INVESTIGATIONS

The Society organizes, pilots or reports on ontology researches. But it is difficult to define ‘ontology’. On the one hand, it is a discipline with a long history, but on the other hand, there is no common, widely accepted, definition of the term ‘ontology’. The term remained, until recently, one dealt with by philosophers, but in the second half of the 20th century found use also in computer science, where an ontology is referred to as a special kind of information object or computational artifact. We list here three contemporary dictionary definitions of ontology.

E. J. Lowe states,
Ontology, understood as a branch of metaphysics, is the science of being in general, embracing such issues as the nature of existence and the categorial structure of reality. … The term ‘ontology’ has some additional special uses in philosophy. In a derivative sense, it is used to refer to the set of things whose existence is acknowledged by a particular theory or system of thought: it is in this sense that one speaks of ‘the’ ontology of a theory, or of a metaphysical system as having such-and-such an ontology (for example, an ontology of events, or of material substances). In a separate, technical sense the term ’ontology’ is the official name of a logistical system created by the Polish logician Stanistaw Lesniewski – a system similar in scope to modern predicate logic and developed by him in conjunction with mereology, the formal theory of part-whole relations.
_{Lowe, E. J. (1995), “Ontology”, in The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by T. Honderich, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 634}

While B. Smith states that,
Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties, events, processes and relations in every area of reality.
_{Smith, B. (2003), “Ontology”, in Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Computing and Information, edited by L. Floridi, Oxford: Blackwell, p. 155}

And finally, E. Craig says that,
The word ‘ontology’ is used to refer to philosophical investigation of existence, or being. Such investigationmay be directed towards the concept of being, askingwhat ‘being’ means, or what it is for something to exist; it may also (or instead) be concerned with the question ‘what exists?’, or ‘what general sorts of thing are there?’ It is common to speak of a philosopher’s ontology, meaning the kinds of things they take to exist, or the ontology of a theory, meaning the things that would have to exist for that theory to be true.
_{Craig, E. (1998), “Ontology”, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. Craig, Routledge,, p. 117}

Importantly,  the notion of existence stands always in the center of an ontology. ‘Existence’ is, however,   a complex topic consisting of many different issues, questions, and responses.
God and Mathematics  and The Metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. A Critical Re-Evaluations  are the basic topics that the Society is currently dealing with.

The establishment of the God and Mathematics research group is based on the belief that mathematics is useful for thinking about God. This thinking about God relates primarily to two questions: What is God like? and Are there good reasons to believe that God exists? The answer to the first question takes us into the study of God’s attributes (of God’s nature). The easiest way to answer the second question would be to point out the arguments (proofs) for or against the existence of God. The trouble is that although the arguments for and against the existence of God have been discussed since ancient times, there is no consensus today as to the assessment of their value.

‘Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics’ – what does that mean? First of all, it is necessary to distinguish  ‘Aquinas’s metaphysics’ from ‘Thomistic metaphysics’. And so, broadly speaking, Aquinas’s metaphysics is a collection of his views on issues classified as metaphysical at large. Aquinas’s metaphysics is not a theological doctrine, as it does not come from the interpretation of the Bible, although it does not exclude such inspiration. Aquinas’s metaphysics is rooted in the past — Plato with  a wide variety Platonisms and Arystoteles had a significant influence on its face. Aquinas’s metaphysics cannot be reduced to any of these earlier sources but it is, for the most part of its content, an original work by Thomas himself. Thomas Aquinas created a new concept of being and, as such, initiated a new stage in the history of human thought.  Properties of being, its divisions into being in act and being in potency, into the act of being essence,  into substance and the accidents, the analogy of being, the metaphysics of participation,   the causes of being,  the metaphysics of divinity — all these topics, among many others,  mark   Aquinas’s metaphysics.  The reception of Aquinas’s metaphysics, from its birth in the thirteenth century, created in almost every generation  a  variety of Thomistic metaphysics, which often randomly referred to the metaphysics of Aquinas. Thomistic metaphysics is a multifaceted phenomenon, internally diverse enough that it is sometimes linked to the name of Thomas  with little other than the source-word.

The project ‘The Metaphysics  of Thomas Aquinas. A Critical Re-Evaluation’  is highly motivated. Its main purpose is to get a positive or negative answer to the question: Is Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics a valuable  philosophical system, worthy of future research? The value of any philosophical systems is measured by the value of the topics covered in this system, the value of posed theses inside these topics and the value of justifications for these theses. The topic ‘The Metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. A Critical Re-Evaluation’ is broken down into 18 thematic areas (see Thematic Areas of the Project), which in total seem to cover the subject-matter  of  Aquinas’s metaphysics.  Thus the value of the subject-matter of Aquinas’s metaphysics is evidenced by its age-old interest, despite  changing trends  of human thought,   in almost all of the listed thematic areas. However, there is a need for critical evaluation of many posed theses inside Aquinas’s metaphysics and justifications for these theses. This evaluation should be done from a meta-philosophical and a meta-mathematical perspective.  In many cases, it would be advisable to look for new justifications for Aquinas’s theses that are as little relative as possible to those proposed by Thomas  Aquinas himself or his successors.

For the project to be realized, the cooperation of many people is needed – Thomists and representatives of other philosophical orientations, meta-mathematicians and philosophers of mathematics, philosophers of science, etc. All works related to the project will be supervised by the Project Scientific Committee, whose members are representatives of three groups: Non-Thomists; Non-Thomists, but well versed in the Thomism; and Thomists. The project ‘The Metaphysics  of Thomas Aquinas. A Critical Re-Evaluation’ is managed by the International Society for Formal Ontology (ISFO).