|
Only a philosopher could ask this question with any degree of
seriousness. As if mountaineers don't have enough to contend
with without worrying whether the thing they cling to exists!
The question trades on a common-sense distinction between appearance
and reality. For the obvious answer to the question is 'yes,
of course mountains exist!'. But perhaps it only seems
to us as though we have a firm grip on the concept of a mountain;
perhaps, in reality, there is nothing genuinely corresponding
to our use of the term. So to understand the question it is
perhaps better to read it as asking 'Do mountains really
exist?'
It is the question's implications for the nature of reality
itself that brings it under the purview of the metaphysician;
and the ontologist in particular. For it is the job of the ontologist,
in partnership with the scientist, to keep a tight rein on the
inventory of the constituents of reality; weeding out any illusory
entities like pixies, phlogiston and yeti.
The existential question 'do mountains exist?' is closely related
to the constitutive question 'what are mountains?', and to the
individuative question 'how do we count mountains?'. For an
answer to any one of these three questions will impact, on pain
of incoherence, on an answer to the other two. It is part of
the ontologist's skill and training to be able to keep track
of these parallel questions, and to describe for us a coherent
picture of reality.
An interesting engagement with the question, by the metaphysician
Barry Smith and the geographer David Mark, is available online:
Do Mountains Exist? Towards an Ontology of Landforms
.
|
Top
