As the subject title suggests, I want to know what the difference between metaphysics and ontology is. I told my philosophy professor that I trouble distinguishing the two. His short reply was, “You’re not the only one.”
Therefore, I’d like to hear what you people have to say. To start off, the understanding I have of ontology is that it deals with ‘being’ or existence and its nature. If that is the case then, what room is left for metaphysics?
Your thoughts…?
Ontology is always applied to metaphysics. To practise metaphysics is to use an ontological analysis. But ontology can be used outside metaphysics, as well.
Ontology, in a simple example, is the exegesis of the verb “to be”. Metaphysics is vitally concerned with that question. But so is logical positivism. Any examination of this word, in a philosophical context, can be called ontology. That includes a purely materialist view of the meaning of “to be”. But metaphysics examines the verb “to be” in a broader context. “Being”, in philosophy, is not limited to “existing in spacetime”.
I don’t know what school you’re in, but I would take what that particular prof has to say about anything with a lump of salt, if he cannot tell the difference.
In its most simple form, the division between ‘ontology’ (the study of what is) and ‘epistemology’ (the study of knowing), is the result of a fundamental metaphor, as Rorty argues it, that of mirroring or reflection. What we “know” (episteme) is imagined to reflect, more or less perfectly or clearly, what is (ontos). This is rooted in Plato, but it’s conception has so pervaded our language and histories that it is present almost everywhere you find epistemology being thought about. So you are right, ontology and metaphysics cannot be separated, in the sense that largely ontology operates in distinction to its partner, epistemology. As Rorty would argue, and many others before him, once the metaphor of the “mirror” disappears, so does “epistemology”. When one stops trying to connect what is “in here” (what we know) to what is really, really “out there” (what is), the metaphysical aim, as it is traditionally known, is given up.
Faust is right, I would only add this brief summary, which is simply another way of expressing the same thought:
Ontology asks what things exist, and metaphysics examines the nature of those things.
For example, I might have the ontological belief that people exist. I might then have the metaphysical belief that people are essentially rational animals.
Yeah, Obie, that is simpler. I tend to go with a linguistic exposition, because I hold no epistemology.
I’m sorry Faust, I was just answering the question as posed, in the context of Philosophy (which I imagine that student is studying), and not in the context of what you have or don’t have. If you take every post of mine as centered around you and your posts, you will have a long preoccupation on nothing. Your answer was fine.
So, Dunamis, how accurate do you think perception and knowledge is?
Accurate assumes correspondence, which I hoped I had worked to expose as a fundamental metaphor of reflection. I don’t think that perception and knowledge is accurate or inaccurate. How accurate do you think it is?
Um, Dunamis, by “Obie” I meant Obw. I wasn’t responding to you at all.
I think that perception all feeds into memory, which is the resource of thought, thus thought is an order of perception or awareness.
I think also, that perception is accurate, yet incomplete, due to perception being a limited spectrum for awareness of attribute.
I can look at a tree outside, without knowing the exact temporature, withouth knowing the exact density, without knowing how many atoms or cells are in it, etc. But I can remember the 3dimensional shape, and the colors. From there, I remember all other passed instances of a tree’s behavior, and I can make a relative guess at how solid, harm or cold the instance is, etc.
I’m not 100% accurate, because I’m not a perfectionist robot. A human brain, despite how imperfect it is, uses a very small amount of electricity and neurons to complete very large data-processing tasks rather quickly.
As with most things in nature, being “right” is not as important as being “alive”. My understanding of reality was meant to be just enough to bring me result, and success, but not a single perfect “truth”.
Look out, maybe that was just a test.
Bring the dragon-Lord a rat’s tail, next, as I have commanded. 
My contribution to philosophy resides in these concepts that you ask about, bouchie.
I am not interested in doing a direct comparison between the terms, ontology and metaphysics. I think faust covered that nicely.
I would only say that to think ontologically is to think existentially: to ask how one’s own moods conditions one’s “logical thoughts”. This is what I have tried to do in the essay linked to above.
I have tried find some kind of absolute foundation for this thing called “metaphysics”. As I see it, metaphysics implies the notion of “that which is necessary for all possible forms of physics”. For there to be any kind of physics, then, there must be some kind of structure – dimensionality – so that logical representations of worldly facts may exist.
The dimensions that physicists use in their investigations are “structured” by something that I call: spatiality-as-such. For me, then, the central question in all of metaphysics is: from where does spatiality-as-such arise?
I believe that this question can only be answered by an existential analysis of one’s very own ontos (being).
“The Metaphysics was divided into three parts, now regarded as the traditional branches of Western metaphysics, called (1) ontology, (2) theology and (3) universal science.”
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
Seems to assert that ontology is always inside metaphysics.
It’s always there. It’s sometimes elsewhere.
dunamis,
I’m trying to understand what you mean by your response to Dan~…how would perception and knowledge be neither accurate or innacurate? I’m not grasping how correspondence is dismissed by the ‘metaphor of reflection’.
Can you elaborate or provide a link so I can study this out?
To be more clear, in case you are understanding it, but phrasing it wrongly. Correspondence is dismissed, when the metaphor of reflection is dismissed.
There are many forms of this in philosophy. To name a few, there is coherence theory, and Holism, in various forms. There is Wittgenstein’s “meaning is use” approach. There is the general (Neo)Pragmatic approach, that “true is what works”. Any Anti-Realism, or as is more fashionable these days, Non-Realism, would operate on this line of thought. You can google or wikipedia any of these and come up with something interesting.
Here is Richard Rorty’s “The Consequences of Pragmatism” which would introduce some of the ideas involved.
Hey dunamis, I liked your responses.
what do you think of the metaphor of reflection though?..
I don’t understand what u mean by that…
are you saying it’s unnecesary? or that it takes us nowhere? or what…
I don’t really get your point.
let’s say i want to find out the truth about something, i need to use the mirror metaphore… why does rorty says we should abandon it? im confussed…
Rorty’s primary argument about why the mirror analogy is faulty is that it is based on a fundamental concept of authority. Metaphysically, in terms of history, “Truth” was seen to be “out there”, either in the abstractions of etherial Ideas (which philosophers or priests had access to), or in the nature of the world itself, and the authority one had had to do with one’s ability to accurately reflect that Truth and reveal it to others. What Rorty claims is that the entire idea of such authority, once traditional claims to God’s word, law and truth were culturally abandoned, simply transferred to the authority of the world itself. Science then was seen to be the accurate “reflection” of how the world really was, (just as philosophers and priests revealed how God or Ideas really were), and scientific discourse became the authority of by virtue of the “brute facts” which it revealed. So Rorty will tell you though, following the logic of Nietzsche, that Science also is caught in the metaphor of reflection, and in the same priestly structure of authorization. What is and has always been important is not the correspondence, but the values and aims that collectively that have produced the illusion of correspondence. What metaphors of correspondence do is obscure the role we as humans play, by consensus, in shaping our world. When we “find it out there,” it is because between us we have produced aims that ask the kinds of questions that produce those kinds of answers. Such answers are not important because they are true, but true because they are important to us. Recognizing this, Rorty would say, humanity passes out of a kind of adolescence, into an adulthood of taking responsibility for the nature of one’s world. The world does not simply appear to us, revealed in its details by experts, but it is as it is, because it is expressing our values.
There are of course methodological reasons to abandon a theory of correspondence, and much of Non-Realism is concerned with this. There simply is no analytical way to connect “what is out there” with “what we know”. The question falls ultimately on the nature of justification.
great response!!! are you a philosophy teacher?
I also found out about the ‘justification’ problem, some time ago, by myself, without reading anyone like rorty or nietzsche… I only read them after I ‘discovered’ this on my own to verify what others had to say about it.
and I liked what I found.
how old are you if I may ask?.
and who’s the lady in your display picture! haha…
ps. I think that not only religion and science are that way, I think that ‘authority’ is actually held by noone and nothing…
I mean, by no metaphysical system that pretends to say it possesses truth.
The Lady in the Picture is from the film “Leave Her To Heaven”.
All the rest is private. Glad you like ideas, yours and others. Good luck on your journey.