ONTOLOgICAL PLURALISm ANd ONTOLOgICAL CATEgORy

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways of being. Historically, ways of being are aligned with the ontological categories. This paper is about to investigate why there is such a connection, and how it should be understood. Ontological pluralism suffers from an objection, according to which ontological pluralism collapses into ontological monism, i.e., there is only one way to be. Admitting to ontological categories can save ontological pluralism from this objection if ways of being ground ontological


Introduction
According to ontological pluralism there are different ways of being as well as there are different beings.This view is in contrast with the dominant view in the contemporary literature, ontological monism, according to which all entities exist1 in the same way and all differences are rooted in what these different entities are, rather than the way they exist.Ontological pluralism, in contrast, had been more popular throughout the history of philosophy.Aristotle's slogan "being is said in many ways" and Aquinas's thesis of the analogy of being (1968) are just a few to mention.More recently in the history, Russell, discriminating the way the concrete and the abstract things exist, pronounced that "the relation 'north of' does not seem to exist in the same sense in which Edinburgh and London exist" (Russell  1912, 98).
Usually those who endorse ontological pluralism adopt a multi-categorical ontology.Aristotle's categorical distinction between substance and accidents, and Russell's categorical division between abstracta and concreta are well-known.The association of ontological pluralism and multi-categorical ontology is not a mere coincidence.For instance, "a special way of existing.For existing can have different levels which thing" (Aquinas 1993, 53).Recently, Jason Turner (2010) sets forth this line, Kris McDaniel (2017, ch.4) argues in detail that nothing undesirable Nevertheless, within the contemporary literature around ontological pluralism it is not clear why ontological categories should be in terms of ontological pluralism.This issue is the purpose of this paper.We believe that the connection between ways of being and ontological categories is integrated with the notion of the generic way of being.Hence, in section 2, we prefer a version of ontological pluralism that admits to the generic way of being.In section 3, we raise an objection against this version of ontological pluralism that we dub 'the collapse argument'.2

Ataollah Hashemi and Davood Hosseini: Ontological pluralism and ontological category
As noted in the literature, appealing to the notion of fundamentality can save the ontological pluralism from the collapse argument.At this stage, the issue of the connection between ontological categories and ways of being comes up.In section 4, based on a plausible account of ontological category, we show why and how ontological pluralism can resolve the collapse argument.Our closing remarks depict the tie between ways of being and ontological categories.

Ontological Pluralism and the generic Way of Being
Given that existence should be regimented by means of particular assume that there are only two ways of being: abstract and concrete. 3We will use a for abstract existence and c for concrete existence.Given that x x a ranges over abstract entities and c ranges over concrete entities.thesis:4 (1) For all x ( ay y=x cy y=x) The problem, however, is that in this formulation "for all" can be replaced neither by a nor by c, because "for all" should range over both concreta and abstracta.The formulation requires a third generic that could range over both categories.By the bi-conditional x , there is a generic that is the generic way of being.
In reaction, McDaniel (2017, 25-30) and Turner (2010, 32-34) suggest ones, and therefore there may be no need for the generic way of being: these two collapse arguments are not the same. 3We stick with this example till the end of this paper.
( Indeed, (4) is a trivial truth that both monists and pluralists concede.Consequently, the thesis of ontological pluralism (i.e., (1) that is equivalent to (4)), turns out to be trivial.However, it is not a desirable outcome for pluralists to concede that the thesis of ontological pluralism is trivial.Turner (2010, 32-34) claims that this result is not as undesirable as it seems.However, it seems that triviality is, per se, an undesirable feature of any metaphysical thesis. 5other approach, that Turner (2021, 191) in passing suggests, is that an ontological pluralist can accept the generic way of being as part of the naïve and ordinary linguistic activity. 6This suggestion makes sense, only if there is a precise distinction between the language of ontology (ontologese) and ordinary language, and ontological claims should be articulated in ontologese rather than in ordinary language.This is a nonstarter, however.If ontological pluralists advocate the distinction between ordinary language and ontologese, they have to formulate the thesis within ontologese; a language that, as they already accepted, cannot accommodate the generic way of being.
At this point, there is a dilemma: either pluralists must acknowledge that they cannot formulate ontological pluralism; or conceding the reduction ontological pluralism is a trivial claim.A way out of the dilemma is to adopt the generic way of being.7

The Collapse Argument and Fundamentality
The collapse argument is a serious concern that might undermine the intelligibility of ontological pluralism.(Fine 2001; Rosen 2010).Taking this reduced to the more natural, since the less fundamental is grounded in however, this role is mediated by fundamentality.
If this is a legitimate way of using naturalness to deal with the problem, it seems that the preferred strategy is appealing to grounding and fundamentality, directly.The original problem is what would be the criterion in virtue of which one could prefer between the two sets of SD and CD.The solution, now, is to see which one is more generic way of being is more fundamental, a version of monism is true; otherwise, a version of pluralism is more defensible. 11 The second problem, however, is more pressing.Not only are SD and CD about ways of being, but also, they are tied to ontological categories, A and C. Now the question is what the relationship between ontological categories and their relevant ways of being could be.Appealing to the concept of elite 11 of naturalness tout court less natural in terms of more natural.Although this approach is preferable by those who might not be comfortable with the notion of fundamentality, in this paper we offer the solution that is more congenial to the literature of fundamentality as this notion enables us to link to metaphysical reduction.
rather than the other way around.As we noted at the outset, this is the question that remained unanswered by McDaniel and Turner, though they the next part, we attempt to provide an explanation to show why and how ontological categories metaphysically relate to ways of being.

Ontological Category and Way of Being
An important metaphysical question, germane to the discussion in hand, is: what is it to be an ontological category?A straightforward answer to the question is that ontological categories are the most general partitioning of all entities. 12condition for the characterization of ontological category.If X and Y, for instance, are ontological categories, X Y is more general than both X and Y. Therefore, based on the characterization, the disjunction is more eligible to be an ontological category.Hence, more conditions, besides generality, is needed to have an accurate characterization of ontological categories.
Jan Westerhoff (2005) suggests that appealing to the notion of fundamentality might help us here.Not only are ontological categories the most general partitioning of all entities, but also they are the most fundamental ones.In this way, the disjunction problem can be resolved, insofar as X and Y are supposedly more fundamental than X Y; hence, X Y is not an eligible candidate for being an ontological category (Westerhoff 2005, 27-28). 13r the characterization of ontological categories, 14 we can explain what 12 There are alternative characterizations of ontological categories as well (see Westerhoff 2005).
13 addition to be the most general partitioning of all entities, ontological categories should be natural.The Y is supposedly less natural that X and Y. Due to the argument presented in the previous section, naturalness plays a proxy role in this discussion.Hence, we prefer to merely employ fundamentality and remain neutral about the relationship between naturalness and fundamentality. 14Although adding fundamentality to generality can resolve the disjunction problem, Westerhoff (2005, the hierarchy of levels of fundamentality, where is the cut-off that discriminates between ontological relates ways of being to ontological categories.In the previous section, we argued that fundamentality gives us a plausible criterion for the preference of each other.Here we state that fundamentality can play the crucial role in characterizing what an ontological category is.As a result, the key notion that links ontological categories with the ways of being is fundamentality.To illustrate this issue, let us turn into the concrete/abstract example.Supposedly, concrete/abstract partitioning is categorical, that is to say this distinction is the most fundamental partitioning of all entities.In addition, than any other ways of being including the generic way of being.Obviously not.For instance, if Dave's favorite things (which include colas, say that this way of being is more fundamental than the concrete/abstract way of being.If fundamentality explains that abstract and concrete are ontological categories, then that very fundamentality must ensure that the ways that concreta and abstracta exist are the most fundamental ways to associated with ontological categories, 15 more fundamental than the generic way of being, because of the fact that ontological categories are the most fundamental partitioning of all entities.In virtue of the suggested connection between ontological categories and ways of being, we can overcome the collapse argument against ontological pluralism.Abstracta and concreta are ontological categories; thus, they are the most fundamental partitioning of all entities.The abstract and concrete ways of being, in effect, are more fundamental than the generic way of being.Hence, CD is legitimately and non-arbitrarily preferable to SD.
Objection: All said and done is that if ontological pluralism is true, admitting ontological categories can save ontological pluralism from the attack of the collapse argument.The objection is why one should be committed to both ontological categories and ways of being.Whereas categories and any other partitioning?We believe that this is not a problem for our conception of ontological category since we can coherently maintain that the most fundamentals are actually ontological categories. 15This is a return to the historical conception of ways of being as ways of being of ontological categories.
monists, who believe in the generic way of being, are only committed to ontological categories.Thus, ontological monism is more parsimonious than ontological pluralism.reply: Indeed, ontological parsimony is violated, only if pluralists take ways of being and ontological categories as fundamental.As explained being.In this way, contrary to the advertisement of monism, pluralism is a more virtuous theory.Monists have to take both ontological categories and the generic way of being as fundamental, while pluralists only take is more qualitatively parsimonious than ontological monism, since the latter presumes two kinds of fundamentals (i.e., ontological category and the generic way of being), whilst the former only requires one kind (i.e., way of being). 16,17jection: One might object that McDaniel's theory, on which ontological be more parsimonious than the theory proposed in this paper according to which ontological categories are grounded in ways of being.For illustration, McDaniel's theory posits abstract way of being and the category of abstracta with the abstract way of being, while according to the theory proposed here abstract way of being is fundamental and the category of abstracta 18 reply: It is true that the theory proposed here holds that ontological categories should be in terms of ways of being, and for us the concept of is the same as metaphysical reduction.Indeed, one might explain (metaphysical reduction) as mere identity, while someone else might appeal to the notion of metaphysical grounding to explain this issue.The question of how to interpret this concept, however, is not the main concern of this paper.What we attempted to do here is to show why and how ontological categories should be in terms of ways of being, and either interpretation is compatible with our proposal.The fact that which interpretation is preferable depends on several factors including explanatory powers, theoretical virtues, etc.For instance, those who defend the mere identity relation between ontological categories and ways of being owe us an explanation about why there is a conceptual gap between ontological categories and ways of being, while if ontological categories are grounded in ways of being, it is more understandable why these two are still conceptually distinct.Therefore, based on parsimony alone, one cannot determine which interpretation is more plausible.

Concluding Remarks
According to the collapse argument, ontological pluralism would be ontological monism in disguise.We argued that the collapse argument does not refute ontological pluralism, if it is augmented by ontological categories.Consequently, there is an epistemological and methodological relationship between these two notions: adopting ontological categories makes ontological pluralism less objectionable.Moreover, throughout the paper, we tried to make a new metaphysical connection between these two concepts: ways of being ground ontological categories.The mutual interdependence may explain why these two notions have been integrated throughout the history of philosophy.
8It is customary to have predicates for abstract and concrete entities, A and C, respectively.Now one can For instance, one can get rid of the abstract way of being by adopting the genetic way of being and the category of abstracta.Consequently, ontological pluralism is ontological monism in disguise.Remember that the original problem was which of CD or SD has to be preferred.It is worth noting in this context by we mean metaphysical reduction.So, it should be explained what the role of naturalness in metaphysical reduction is.McDaniel can address fundamentality (2017, ch.8).As assumed in the literature of grounding, metaphysical reduction can be cashed out in term of grounding relation between levels of fundamentality cy (x=y)A new problem, however, arises: what is the criterion in virtue of which one could prefer SD over CD or vice versa?The issue is related to a similar question raised in the literature: what is the criterion in virtue of which , a and c) is elite, i.e.