absolutist realism of interest in what follows. The second section considers arguments against ordinary common-sense entities such as bodies, and for the view that subjects enjoy a superior ontological position. No such argument is found persuasive. The third lays out three options in ontology, opts for a kind of conceptual relativism, and takes up three problems for the proposed view. The fourth section then offers a compromise position based on a kind of existential relativity meant to accommodate our most settled beliefs about what there is, while retaining a fundamentally realist and objectivist ontology. The main argument of that section relies on a distinction between (a) semantical relativity and (b) ontological relativity.

KW - Absolutist realism

KW - Common-sense entities

KW - Conceptual relativity

KW - Objectivist ontology

KW - Ontological relativity

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U2 - https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199284221.003.0023

DO - https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199284221.003.0023

M3 - Chapter

SN - 9780199284221

BT - The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics

PB - Oxford University Press

ER -