Abstract
This chapter discusses arguments for conceptual relativity and their philosophical implications. I start with the ideal of exactly one fundamental ontology as it is common in analytic metaphysics. Contemporary metaphysicians often try to step behind the plurality of ordinary ontologies by employing a distinction between “ordinary” and “fundamental” existence questions. While we use a wide range of ontologies in ordinary and scientific contexts, the goal of metaphysicians is to evaluate what exists in the most fundamental sense. Conceptual relativists like Putnam and Hirsch reject the metaphysical appeal to exactly one fundamental ontology and therefore endorse a substantive conceptual pluralism. I consider a range of arguments for conceptual relativity that are based on considerations of understandability (“we do not even understand claims about a supposedly fundamental ontology”) and epistemic access (“we could never figure out what entities fundamentally exist”). While I endorse conceptual relativity, I acknowledge that debates about these arguments usually end in an intellectual stalemate. I therefore propose to shift attention from conceptual relativity in philosophical thought experiments to conceptual relativity in scientific practice.
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Notes
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One interesting area of research that is concerned with similarities and differences between folk ontologies is ethnobiology. Berlin (1992) and Atran and Medin (2008) provide helpful overviews for research on cross-cultural issues in folk-biological ontologies. See Ludwig (2015) for a detailed discussion.
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The relation between “metaphysics” and “ontology” is a complicated issue due to the vagueness of both terms. I will follow a common use of both terms by considering metaphysics to be generally concerned with the structure of reality and ontology to be concerned more specifically with issues of existence. Even if this distinction is often important, Putnam’s argument from conceptual relativity clearly combines both issues by rejecting the ideal of exactly one fundamental ontology on the basis of a general rejection of the ideal of one fundamental account of reality.
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Eklund (2013) argues that Carnap-references in contemporary metaphysics are largely based on a misunderstanding of this historical debate.
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Chalmers’ (2009, 80–85) proposes an analogous distinction between ordinary and ontological existence questions. “Ontological existence questions” in the sense of Chalmers are exclusively concerned with fundamental ontological truths and therefore correspond to my “fundamental existence questions”.
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Putnam’s criticism of Ontology with a capital “O” occasionally leads him to an anti-ontological rhetoric as illustrated by the title of his Ethics without Ontology (2004 cf. Pihlström 2006 and Copp 2006). Dale (2008) extends this strategy to debates about mind and cognition by suggesting a “cognitive science without ontology”. However, I do not assume that Putnam’s or Dale’s proposals are incompatible with my presentation of ontological pluralism. Instead, the difference is largely rhetorical: while I talk about “ontology” in a metaphysically shallow sense that is ubiquitous in scientific practice, Putnam and Dale reject “Ontology” as a philosophical project that aims at exactly one fundamental account of what exists.
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One may also worry that philosophical intuitions about the understandability or non-understandability of metaphysical issues are easy prey for the “negative program” in experimental philosophy (Alexander et al. 2010; cf. Thomasson 2012) that challenges the use of intuitions in philosophical arguments. If there are no good arguments of why we should consider certain metaphysical issues understandable or not understandable, the variability of intuitions provides a further reason to expect a stalemate in the discussion of the ideal of one fundamental ontology.
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Ludwig, D. (2015). Conceptual Relativity in Philosophy. In: A Pluralist Theory of the Mind. European Studies in Philosophy of Science, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22738-2_3
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