Bimodality of formal ontology and mereology

Abstract

From the distinctions between "ontology" and "logic" and between "formal" and "material" we obtain two basic oppositions. Keeping the term "ontology" constant yields the opposition between "formal ontology" and "material ontology". This raises a question: when one speaks of ontology, how can its formal aspects be distinguished from its material ones? If, instead, we keep the term "formal" constant, the opposition is between "formal ontology" and "formal logic". The question here is therefore: when we talk about "formal" how can we distinguish between logic and ontology?Starting from these questions, I propose to update the somewhat old distinction between formal ontology as the domain of the distributive-collective opposition and material ontology as the domain of the parts-whole oppositions.