Volume 97, 2023
The Human Person
Joshua Lee Harris, Roger J. Ronald
Pages 261-270
https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc2025618172
A Way of Seeing Ways of Being
Building a Case for Ontological Pluralism
Ontological pluralism is the view that there are ways of being. In this paper, we build a case for ontological pluralism in the form of three contributions: (1) We offer a theoretically useful definition of ¡°way of being¡± as a positive principle of similarity and difference that is distinct from¡ªand a prior condition for¡ªhaving properties. (2) We develop a test for distinguishing ways of being from properties: features of entities that are conceptually redundant when represented as predicates in standard predicate logic are ways of being. Finally, (3) we argue that there are ways of being, i.e., there are features of entities that satisfy the definition in (1) and pass the test outlined in (2). Along the way, we develop replies to objections against pluralism raised by Peter van Inwagen and Wouter Cohen.