Language, Ontology, and Structure

Abstract

This chapter addresses the role of ontological languages in verbal disputes, by first refuting Mathew McGrath's arguments against the author's position that ontological disputes are verbal—that each linguistic community can upon plausibly charitable interpretations assert the truth in their own favored languages. McGrath presumes that some ontological languages are better than others; that some languages are expressively deficient and unable to understand the truth-conditions in an opposing statement. This idea becomes restrictive and paradoxical when one attempts to determine the correctness of any statement arising from these disputes. An alternative to consider would be Theodore Sider's vision of a perfect ontological language in his “Ontologese,” which is aligned to the world's quantificational structure. But even then there is no substantive question about the world's quantificational structure. It seems that the search for the best ontological language continues to remain a fanciful prospect.