Abstract

Ontology is that part of metaphysics which is concerned with what there is. How then can we justify an ontology of ordinary everyday things? I suggest that the entry into such an ontology is the truth of ordinary non-philosophical sentences. But such sentences do not wear their ontology on their sleeves. You need to discern quantificational structure, and so I discuss the syntactic and semantic tests for discerning such structure. In this talk I look particularly at the evidence from the underlying logical structure of modal and temporal discourse that natural language presupposes an ontology of times and possible worlds. The claim may be expressed in the following argument: (1) Temporal operators are quantifiers. (2) ‘times’ are whatever temporal operators quantify over. (3) Some appropriate temporal sentences are true. (4) Modal operators are quantifiers. (5) ‘worlds’ are whatever modal operators quantify over. (6) Some appropriate modal sentences are true. [This research is part of a joint project with A.A.Rini on the ‘World-Time Parallel’, supported by the Marsden Fund Council from Government funding, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand, and by Visiting Fellowships at the Flemish Academic Centre for Science and the Arts, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts.]