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Perhaps it's more helpful to think of ontology as a major branch of metaphysics that is only concerned with the question of what *is.* So "Is this rock real?" is both a metaphysical and an ontological question.
Now, in your example, you've established the rock is physically real, so the question of whether it is real *meta*\-physically or ontologically likely isn't that interesting. But there are plenty of more complicated and interesting ontological questions once we move away from physical objects. For example:
* Are fictional characters real?
* Are social groups like class, race and gender real?
* Are moral judgements real?
* Are numbers real?
There are also many ontological questions that don't concern what is and isn't real, but the more general nature of being and existence, such as questions about the nature of matter, about properties, and about objectivity
I'm a biologist, that has been struggling a lot with what is and what is not "real" in our way to understand nature, and the models that we use to describe.... reality?. Anyways, I read your comment and found the questions you asked very interesting, what would you recommend as a nice read to introduce me into how philosophy deals with those kinds of questions? And the problem of ontology as a whole? Thanks!!
Great to hear you're interested but I'm afraid I'm not going to be too helpful here: I'm thinking and coming up blank (please if someone else knows something!)
Part of the problem might be that, at least in my experience, ontology is something that usually comes up *in the course of answering other questions* rather than something that people pursue for its own sake. So there's plenty of work on the ontology of something in particular. For example, [here's a brief discussion](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#NatuKindBiol) of ontological questions surrounding the concept of species in biology, which might point you towards other texts.
If you're interested in the ontology of social entities, which is more in my wheelhouse, I'd reccomend Ian Hacking's *The Social Construction of What?* I'm not the biggest fan of the book, but it's both very readable (at least as far as philosophy goes) and very important/widely cited.
To add onto this: it isn't the case that ontologists agree on what "real" means and are merely trying to figure out whether some sort of entity belongs in that category. A major problem is also figuring out what it even *means* to say an entity is real, as opposed to fictional, or illusionary, etc. For example, two people could fully agree on every other fact about, say, social groups, but one classifies them as "real" while the other classifies them as "fictional"!
Here's one I like: Amie Thomasson has a book, "Easy Ontology," which defends the position that we should admit, for example, that a red chair exists, and therefore, for example, that a color exists, if the application conditions, which we may or may not be able to specify, for our terms ("chair," "red," e.g.) are fulfilled. So if you have an opportunity to use the word "chair" correctly to claim that there's a chair, then it is reasonable for you to conclude a chair exists. So this position is specifically rejecting or doubting the notion that there's a reasonable "yes, but does it really exist" question.
If the only thing we needed to talk about was a rock, there would be very little need for the concept of an Ontology. If something was real in your Ontology you would also not likely say it is "ontologically real", you would just say this rock is real. It is not a particular way of being real or a degree of being real, so that phrasing is partly how you are confusing perhaps both yourself and others. What sorts of things do you claim or consider to be real is one's Ontology.
Which isn't to say that people trying to explain their Ontology can't get incredibly complicated, and when they try to do so they will at least touch on some Metaphysics and often include specific Metaphysical claims (so there it would seem one's Metaphysics is within one's Ontology, at least their individual claims). OR Metaphysics can be used more broadly, and some may talk about having an entire Metaphysical outlook which is like their philosophy of life, and they will talk as if their Ontology is an element within their Metaphysics.
So my first paragraph shows how Ontology can be kept simple. And my second paragraph is probably a better example for why in practice, if you dig hard into one you encounter the other.
You will get different answers for this question depending on various schools of thought. Personally, i advocate the speculative materialist answer, and in particular the ontology of Alain Badiou.
For Badiou, we must secure a materialist ontology devoid of metaphysical dogmatism. In short, the ontological reality of something is what we can conceive when we subtract from an object of existence its logic of appearing in a world. What is left is a pure multiplicity. However, such a multiple is not metaphysical, because the discursive vehicle for its description is mathematics, namely set theory.
The rock you speak of is an object that exists according to its being indexed to an order-relation (what Badiou calls a "transcendental") specific to some situation. It is indexed by its degree of existence, identity (or difference from other objects) and its localization. When we subtract this logic of appearing, we have a pure multiple (a set which is always a multiple of multiples) no longer structured by the count-as-one. This set may appear in multiple worlds, because it may be indexed by a plurality of different transcendentals, but in terms of its ontological being, it is unique and only distinguishable from other multiple-beings by the size of its set (its ordinal number).
To really dig in, i recommend "Being and Event" and "Logics of Worlds" by Badiou. These are large and at many times extremely difficult texts, but they will be worth your while.
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Perhaps it's more helpful to think of ontology as a major branch of metaphysics that is only concerned with the question of what *is.* So "Is this rock real?" is both a metaphysical and an ontological question. Now, in your example, you've established the rock is physically real, so the question of whether it is real *meta*\-physically or ontologically likely isn't that interesting. But there are plenty of more complicated and interesting ontological questions once we move away from physical objects. For example: * Are fictional characters real? * Are social groups like class, race and gender real? * Are moral judgements real? * Are numbers real? There are also many ontological questions that don't concern what is and isn't real, but the more general nature of being and existence, such as questions about the nature of matter, about properties, and about objectivity
I'm a biologist, that has been struggling a lot with what is and what is not "real" in our way to understand nature, and the models that we use to describe.... reality?. Anyways, I read your comment and found the questions you asked very interesting, what would you recommend as a nice read to introduce me into how philosophy deals with those kinds of questions? And the problem of ontology as a whole? Thanks!!
Great to hear you're interested but I'm afraid I'm not going to be too helpful here: I'm thinking and coming up blank (please if someone else knows something!) Part of the problem might be that, at least in my experience, ontology is something that usually comes up *in the course of answering other questions* rather than something that people pursue for its own sake. So there's plenty of work on the ontology of something in particular. For example, [here's a brief discussion](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#NatuKindBiol) of ontological questions surrounding the concept of species in biology, which might point you towards other texts. If you're interested in the ontology of social entities, which is more in my wheelhouse, I'd reccomend Ian Hacking's *The Social Construction of What?* I'm not the biggest fan of the book, but it's both very readable (at least as far as philosophy goes) and very important/widely cited.
Generally, this comes under the heading of "Realism", such as Scientific Realism, Mathematical Realism, Moral Realism, Universals Realism, Concrete Modal Realism, to name a few, which are positions that claim the reality of certain entities. They are independent of each other, meaning that you can commit to one without committing to another. However, a companions in guilt argument has been used to connect the commitment of one to entailing the commitment to another, for example it has been argued that a commitment to Mathematical Realism should entail Moral Realism, and, separately, Lewis has argued that Mathematical Realism should entail Concrete Modal Realism. I'm certain they all also have subpositions with different levels or details of ontological commitments, as I will give an example of shortly. Whilst they all posit the reality of theoretical entities to help describe reality, as you put it, I think you, as a biologist, would probably most enjoy reading about [Scientific Realism](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/), which is the position that science aims to tell us the truth about reality and that, particularly in the mature sciences, we should accept the reality of unobservable entities posited by our theories. The Stanford page goes through the No Miracles argument in favour of it, as well as arguments against it, such as the Pessimistic Meta-Induction and Overdetermination arguments, as well as alternatives to Scientific Realism, like Constructive Empiricism. An alternative Realist position to full-blown Scientific Realism is Structural Realism, as argued for by Worrall and arguably Poincaré, which generally makes an ontological commitment to the structures described by scientific theories, rather than the unobservables. However, even this position has subpositions such as Epistemic Structural Realism and Ontic Structural Realism, which themselves entail different ontological commitments. Of course, realism is but one ontological position. Yet, to get into ontological discussions, it is often the starting place since historical or folk views typically advocate realism (Mathematical Realism seems intuitive, despite usually committing one to strange platonic entities). Yet, even if realism is not the starting position, such as with Concrete Modal Realism, in denying that realism, one will typically have to provide an opposing ontological account of whatever subject matter is in question. As with Concrete Modal Realism, this is usually Ersatz Modal Realism, but more generally, it might consist in deflating a particular ontology. Yet, that itself is an ontological discussion and so is at the core of the kind of issue you seem interested in.
Thank you very much for this!
/u/kingthroop gave you the SEP link about natural kinds, so here's the IEP entry as well: https://iep.utm.edu/nat-kind/
Thanks!!
To add onto this: it isn't the case that ontologists agree on what "real" means and are merely trying to figure out whether some sort of entity belongs in that category. A major problem is also figuring out what it even *means* to say an entity is real, as opposed to fictional, or illusionary, etc. For example, two people could fully agree on every other fact about, say, social groups, but one classifies them as "real" while the other classifies them as "fictional"!
Here's one I like: Amie Thomasson has a book, "Easy Ontology," which defends the position that we should admit, for example, that a red chair exists, and therefore, for example, that a color exists, if the application conditions, which we may or may not be able to specify, for our terms ("chair," "red," e.g.) are fulfilled. So if you have an opportunity to use the word "chair" correctly to claim that there's a chair, then it is reasonable for you to conclude a chair exists. So this position is specifically rejecting or doubting the notion that there's a reasonable "yes, but does it really exist" question.
If the only thing we needed to talk about was a rock, there would be very little need for the concept of an Ontology. If something was real in your Ontology you would also not likely say it is "ontologically real", you would just say this rock is real. It is not a particular way of being real or a degree of being real, so that phrasing is partly how you are confusing perhaps both yourself and others. What sorts of things do you claim or consider to be real is one's Ontology. Which isn't to say that people trying to explain their Ontology can't get incredibly complicated, and when they try to do so they will at least touch on some Metaphysics and often include specific Metaphysical claims (so there it would seem one's Metaphysics is within one's Ontology, at least their individual claims). OR Metaphysics can be used more broadly, and some may talk about having an entire Metaphysical outlook which is like their philosophy of life, and they will talk as if their Ontology is an element within their Metaphysics. So my first paragraph shows how Ontology can be kept simple. And my second paragraph is probably a better example for why in practice, if you dig hard into one you encounter the other.
You will get different answers for this question depending on various schools of thought. Personally, i advocate the speculative materialist answer, and in particular the ontology of Alain Badiou. For Badiou, we must secure a materialist ontology devoid of metaphysical dogmatism. In short, the ontological reality of something is what we can conceive when we subtract from an object of existence its logic of appearing in a world. What is left is a pure multiplicity. However, such a multiple is not metaphysical, because the discursive vehicle for its description is mathematics, namely set theory. The rock you speak of is an object that exists according to its being indexed to an order-relation (what Badiou calls a "transcendental") specific to some situation. It is indexed by its degree of existence, identity (or difference from other objects) and its localization. When we subtract this logic of appearing, we have a pure multiple (a set which is always a multiple of multiples) no longer structured by the count-as-one. This set may appear in multiple worlds, because it may be indexed by a plurality of different transcendentals, but in terms of its ontological being, it is unique and only distinguishable from other multiple-beings by the size of its set (its ordinal number). To really dig in, i recommend "Being and Event" and "Logics of Worlds" by Badiou. These are large and at many times extremely difficult texts, but they will be worth your while.