Western Philosophy

Reconsidering Ontological Pluralism Critique of Two Misguided Presuppositions

Document Type : Original Article

Author

PhD in Philosophical Logic, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran.

10.30479/wp.2025.21292.1134

Abstract

Ontological pluralism is an approach in metaontology that has been systematically introduced over the past decade. However, there is still no detailed formulation and proper explanation of it. In addition, since ontological pluralism has generated a new literature in analytic philosophy, it has led to the belief that it is a new approach to ontology with little historical precedent. The following article is dedicated to these two works. First, it has been shown how ontological pluralism has had prominent supporters in various periods of the history of philosophy; in a way, it can be said that it is the dominant approach in the history of ontology. Second, it has been shown that ontological pluralism has been pursued in two different and seemingly unrelated formulations in the past decade; in such a way that each of them has different presuppositions, concerns, arguments, and consequences. The first formulation focuses on the metaphysical structure of the world and considers the world to consist of facts that are not uniform in their way of being. The second formulation deals with ontological descriptions of the world and focuses on the fact that different and conflicting ontological descriptions of the world can be put forward.

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Main Subjects

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Western Philosophy
Volume 4, Issue 3 - Serial Number 15
December 2025
Pages 23-48