Ontology

• Reference: Knowledge Management: Knowledge Representation: Ontologies  (67)

Buffalo Ontology Site - Information on ontology, on the history of ontology, and on contemporary ontology and its applications.

The Metaphysics of Blue - On the nature of consciousness - looking for soul in a soulless world.

Metaphysics of Quality - Robert M. Pirsig deals with the fundamentals of existence and attempts to provide a more coherent system for understanding reality than current paradigms allow.

Ontology. A Resource Guide for Philosophers - Resources on the development of ontology, especially in the twentieth century.

PhilSci Archive: Idealist Philosophy: What is Real ? - Paper by Axel Randrup defending idealism and arguing that materialism leads to logical contradictions, which closes by considering the implications of this for religion.

Qualia: The Knowledge Argument - Aims to establish that conscious experience involves non-physical properties. It is one of the most discussed arguments against physicalism; from the Stanford Encyclopedia by Martine Nida-Rümelin.

The Shift of Aspect in Language and Thought - Examines the role of this ubiquitous but neglected feature of expression and perception, suggesting that by a shift of aspect reality is both mental and physical.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Abstract Objects - Survey of attempts to draw the distinction between concrete and abstract objects; by Gideon Rosen.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Events - Survey of philosophical views on the character and status of events; by Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Existence - Survey article by Barry Miller.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Holes - An interesting case-study for ontologists and epistemologists.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Physicalism - Discussion of the thesis that everything is physical; by Daniel Stoljar.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: The Identity of Indiscernibles - A principle of analytic ontology first explicitly formulated by Leibniz. It states that no two distinct substances exactly resemble each other.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Tropes - An article describing tropes; by John Bacon.

What is Ontology? - Collected definitions, from leading philosophical reference works and from philosophers from Wolff to Husserl.

Why Does Anything Exist? - Sequence of short essays on this topic.