| Title | Ontological Commitments |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Manuel DeLanda (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0032.1.12 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/speculations-4-speculative-realism/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ |
| Copyright | DeLanda, Manuel |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2013-06-05 |
| Long abstract | Any philosophy commits itself, explicitly or implicitly, to assert the existence of the entities that it intends to describe or explain. Philosophers who deny the truth of this statement—affirming for example that specifying what kinds of entities populate their world constrains their ability to think—usually assume an implicit ontology which is, for the same reason, uncritically accepted and poorly analyzed. Hence, declaring one’s ontological commitments from the start should be standard procedure in philosophy. Although ontologies vary widely, and it is unwise to try to fit them into a rigid taxonomy, for the purposes of this brief essay they can be classified into three categories: idealist, empiricist, and realist. For the idealist philosopher there are no entities that exist independently of the human mind; for the empiricist entities that can be directly observed can be said to be mind-independent, but everything else (electrons, viruses, causal capacities etc.) is a mere theoretical construct that is helpful in making sense of that which can be directly ob-served; for the realist, finally, there are many types of entities that exist autonomously even if they are not directly given to our senses. |
| Page range | pp. 71–73 |
| Print length | 3 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |