OK, every tribe likes to reserve some language for its own use and polish up a few long words to keep the barbarians at bay. Philosophers are no different, but not as bad as medics. 'Ontology' is the study of what types or categories of things might reasonably be thought to exist in the world itself as opposed to just our imagined ways of thinking about things. Talking about planks of wood and body tissue is easy - they seem to exist in the world as it is in itself - we can cut them, we can measure them, we notice when they go wrong. But what about right' or wrong'? Are they real categories in the world? They are certainly not real categories in the world of matter but neither is the experience of seeing the colour red - it exists within our mind only but is no less real for that. Might right and wrong be real categories in the human world, which is part of the whole world, or do we just invent them as we talk?
展开▼
