On being ontologically unserious

Kai Nielsen

pp. 235-259

in: John Heil (ed), Cause, mind, and reality, Berlin, Springer, 1989

Abstract

There are philosophers who even now want to be ontologically serious. We need, they tell us, to see the world rightly and to do this we must work out a fundamental ontology which will display the most basic features that the world must have. This is not a matter of careful experimental investigation linked with adroit and imaginative theory design but a matter, or in some way essentially a matter, of pure rigourous thought. Pure disciplined philosophical reflection will yield the basic categories of the world.